The woman who wrote a letter to King George V about schools

June 25, 2024 6:36 PM

The forgotten political warrior whose letter to King George V helped Aboriginal kids back into schools. A woman whose great-grandmother refused to give up on better access to education says acknowledgement of her family's New South Wales south coast healing place has brought a sense of justice.

In 1926, a Yuin woman from Moruya on the NSW south coast sat down to pen a letter to the King.

Jane Duren was writing to King George V asking for her grandchildren to be allowed to attend Batemans Bay Public School.

That letter, signed and stamped, would be received by Buckingham Palace, endorsed by the Australian Governor-General, and end up as an important artefact of cultural change in the state's archives.

"I beg to state that it is months and months since those children were at school and it is a shame to see them going about without education," she wrote.

"Your Majesty, we have compulsory education. Why are they not compelled to attend school?"

Up until the 1970s, an Indigenous student could be removed from a school if a non-Indigenous parent complained.

Ms Duren thought that ridiculous — and she had written as much in previous letters — to the Minister of Education, the Child Welfare Department, her local Member of Parliament, and the Aborigines Protection Board, but with no outcome.

This letter, however, would have a different fate.

Buckingham Palace forwarded the letter to the Governor-General who endorsed the letter and sent it to the NSW state government, which in turn passed it onto the Aborigines Protection Board — about whom Ms Duren was complaining.

posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (3 comments total)

“The push by some European residents to exclude Aboriginal children from the local public school in the 1920s would have forced their families to move away to settlements managed by the Aborigines Protection Board, in order to provide them with continued access to schooling. Providing their children with an education was important to Aboriginal families, and was also seen as a way of preventing their children from being removed as part of the stolen generation. [bringing them home]
“Aboriginal families in the area protested strongly against their children’s exclusion from the Batemans Bay Public School. Amongst them was Mrs Jane Duren, nee Piety, a community leader and member of the Batemans Bay branch of the Australian Aborigines Progress Association (AAPA). The AAPA was founded in 1924 to fight for the rights of Aboriginal people and was an early and important united Aboriginal activist group.” [Yangary and Bhundoo: Aboriginal places and values around Batemans Bay, NSW Government: pdf]
posted by HearHere at 7:22 PM on June 25 [2 favorites]

Furious that I, a white Australian, didn't already know Jane Duren's name and revere her as a heroine. Furious that this indigenous family was dispossessed from their land, TWICE.

Reparations. Treaty now.
posted by rdc at 11:02 PM on June 25 [4 favorites]

Thank you very much for posting this! I know this area very well but had never heard of Jane's letter and the consequences. Sadly part of the land that was stolen was used for an army barracks (known as Garland Town, also Bali Hai) which was later bought by my parents' church and used as a family camp through the 80s and 90s. I spent many, many holidays there - there were still Aboriginal people living in the hills overlooking the camp even then, but of course the whole area was rightfully theirs. Here are some elders' stories, Jane is mentioned briefly.
posted by goo at 4:58 AM on June 27