Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows the conflicting views held by teacher Noel White and the Native Welfare Department on the future for Indigenous children at the Carrolup school in the south-west of Western Australia in the 1940s and 50s. White’s children are interviewed, excerpts from Noel White’s school journal are read and Dr John Stanton of the Berndt Museum of Anthropology recounts how White tried to encourage the art of talented students and how his efforts were frustrated by the Native Welfare Department. Five paintings by the children are shown.

Educational value points

• The lives of the child artists of Carrolup illustrate the complex history of Indigenous Australians removed from their families. The children were taken from their families to live and be educated at the Carrolup Native Settlement, 15 km from Katanning in WA. Here they responded to the encouragement of Noel White, their teacher, to produce remarkable artwork. The settlement closed in 1951. A small number of the children continued to paint as adults.

• Two very different perspectives on vocational possibilities for Aboriginal children in the late 1940s are illustrated in the clip. White’s teaching program fostered their creativity and imagination and the value of the children’s art was recognised in exhibitions nationally and internationally. The Native Welfare Department actively discouraged the children’s artistic endeavours as it believed their future employment lay in manual labour and service.

• Reports from Noel White’s journal heard in the clip indicate a level of hostility from the Native Welfare Department’s officer in response to White’s success with the children, which led to direct interference in the school’s decision-making process. White’s diary reveals that as the children were preparing their artwork for a competition, the officer ordered the boys to stop and do some manual labour, stating: 'Mr White is not your boss. You’ll do what I tell you’.

• The clip refers to work important in the history of art in Australia, showing the unique style and artistic ability of Indigenous artists long before Indigenous art gained popular recognition in the 1970s and 80s. In the 1940s Carrolup artworks toured Australia and New Zealand before being shown in Britain and America but then they disappeared from view. Recently 113 Carrolup artworks have been located in New York. A worldwide search for others has begun.

• The distinctive style of the artwork produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s is displayed in the clip. Produced in pastels, ink and watercolours, the work mostly depicts landscapes in a style that combines European influence with elements from the children’s culture, the culture of the Noongar people of south-western WA. The 'Carrolup school’ style still inspires Indigenous artists such as Athol Farmer, a contemporary Carrolup artist.