July 27.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Dispossession and Dispersal
“...we were about to dispossess unceremoniously the rightful owners of the soil”
[In July 1838]* a correspondent using the nom de plume Philaleh wrote to the Perth Gazette expressing misgivings of a different sort, referring to the violent clashes between settlers and local Aborigines. He called on his fellow colonists to think again about the establishment of the colony:
Let us look now to that in which we are all parties concerned; namely the Settlement of Swan River...does it not strike us all with surprise that...we should have plunged into such a situation without consideration, without forethought. How few of us deigned to bestow even a thought upon the existence of a people whom we were about to dispossess of their country. Which of us can say that he made a rational calculation of the rights of the owners of the soil, of the contemplated violation of those rights, of the probable consequences of that violation, or of our justification of such an act? If perchance at any moment the murmurings of our conscience made themselves heard, were not its faint whisperings stifled by the bustle of business, or drowned in the din of preparations? Did we not swim in a state of high wrought excitement, from the novelty of our sensations and the rapidity of our course, without reflecting that this rapidity might be the indication of the vicinity of an awful cataract towards which we were hurrying in a heedless and blind security? Did it never occur to us then, that in thus extending the dominion of Great Britain, in thus acquiring a territory for our country, while seeking a fortune for ourselves, we were about to penetrate a monstrous piece of injustice, that we were about to dispossess unceremoniously the rightful owners of the soil? [2]
Perth Gazette, 27 July 1838.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts, pp.17-18, 254 n. 28.
* For earlier correspondence see entry for 28 July.
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“the policy of dispersion”
In July 1889 the local correspondent of the Queenslander reported that the remnants of the rainforest people were finally brought in on the Atherton Tableland following some 15 years of frontier conflict, with raids and pilfering of the local farmers' gardens and livestock. The farmers and the government were pleased to provide the blacks with some supplies, the correspondent stated. Turning to the issue of the Native Police system, he added that the
...people here are heartily sick of the policy of dispersion. It means nothing else but brutal, barbarous, and cruel extermination. When asked why it was that they robbed the selectors, the Atherton blacks replied that they only did so when they were hungry. Who would deny to these creatures the right to live? And yet their marauding excursions have been followed by deadly reprisals as certainly as day follows night. [1]
That the word 'dispersal' was widely used as a euphemism for shooting to kill is thus easily documented. Indeed, there are countless citations of this kind throughout the primary sources...
Queenslander July 27, 1889. p. 172d.
Acknowledgment: Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited, p. 39, n.55, p.40.
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Justice, deprived of a strong voice slowly inexorably dies…
Acknowledgment: Kevin Gilbert, “The Gurindji – News Item: ‘Fasting’” 25/10/70 in The Blackside, p. 40.