Pastoralists had permits to employ, i.e. control, ‘natives’. Under the Act, officers named Protectors, often doubling as policemen, controlled the ‘natives’. Aboriginal people had learned from bitter experience to be afraid of the police, who assisted the Protector to secure their compliance. More than twenty Pilbara stations could therefore be run by a few white men with the help of hundreds of Aboriginal men and women.

‘Help’ was a euphemism for labour that was not properly remunerated and in many cases was coerced. ‘Natives’ could be underpaid or not paid at all; they were not provided with the accommodation or amenities supplied to white workers. Scrimgeour reveals how apparently obliging, apparently happy Aboriginal people produced a stable industry but secretly resented being exploited. As Lawman Clancy McKenna later said, ‘Sour bread and kangaroo, old tea and no pay, that’s not right.’ The workers kept silent until they had an opportunity to challenge the injustices. They met local white man Don McLeod, who supported their cause and advised about union strategies of striking to claim workers’ rights. Emboldened, they told their bosses that if they did not get better wages and conditions they would strike. Such was the pastoralists’ and Protectors’ incredulity that Aboriginal people could be capable of organising themselves that they did not take these demands seriously. Instead, they imposed the usual methods of threats and arrests to maintain control. Power had, however, changed hands.

On 1 May 1946 many Aboriginal pastoral workers went on strike. McLeod backed them in the Pilbara and sympathetic citizens in Perth formed a committee to publicise their demands and raise money. Over the next couple of years, some workers returned to the stations. Those who remained on strike suffered greatly as they battled to support themselves at a subsistence level. Their greatest asset was their cultural cohesion, one that was not recognised by pastoralists or state officers. Obedient to the traditions of the desert and coastal clans, their senior law carriers organised disparate groups to work cooperatively for the benefit of all. That they survived beyond the previously controlled environment was anathema to the state. Government authorities tried to regain control; strikers were jailed or harassed by pastoralists who stood to lose their cheap labour force.

Some of the original strikers photographed in 1983 (photograph by Anne Scrimgeour)

The strikers were resolute and remained on strike until August 1949, by which time they had achieved modest increases in wages and better conditions. Even more significantly, they had established their independence from state control and brought about a fundamental shift in government policy towards Aboriginal people. Most never returned to the pastoral stations. These facts have been examined by others, but Scrimgeour adds a new dimension, thus changing the narrative to reflect a deeper reality.

Scrimgeour allows the story to emerge from the participants’ experience, drawing from her interviews with the strikers and their descendants, and from exhaustive documentation of archival sources. Showing how a previously subservient people organised resistance to the status quo, she introduces their anecdotes to enrich insights into previously concealed responses to their situation. She documents their perseverance in confronting strategies designed to force them back to the stations, substantiating these through official reports. These objective facts are brought to life when she introduces oral testimonies that show how the authorities became only one part of the world they used to dominate.

Scrimgeour’s book is the first published account of how the ‘station natives’, as they were known, developed ‘an ideology of resistance through group action’. It complements the memoir of striker Monty Hale (Minyjun), Kurlumarniny: We come from the desert (2012), which she edited, and the recently published website www.pilbarastrike.org, on which she collaborated with historian Bain Attwood. With so much information, she could have obscured the storyline by drowning the narrative in detail. Instead, she interweaves strikers’ testimonies with reports from other actors in the drama, including police reports and interpretations by other academics, analysing the meanings from all sources. Step by step, she builds the case that the strike, which at first seemed ludicrous and unattainable, became logical and inevitable.

Before 1946 the status quo was unchallengeable. The winners were the pastoralists and the state, and the losers were the Aboriginal workers. During 1946–49 the losers had taken control and the relationships of power were shattered. Hundreds of Aboriginal pastoral workers had begun a ‘decolonising movement’. It is a story told by a fine historian whom the people trusted to listen to their truths and faithfully represent them publicly.

Anne Scrimgeour died just before her book was released in February 2020. Her words will, however, like the story, increase in their influence as more people come to understand their meaning. Her carefully edited book contributes insights into an astonishing event in Australia’s past, her polished writing style makes reading the specifics easy, and the quality of her research convinces the unbeliever. What she has retrieved and achieved ensures that this new reality can never be erased.