June 9.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
One hundred years apart.
The claims of contemporary Tasmanian Aborigines
So who owned Aboriginal heritage? [Rosalind] Langford said that there was the view, represented by the dominant white culture, that heritage was the property of mankind. This view encouraged the exploitation and invasion of the lands and cultures of 'other' societies. But, she pointed out, 'If we [as Aboriginal people] cannot control our own heritage, what can we control?' It was vital that Kuti Kina and Deena Reena caves and the remains in the Crowther Collection [of Aboriginal skulls and skeletons] were recognised as Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage. She concluded: 'We are the custodians. You can either be our guests or our enemies. That decision can only rest with you.' [1]
…Six months later, in May 1983, counsel for the Tasmanian government's High Court challenge to the federal government's use of its foreign affairs power to stop the flooding of the caves claimed that the Kuti Kina Cave could not be of special significance to Aborigines because the Tasmanian Aboriginal race was extinct. [2] In response the [Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre] TAC presented to the High Court affidavits which argued that the Tasmanian Aborigines still existed and that the state government had explicitly recognised that fact through its acceptance of federal government funds for Aboriginal projects. [3] In his affidavit Michael Mansell said that Kuti Kina Cave was the first tangible link between him and the state's 40,000-year-old heritage:
The fact that the Aborigines could survive physically and culturally in adverse conditions and over such a long period of time...helps me counteract the feeling of racial inferiority and enables me to demonstrate within the wider community that I and my people are the equal of other members of the community. [4]
When the High Court ruled in July that the federal government had acted within its legal powers, one of the judges noted the significance of Aboriginal heritage in reaching his decision. [5] It represented another important step in the TAC's campaign for Aboriginal rights and recognition. A few months later Kuti Kina and Deena Reena caves were listed as part of the World Heritage Area of South West Tasmania.
Langford, 'Our heritage – your playground', 6.
Sydney Morning Herald, 9 June 1983
Hobart Mercury, 6 June 1983
The Age, 8 June 1983
Sydney Morning Herald, 2 July 1983
Acknowledgment: Lyndall Ryan, Tasmanian Aborigines, pp. 318-319, 383 n.13, n.15, n.16, n.17, n.18.
____
Attitudes from the 1880s
“Gather them all together in an immense reserve in North-Western Australia, say; there is plenty of room there. Let them have no rum and no religion, but fight and frolic in their own way. And by the time the whites would be closing in on them, they would have reduced their own numbers so much by internal quarrels that the boundary line of their reservation could be shifted inwards far enough to allow four or five 'runs' in the space vacated. So the process of closing in could go on until the last survivors, two or three in number, were frozen out altogether. Some showman by that time would make a good thing of taking them around the other colonies and exhibiting them as curiosities. This is the way to let the black race die out easily and naturally.” [1]
Bulletin, 9 June 1883.
Acknowledgment: Cited in The Macquarie Dictionary of Australian Quotations, General editor Stephen Torre, Associate Editor Peter Kirkpatrick, The Macquarie Library, NSW, 1990, p.1.