July 26.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
“...the feelings of civilised life.”
[Officials] punished Aboriginal crimes against whites with unyielding severity...
Senior government officials were increasingly conscious of their inability to control the situation. They punished Aboriginal crimes against whites with unyielding severity in the belief that Aborigines would thus respect British law. In one case where Aborigines were tried for murder, found guilty and hanged at the scene of the crime, the authorities hoped their action would serve as a strong deterrent to future aggression. They were unable, however, to get any Aboriginal people to attend the execution and the curious conclusion was that their reluctance to watch was because they had not been 'sufficiently influenced by the feelings of civilised life'. [1]
In 1849, the Government Resident in Port Lincoln admitted that it was unreasonable to expect the Aborigines to act with restraint; that having been dispossessed of their land, they could hardly be expected to respect settlers' property:
The cause of the outrages appears to me to have arisen from an injudicious reliance on the trustworthy and forbearing character of the natives; their forbearance especially is kept in constant exercise by the sheep-farmers, who appear to expect that their moral perceptions should be sufficiently vivid to deter them from doing wrong, although at the same time they are to be starved out of their inheritance and allured by the presence of large supplies of provisions insufficiently protected. [2]
Protector's Report, in Government Resident's Report on the Northern Territory, 17 January 1850, South Australian Public Papers SAPP.
Government Resident's Report on the Aborigines of Port Lincoln, 26 July 1849, SAPP.
Acknowledgment: John Harris, One Blood, pp. 340, 377 n. 98, n. 99.
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A snap shot from recent times
For the period 1991-95, life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples at birth was approximately 57 years for males and 66 years for females. [1]
Based on information collected by the 1996 census, life expectancy in 1997-99 was estimated at 55.6 years for indigenous males and 63 years for indigenous females Australia-wide. These expectations are around 19-20 years less than life expectancy for non-indigenous people at that time – 76.2 years for males and 81.8 for females. [2] Comparable life expectancies were experienced by males in the total Australian population in 1901-10 and by females in 1920-22. [3]
Australian Board of Statistics (ABS) Year Book Australia 1999, at 90.
ABS. 'Deaths Australia 1999', Catalogue No. 3302.0, Commonwealth of Australia: Canberra, 2000.
ABC & Australia Institute of Health and Care (AHW), 'The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples 2001' at 121.
Acknowledgment: Professor Margaret Reynolds, The Australian Report – Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, 2002, p. 18, n.11, n.12, n.13.