February 21.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
‘...a good deal of shooting...’
Hangings were intended to terrify and teach Indigenous people resistance to British colonisation would not be tolerated.
Unlike public executions for European offenders which always took place in or around the Adelaide Gaol, public Indigenous hangings occurred at the scene of the crime with settlers and fellow tribesmen encouraged, sometimes forced, to watch. Recognising that race was a determining factor in the treatment of a capital offender, this paper shows how pioneering South Australians placed great value on the violent theatre of the gallows, as it was thought to pacify a troublesome Indigenous population who did not share British culture or language. It was a belief that culminated in the successful passage of an 1861 amendment through the South Australian Parliament that made provisions for the reintroduction of public executions for Indigenous offenders.[1]This was after public executions for all capital offenders, regardless of race, had been abolished three years prior in 1858. [2]
In the analysis below, the spectacle of frontier hangings are invested with much greater significance than has previously been the case in major South Australian contact histories. [3] Sentencing an Indigenous person to death was more than just punishment; it was a calculated stage-play intended to simultaneously terrify and teach Indigenous people that resistance to British colonisation would not be tolerated.
Act to amend an Act, no. 23 of 22nd Victoria, intituled ‘An Act to Regulate the Execution of Criminals’ 1861 (SA) (25 Victoria, no. 1).
Act to Regulate the Execution of Criminals 1858 (SA) (22 Victoria, no. 23).
Foster and Nettlebeck 2012; Foster et al. 2001; Pope 1989, 2011.
Acknowledgment: Steven Anderson, ‘Punishment as pacification: The role of Indigenous executions on the South Australian frontier, 1836–1862’, Aboriginal History Vol 39 2015 pp. 3-4, n.3, n.4, n.5
____
[Theodor Strehlow] often made out strong reports against white station managers and stockmen when complaints of brutality or the misuses of Aboriginal women had been made against them.
Once he travelled by camel for days to investigate the alleged shooting of an Aboriginal man by a station manager. When he reached the station homestead, Strehlow was met rudely by the manager who called him a “filthy boong [sic] lover” and a “treacherous bastard”. Strehlow attempted to calm the man and to discuss the purpose of his visit sensibly with him, but all he got for the effort was more abuse. And when two white station workers joined the manager on the homestead verandah, the abuse grew louder and more insulting.
Since, on his way to the station, Strehlow had seen an Aboriginal camp to the west, he decided to go there to try to pick up whatever information he could relating to the complaint. After the usual familiarities, Strehlow got down to the nitty-gritty of the business at hand. It did not take the elders long to accuse the station manager of having raped a young girl, and afterwards handing her over to his two white workers for their sexual satisfaction. According to their account, when the three men had finished with the girl, they had thrown her out, leaving her to find her way back to her people. The girl’s father and two young men of the tribe had then gone to the homestead to protest the girl’s treatment. They had been ordered off the property. Tempers had flared. A native weapon had been produced and waved in anger. One of the station men had handed a rifle to the manager, and a shot had been fired, hitting the girl’s father in the thigh. He had fallen to the ground, blood pouring from the wound.
Armed with this information, Strehlow returned to the homestead to again attempt to open up a discussion with the manager. But once again he was roundly abused…
...Strehlow was furious about this, but he managed to bite his tongue and let the outburst go over his head. He realized he had no hope of obtaining sufficient evidence to recommend a charge being brought against the white men and his report of the investigation would lie in a pigeonhole for months, probably years….So, after issuing a warning to the three white men...he rode off... “Once a white man was under investigation, no other white person would say one bad word against him.”…
Once, after submitting to his superiors a particularly strong recommendation for prosecution against a white station manager, Strehlow received a reply from the office of the Northern Territory Administrator.… The letter concluded with the suggestion that Strehlow should devote more time to working constructively instead of engaging “flights of fancy”.
Ward McNally, Aborigines, Artefacts and Anguish, Chi Rho Lutheran Publishing House, Adelaide, 1981, pp.58-60
____
A parliamentary motion – words but no action.
On the 20 February, 1970, the Australian Senate passed unanimously a resolution presented to it by Aboriginal Senator Neville Bonner. It called on the government to recognise that Aborigines had had “prior ownership” of “this entire nation” and should be compensated for their dispossession.