Massacres

It must be acknowledged that this country was invaded and this is confirmed by the actions of Captain James Cook when he fired at the first group of Aboriginal people he came in contact with. Then the invaders imprisoned us and interned us in detention centres in the guise of looking after our welfare, protecting us from the barbarous acts of the squatocracy and their militias, supported by the police and redcoats, and then had the audacity to try and establish representative government on the land of others, while we were being imprisoned and killed.

When you know who owned the stations on which Aboriginals were killed and the names of the politicians who knowingly allowed it all to happen, you also know the Who's Who of colonial Australia.

It is horrific to read, in fine detail, what was done to hundreds of innocent men, women and children. That is why some people still want this history to remain hidden.

Tony Roberts 'The Monthly Essays' November 2009

'Telling his own people to move on from the traumas of the past, makes it very obvious why he is not accepted in many Aboriginal communities.' Ghillar Michael Anderson says, and 'It is untrue that all of the European holocaust victims have moved on and forgotten the past. Throughout Germany and other places there are memorials for those who suffered and died at the hands of tyrannical leaders and murderers, but there is only one monument to the Aboriginal dead, who were killed en masse through white farmer vigilantes and government approved killings'.

In April 1789, a sudden, unusual, epidemic of smallpox was reported amongst the Port Jackson Aboriginal tribes who were actively resisting settlers from the First Fleet.

This outbreak may have killed over 90 per cent of nearby native families and maybe three quarters or half of those between the Hawkesbury River and Port Hacking. It also killed an unknown number at Jervis Bay and west of the Blue Mountains

A First Nations author from Western Queensland has launched her memoir, 'The Power of Bones', which tells of her seven-year struggle to have the bones of her ancestors returned to her people. It's a slow process, trying to pry the remains of First Nations people away from governments, dithering scientists and privileged museum curators, but after much begging, arguing and pressure some are being returned to country a few at a time. The pussyfooting only ceases when the holders have their arms tied behind their backs.