October 27.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Compensation vs Racism
The long quest for ‘compensation’ down to present day Australia.
Another theme running through humanitarian discourse was the absolute obligation to provide for compensation – or an 'equivalence' as it was often called – for the land that had been expropriated and the violence and disruption which had accompanied it. 'Of how large a debt do Britons owe these Aboriginal natives', exclaimed missionary [William] Watson, 'for the physical and moral injuries inflicted by their fellow countrymen'. [1] The barrister Sydney Stephen took up the question while addressing the public meeting which launched the Aborigines Protection Society in Sydney in October 1838:
The great question was, whether we were to give them no equivalent for that which we had taken from them? Had we deprived them of nothing? Was it nothing that they were driven from the lands where their fathers lived, where they were born, and which were endeared to them by associations equally strong with the associations of more civilized people? [2]
W. Watson, Journal, op. cit., 29 June 1835.
The Colonist, 27 October 1838.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts, pp. 38-39, 256 n. 53, n. 54.
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Racism leavening Australia’s values.
Despite the fact that the lives of Aboriginal people were protected equally under the law, many settlers viewed them as subhuman, a mentality that was certainly not exclusive to the 'lower orders' of society. [R.J.] Sholl's well-read son Trevarton, who assisted his father in administrative matters [as Government Resident] at Roebourne from 1865 and spent his 'fearfully hot' days waited on by his 'nigger [sic] servant' while reading Samuel Johnson, Jane Austen and Byron, remarked casually after his return from a 7-week ex[edition south to Exmouth Gulf: 'Saw any amount of niggers, [sic] obliged to pepper one lot, others friendly'. Once British settlers had a stake in the land, they would not tolerate interference. The clear instructions given to Charles Nairn by the investor Walter Padbury left no doubt as to how he should deal with 'troublesome' natives; 'you must shoot at them'. The settlers, he told Nairn, 'must fight and subdue the natives' in order to provide greater 'security to property'. [1]
Quoted in Noel Olive, Enough Is Enough: A History of the Pilbara, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2007, p. 55.
Acknowledgment: Mark McKenna, From The Edge: Australia's Lost Histories, pp. 136, 231 n. 33.
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“They just massacred a whole lot of Aboriginal people.”
At Jurlakkula it happened the same way as at Warluk. They just massacred a whole lot of Aboriginal people. Is it right that kartiya [Europeans] come from another place and wipe out people on their own country? That kind of thing can't be right! They were shooting people just for having taken some cattle. Their punishment was to be shot dead.
Everywhere they used to do this, here to the south and up on then rocky country. Ngumpin [Indigenous people] survived the shootings at Wulupu, Hooker Creek, to the east, west and lower down on the Victoria River. They were alright there at Pirlimatjurru; Ngarinyman might have been safe...but across the south on higher ground, Kartangarurru and Pirlingarna ngumpit were just shot by kartiya.
Acknowledgment: Ronnie Wavehill, 'Jurlakkula (Nero Yard)' in Erika Charola and Felicity Meakins, eds. Yijarni – True Stories from Gurindji Country, p. 46.