April 26.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Abuse of women
“The sexual abuse, and decimation of women and children.…”
The least discussed, most hidden, and most sinister cause of death and depopulation was sexual abuse of women and children. At times deaths of Aboriginal females from venereal diseases and sexually-related violence outnumbered all other causes of Aboriginal death. The official census figures from the mid-19th century are appalling in their stark and horrifying objectivity. For example, the return from Lake Macquarie District in 1837 was ‘28 men, 2 women, 2 boys, no girls’. [1]
Threlkeld 1837.
Acknowledgment: John Harris,’ Hiding the bodies: the myth of the humane colonisation of Aboriginal Australia’, Aboriginal History, Vol. 27 (2003) pp.95 n.91.
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“...the matter-of-fact way in which the oppression of Aboriginal [women] is described.”
One of the most startling aspects of the writings of the period is the matter-of-fact way in which the oppression of Aboriginal people is described. Emily Creaghe, for example, accompanied her husband as part of Ernest Favene's 1883 expedition. She spent a few days on one of the new cattle stations in the Northern Territory and recorded her observations.
20 February 1883. They brought a new black gin with them who can't speak a word of English. The usual method here of bringing a new wild gin is to put a rope around her neck and drag her along from horseback, the gin on foot.
21 February 1883. The new gin whom they call 'Bella' is chained up to a tree a few yards from the house, and is not to be loosed until they think she is tamed. [1]
Diary of Emily Caroline Creaghe...member of exploration party partnered by Ernest Favene and Harry A. Creaghe...Mitchell Library MSS2982
Acknowledgment: John Harris, We wish we'd done more – Ninety years of CMS and Aboriginal issues in north Australia, pp. 1-2, 14 n.6.
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Awkward Indigenous questions to the Christian missionaries.
[Another] contradiction for the missionaries was the gross immorality of life outside the mission. Aboriginal people inevitably thought Christianity to be the religion of the British colonists. As they began to understand the missionary teaching on sin and eternal damnation, they began to ask awkward questions. [1] They asked whether or not particular white men known to them would be punished for their very public sins, and why the missionaries preached about sin to the Aborigines so much and not to the whites. If whites really do have a God of light, asked one man, why do they keep asking for my wife and daughters?
White fellow all about make a Light God... What for white fellow always say you lend me yeener [woman] belonging to you, this night, so many nights, this moon...then I give you bread, I give you milk, shirt...when black fellow make a Light God then he never never lend yeener to white fellow at all. [2]
Watson Diary, 4 July, 1834.
Watson Diary, 26 April 1833, AJCP. M233. NLA
Acknowledgment: John Harris, One Blood, pp. 59-60, 82 n. 151, n. 152.