This page provides an insight into the treatment of the First Nations peoples in the second phase of the mass slaughters in the Australian Eastern states and the archaic attitudes of the colonisers immediately following the first stage of the invasion and the many massacres, land theft and displacements in the late 18th to the mid 19th centuries.
In 1926 a group of colonists with self acclaimed 'high moral standards' and with a small touch of guilt, came up with the idea to create an Aboriginal state. The idea was to give Arnhem Land to Aboriginal people and teach them how to be self-sufficient ... "It is a bold scheme, but the committee behind it includes men who know the aborigine, and who have sufficient faith in it to call for signatures to a petition to be presented to the Commonwealth Parliament asking for its inauguration"
Archeologists working on the Dampier archipelago off Australia’s north-west coast have found evidence of stone houses dating back 9,000 years – to the end of the last ice age – building the case for the area to get a world heritage listing.
A team from UWA are exploring the Dampier Archipelago (Murujuga). What they have uncovered so far is astounding, and pushes back the known occupation of this place to before the Last Ice Age.
Capitalism could not flourish without crushing the resistance of people who wanted to live differently ... wage labour and the drive to accumulate capital were incompatible with Aboriginal society. That incompatibility was the basis of the genocide. Across a vast stretch of northern Australia, extending at least from Borroloola to the Kimberley, Aborigines tell the tale of a murderous white man. He stands for whites in general, and is seen as an invader. As quoted in a paper by anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose; "shooting all the people [and] getting ready for the country, trying to take it away".
'Conspiracy Of Silence' - Blood baths of the past by Dr T Bottoms
Richard Fotheringham The Australian
06 October 2010
The discovery of a memoir by Steele Rudd's father sheds light on the murderous collision between settlers and Aborigines on the Darling Downs
European settlement in Australia was bloody brutal. The idea that on small or imagined provocation you had to kill Aborigines indiscriminately was tacitly acknowledged throughout the immigrant rural communities: "how else could the land be made safe for settlers and their families?"
Here is a book review that reveals a few historical records of southern Queensland's frontier wars. An uncomfortable silence still hangs over the most controversial issue in Australian colonial history.
Captain James Cook Journal - 30 April 1770
As Soon as the Wooders and Waterers were come on board to Dinner 10 or 12 of the Natives came to the watering place, and took away their Canoes that lay there, but did not offer to touch any one of our Casks that had been left ashore; and in the afternoon 16 or 18 of them came boldly up to within 100 yards of our people at the watering place, and there made a stand.
Mr. Hicks, who was the Officer ashore, did all in his power to intice them to him by offering them presents; but it was to no purpose, all they seem'd to want was for us to be gone. After staying a Short time they went away. They were all Arm'd with Darts and wooden Swords; the darts have each 4 prongs, and pointed with fish bones. Those we have seen seem to be intended more for striking fish than offensive Weapons; neither are they poisoned, as we at first thought.
Reconciliation, Nationalism and the History Wars
A paper presented to the Australasian Political Studies Association Conference University of Adelaide
Dr Andrew Gunstone
Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies
Monash University
29 September - 1 October 2004
Historic Resources and Activism Links
