'Black velvet' and 'purple Indignation': Print responses to Japanese 'poaching' of Aboriginal women

Abstract

In 1936 a flurry of newspaper reports alleged widespread prostitution of Aboriginal women and girls to Japanese pearlers. The claims had a dramatic impact. Within weeks of them being printed a report was placed before the Department of the Interior. A vessel was commissioned to patrol the Arnhem Land coast. The allegations were raised at the first meeting of State Aboriginal protection authorities. Cabinet closed Australian waters to foreign pearling craft and a control base was established in the Tiwi Islands. Japanese luggers were fired upon with machine guns and a crew detained in Darwin. These escalating events occurred within five years of a series of attacks on Japanese by Aborigines (culminating in the infamous Caledon Bay spearing of five trepangers, along with the killings of two white men and one policeman on Woodah Island), and only five years before Australian and Japanese forces waged war. Much ink was spilt over the course of this print scandal, and while reports made use of established language such as 'vice' and 'outrage', a telling omission was the commonly known phrase 'Black Velvet'. The lapse could be considered a deliberate attempt to mask the expression's explicit reference to the tactile sensations associated with illicit white contact with racialised genitals. However tracing its use reveals that the phrase exclusively pertained to white men's sexualisation of Aboriginal women. Aboriginal women were not 'Black Velvet' to Japanese men, indicating this colloquial language played a role in establishing settlers' sense of proprietorial ownership of Aboriginal women's bodies - quite literally, for whom Aboriginal women were out-of-bounds.