May 21.
Indigenous holocaust
Every mother’s son is guilty’
The gaoler at Broome stated that ‘not one’ Aboriginal prisoner knew why they were in gaol. [1]The gaoler at Wyndham admitted ‘grave blunders’ had been made in identifying people and as a consequence the wrong Aboriginal people were gaoled for periods of up to two years. [2]
Near the end of [Commissioner Walter] Roth’s examination of P[olice] C[onstable [John] Inglis he asked him a question: Was this informal, possibly unlawful yet widely accepted arrest and gaoling system, where regulations regarding arrest and rules of evidence were so lax, a ‘rather one-sided justice’ for Aboriginal people? Inglis admitted as much remarking, ‘it’s a queer country where I am. Every mother’s son is guilty’. [3]
1. Witness statement by William Paterson, gaoler, Broome. Roth Report, Pt. 513, p.54.
2. Witness statement by George Scott, gaoler, Wyndham. Roth Report, Pt. 1765, p.104.
3. Witness statement by Constable John Inglis, Halls creek Police Station, Roth Report, p.94.
Acknowledgment: Chris Owen, ‘Every Mother’s Son is Guilty’ – Policing the Kimberley Frontier of Western Australia 1882-1905, UWA Publishing, Perth, 2016, pp.5, 460 n.22, n.23, n.26
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Strategies to dominate and kill.
Memoirs of explorers in the Kimberley, such as Alexander Forrest, Frank Hann, David Carnegie and Aeneas Gunn...provide insights into racial attitudes to Aboriginal people. Hann and Gunn outline conflicts and shootings at ‘bush blacks’ and of European ‘nigger [sic] hunting’ parties. [1] Buchanan and Carnegie describe the practice of capturing and chaining Aboriginal people whilst feeding them salt to dehydrate them until they would reveal water sources. [2]
1. A. Forrest, North West Exploration: journal of expedition from DeGrey River to Port Darwin, Perth, Government Printer, 1880. et al.
2. D.W. Carnegie, Spinifex and Sand, facsimile edition, Perth, Hesperan Press, 1982 (first published 1898), p. 189.
Acknowledgment: Chris Owen, ‘Every Mother’s Son is Guilty, pp. 29, 465 n.86, n.87
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The Indigenous holocaust.
...I had reached the conclusion independently [1]...that what the Aboriginal people had experienced was a holocaust...the early population estimate for Aborigines in Australia before European colonisation was about 300,000. More recent estimates suggest 750,000 and possibly one million. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated it to have plummeted to 31,000 by 1911, the lowest level suggested. These figures indicate a depopulation of perhaps 90% or even 97%. If the population estimates were accepted conservatively as reducing from 750,000 to 100,000, a depopulation of 87% would be indicated. Detailed studies support human devastation. One estimate is that the population of Tasmania declined in thirty years by 96%; in Victoria by at least90% in 35 years; in the Northern Territory, on Victoria Downs approximately 90% in thirty-five years and perhaps 97% in the Alligator river district. [2] As previously indicated, I can suggest no more appropriate word than holocaust, very different in its implementation from the Holocaust of the Jews, but truly a holocaust: the Holocaust of Australia's Aboriginal People. And they live in its shadow whether we admit or not, whether we know it or not.
On pp. 187, 194 n. 7, n.8, Loos notes papers presented by Gary Foley and Dr Bracelyn Smallwood - Gary Foley, Australia and the Holocaust: A Koori Perspective, the Koori History Website, 1997 (www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/essay_8.html); Bain Atwood and Andrew Markus (eds), Thinking Black: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines League, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2004, pp. 20-21,
Gracelyn Smallwood, Anti-Racism Conference, Perc Tucker Gallery, Townsville, 23 May 2013
Acknowledgment: Noel Loos, In the Shadow of Holocausts: Australia and the Third Reich, Boolarong Press, Salisbury, 2017, pp. 187, 188, 194 n.7, n.8.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey