Embargoes,a Queen and the Gurindji

Whatever the … letters may reveal, the most important thing is that now we can know it. ¹

It took historian Jenny Hocking four years of tenacious effort through the High Court of Australia to gain approved access to previously embargoed archival documents known as the ‘palace letters’. Professor Hocking’s interest was to investigate the 1975 correspondence exchanged between Queen Elizabeth and her staff, and Australia’s then Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, in relation to the extraordinary dismissal of the elected federal government led by Labor’s distinguished Gough Whitlam. Hocking cogently and rightly noted on release of the palace letters that no matter what the content revealed, ‘[t]he significance of the decision and its ramifications is tremendous, beginning with the release of the letters themselves.’ ²

Also in 1975, but prior to what’s become known as ‘The Dismissal’, and this time in Australia’s Northern Territory, Gurindji Traditional Owner and Leader, Vincent Lingiari ³ met with Prime Minister Whitlam. As Whitlam sprinkled a handful of Gurindji soil into Lingiari’s hands, he told him that Gurindji lands would be returned: ‘I solemnly hand to you these deeds as proof, in Australian law, that these lands belong to the Gurindji people and I put into your hands part of the earth itself as a sign that this land will be the possession of you and your children forever’. A photo taken that day of Lingiari and Whitlam has become an iconic feature of Australian archives and its social and political history. ⁴

Stepping further back into the last century but staying in the Northern Territory, and still with the Gurindji as focus, two young anthropologists, a husband and wife, visited Gurindji traditional lands and met with men, women and children, and a local missionary. It was 1944. For the next few months, the Gurindji graciously shared with their visitors, Ronald and Catherine Berndt, intellectual, cultural, social, economic and spiritual information. Gurindji people also shared their concerns about local living conditions at Wave Hill Station, or Jinparrak, the place where Vincent Lingiari and Gough Whitlam were to symbolically meet 31 years later.

Ronald and Catherine take field notes and photographs, and receive gifts of finely sewn dillybags and drawings. These all leave Gurindji Country with them and are eventually lodged at The University of Western Australia's Berndt Museum which is named after them. No scope is found in 1944 conversations and documentations, or thereafter, for copies of the information to remain with the persons to whom that information belonged – nor was thought given to Gurindji intellectual and cultural copyright then, or for future generations.

Following the death of Catherine Berndt in Perth in 1994, four years after her husband and in accordance with his wishes, a 30-year embargo was placed on the information they had collected. The embargo included the 1944 Gurindji material, as well as material recorded with individuals and families in different parts of Aboriginal Australia, including other Northern Territory locations, as well as areas of South Australia, and Western Australia’s Kimberley. The University accepted the embargo as part of the 1994 Berndt Bequest.

In 2016, Gurindji artist, author and collaborative scholar, Brenda L Croft, in long-term consultation with the Karungkarni Art and Culture Aboriginal Corporation, prepared a respectful and detailed request on behalf of key Gurindji Traditional Owners to access what is now known as the ‘Berndt Field Note Archive’ at the Berndt Museum. The request concentrated on access to all materials relating to the Gurindji, including the 1944 Berndt Archive. Notably, the request was to view, and not to remove or repatriate, the materials.

The application was submitted as a written document and a video, made by Gurindji Traditional Owners through the Karungkarni Art Centre, to the Berndt Museum and the Berndt Research Foundation Committee. By the time the request for access was submitted, over 70 years had passed since the Gurindji ancestors had so graciously provided the information to the Berndts. Yet, despite the depth and breadth of their application and accompanying documentation – such as support letters and additional audio-visual testimony – the Gurindji request for access was denied by Berndt Museum management, the Berndt Research Foundation Committee, and the University’s legal advisers.

During the past four years, the Gurindji applicants, Croft and others have continued to try to resolve the Berndt Museum and Berndt Foundation standoff in relation to granting the Gurindji access to their materials. Co-authored articles have been published, emails exchanged, meetings occurred, letters written, and phone calls managed. ⁵ While Gurindji applicants remain consistent, respectful and not unfamiliar with the need for struggle, Museum management, the Foundation Committee, and the University lawyers continue their opposition citing the embargo as cause. The situation today remains at a hollow stalemate.

At the same time, and as Croft and others know, feel, and experience so immediately and so directly, there are senior Gurindji women and men dying without seeing – and, worse, without knowing their families can access – the information that was gathered about their ancestors’ lives that the Gurindji own – intellectually, emotionally and culturally.

In July 2020, news spread rapidly throughout Australia and the United Kingdom that the embargo placed on the palace letters has been lifted by the High Court of Australia ruling. No longer are the letters considered to be the personal correspondence of Queen Elizabeth, the apparent rationale of the embargo being hitherto maintained. The release of that ‘public interest’ correspondence will add depth and breadth to Australia’s political and social history, most especially about The Dismissal, and is profound.

But is the lifting of an embargo, such as that imposed on the palace letters, any more important than the lifting of the embargo imposed on the Berndt Field Note Archive which (it currently appears) will remain until 2024, 30 years after Catherine Berndt’s death?

If an embargo imposed in 1975 through the office of a British Queen, in company with an Australian Governor-General, can be upheld for 45 years until lifted in 2020 with a ‘public interest’ claim as cause, then surely there is ethical room for the 1940s Berndt Field Note Archive embargo to also be lifted in 2020, not only for groups such as the Gurindji and others, but as a valuable insight into Australia’s cultural, political and social history. ⁶

Who is to say that both these complex legal, historical and ethical moments – the palace letters and Gurindji access to the Berndt Archives – are not equally urgent, or telling?