May 9.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Occupied for thousands of years
Thousands upon thousands of years of occupation of the land
Aboriginal people have lived in Tasmania for more than 35,000 years – more than three times as long as the human occupation of the British Isles. They have adapted to extraordinary climate change (including being the southernmost human beings in the world during the last Ice Age), vastly different environmental realities and, in very recent times, the brutal invasion and conquest of their country.
...Over the whole period of human occupation of Tasmania, the environmental contrasts were much more extreme: during the last Ice Age the temperature was up to 7 degrees colder and much drier than it is today, and country that is now temperate rainforest was open tundra with vast glaciers and now extinct megafauna. Not surprisingly, the archaeological records confirm that there have also been marked changes in human society…
And about 2,500 years ago there is evidence that Tasmanian Aboriginal people further ‘widened their coastal economy to focus increasingly on the hinterland...incorporated exotic raw materials into their stone tool kit, commenced rock art at Mount Cameron West...opened up inland areas by firing the landscape, and moving on to offshore islands’. Some technology and cultural practices, however, remained consistent over 20,000 years. For example, ‘Darwin glass’ (black silica used in knives and scrapers) from a deposit near Macquarie Harbour was already in use 20,000 years ago, as was red ochre. [1]
By the time the British arrived, climate change and land management had ensured that Tasmania was an extraordinarily bountiful land for human beings. The nine different language groups ‘harnessed the technology of fire to manage the land, encourage new growth for the wildlife [and] keep open pathways that networked the island for ease of seasonal movement…’ [2]
Tim Murray and Christine Williamson, ‘Archaeology and history’, in Robert Manne (ed.), Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2003, pp. 319-20. Roslynn D Haynes, Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and Photography, Polymath Press, Sandy Bay, Tas., 2006, p. 2.
Patsy Cameron, ‘Aboriginal life pre-invasion’ in Alison Alexander (ed.), The Companion to Tasmanian History, Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 2005, pp. 3-6.
Acknowledgment: James Boyce, “Towlangany: To Tell Lies” in First Australians, Rachel Perkins and Marcia Langton eds, The Miegunyah Press, Carlton, 2010, pp pp. 43-45, 257, n.1, n.2.
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The use of a euphemism to cloak the killing of Indigenous people.
The following citations [provide readers] with a...picture of the manner in which Queensland frontier skirmishes were depicted by people close to the actual events throughout the colonial period.
The Native Police officer, Frederick Wheeler (1830-1882) was interviewed during a parliamentary enquiry in 1861: 'When asked what his orders were', in relation to a particular situation, he said, 'I told them to surround the camp of Telemon blacks, and to disperse them.' He then proceeded to elaborate further on this: '...”Disperse'', he said,' meant firing at them.' After which, he added 'there are no general orders for these officers' and 'officers must take care that general discretion is exercised'. He 'never took any white people with him', and 'only two men and one gin were shot'. He said 'there was no other way of proceeding except by surrounding and shooting at the black's camp.' When asked what they did with the bodies, he said, 'they left them in the scrub'. The same officer later added that 'he had never received any written or printed instructions from the Commandant, but the general orders had “one clause” which instructed him to disperse all assemblages 0f the blacks'. He did not think that the blacks 'understand anything else except shooting at them'. [1]
...Following an attack on a telegraph station in 1874, the Queenslander's telegraphic correspondent in Georgetown bluntly told his readers that 'the blacks were dispersed by rifle in the usual manner'. [2]
QV & P RE SC-61 – 9 May & 16 May 1861
Queenslander, February 28 1874, p4d.
Acknowledgment: Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited, pp.35-36 n.42, 37 n.