January 11.

“Australia Day” by Glenn Loughrey

Gibbets and Statues

“The bodies of the Dharug killed were to be placed in iron gibbets and hung from trees as a warning.”

As settlement spread from Sydney Cove, violence escalated. By the late 1790s the Hawkesbury River area, 60 kilometres north-west of Sydney, supported more than 400 European farmers who claimed exclusive rights to the rich river flats. The Dharug complained that farms were barriers to the river and their food supply. The dispute soon became deadly. When the Dharug crossed the farms or took corn in retaliation, settlers fired on them. The Dharug hit back, forming raiding parties and setting fire to crops. 'Mosquito' led one group until he was captured and transported for murder to Van Diemen's Land, where two decades later he led the Oyster Bay tribe in raids on settlers. He was caught and hanged in 1823. [1] Open warfare soon erupted on the Hawkesbury and the government reluctantly provided troops in 1795 to protect the settlers and their crops. Captain Paterson wrote that 'it gives me concern to have been forced to destroy any of these people, particularly as I have no doubt that their having been cruelly treated by some of the first settlers who went out there'. However, the crops were vital and had to be defended. [2] The bodies of the Dharug killed were to be placed in iron gibbets* and hung from trees as a warning. The fiction of their equal status before the law was exposed.

1. C. Turnbull, The Black War: The Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1974, p. 62.

2. Historical Records of Australia, vol. 1, p. 500.

Acknowledgment: Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians, - A history since 1788, Fifth edition, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2019, pp. 25-26, 381 n.18, n.19

* A gibbet was a 'gallows with a projecting arm at the top, from which formerly the bodies of criminals were hung in chains and left suspended after execution'. - The Macquarie Dictionary, Macquarie Library, McMahons Point, Sydney, 1982, p. 750

———————————————————————————————-

Statues and “a mythical history that ignores the brutal reality of colonialism...”

Tony Birch [in 2017][writing an article entitled “If we are to recognise heroes, where are the stories of Aboriginal courage?”] observe[d] [that] in Australia these monuments represent a mythical history that ignores the brutal reality of colonialism:

At present, these bronzed heroes stand unchallenged, representing either a fictional history of terra nullius or the passive conquest of a land inhabited by unproductive ‘savages’ awaiting British ingenuity and capitalist exploitation. Such histories do not venture beyond myth. Aboriginal nations were invaded. Many people suffered horrific violence. And in the decades and centuries following the original killing fields of the frontier, communities continued (and continue) to suffer government policies, such as the forced removal of children... [1]

1. Tony Birch, “If we are to recognise heroes, where are the stories of Aboriginal courage? The Guardian, 8 September 2017, p.2. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/08/if-we-are-to-recognise-heroes-where-are-the-stories-of-aboriginal-courage?>

Acknowledgment: Sarah Maddison, The Colonial Fantasy – Why white Australia can’t solve black problems, pp.202-3.

———————————————————-

Colonisation’s cruel third act

In late June 2018 a Northern Territory Estimates Hearing learned that 100 per cent of children in detention in the Territory (a total of 38 young people) were Aboriginal. [1] These statistics have only worsened through policies such as the Intervention [2] this is not a mark of the effectiveness of such policy in improving safety through incarceration.- research shows there has been no discernible increase in prosecutions for family violence or notifications of child abuse in Northern Territory. Rather, the burgeoning incarceration rates are the result of a significant increase in prosecutions for minor driving-related offences. [3] One journalist has described indigenous incarceration as ‘colonisation’s cruel third act’. [4]

1. Lorena Allam, ‘All children in detention in the Northern Territory are Indigenous’, The Guardian 26 June 2018. <https://www.theguardian.com.australia-news/2018/jun/25/all-children-in-detention-in-the-northern-territory-are-indigenous>

2. See Chapter 5 ‘The Intervention’ in Sarah Maddison, The Colonial Fantasy pp. 104-125

3. Thalia Anthony and Harry Blagg, Addressing the ‘crime problem’ of the Northern Territory Intervention: Alternate paths to regulating minor driving offences in remote Indigenous communities, Report to the Criminology Research advisory Council Grant: CRG 30/09-10, 2012 <http://www.criminologyresearchcouncil.gov.au/reports/CRG_38_0910_FinalReport.pdf

4. Call Wahlquist, ‘Indigenous incarceration: turning the tide on colonisation’s cruel third act’, The Guardian, 20 Februry 2017, p.1 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/20/indigenous-incarceration-turning-the-tide-on-colonisations-cruel-third-act

Acknowledgment: Sarah Maddison, The Colonial Fantasy – Why white Australia can’t solve black problems, p.127.