## FRAMES OF DOMINATION

Connecting the Chaining of Aboriginal 'Prisoners' and Settler Emotions, 1900-1950.

By: Elizabeth Megan Kiemel Clewett Advanced Migration Studies

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ABSTRACT: From  the  establishment  of  the  first  Australian  colony  until  the  mid-1900's, Aboriginal  people  were  routinely  forcibly  restrained  using  chains  by  white  settlers.  Using  two lenses, this article analyses a selection of photographs published in colonial newspapers, depicting this practice. It firstly examines how colonial photography constructed the Aboriginal body as an object of fear to be controlled by the frightened settler. This article also interrogates how these photographs  appealed  to  humanitarian  sympathies,  which  themselves  were  highly  conditional, with comparisons to slavery embodying a 'safe' method of critique, one which did not challenge the settler colonial state.

KEYWORDS: colonial photography, Australia, fear, sympathy, First Nations peoples

Disclaimer: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this article contains images, and names of deceased persons in photographs and printed material.

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## Introduction

' So far as I can understand, the custom of chaining blacks has been practised from time immemorial, and within the present gaol it is the only safe way… If the natives had any more liberty than they have at present they would run away ' (Roth Report 1905: 54)

The expansion  of  the  Australian  colonial  frontier  occurred  in  concert  with  increasing  carceral control and institutional violence against Aboriginal people (ALRC Report 133, 9 January 2018). Indeed, the establishment of the very first Australian colony accompanied practices of forcibly restraining Aboriginal people. This practice became systemic in early prisons (or 'gaols'), and was purported to prevent prisoners absconding, as it was supposedly 'impossible to keep a native in custody without chaining' (Roth Report 1905: 44).  Various methods of chaining were employed, including chains which were 'attached to his neck and hands and wound round his body' ( ibid: 13) and used 'morning, noon and night - usually through the entire period of sentence' ( ibid: 18). These neck chains often secured prisoners in groups, forming 'chain gangs', and could weigh as much as 3.1kg (Harman and Grant 2014: 166). With the onset of the 1900s, an increasing degree of concern attended chaining practices which culminated in Walter Roth's 1905 Report of the Royal Commission on the Conditions of Natives 1905 ('Roth Report'), which condemned the use of neck chains. The recommendations were, however, widely disregarded and chaining continued until the early 1960s (Grant 2015), even after its formal abolition in 1958.

Contemporary  Australian  national  identity,  which  rests  on  a  bedrock  of  (white)  Australian exceptionalism  and  'progress',  necessitates  the  'perpetuation  of  a  singular  collective  amnesia' (Burke et al . 2020: 48) and the obfuscation of myriad brutal atrocities committed well into the 20 th century.  Despite  this  enduring  tendency  towards  denial  in  Australia,  the  maltreatment  of Aboriginal people was far from concealed from settlers during the early 20 th century, with colonial

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newspapers regularly printing photographs of chained Aboriginal prisoners from the early 1900s until the abolition of the practice. This article will analyse a selection of these photographs through two lenses: the emotions of fear, and sympathy.

Analysis of similar source material has explored the role of colonial photography in recognising and bearing witness to the suffering of Aboriginal people (Lydon 2010; 2012) and has investigated the ways in which such photographs perpetuated racist stereotypes ( ibid ). Through the utilisation of Ahmed's (2014) theory of emotion, this article aims develop the scholarship by exploring the roles of fear and sympathy in the construction of racist stereotypes through colonial photography. Firstly,  I  will  firstly  examine  how  colonial  photography constructed the Aboriginal body as an object of fear and disgust to be controlled by the frightened, anxious settler.  I argue that the visible restraint of Aboriginal people reified perceptions of them as inherently violent and primitive, and it communicated settler progress. Secondly, I will investigate how these photographs appealed to humanitarian  sympathies,  drawing  parallels  between  the  image  of  the  chained  Aboriginal  and slavery embodying a 'safe' method of highlighting barbarity, without challenging the foundations of  the  settler  colonial  state.  These  images  reveal  how  settler  colonial  desires  bled  into  highly conditional  humanitarian sympathies. In analysing only those photographs printed in colonial newspapers, connections can be made between the function of these images in orientating bodies towards and away one another, and the Australian nation-building project - a process to which the colonial newspaper was central (Putnis 2010).

## Approaching Newspaper Photography

Photography historian and theorist John Tagg problematises a generalised history of photography and  highlighted  the  importance  of  situating  it  within  a  'multiplicity  of  social  sites  and  social practices' (Tagg 2009). For Tagg, photographs serve to animate meaning, not to discover it ( ibid: 128). Consequently, meaning is not fixed, but rather determined by historians themselves (Bate 2016: 246). Sontag argues that a photograph can only become effective in informing a viewer if it is  received  within  the  context  of  relevant  political  consciousness  (Sontag  2003).  The  viewer's

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interpretation  of  the  photographer's  'reality'  is  therefore  impacted  by  the  captions  which contextualise it.

During  the  colonial  era  photography  became  'a  gesture  of  domination  […],  a  tool  which participated in, and supported, the application of violence' (Foliard 2020: 28) and was thus a key instrument of the Australian colony. Its development enabled settlers to 'view' remote areas of the colonies which they were otherwise isolated from, thereby gaining knowledge about the people and areas  photographed.  The  viewer  and  subject  were  brought  closer  through  the  construction  of Indigenous  People  to  colonisers  (Twomey  2015).  Such  knowledge  was  deepened  through  the repeated  publication  of  images  of  Aboriginal  people  in  colonial  newspapers,  many  of  which depicted chained Aboriginal prisoners. Newspapers were an essential institutional element in the creation of the Australian nation (Putnis 2010) as they allowed those on the frontier to participate on a contemporaneous, regular and recurring basis in the wider imagined community (Anderson 2016;  Putnis  2010). The increasingly  widespread distribution  was  assisted  by  the  19 th century technological  developments  (i.e.  the  rotary  press  and  railways)  which  ensured  that  even  rural communities  were  able  to  participate  in  this  imagined  community  of  the  fledgling  Australian nation.  Whilst  the  earliest  Australian  newspapers  could  be  regarded  as  'mouthpieces  of  their colonial governors' (McDonald 2023: 16), the next generation was highly politicised and by 1892 there were over 600 newspapers and magazines in circulation.

Importantly,  it  was  often  through  newspaper  coverage  that  settlers  primarily  came  to  'know' Aboriginal people. What was 'known' was limited in scope as, despite the diversity of culture and language, Aboriginal people were presented as a homogenised, amorphous group - labelled as 'the problem'. Sections entitled 'The Blacks' were common (McDonald 2023: 27), featuring accounts of Indigenous violence under headlines like 'Affray with the Natives' ( ibid ). Images of incarcerated and chained Aboriginal people began to appear regularly in newspapers from the 1890s and, from the 1920s, were 'an immediately recognisable symbol of ill-treatment' (Lydon 2012: 232). This illustrates how the relationships between the photographer, the subject and the viewer were steeped in asymmetrical colonial power dynamics and how the photograph itself often emerged from settler

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fetishisation of a colonial encounter. Thus, when considering these images today, it is essential to avoid perpetuating the colonial gaze by divorcing them from the agency and history of colonised populations (Bate 2016: 246).

## Theorising Colonial Emotions

Notwithstanding the centrality of 'western rationality' in the expansion of empire and its 'civilising mission', emotions formed a key part of the settler colonial experience (Pyenson 1993). In her seminal work, Ahmed (2014) argues that emotions do 'not reside positively in a particular object' (Ahmed 2014: 64). Instead, she conceptualises emotions as 'affective economies' ( ibid : 44) which create surfaces and boundaries, allowing objects to be defined. Therefore, it is the contact between a subject and object which shapes emotions. In the colonial context, this notion of 'contact' is useful  for  understanding  the  emotions  of  settlers  as  they  relate  to  Indigenous  populations. Photographs published in colonial newspapers should be considered a form of 'contact' and, as such, influential in the shaping of settler emotions.  Ahmed argues that narratives can stick to objects and result in a subject making a conditioned affective judgement upon coming into contact with an object ( ibid : 211). These judgements and the stickiness of objects are impacted by past histories  of  contact.  Emotions  can  be  conceived  of  as  performative:  'They both  generate  their objects and repeat past associations' ( ibid : 194) creating a so-called 'loop of the performative' ( ibid : 194). The emotions of fear, disgust and sympathy were, I argue, pertinent to the interpretation of photographs of chained Aboriginal prisoners by settlers.

## Fearing and Controlling the Aboriginal Body

Photographs of Aboriginal prisoners were frequently published in dedicated illustrated newspaper supplements,  often  alongside  photographs  of  new  infrastructures  (Lydon  2010).  From  this photographic genre, themes of order and control emerge - which serve to communicate the idea of settler sovereignty and the superiority to the viewer. Order -specifically law and order- was a

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core  tenet  of  the  'civilising'  goals  of  the  Western  imperial  powers.  The  settler  population  in Western Australia at the time largely consisted  of new  European immigrants (Byers 1993), to whom the realities of frontier life were new and unfamiliar. Lester (2015) has convincingly argued that 'colonial anxieties' were structural and systemic aspects of the colonial life, and the degree of fear was such that the settler population was rendered utterly insecure (Laffan and Weiss 2012: vii). The colonial anxieties which characterised their daily lives stemmed from the frustration of trying to understand the environment (Fischer-Tiné and Whyte 2016). The 'unknown-ness' and unpredictability of this environment contrasted not only to the ultimate goal of law and order, but also to their rational self-image.

Bourke (2005) asserts that fear is fundamentally about encounters between bodies. This aligns with Ahmed's argument that contact shapes emotions. The degree of fear, however, cannot be attributed to encounters alone. Whilst the frontier was in some respects a genuinely dangerous place (Burke et al . 2020: 24), the magnitude was amplified by false reports spread through rumour and by the press ( ibid : 24). The 'strain and terror involved in contending with the unknown wilds' (Evans 1993: 29-30) and combined with fear of retaliation from those they had forcibly dispossessed, produced an atmosphere of fear and a sense of communal vulnerability (Burke et al . 2020: 22). The  fact  that  fear  does  not  reside  in  any  particular  object  generates  a  senso  of  slipperiness, permitting it to stick to the specific collective bodies of Aboriginal people (Ahmed 2014: 64). The communication of sovereignty and superiority was reliant upon the reproduction and vindication of  fear  in  a  loop  of  performativity  ( ibid :  203).  According  to  Weiss  and  Laffan,  development, progress, certainty, order, stability and security can be conceived of as the antidote to fear (Weiss and Laffan 2012: 5). Therefore, through the publication of this genre of images, settlers could 'see' the order imposed on Aboriginal people in securitised settings, thereby assuaging their fears.

## I. Reinforcing Primitivism

Notions  that  white  settlers  brought  with  them  civilisation  were  founded  upon  the  enduring stereotype of Aboriginal people as a 'stone age race' (Lydon 2012: 224).  Figure 1 depicts several labouring Aboriginal men, chained at the waist.

NATIVES AT WORK

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Figure  1.  Photographer  unknown.  Natives  at  Work.  'The  Far  North-West',  The  Australasian,  28 November 1908, p. 1378. Newspapers Collection. National Library of Australia.

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This was standard practice, with prisoners being required to work whilst chained, often in quarries or construction, for up to 8 hours per day (Roth Report 1905: 19). It was argued that manual labour necessitated neck chains, as it could hardly be completed in handcuffs, and ankle chains were  likely  to  cause  the  prisoner  to  injure  themselves  (Harman  and  Grant  2014:  165).  The prisoners in Figure 1 are dressed in calf-length trousers and wide brim hats, with belts to which chains are attached. Though there were likely practical reasons for the lack of shirts, it is pertinent that this renders the scarification on their chests and backs visible. These scars are also highly visible in Figure 2, which was included in the same section of The Australasian .

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PRISONERS ON THEIR WAY BACK TO GAOL AFTER A DIP IN THE QULF.

IN THE YAR NORTH-WEST.

Figure 2. J. Thomson. Prisoners on their way back to gaol after a dip in the gulf. 'The Far North-West', The Australasian, 28 November 1908, p. 1378, J Thomson. Newspapers Collection. National Library of Australia.

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Scarification is a meaningful practice that was widely performed across Australia. Each scar was deliberately placed, told personal stories and identified social roles. In other words, they embodied the societal structures 'by marking it in the very flesh of the individual and make him [ sic ] feel and experience it' (Thevoz 1984: 28-29). What a photograph may 'factually' portray, however, does not compel the audience to draw the same conclusion.  Interpretation, and what viewers deem important, depends on the context in which an image is viewed and presented. In the colonial setting, 'many newcomers misread the social and cultural significance of indigenous body marking and associated them with western punitive stigmatising practices' (Cole and Haebich 2007: 295). As  neither  the  captions  nor  the  article  text  remark  on  the  scars,  no  context  is  provided.  The publication of these images without context invited the viewer to deepen their fears, which were founded on the pathologising of Aboriginal people as under-developed and harbouring an intrinsic capacity for violence. Given that the 'response of fear is itself dependent on particular narratives of who or what is fearsome' (Ahmed 2014: 69), erroneous settler interpretations of these scars as indicators of inherent violence fed into existing fears that settlers too would be the subject of this

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violence. These marking were, therefore, likely considered manifestations of primitiveness, flagging the  'savage'  tendencies  of  Aboriginal  people  to  the  viewer.  This  interpretation  of  scarification sharply  distinguished  the  Aboriginals  from  the  white  settlers,  indicating  an  'otherness'  and contributing to the production of fear which thereby justified the use of heavy chains. Therefore, chains were not perceived as an enactment of violence, but - paradoxically - as a tool for preventing it.  The  violence  of  this  photograph  further  lies  in  divorcing  scarification  from  its  context. Embodying the logic of elimination, Aboriginal cultures were erased through the distortion and re-formation  of  the  scars  as  imprints  of  barbarity  (Cole  and  Haebich  2007:  295).  Thus,  each misinterpretation constituted a new instance of violence against these men. This highlights how it is those least in danger of violence who are most afraid (Ahmed 2014).

The accompanying article declared that 'after natives have been in gaol a few months they present a comparatively well-groomed [ sic ] appearance'. 1 This informed the interpretations of Figures 1 and 2, prompting the reader to imagine the men prior to their detention.  The scars, reconstituted in the eye of the settler as indicators of primitivism, served as a visual reminder of 'before'. The gaolers have clothed the prisoners in markers of white, western 'civilisation', reassuring settlers that western  sensibilities  were  in  the  ascendancy,  and  that  Aboriginal  ways  of  life-constructed  as primitive  and  immoral-were  being  eradicated.  In  choosing  these  images, The  Australasian communicated that though settler sovereignty was advancing, Aboriginal people were incapable of being  entirely  'civilised',  as  they  carried  difference  on  the  very  surface  of  their  bodies.  The transgression 'evoked deeper fears of a chaotic savagery that lay outside the control and bounds of the civilised world' (Cole and Haebich 2007: 202), and, therefore, efforts to remould the body of the Aboriginal people could not be entirely successful.

## II. Order, Segregation and Containment

Figure 3 featured in a February 1905 edition of The Western Mail , a conservative rural weekly which often advocated the use of chains. It depicts tens of Aboriginal prisoners at Wyndham

1  'The Far North-West', The Australasian , 28 November 1908, 1378. Newspapers Collection. National Library of Australia.

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Gaol in North-Western Australia. The prisoners are chained in groups of three, with the chains fastened around their necks and secured using padlocks, accurately reflecting the general conditions at Wyndham.

ABORIGINAL BATHING GANG AT WYNDHAM

Figure  3.  Photographer  unknown. Aboriginal  Bathing  Gang  at  Wyndham .  'The  Treatment  of Aborigines  -  Prison  Life  in  the  Nor'-West', The  Western  Mail ,  18  February  1905,  p.  24. Newspapers Collection. National Library of Australia.

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Importantly, this photograph-which is presented in a manner entirely uncritical of chaining-was printed  in  the  immediate  aftermath  of  the  publication  of  the  1905  Roth  Report.  Therefore, considering the Western Mail 's long-standing support of chaining, the publication of this photo should be read as an effort to vindicate the practices criticised in the Report.

Notwithstanding the accuracy of the conditions depicted, elements of Figure 3 have evidently been constructed for the photograph. It is essential to be cognisant of such choices made in an image's composition (Butler 2016), which may have contributed to the decision to publish this image mere weeks after the Roth Report. The subjects have been precisely organised and are pictured standing in systematic rows and columns, all facing the camera. As this arrangement seems to have been done for the benefit of the camera, it seems intentional that this image evokes a sense of orderliness. This orderliness is mirrored in Figure 2, in which prisoners are standing in an organised queue. The presentation of a group considered 'wild' in the settler imagination, adhering to order while

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in chains, implicates the chains in the production of that order. The fact that the prisoners are seen as 'under control' through the two-fold containment of the prison and chains, thus demonstrating their 'effectiveness', suggests that such treatment was an effective method of 'taming' the 'unruly' population. Consequently, the use of chains is reified as necessary to prevent inevitable escape, thereby vindicating the use of neck chains in the eyes of the settler population.

In  exclusively  capturing  Aboriginal  people,  Figures  1  to  4  exemplify  another  dimension  of orderliness - a strict adherence to racial segregation. There are no white settlers in these images, despite, for example, Figure 3 being taken at Wyndham Gaol, where there were both European and Aboriginal prisoners (Roth Report 1905: 44). The portrayal of strict adherence to racial norms communicated that white criminals were not to be associated with Aboriginal people, even in prison. They reflected wider society, in which interracial interactions were limited and occurred largely  in  carceral  settings.  Therefore,  such  photographs  entrenched  structures  of  the  racial hierarchy - which was fundamental to the establishment of the setter colonial state. The absence of images of white criminals also indicates that it was not deemed to be in the public interest to visualise  settler  criminality.  This  acts  to  associate only Aboriginal  people  with  criminality,  and Aboriginal people with only criminality, in the public consciousness - in spite of Aboriginal people never constituting a majority of the prison population (ALRC 2018). Photographs entrenching racial hierarchy and the criminality of Aboriginal people informed what was believed about them. The delineation  between  settler  and  Aboriginal  bodies  allowed  for  the  coding  of  the  latter  as criminal, whilst the former was coded as threatened.

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## III. Dehumanisation

4 Photother unboon Matine Priconer Rothino at Wandham Totty "The Far North\_W

Figure 4. Photographer unknown. Native Prisoners Bathing at Wyndham Jetty. 'The Far North-West', The Australasian, 28 November 1908, p. 1378. Newspapers Collection. National Library of Australia.

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Unusually for this genre, Figure 4 depicts prisoners in a more disorderly fashion, showing a large group bathing at Wyndham Jetty. This jetty, high up and out of the water, is where the white settlers would walk, avoiding the water below. The prisoners here are not only separated from the white  settlers,  but  are  immersed  in  the  body  of  water  the  jetty  was  constructed  to  avoid.  In capturing the physical separation of the two groups, the composition of this photograph therefore operates to subjugate its subjects. The Australasian has included the caption 'although alligators are numerous, they do not touch the natives' (Figure 4). This flags one of the numerous fears held by the settlers  - that of  the new,  dangerous animals in their new, dangerous environment and operates on two levels.

Firstly,  it  equates  the  Aboriginal  population  and  the  alligators.  They  exist  in  the  same  space physically,  one  which  is  avoided  by  the  'civilised',  'vulnerable'  white  settler.  In  highlighting  a

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proximity  between  the  prisoners  and  alligators,  their  lower  position  on  the  racial  hierarchy  is naturalised justifying their segregation and ill-treatment.

Secondly, the utilisation of this photograph to further the alignment of Aboriginal people with animals is a blatant example of dehumanisation. This perception that Indigenous Peoples were evolutionarily closer to animals than to the 'civilised' white man was a crucial tool of colonisation (Porteus 1931). The photograph implements the disgust, which is suggested to be the primary mechanism of dehumanisation (Rousseau, Gorman and Baranik 2023: 2). Disgust is an objectoriented emotion of superiority, meaning that subjects feel disgusted by bodies deemed inferior and, therefore, are repelled for fear of contamination. By highlighting that even the alligators do not touch the prisoners, the viewer was led to consider the prisoners as repellent in the extreme. This  not  only  operates  to  suppress  the  population  to  the  realm  of  the  non-human,  but  also emphasises the need for strict segregation. Coming into contact with Aboriginal people would be read as contaminating for the settler population. Therefore, disgust worked to confine Aboriginal people to carceral spaces to eliminate the risk of contamination. The dissemination of disgustinducing  photographs  acted  to  attribute  the  emotion  of  disgust  to  Aboriginal  people  before encounters occurred. The loop of performativity demonstrates the performance of emotions: when one subject reads another as disgusting, the subject is in fact filled with disgust, thereby confirming their initial reading (Ahmed 2014: 203). This works to explain the dehumanisation of Aboriginal bodies by white settlers.

With newspapers, the reproduction of the Indigenous man as animalistic occurs with each viewing on a massive scale across readerships. The norm to which the peoples indigenous to Australia do not conform has been constructed as the white Christian man. The violation of this norm also induced disgust. Figure 1, which highlighted the scarification on the chests of several prisoners, exemplifies this. The transgression represented by scarification was read as something repulsive and indicative of the less-than-human.

church.

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## Humanitarian Sympathies

During the 1920s, photographs of the chained Aboriginal prisoner became a prominent symbol of ill-treatment (Lydon 2012: 232) and the advent of the League of Nations following the First World War brought with it a 'renewed and vigorous interest in Aboriginal people' (Reynolds 2018: 184). Humanitarians often focused on the slavery question (e.g. Gribble 1905: 9) and used photographs to provoke outrage and garner sympathy in urban Australia and beyond. Halttunen (1995) asserts that sympathy is spectatorial in nature, meaning that the act of seeing rendered ill-treatment 'real' for urban audiences. things, that he and been very pleasantly surprised to ind that the Government of the State were

Figure 5. Photographer unknown. 'Chained Native Prisoners in a Nor'West Church', The Sunday Times Perth, 28 March 1909, p. 9 Newspapers Collection. National Library of Australia.

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The movement towards perceiving the Aboriginal prisoner as an object of sympathy, however, was not linear. In the first decade of the 1900s Figure 5, which criticises the treatment of prisoners as inhumane, was published less than half a year after Figure 1 - which pushes the opposite narrative.

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Crucially, Figure  5 was  published  in  the Perth  Sunday  Times , which  differed from  its contemporaries, such as The Western Mail (Figure 3), in that it was considered a relatively radical newspaper (Byers  1993), purporting to oppose  the  political  elite  and  support  reform.  Clearly, photographs have no inherent moral agency to stimulate sympathy. The emotions of viewers are highly  dependent  on  how  the  photographs  are  discursively  framed  and  on  the  emotional community  (Rosenwein  2007)  to  which  the  viewer  belongs.  Such  communities  influence  the historical emotional narratives that 'stick' affects to objects, which are taught as established values within particular emotional communities. If these values become dominant, they can turn into social norms. slaves

NOT

imaginary Russian

## Depicting Discomfort

Aborigines are here pictured

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in chains in a real Austra-

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Figure 6. Photographer unknown. 'Australian Slaves', Workers Star, 14 April 1949, p. 8. Newspapers Collection. National Library of Australia.

Figure 6 is typical of images published in the late 1940s. Here, a small group of Aboriginal prisoners are pictured working whilst chained together. In the bottom image, two of the men are making direct eye contact with the camera, while the third seems to be holding the chain around his neck and  looks  distinctly  uncomfortable.  Both  attributes  would  be  uncharacteristic  of  earlier  fearprovoking  photographs.  Especially  the  discomfort  contrasts  with  earlier  images,  in  which  the prisoners were not portrayed as being affected by the chains. As objections to chaining increased, its proponents argued that chains were a more humane option as, for example, they enabled the prisoners to swat away flies whilst they worked. The visual evidence of discomfort here counters this  aspect  of  the  pro-chaining  argument,  and  somewhat  challenges  the  colonial  ideas  that Aboriginal people were less susceptible to pain due to their 'primitive' nature.

## The Slavery Question

Figure  6  is  explicitly  framed  through  slavery  and  takes  a  degree  of  responsibility.  Aboriginal prisoners were frequently referred to using slurs such as 'natives' or 'aborigines'. In the photograph, they are referred to as 'Australian slaves', subsuming the men in the Australian identity and inviting viewers to somewhat align themselves with the men in the image. 2 The appropriation of the slavery frame was extensive, and worked to make to label of 'slave' stick to Aboriginal people. In Figure 6, connections to the slavery frame can also be identified in the setting - a rural area that contrasts with the construction sites of many earlier photos. This choice of setting aligns the subjects with American slaves toiling in fields. Thus, the slavery connection was an obvious one to make (Paisley 2014: 104) and enabled discussion under an established precedent - that slavery was bad. For Paisley, comparisons with slavery suggested the 'collapsing of very distinct histories' ( ibid : 104), which  in  turn  acted  to  obscure  unique  and  particular  violence  of  settler  colonialism.  The homogenisation of the Aboriginal 'slave' is evidenced by the repeated use of Figure 6 across a

2 This subsummation still relates to the settler logic of elimination.

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number of years. Clearly, the utilisation of such an image was not to record a specific instance of injustice directed at an individual, but rather served as a generalised icon of slavery and injustice imposed on a homogenised 'victim' population - a population in need of the white helping hand. This relied upon the proliferation of the notion of western 'advancement'. In 1927, The AntiSlavery Reporter argued that:

[I]f we recognise their rights […] at least we have the satisfaction of knowing that even  in  the  eleventh  hour  we  shall  have  endeavoured  to  redeem  any  neglect, indifference or maladministration in the past and to do substantial justice ( AntiSlavery Reporter 1927: 7, in Reynolds 2018: 194).

This signals that humanitarian organisations were still permeated with the notion that Aboriginal people were an 'inferior' race, and it was this belief which prompted sympathetic efforts of the 'superior'  whites.  The  support  for  'more  humane  and  enlightened  treatment'  ( Anti-Slavery Reporter 1932:  95-97,  in  Reynolds  2018:  191) reveals that ill-treatment  was  considered unacceptable  because  the  settlers  perceived  themselves  as  more  advanced  than  such  treatment would  suggest.  That  the  treatment  was  meted  out  'to  a  primitive  race  by  a civilised nation' ( Morpeth Review 1933: 29, in Reynolds 2018: 186) was unacceptable and evidently stemmed from the same stereotypes upon which feelings of fear and disgust were based.  Such views underscored much of the 'care' and protectionism that was enacted as the new form of control. This illustrates how colonialism bled into humanitarianism and why the construction of Aboriginal prisoners as anonymous slaves in the national imagination should be considered a form of violence.

The publication of Figure 6, which aligns the men with slavery, was intended to provoke shock and outrage without igniting new and difficult discussions about the specific plight of Aboriginal people. Instead, the same practised sympathies and arguments could be recycled. Figure 6, whilst meant to shock, also remains within the realms of acceptability of the period. Lydon notes that this forms a stark contrast to the violence captured in the photographic record of the United States, for example, where photographs of lynchings constituted trophies and were commonplace (Lydon

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2010: 245). The harsher treatment and the dispossession of land, from which it may have been harder for the average settler to extricate themselves from blame, remained concealed from view. This highlights how humanitarian sympathies are endowed with inequalities of power and work to perpetuate them. Consequently, whilst the diversifying of the frame to express humanitarian sympathies widened the information available in the emotional community, it was arguably still defined by the white man's implicit 'superiority' (Hillbrands 2021). Suski argues that sympathy, while  capable  of  building  an  ethical  connection,  can  simultaneously  maintain  relationships  of power which obscure any genuine social connection between the humanitarian and the 'sufferer' (Suski 2012).

## Conditionality

Figure 5 shows a group of chained prisoners sat on the floor of a church, heads bowed. A group of white men stand behind them, either side of a crucifix, separated from the prisoners by a physical barrier. The Perth Sunday Times states that this picture of 'chained prisoners at worship (!) in a Nor'-West church' [ sic ] should be considered 'a commentary on the humanity and paternalism' ( Sunday Times Perth 1909: p. 9), responding to claims that the state government was treating the Aboriginal  people  in  a  'humane  and  paternal  manner'.  Whilst  this  tone  guides  the  viewer  to interpret  the  photograph  as  evidence  of in humane  treatment,  the  selection  of  this  photo  to highlight ill-treatment indicates the conditionality of recognition of their suffering (Lydon 2012: 210). Whereas many photographs enabled the viewing of remote areas of the frontier, this one exemplifies the ability of photography to draw the subject and the viewer closer by locating the chained Aboriginal in a familiar setting - a church.  This reduces both the physical and emotional distance, by placing them in a recognisable, 'moral' setting. This flagging of religion becomes more overt  with  the  caption  which  identifies  the  prisoners  as  being  'at  worship'.  The  affective judgements of humanitarians who came into contact with Aboriginal people were shaped by the sticky narratives of Christian humanitarianism, based on values of conversion, equality and the salvation  of  'heathens'.  Therefore,  the  assertion  that  the  prisoners  were  partaking  in  Christian worship, speaks to how the 'benefits' of sympathy are bestowed only if efforts have been made to shed 'primitive pagan' behaviours and adopt the 'civilised' characteristics of the settler.

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 02 December 2024

Religion was considered crucial in advocating for the liberation of Aboriginal people, with The Anti-Slavery Reporter asserting that with the church's support 'the cause of all weak and depressed peoples throughout the world will receive fresh encouragement and reinforcement' ( Anti-Slavery Reporter 1932: 95-97, in Reynolds 2018: 192). This reinforces the notion that sympathy was highly dependent upon notions of passivity which aligned with the framing of the Aboriginal people as 'helpless, docile members of a 'child race' in need of protection by beneficent whites' (Lydon 2012: 216). The racial hierarchy remains unchallenged by this image -  the composition of which draws on many of the same themes as other cotemporaneous photographs. Whilst there are white settlers in the image, they are visually distinguished from the prisoners in a multitude of ways: they are standing, whereas the prisoners are sitting; the settlers are clothed, and the prisoners are mostly not; the settlers are looking straight into the camera, whereas the prisoners are mostly looking at the floor - a distinctly non-confrontational pose. They are even separated by a physical barrier. Therefore, every part of the composition of this image speaks to the hierarchical nature of early 1900s Australia and demonstrates the conformity of colonial humanitarian photography to the hierarchical  standards  of the  colonial  visual  economy.  The  utilisation of  photographs  as  meek, anonymised symbols of slavery indicates the conditionality of humanitarian sympathy. A sympathy which, crucially, did not necessitate them to re-evaluate their identity as rightful occupants of a (stolen) land.

## Conclusion

The analysis of colonial newspapers' photographs reveals two over-arching themes which aligned with colonial goals to 'isolate, know and manage Aboriginal people' (Lydon 2005: xiv): order and control, and humanitarianism. Through the impression of orderliness, chains were perceived to be an effective method of containing a 'fearsome' primitive population. As order and progress counter fear, such impressions validated the imposition of regimes of control by the fearful and anxious settler.  This  illustrates  how  fear  works  to  restrict  the  movement  of  'othered'  bodies.  The contributions of colonial newspapers thereby reified white victimhood and perpetuated the 'loop of the performative': by constructing certain bodies as disgusting and fearsome, those bodies were

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 02 December 2024

subsequently perceived as such. By subjecting the 'problem population' to regimes of correction and control, settler sovereignty was consolidated.

That this same photographic genre was also used by humanitarians highlights their lack of inherent moral agency. The parallels drawn between the image of the chained Aboriginal and the slave trade made these images a safe method of evidencing barbarity without challenging the fundamentals of the settler colonial state. Thus, these photographs reveal the conditional nature of humanitarian sympathy, which relied on constructions of Aboriginal people as docile, primitive and desperately in need of the white, civilised helping hand. Instead of restoring dignity, they were used and reused  precisely  because  they  allowed  the  chained  Aboriginal  prisoners  to  become  a  symbol, abstracted from their individual humanity.

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