April 6.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Taking possession of land
“Death was perpetually present on Flinders Island.”
Governor Arthur, perhaps alone of all Van Diemen’s Land officials, felt a personal responsibility, even guilt, for the fate of the Aborigines:
Undoubtedly, the being reduced to the necessity of driving a simple but warlike, and as it now appears, noble minded race, from their native hunting grounds, is a measure in itself so distressing, that I am willing to take almost any prudent sacrifice that may tend to compensate for the injuries that government is unwillingly and unavoidably the instrument of inflicting. [1]
Arthur issued instructions in 1836 that the Aborigines were to want for nothing in order to prevent their extinction, instructions which were surely too late as extinction was all but inevitable.* Indeed, two weeks after he issued them, he was recalled to England.
Death was perpetually present on Flinders Island. Of the 242 people who had, in hope, given themselves up into exile, only forty-four remained in 1847 and the Government removed them to Oyster Cove at the Derwent mouth, not far from Hobart. Here they were more or less left to their own devices with grants of food and clothing. They instantly became the victims of the lust of the white settlers…Some became alcoholics. Most became sick. They died rapidly of European diseases.
Arthur to Goderich, 6 April 1833, in West 1852 (1971: 318)
* On continuous Aboriginal communities in Tasmania to the present day, note entry at 9 June.
Acknowledgment: Harris, One Blood, pp. 97, 140 n.67
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“The European project was about taking possession of land...”
One of the greatest differences between the culture of Aboriginal Australia and that of mainstream Australia is the concept of land. The same liberal philosophy that did so much to abolish slavery also promoted the rights of the individual, and that meant individual ownership of land. Tony Barta comments:
[T]he small band of men and women who had created the first modern political movement to defeat slavery in the British Empire met their match [in the form of white settlers] on the South African veldt and the pastures of Australia Felix. They understood only too well the relationship between the appropriation of land and the loss of Aboriginal lives but found their power to intervene more circumscribed by distance and a separate spread of interests...the mass appeal of property and opportunity was only beginning to gather pace. In Australia...it was plain what that meant for indigenous peoples in its path.
The European project was about taking possession of land, asserting dominion over nature, despoiling newly 'discovered' country to create a familiar civilisation. [1]
Aboriginal Australian law insisted that the land was held in common and that people were the mere temporal custodians. Individuals were responsible for particular trees, rivers, lakes, and stretches of land, but only so these could be delivered forward to the next generation in accordance with law. Individuals and families might be said to own a particular fish trap or crop, but they worked it in cooperation with the surrounding clans.
T. Barta, 'They Appear Actually to Vanish from the Face of the Earth: Aborigines and the European Project in Australia Felix', Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 10, issue 4, 2008a, pp. 519-39.
Acknowledgment: Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu – Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture, pp. 198-99, 246 n.20