Ellen Atkinson

Australian Aboriginal community leader

• Born: c. August 1894
• Birthplace: Madowla Park, Victoria, Australia
• Died: April 30, 1965
• Place of death: Mooroopna, Victoria, Australia

Significance: Ellen Atkinson was a twentieth-century Aboriginal community leader committed to helping better life for native Australians. Together with her husband, Edwin, she helped support activists who protested unfair practices that discriminated against Indigenous Australians. Atkinson was part of the historic 1939 Cummeragunja Walk-Off that led to improved living conditions in the Indigenous community.

Background

Ellen Atkinson was born Ellen Campbell in around August 1894, in Madowla Park, near Echuca, in Victoria, Australia. Her father was Alexander (Alick) Campbell, an orphaned “half-caste,” or mixed-race person from the Baraparapa Indigenous people from Kerang. He made his living as a stockman and sheepshearer. Atkinson’s mother, Elizabeth Briggs Campbell, was descended from Tasmanian and Port Phillip Aborigines. Both parents had been married before, and each brought seven children into the marriage in addition to four daughters born of their union, of whom Atkinson was the youngest.

The family moved to a government reserve for Aborigines at Cummeragunja in New South Wales, where Atkinson spent part of her childhood. The family later returned to Victoria to escape government policies that removed half-caste children from their parents. Despite discrimination and harmful government policies, Atkinson later remembered her childhood as happy.

However, her contentedness was threatened when at the age of sixteen she feared that she would be removed from her family because of government policies intended to Westernize Australia’s Aborigine population. Around the same time, she met Edwin “Eddy” Atkinson and his family. The couple married on May 3, 1911. The ceremony took place at Christ Church, an Anglican parish in Echuca. They eventually had four children—two sons and two daughters—between 1919 and 1927.

Life’s Work

Atkinson and her husband settled in the farming community of Cummeragunja in New South Wales, an 1,800-acre community established in the late 1880s that grew wheat and provided grazing land for wool sheep and dairy cows. Her husband farmed but also worked as a carpenter and fisherman when needed. The community thrived until around 1915 when the New South Wales Protection Board began managing the community committee. It changed the rules, keeping most of the proceeds and giving little to community workers. As farming was reduced and living became more difficult, the Atkinsons often traveled as temporary migrant harvest workers, sometimes living in camps near the peas, beans, and fruit that they picked to support their family.

In the meantime, the Atkinsons became close to Thomas Shadrach James, a preacher and doctor married to Eddy Atkinson’s aunt. When Christian missionaries from Christian Aborigines’ Inland Mission (AIM) came to stay with James in 1913, the Atkinsons were among the many native Australians who converted to a more evangelical form of Christianity. They became active participants in a growing church in the Cummeragunja community that helped keep the workers there united and boosted their morale as the protection board policies became even more oppressive. Atkinson’s husband was an unpaid preacher, and she was the church organist and a Sunday School teacher. Their association with AIM missions continued until 1935, when one of Eddy Atkinson’s preaching associates was removed for complaining about the Christian churches’ attitude toward Aborigines. The Atkinsons joined the Church of Christ, taking some of their congregation with them in the process.

Meanwhile, the conditions at Cummeragunja worsened as the protection board demanded more output and paid only meager supplies of food and poor housing in exchange. The situation for all Aborigines everywhere declined even further when the Great Depression struck in 1929 and continued through the 1930s. In addition to the struggles faced by everyone during those financially difficult times, the Aborigines experienced great discrimination in acquiring jobs or resources. Some advocates for the Aborigines staged protests, including William Ferguson, William Cooper, and Jack Patten, and the Atkinsons helped to support them in their work.

At Cummeragunja, the Aboriginal farmers also faced the loss of their land. White settlers lobbied successfully to have them removed and the productive farmland reallocated to them instead. Despite efforts by Patten and others to negotiate on behalf of the Aborigine community at Cummeragunja, it became clear that the intent was to create a closed compound situation that would limit the Aborigine population to staying there and working for nearly nothing. There were also plans to remove their children as part of the ongoing government effort to assimilate the Indigenous population into the White population. By 1939, the last two hundred or so members of the Cummeragunja community, including Atkinson and her family, walked out of Cummeragunja in protest and moved to Barmah, Victoria. This historic Cummeragunja Walk-Off lasted about nine months and led to greatly improved living conditions for the Aboriginal community members who returned.

Atkinson and her husband continued to minister to and support the Aboriginal population as they endured these challenges. They visited Melbourne in 1940 where World War II had created factory jobs that attracted many Aborigines with better living conditions. The Atkinsons traveled throughout the area, holding religious services in various Aboriginal communities and offering help wherever they could. The following year, they returned to Cummeragunja where they lived until the war ended, and the family was once again evicted by the government.

They moved to Mooroopna, and Eddy Atkinson was hired by Victorian Churches of Christ. As before, Atkinson assisted her husband in ministry. They were raising money for a church of their own when he died in 1952. The church finally opened in 1957, with Atkinson presiding over it with her late husband’s nephew, who took his place as the church’s pastor.

Impact

Atkinson continued to serve the church after her husband passed away. She was known as Aunty Ellen to her entire community, whether related to her or not. Until her own death on August 30, 1965, in Mooroopna, she continued to advocate for Aboriginal rights, was a leader in her community, and a kind neighbor. She was survived by her four children.

Bibliography

Atkinson, Neville. “The struggle for identity.” Age, 2 Jan. 2006, www.theage.com.au/national/the-struggle-for-identity-20060102-ge1iel.html. Accessed 26 June 2023.

“Cummeragunja.” Missions and Reserves, web.archive.org/web/20090527022555/http://www.abc.net.au/missionvoices/cummeragunja/mission‗history/default.htm. Accessed 26 June 2023.

“Cummeragunja Walk Off.” Museums of History New South Wales, mhnsw.au/stories/general/cummeragunja-walk-off/. Accessed 26 June 2023.

“Ellen Campbell Atkinson and Edwin Atkinson.” Picryl, picryl.com/media/ellen-campbell-atkinson-and-edwin-atkinson-05b0a7. Accessed 26 June 2023.

Knowles, Rachel. “What was the Cummeragunja Walk-Off?” Special Broadcasting Services NITV, 4 Feb. 2022, www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/what-was-the-cummeragunja-walk-off/smbz2umrb. Accessed 26 June 2023.

White, Isobel. “Atkinson, Ellen (1894–1965).” Indigenous Australian, ia.anu.edu.au/biography/atkinson-ellen-9397. Accessed 26 June 2023.