November 20.
Settlers’ might over right
“It would be 'extremely impolitic' to try settlers for killing Aborigines.”
In April 1830 the British Colonial Secretary, Sir George Murray, wrote to [Governor] Arthur laying the blame for the frontier conflict in Van Diemen's Land squarely with the settlers and demanded that all settlers who killed Aborigines should be put on trial. [1] Murray's analysis of the cause of the fighting was sound, and his call for Arthur to enforce the law commendable. However, Murray's letter met with a hostile reaction when it arrived in Hobart Town in August. During the year, the number of Aboriginal raids had risen dramatically and at least fifteen settlers had been killed.[2] The prominent settlers of the Van Diemen's Land Executive Council told Arthur on 27 August that settlers were only doing what was necessary to defend their farms, and that it would be 'extremely impolitic' to try settlers for killing Aborigines. Arthur himself was a humane man who later wrote that he regretted that the British had not negotiated a treaty with the Aborigines when they first arrived. While superintendent of British Honduras he had fought the slaveholders over the rights of their slaves, and perhaps the bitter experience of that defeat led him to conclude that he could not oppose the settlers on this issue. [3]
Murray was reacting to news that an Aboriginal woman had been killed by Van Diemen's Land Company employees on company land west of Launceston. Letter – Murray to Arthur, 23 April 1830, NLA AJCP Reel 290 PRO CO408/7.
Plomley, Aboriginal/Settler Clash, pp 26, 85-90.
Extract from Van Diemen's Land Executive Council Minutes, 27 August 1830, and letter – Arthur to Murray, 20 November 1830, NLA AJCP Reel 245 PRO CO280/25; letter – Arthur to Robert Hay, Colonial Under-Secretary, 24 September 1832, NLA AJCP reel 251 PRO CO280/35; AGL Shaw, Sir George Arthur, Bart., 1784-1854. Superintendent of British Honduras, Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land and of Upper Canada, Governor of the Bombay Presidency, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1980, pp 50-60.
Acknowledgment: John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars, pp. 93, 143 n.51, n.52, n.53.
____
The issue of Land
Land is at the centre of the troubled relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the Australian settler state. The need for new territory in order to create an economic base for the settler society is the primary motive behind the logic of elimination. The taking of Indigenous lands underpins the destructive, immoral exchanges that are intrinsic to settler colonial societies, and which have wrought incredible damage to Indigenous peoples and communities. [1] …
...In settler colonial societies, Indigenous and settler identities coalesce around crucial differences in their relationship to land. In settler society and politics, land is both an economic resource and demarks the boundaries of sovereign authority over a particular territory. Colonialism seeks to turn land into a commodity providing power and profit to the colonisers, creating a home and economic stability for settlers. Indigenous conceptions of land tend to be starkly different. For indigenous people land is what sustains communities and identity, and forms the basis of social life. [2] The collective Indigenous ‘self’ derives its identity from a particular place or territory. [3] As Larissa Behrendt explains, ‘Aboriginal people believe the land gives life. The attachment of Aboriginal people to their land and the importance of land in Aboriginal life cannot be overemphasised’. [4]
Custodianship of land is a foundational element of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cosmology and cultural practice. It is the ‘central organising principle of society’ [5] and relationships to land are understood as relations of care and responsibility rather than ownership and exploitation.
1. Kristen Lyons, “Traditional owners expose Adani’s relentless pursuit of W&J country’, New Matilda, 23 November, 2017, p.8.<https://newmatilda.com/2017/11/23/traditional-owners-expose-adanis-relentless-pursuit of-wj-country/>
2. Emma Battell Lowman & Adam J. Barker, Settler: Identity and colonialism in 21st century Canada, Fernwood Publishing, Halifax, 2015, p.48.
3. Russell, Peter H., Recognising Aboriginal title: The Mabo case and Indigenous resistance to English-settler colonialism, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2005, p.155.
4. Larissa Behrendt, Aboriginal dispute resolution, The Federation Press, Sydney, 1995, p. 15
5. Heather Goodall, Invasion to embassy: Land in Aboriginal politics, in New South Wales 1770-1972, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1996, p.18.
Acknowledgment: Sarah Maddison, The Colonial Fantasy – Why white Australia can’t solve black problems, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2019, pp.75-76..
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey