Assimilation

Many relationships between white colonizers and indigenous women in the late 19th century and early 20th century were purely based on the assimilation policy (Ellinghaus 2003). This extremely racist Australian assimilation policy was the idea of “breeding out” traits until Australia had a pure white race. The idea was that every set of offspring would have less black in them and eventually everyone would look the same color the black traits would be eliminated. Colonizer men intentionally impregnated indigenous women, whether it was consensual or not, knowing their offspring would be half white and then if this pattern continued then eventually the race would be fully white. This concept is known as biological absorption (Ellinghaus 2003). This assimilation policy increased the number of interracial relationships as white males saw it was a way to “breed out” the indigenous black cultures. The assimilation policy was taken extremely seriously in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The policy involved wrongfully taking children from their families and sending them to mission institutions with the intention of assimilating them as part of the colonizers Civilizing and Christianizing missions. This is clearly documented in the film Rabbit-proof Fence (Noyce 2002) which is a film roughly based around the true story of three aboriginal girls who got taken from their families and places in Moore River Station. The idea of these mission camps was to make the indigenous Australians look and act like the colonizer Australians so they would “fit in” with the "ideal" Australian society.

Restrictions

In 1901, the Australian government implemented restrictions which forbid the cohabitation between Indigenous women and white men, these restrictions were tightly monitored and if broken they could result in a criminal offense, and it done more than once often resulted in imprisonment. In 1905, The Western Aboriginee Act was passed, which had the intention of intervening and preventing interracial relationships when they were becoming more prevalent (Ellinghaus 2003). This law made it harder for colonizers and indigenous people to come into contact with one another by setting restrictions such as creating reserves that aboriginal people had to have formal permission to enter and sending mixed race children to go and live with protectors. In the Northern Territory, there was a similar dislike for interracial marriage as it was believed that they would be growing an “undesirable race” (Ellinghaus 2003), this led to another act which put restrictions on marriages, The Northern Territory Act, 1910. This specific act meant that Aboriginal women were unable to celebrate any marriage unless the marriage was between an indigenous female and an indigenous male.

Indigenous women who were involved in the missionary programs were advised on their marriage choices. A journal from an aboriginal woman comments on her life and her choices of marriage and how it was frowned upon by white missionaries. Bessy Cameron, an indigenous missionary, took Donald Cameron hand in marriage who was a mixed-race laborer, choosing him over a white colonizer prospective husband. The white missionaries widely disapproved of this choice and said it was a step “backwards” in their civilizing mission and were outwardly against this marriage and her choices (Grimshaw, 2002). Due to the disapproval of the white colonizers this marriage saw many obstacles and many negative consequences for the couple as well as their children, one consequence being they were unable to enroll their children in school.

In 1911, Charles MacKeller further restricted Indigenous women by implying thy were incompetent breeders or children, naming them to be a “source of contamination and a threat to the white society” (Goodall 1995). These accusations made it harder for successful interracial relationships to be successful as these off-putting false rumors were being spread about indigenous women making them seem less attractive as prospective partners for white colonizer men. The constant hateful government claims and accusations made it harder for interracial relationships to work as they were portrayed so negatively and were highly frowned upon.

Successful Relationships

Despite laws and restrictions, in Queensland 1901, interracial relationships were common and many of these relationships were true and compassionate. When the first fleet originally arrived in Australia the fleet was majority men and few women, this means that majority of the women available were aboriginal women which flowered some interracial relationships. Some relationships were successful and led to white colonizer men joining their indigenous partners living in the country. Indigenous women were popular prospects for a wife due to the survival skills they showed living in the bush and what they could provide for the white colonizer men. These were attractive qualities for men looking for wives as it showed that indigenous women had the skills required to look after their husbands and their families. Indigenous women had as high set of skills which included living and thriving off of the country, as well as sexual companionship making them ideal wives (McGrath 2005). This indigenous women with white colonizer male relationship was much more common than a relationship between a white female and an indigenous male. The laws and restrictions placed upon the indigenous men were much stricter. Furthermore, indigenous males were often low income as their jobs and income went through the colonizers and this was seen to make males “poor prospects” for white women who were looking for a husband (McGrath 2005).