April 8.

Artwork by Glenn Loughrey

A sharing culture

“...sharing was so central to Aboriginal values...”

There was no neat or decisive end to conflict between Aborigines and settlers; neither armistice nor treaty; no medals, no speeches, no peace conference. Black resistance did not conclude when the last stockman was speared although methods were modified and objectives altered. Sorcery was probably increasingly favoured over physical confrontation as a means of challenging white domination. Killing ceased but raids on European property continued. The most immediate motive was economic; blacks stole to survive. But there was always a political element in Aboriginal behaviour. They continued to believe that Europeans were under a moral obligation to share their abundance, both because sharing was so central to Aboriginal values, and to provide compensation for the loss of land, water and game. 

Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, p. 96.

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A dark native, that is an Aborigine, paid me a visit. He was looking for bees. He mentioned that when a native discovers a hive, he invites the neighbours to partake of the honey, but when a white Christian discovers it, he keeps the produce to himself.

Acknowledgment: William Evans, Diary of a Welsh Swagman 1869-1894, p. 38.

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“...all of them were shot out in the open…”

The oral histories of Aboriginal people describe the violence of [Police Constable George] Murray’s patrol, [1] which echoed the events in the Kimberley in 1922 and 1926. Rosie Nungarrayi, a Walpiri woman, said:

the policemen came to Liirlpari… [they] killed some people there… then [they] travelled west to Patirlirri (Rabbit Bore)… [and] killed a lot more of our people… For a whole day they went around shooting at people. They shot them just like bullocks. They shot the young men coming out from bush camp where they’d been initiated. People were shot digging for rabbits in our country, Muranjayi. They were getting yakajirri berries, yams and wanakiji tomatoes...The policemen shot them for nothing… No-one breathed. All were dead… They let the women go alive and killed the men. [2]

After Patirlirri, Murray went north with civilians to Boomerang Waterhole, Lake Surprise and Curlew Waterhole.

[At Warlawurrukurlangu] they found Molly Napangardi’s father’s eldest brother, a Japanangka, who had two wives, two Napurrulas. The whitefellas sent them away and then fired after them, shooting them like dogs. Half of the men and women were shot. The wives tried to protect the men by standing in front of them and blocking the bullets, but they were shot too. My husband’s father, Jampijinpa, was one of them.

People will say:

there is a flat rock there where you can see all the marks of the bullets. All of them were shot out in the open. One of my grandfathers was a good doctor and he healed himself… he survived. He started to breathe and he opened his eyes. He picked up his spears and then set off, escaped. He cried all the way. The hills dragged him along – and he kept going, mourning all the way. The bones of the dead were spread everywhere. You can see them everywhere – they [the Europeans] didn’t bury the dead. Nothing. They just left them lying out in the open. Poor things. They were left lying there just like bullocks. All the shields and things were out in the open.

1. Michael Bradley, Coniston, UWA Press, Crawley, 2019, citing Petronella Vaarzon-Morel (ed.), Walpiri Women’s Voices: Our Lives Out History, Institute for Aboriginal Development Press, Alice Springs, 1995

2. This quote and the set-down quotes on pp. 154-155 are in Every Hill Got a Story: We Grew Up in Country, Men and Women of Central Australia and the Central Land Council, Marg Bowman (ed. and compiler) Hardie Grant Books, Richmond, pp.92ff.

Acknowledgment: Kate Auty, O’Leary Of The Underworld – The Untold Story of the Forrest River Massacre, La Trobe University Press in conjunction with Black Inc, Collingwood, 2023.pp. 154- 155, 243 n.13, n. 14.