June 30.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
From Aboriginal resistance to the Wik decision
Acknowledgment of Aboriginal resistance on the Monaro.
In 1875, on the eve of the centenary of American Independence, the Colonial Secretary requested copies of newspapers from across Australia which were to be sent to the United States to an international exhibition at Philadelphia, in an attempt to give Americans some picture of life in Australia. Many papers in New South Wales devoted one issue to the event and almost all set out to explain the genesis of their community. Sometimes the Aboriginal presence was invisible, sometimes it was hinted at, and sometimes it was presented as tragic decline. After offering the predictable spiel that told of those 'daring and dashing young Australians' who had 'opened up' the Monaro in the late 1820s and 1830s, the editor of the Bombala Times attempted to explain how the indigenous presence had been dealt with in the Monaro:
We must not think that the lands taken up and acquired by those early settlers were done so without opposition from the native lords of the soil. The native chiefs and their dusky retainers of both sexes were seized with terror at the first sight of the white man, and cautiously hid themselves, sending messengers to their different tribes to 'pialla' the news of this wonderful invasion of their territory; but soon their timidity was removed. [1]
Here was blunt acknowledgment of Aboriginal resistance on the Monaro and the eventual victory of the colonists. The colonial project began as an invasion, and in a culture convinced of its own racial superiority it was entirely appropriate for the editor of the Bombala Times to use the adjective 'wonderful'. There was nothing to hide: those Aboriginal people remaining after the victory were deemed to be 'proud to be the guest of the pale faced invader'. [2]
Bombala Times, 7 August 1875. Cooma Gazette, 7 August 1875. the Bega Gazette, 5 August 1875 says, selfishly, that the Americans shouldn't think of coming to the Bega Valley – 'though there is much Crown land available, the eyes of this part of the colony have been well and truly picked out'.
Candelo and Eden Union, 30 June 1887; Candelo and Eden Union, 26 January 1888, editorial; Illawarra Mercury, 26 January, 1856.
Acknowledgment: Mark McKenna, Looking for Blackfellas's Point, pp.74-75, 242 n.33 n.34
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The Australian High Court decision in the Wik case.
The High Court handed down its decision in the Wik case...a week before Christmas in 1996...the bench had decided by a 4-3 majority that pastoral leases did not necessarily extinguish native title...
It is important to be clear where these rights [to land] came from. They were not created or invented by the High Court, neither were they the gift of the government, be it federal, state, colonial or imperial. They were recognised as pre-existing rights by the Colonial Office and given statutory backing. They derived from Aboriginal society as it was before settlement. Native title is not new title; it is ancient title belatedly recognised. Those people who can establish use and access rights on pastoral leases are merely the present beneficiaries of land tenure which dates back hundreds of generations. In all likelihood it is the oldest continuing system of land tenure in the world.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Why Weren't We Told – A personal search for the truth about our history, pp. 205, 217.
For Reynolds' account of the response to the Wik judgment by various Australian politicians, including John Howard, Tim Fischer and Pauline Hanson, note Why Weren't We Told, pp. 218-223.