Remembering assimilation: Queen Elizabeth II’s 1954 visit to Shepparton and a ‘new deal’ for Victorian Aboriginal people

This article considers the significance of Queen Elizabeth II's 1954 visit to Shepparton, Victoria, to the history and memory of Aboriginal political activism in the era of assimilation.Using oral testimony, newspaper reports, and other archival sources, I describe the visit and ponder its prominent role in Yorta Yorta storytelling, which I suggest amounts to a type of 'memory activism'.The article also discusses Victoria's dysfunctional Aboriginal policy of the 1950s, which excluded mixed-race Aboriginal communities from its purview.The visit of the Queen is remembered as a transformational moment in Yorta Yorta history and is part of a longer history of Aboriginal people's engagement with the monarchy through their activism. REMEMBERING ASSIMILATIONAccording to some accounts, Aboriginal campers were also moved away from Daish's Paddock to a discreet site nearby.In this way, as the Yorta Yorta man Neville Atkinson later explained, 'the regal eyes were spared the sight of unseemly dispossession'. 3first heard this story in 1995 when I interviewed Atkinson at the Rumbalara Aboriginal Cooperative in Mooroopna for an undergraduate history assignment.4 He explained that the queen's visit had 'prompted the wider community to do something about it, [to] stop ignoring the needs of another human being to be assisted and helped in some way'.5 Although I had spent part of my childhood in a rural community 50 kilometres west of Mooroopna, and for two years had attended high school in Shepparton, the Aboriginal history of the area was largely unknown to me, and I was keen to learn more.As I discovered in my subsequent research, the local campaigns that followed the queen's visit led to a wider reform of Victoria's Aboriginal policy, with a state government inquiry in 1955, a new assimilationist Aborigines Act in 1957, and the construction of transitional housing for Aboriginal people at 'Rumbalara' near Mooroopna in 1958.My interview with Atkinson resulted in a history honours thesis (1997) exploring the circumstances of the queen's visit and its political aftermath.6 More than a quarter of a century later, I have decided to revisit my unpublished honours thesis for several reasons.First, the story of the queen's visit has only grown in significance: it has been retold in oral history publications, 7 media reports, 8 a radio documentary, 9 a 2005 play, 10 and on interpretative signage for a cultural walk near Mooroopna.11 Most recently it featured in reports on the death of Elizabeth II 12 and in evidence to the Yoorrook Justice Commission. 13This article is not a comprehensive oral history of the queen's visit, and does not claim to represent the views of all Yorta