Aboriginal Australia Colonization and History

THE TALE OF ABORIGINAL
AUSTRALIA
Portfolio by
Hafsa Usmani
Tayyaba Zainab
Mashal Asma

The colonization of aboriginal people
and the appropriation of their culture
has been explored with the help
of indigenous literature, films and
media.

Terminology
In Australia, two distinct groups of First Nations Peoples are recognized:
Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. The term
Indigenous is also used. Generally, this is used in an international or
national context.
This may also include peoples who are Indigenous to other places, and
who are not Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Barani is an
Aboriginal word of the Sydney language that means 'yesterday'.

Historical Periods /
History of Colonization
1. The Occupants of the land
2. Before British Arrival
3. Impact of British Settlement
4. After 1900
5. The path of reconciliation - onwards

ABORIGINAL
AUSTRALIAN
FLAG
The symbolic meaning of the flag colors (as
stated by Harold Thomas) is: Black
represents the Aboriginal people
of Australia. Yellow circle – represents the
Sun, the giver of life and protector. Red –
represents the red earth, the red ochre used in
ceremonies and Aboriginal peoples' spiritual
relation to the land.

Continued
“It’s my fathers land, my grandfather’s land, my
grandmother’s land. And I’m related to it, which
also give me my identity.” Father Dave Passi,
Plaintiﬀ in Mabo Case
"What was before Lord Vestey born and I born?
It was blackfella country." - Vincent Lingiari
(Wattie Creek 1966)

TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER FLAG
The meanings of the colors in the ﬂag are:
Green – represents the land
Black – represents the Indigenous peoples
Blue - represents the sea
White – represents peace

Who gave us
the terra
nullius myth?
a judgement in the
little-known Privy
Council case of
Cooper v Stewart in
1889.
Why did the
British think this?
justify a lack of
recognition of
Aboriginal
sovereignty or
property
Denial to sovergenity

1. For thousands of years prior to the arrival of Europeans, northern Sydney was occupied
by different Aboriginal clans.
2. Living primarily along the foreshores of the harbour
3. Self-sufficient and harmonious
4. Moving throughout their country in accordance with the seasons
5. With such a large amount of leisure time available, they developed a rich and complex
ritual life –

European Arrival
and Discovery
1. The arrival of Lt James Cook in 1770
2. Cook’s voyage of exploration had sailed
under instructions to take possession of
the Southern Continent if it was
uninhabited, or with the consent of the
natives if it was occupied. Either way, it
was to be taken.
3. Upon his arrival, Lt Cook declared the
land he called New South Wales to be the
property of Britain’s King George III,

Cook was followed soon enough by
the arrival of the First Fleet, in
January of 1788, under the command
of Captain Arthur Phillip, whose
mission was to establish a penal
colony and take control of Terra
Australia for settlement.

We found the natives tolerably numerous as we advanced up the
river, and even at the harbour’s mouth we had reason to
conclude the country more populous than Mr Cook thought it.
For on the Supply’s arrival in the [Botany] bay on the 18th of the
month they assembled on the beach of the south shore to the
number of not less than forty persons, shouting and making
many uncouth signs and gestures. This appearance whetted
curiosity to its utmost, but as prudence forbade a few people to
venture wantonly among so great a number, and a party of only
six men was observed on the north shore, the governor
immediately proceeded to land on that side in order to take
possession of this new territory and bring about an intercourse
between its new and old masters.
Watkin Tench, January 1788

“The Aborigines taking part in this
reenactment were press-ganged in
playing roles. They were brought to
Sydney and held in compounds, next
to dog kennels. They were warned if
they didn’t cooperate their food ration
would be stopped.”
The Secret Country John Pilger

Aboriginal Life
Through
European Eyes

This excerpt is taken from the diary of Watkin Tench, an officer in the First Fleet:
It does not appear that these poor creatures have any fixed Habitation; sometimes
sleeping in a Cavern of Rock, which they make as warm as a Oven by lighting a Fire
in the middle of it, they will take up their abode here, for one Night perhaps, then in
another the next Night. At other times they take up their lodgings for a Day or two
in a Miserable Wigwam, which they made from Bark of a Tree. There are dispersed
about the woods near the water, 2, 3, 4 together; some Oyster, Cockle and Muscle
Shells lie about the Entrance of them, but not in any Quantity to indicate they make
these huts their constant Habitation. We met with some that seemed entirely
deserted indeed it seems pretty evident that their Habitation, whether Caverns or
Wigwams, are common to all, and Alternatively inhabited by different Tribes.

Kinship with the
Land
For Aboriginal people and the Clans living on
the northern shores of Sydney, nothing could
have been further from the truth. What the early
colonists never understood, was that the
Aboriginal lifestyle was based on total kinship
with the natural environment.
Wisdom and skills obtained over the millennia
enabled them to use their environment to the
maximum.
For the Aboriginal people, acts such as killing
animals for food or building a shelter were
steeped in ritual and spirituality, and carried out
in perfect balance with their surroundings.

Continued
… from time immemorial, we believe as
Aboriginal people, Australia has been here from
the first sunrise, our people have been here along
with the continent, with the first sunrise. We
know our land was given to us by Baiami, we
have a sacred duty to protect that land, we have a
sacred duty to protect all the animals that we
have an affiliation with through our totem
system …1

Disease and Devastation
The region, once alive with a vibrant mix of Aboriginal clans, now
fell silent.
Every boat that went down the harbour found them lying dead
on the beaches and in the caverns of the rocks… They were
generally found with the remains of a small fire on each side of
them and some water left within their reach.
Lieutenant Fowell, 1789

At that time a native was living with us; and on our taking him down to the
harbour to look for his former companions, those who witnessed his expression and
agony can never forget either. It seemed as if, flying from the contagion, they had
left the dead to bury the dead. He lifted up his hands and eyes in silent agony for
some time; at last he exclaimed, ‘All dead! all dead!’ and then hung his head in
mournful silence, which he preserved during the remainder of our excursion. Some
days after he learned that the few of his companions who survived had fled up the
harbour to avoid the pestilence that so dreadfully raged.

I have myself heard a man, educated, and a large proprietor of sheep and cattle, maintain that there was no more
harm in shooting a native, than in shooting a wild dog. I have heard it maintained by others that it is the course
of Providence, that blacks should disappear before the white, and the sooner the process was carried out the
better, for all parties. I fear such opinions prevail to a great extent. Very recently in the presence of two
clergymen, a man of education narrated, as a good thing, that he had been one of a party who had pursued the
blacks, in consequence of cattle being rushed by them, and that he was sure that they shot upwards of a
hundred. He maintained that there was nothing wrong in it, that it was preposterous to suppose they had souls.
In this opinion he was joined by another educated person present.
Bishop Polding, 1845

shot down like dogs while sleeping round their fires,
their women taken from them to gratify the lusts of
white men, hunted and persecuted in all directions,
and in fact looked upon as savage beasts of the forest,
whom it was necessary to get rid of, no matter how.
Kiernan, 2007

Australian Aboriginal Genocide

Excerpt from the UN Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide (and ratified by the UN, including Australia, in 1948):
"Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Movie Poster Title
“Where the Green Ants Dream”
Writers
Werner Herzog and Bob Ellis.
Brief Description:
The film is considered as a
graceful compliment to the
aboriginal culture and also a
warning to the invaders from
the West.

Plot Summary
In a land originally occupied by aboriginals, an
Australian mining company decided to set up a
uranium mining operation. However, when they
are about to detonate the first charge, a group of
aboriginal elders blocked the site. One of the
geologist, unlike the other workers decided to find
out the reason behind their resistance. He finds out
that the land is sacred to their amulet, the green ant.
They told him that the life cycle of the green ants
and the cycle of life on earth is coherent. Mining
will disrupt the lifecycle and hence it and bring
about an disaster.

Where Fiction
Meets History
The plot line of this movie is partially based
on the Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd case. It
was the first lawsuit on Australian natives.
Justice Richard Blackburn rejected the
dogma of Aboriginal title. The verdict noted
that the Crown had the authority to
extinguish native designation. The Federal
Government granted mining lases to the
Perpetrator without consulting the Accusers
(native people).

Dialogues From The
Movie
Miliritbi: You white men are lost.
You don't understand the land.
Too many silly questions. Your
presence on this earth will come to
an end. You have no sense. No
purpose. No direction.
A scene from the movie in which the
natives are addressing the white men
to keep their business out of their
land.

Mining is prepared to make a substantial
case settlement the value of which would
buy you a new pumping station for water, a
bus to take your children …into town for
their schooling.
Aboriginal: No!... Are you Christian? What
will you do if I bring a bulldozer and pickup
your church?
White man talking about the incentives to motivate the
aboriginals.

A scene from the movie
in which the mining
company is destroying
the land of the natives.
Natives: We have in here
for 40 thousand years…
longer than you came, if
you are going to do
mining in the land you are
going to destroy the land.

“Lawyer: You talk about
progress over and over again
and where does it lead the
aboriginal?
It is progressing to
nothingness. What are the
last 200 years brought?
Extinction! and where that
was not radical enough
cultural extermination by
the word civilization simple
outright murder was only
part of it?”
A scene in which the lawyer is
defending the aboriginals and
presenting their demands in
the court

Title:
The Songlines
Author:
Bruce Chatwin
Publication year:
1987
Brief Description:
This novel by Bruce Chatwin delivers a
captivating background of the native
Australian life.
Book Cover

Songlines As Symbol Of
Australian Culture
PHOTO: Ronnie Wavehill Wirrpnga, Thomas
Monkey Yikapaya, Topsy Dodd Ngarnjal and
Peanut Bernard sing Wajarra. (Supplied: Brenda
Croft)

Background Information
Songlines have been a prominent
feature of Aboriginal cultures for
over 60,000 years. Songlines
explain the laws by which desert
people have lived, and the origins
of this country.
Noel Pearson, in his quarterly
essay A Rightful Place, compares the
Song lines of Central Australia to
the Odyssey, the Iliad, and the Book
of Genesis - referring to these Song
lines as Austra

Margot Neale on Importance of
Songlines:
"The song lines shouldn't be just an
anthropological footnote, but a part
of Australian history as it is taught
in schools. To tell the real story of
this continent, you've got to have
both histories. To really belong to
this place, you've got to embrace the
song lines. They are the story of this
land."
Australia’s Songlines: An
Ancient Network Known As The
‘Footprints Of The Ancestors’

Quotes From The Novel
On Colonization:
• “The whites had stolen his country, he said. Their presence in Australia was
illegal. His people had never ceded one square inch of territory. They had never
signed a treaty. All Europeans should go back where they came from.” (Page 31)
• “Many Aboriginals, he said, by our standards would rank as linguistic geniuses.
The difference was one of outlook. The whites were forever changing the world
to fit their doubtful vision of the future. The Aboriginals put all their mental
energies into keeping the world the way it was. In what way was that inferior?”
Page 124

On Marginalization:
• “The black men were not at fault. For
thousands of years, they'd been cut off from the
mainstream of humanity. How could they have
felt the Great Awakening that swept the Old
World in the centuries before Christ?” (Page 66)
• “Aboriginals are sick and tired of being snooped
at like they were animals in a zoo.” (Page 42)

On Australian Culture
• “What makes Aboriginal song so hard to appreciate
is the endless accumulation of detail. Yet even a
superficial reader can get a glimpse of a moral
universe--as moral as the New Testament--in which
the structures of kinship reach out to all living men,
to all his fellow creatures, and to the rivers, the rocks
and the trees.” (Page: 70)
• Wendy said that, even today, when an Aboriginal
mother notices the first stirring of speech in her
child, she lets it handle the 'things' of that particular
country: leaves, fruit, insects and so forth.…“We give
our children guns and computer games,' Wendy
said. 'They gave their children the land.” (Page: 270)

Title:
A Secret Country
Author:
John Pilger
Publication Year:
1991
Brief description:
The novel tires to reveal the often invisible
past and portrays Australia as a country of
stark contrasts, visionaries and criminals
whose secrets are exposed.
Book cover

Plot Overview
The book portrays a contrary image of Australia than it is often portrayed in
tourism Australia advertising. It depicts a country that is uncomfortable about its
past. Many Australians are ashamed of the fact that a lot of their ancestors came as
a result of the British transportation of prisoners. The terrible treatment of
Aboriginal people by the British colonizers is one of the major topics of discussion
of the novel.

Impact of
colonization
The earlier part of the book is about Australia's early history and
their ill treatment by the English arrivals. However, the latter
part brings to light the political changes made by the British
government. The story of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who
was fired from his job by Sir John Kerr, entitled as the
Governor-General of Australia. He was appointed by the Queen
of England and it is hard to believe that the people of Australia
tolerated this move. It clearly depicts the power and control of
British government over Australia. Moreover, it reveals the
involvement of CIA in ousting Australia’s Labor Government.

“When the British invaded, they declared
Australia ‘Terra Nullius’, empty land,
and for the purpose of historiography,
those who inhabited this ‘empty land’
did not exist. And not only was such a
denial of reality and logic exclusive to the
Georgian mind; subsequent generations
accepted the nuance that in this ‘empty
land’ the original people were ‘dying
off’.”

Post Colonization:
• “We are still finding our freedom among condoms on the sand and
joggers on the dole, ‘banana lizards’ on parole and others on illicit
business, ageing ‘hot doggers’ and gays eyeing lifesavers and
mums with ‘toddlers’ and tourists from Osaka. In short, we have
found our freedom by taking our clothes off and doing nothing of
significance, and by over the years refining and elevating this state
of idleness to a ‘culture’ now regarded highly in the world’s most
fashionable places.”
• “Australia still has not gained true independence, as the historical
record shows.”

“How could you stick a ﬂag in dirt?
And then claim no one was here
For sixty thousand years we roamed
The Country of our birth
Then along you came with guns in hand
And killed our hope and worth”
Australia’s Silenced History, Nola Gregory
The British declared Australia as an empty land in spite of
the fact there were tribes of over 300 thousand population
or nearly a million. No one knew about it because the first
Australians were not counted as human beings. The black
Australians were only considered as the animals of prey so,
they did not consider it inappropriate to kill them.

“Aboriginal is abbreviated, it means Abolish Original.
We are The First Australians here; they are convicts, which are
criminals”.
The First Australians, Troy Hopkins
The English colonizers and their descendants called indigenous Australian
Aborigines by giving them a new name that had no meaning for peoples
who had their own ethno-national group names. For the English settlers,
the name Aborigines characterized the backwardness, inferiority, and
otherness of indigenous Australians.

Poem:
Always told I was a white Girl
Poet:
Tara Shannon

Who are you to say I’m not Aboriginal?
Because the colour of my skin is white?
and I myself don’t believe in who you call Christ?
Educate your kids, Australia, get them to change
their behaviour. (5-8)
Australian were forced to leave their Aboriginal culture and
language during the British colonization. The only choice they
had was to adopt the culture and religion of the colonizers were
absorbed into the white society. However, the Aboriginals were
not willing to leave behind their identity and religion.

“I will always stand up for what is right and speak up
on behalf of my mob and community” (21-22)
After the British colonization in different regions of Australia,
the Indigenous people were dispossessed of their lands, food,
culture and were subjected to slavery and sexual abuse.
Indigeneous Australians did not accept the invasion of their
lands and resisted vigorously. Till today, they fight for the
recognition of their dispossession and violence.

Representation
and
Visibility
The Australian continent has been inhabited for many thousands of
years by Aboriginal peoples. Aboriginal people will tell you they have
always been here.
When Captain James Cook hoisted the British flag in 1770 in what is
now called Possession Island in Northern Queensland, he claimed the
whole of the east coast of the Australian continent for the British
crown.
Until very recently, Australian school children were only taught about
the so-called explorers and the many firsts they claimed, like crossing
mountains or discovering new places. How Aboriginal peoples are
represented and made invisible.

Aboriginal
Artefacts
1. Artefacts, ethics and
anthropology
2. Indigenous Heritage
at the Macleay
Museum
3. The Origin of Species

1 2 3
History of collecting Aboriginal artifacts
has been unethical and problematic.
Collection of stone
tool artefacts held in
the Macleay Museum
at the University of
Sydney.
Cross-cultural
collaborations
Self determination
movement in the
'60s and '70s

Truth, Silences and
Visibility
Tony Albert, aboriginal artist living
in Sydney.
The creator of the war memorial,
Yininmadyemi, Thou didst let fall.

Continued
Social, political, environmental issues attached to the 'here and
now' and the people we are today.
with Aboriginal men and women, who have fought for this
country, when they return to Australia, were given land as
settlement, as payment. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men
and women received nothing when they returned.
Yininmadyemi, which is a Gadigal word meaning thou didst let
fall, came about. Who wrote history and how they wanted history
to be perceived.
As an Aboriginal person, my work has really helped with my own
identity and my own understanding of who I am, where I sit
within the framework of not only myself and my people but also
the broader community.

Aboriginal
Sovereignty
Aboriginal sovereignty has never been ceded.
This means that Aboriginal peoples never came
to any agreement or treaty which conceded their
land. One of the myths of colonisation was that
Aboriginal peoples didn't resist. But they did
resist. From the overtly political, to the
revitalisation of cultures and languages, to
expression through artistic endeavors.
The language of sovereignty is in the political
space.

Language, colonisation
and revitalisation

• Sydney was a gathering place for Aboriginal people
from many nations and diverse language groups.
After the invasion, English and Irish Gaelic were
added to the mix.
• Language and politics
• The work of revitalising language is an important
aspect of Aboriginal people's reclaiming cultures and
identities.
• Dharug
• When a language goes to sleep
• Revival of aboriginal languages

Experiencing and
embodying landscape

1. Why couldn’t the
colonizers sustain
themselves?
2. What is Circle Quay?
3. Why were British
indifferent to Aboriginals?

1. Appropriate consultation and protocols in relation to the objects in their collection, and what approach they take to
decide which objects can be displayed publicly. Matt also talk about the important issue repatriation of human
remains.
2. The university of Sydney
3. Illegal for Museums
4. Capitalizing on colonialism and history
5. We've been able to rectify those mistakes of the past of excluding Aboriginal people, and excluding them from the
process of owning their own graveyards. And be able to use the repatriation project to start a new dialogue and build
new spaces, community service sort of spaces, which all people need to use. And allow Aboriginal people to have
greater control over what happens with their remains after they have passed.]

First People: Aboriginal
Australians -
Documentary Films
French depiction of
Aboriginal life, 1807
(Tasmaniana Library, SLT)

A genetic study in 2011, researchers found evidence, in DNA samples taken from
strands of Aboriginal people's hair, that the ancestors of the Aboriginal
population split off from the ancestors of the European and Asian populations
between 65,000 and 75,000 years ago—roughly 24,000 years before the European
and Asian populations split off from each other.
These Aboriginal ancestors migrated into South Asia and then into Australia,
where they stayed, with the result that, outside of Africa, the Aboriginal peoples
have occupied the same territory continuously longer than any other human
populations. These findings suggest that modern Aboriginal peoples are the
direct descendants of migrants who left Africa up to 75,000 years ago.

Aboriginal Slaves -
Pearling Industry

'Blackbirding' was often the term
used for 'kidnapping', When
Europeans hunted down and
captured Aboriginal men for
slaves in the Western Australia's
Pearling industry in the late
1800's.
Two of the infamous black
birder's from the Shark Bay area
were Captain Francis Cadell and
Charles Broadhurst, but many
others hunted Aboriginal people
up and down the north west coast
to supply the much needed labour
for this thriving and lucrative
industry.

“Australia
Never Had Slavery” Says PM
Who Thinks The Sugar Cane
Just Cut Itself For 100 Years
CLANCY OVERELL
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s attempts to quash the Black Lives Matter
protests has resulted in him revisioning Australian history today, after declaring
that there was “no slavery in Australia”.
Queenslanders as a whole have kept pretty quiet on this one, with not one of his
LNP colleagues working up the courage to tell him he probably shouldn’t die
on that hill.
However, his comments about slavery have overshadowed the ‘lock em up’
sound bite that he was hoping to make headlines.

Continued
Historians have been quick to correct the Prime Minister’s suggestion .
Morrison has also been criticised for ignoring that whole slave trade that was running
between the Pacific and North Queensland in the 1800s.
For the good part of a century, sugar cane farmers in Queensland engaged labour firms
to obtain young men from Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and
New Caledonia. Pacific islanders were shipped to Australia, a practice known as
“blackbirding” to provide labour, with many tricked into rum and kidnapped from
their homelands before the journey.

Melbourne place
names recorded
by
A. W Howitt

The contemporary
heart
of
Aboriginal political
consciousness

Redfern: the crucible of
self-determination
1. What is Redfern?
2. Aboriginal legal service, 1970

Imperial Cultural
Hegemonies; does the
Master still exist?

Australian literature’s
legacies of cultural
appropriation;
Australian literature
has a long history of
appropriating and
misrepresenting
Aboriginal culture.
1. Take anthropologist A.P. Elkin and his associate W.E.
Harney. These white men collaborated in the 1940s on a
book translating Aboriginal songlines into anglophone
ballads.
2. In “Our Dreaming”, a dedicatory poem to the resulting
collection Songs of the Songmen, the pair open with a
self-aggrandising appropriation.
Together now we chant the ‘old time’ lays,
Calling to mind camp-fires of bygone days.
We hear the ritual shouts, the stamping feet,
The droning didgeridoos, the waddies’ beat.

The Jindyworobak group
The most famous literary movement in Australia to be engaged
in appropriation formed in the 1930s. They were the
Jindyworobak group, their founder Rex Ingamells drawing the
word from his friend James Devaney’s book The Vanished
Tribes, which included a Woiwurung word list.
Jindyworobak means “to annex” or “to join” in Woiwurung. The
practices of its writers were, however, more annexation of
Aboriginal culture than any inclusive joining together.

Contemporary Currents
Some of Les Murray’s verse can be read as inheriting from Jindyworobak and its legacy of
appropriation – notably his 1977 "Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle", which presents a
non-Indigenous family holiday as sacred to the equivalent of an Indigenous song cycle. Murray’s
poetry is often innovative, but its progenitor is also famous for positing a near equivalence
between non-Indigenous and Indigenous belonging.

Conversations
Hahaha, just overheard a conversation in a dress shop about
Aboriginal people and how we were aggressive and had a chip on
our shoulders. The other customer left and the 'shop assistant'
came over and asked me "how are you?" My reply: "I'm
Aboriginal!" The look on her face was priceless. She then
proceeded to try and tell me that her brother was married to an
Aboriginal. I cut her off and told her that I am not aggressive and
I don't have a chip on my shoulder and that she should think
about what she says. And not just what she says, but what she
obviously thinks!! As I am walking away, she half-heartedly tries
to apologise. Too late lady. Plus you lost a possible sale, DCW
Warehouse at Randwick.
- Donna Ingram, Aboriginal People and Culture

Exclusionary behaviour of
Police
(police brutality)
NITV's WA correspondent Rangi Hirini has an
exclusive special report as police moved in to disband
an Aboriginal camp of rough sleepers during the
COVID-19 pandemic.
https://www.facebook.com/NITVAustralia/videos/
228343108479515

Aboriginal sacred sites
are under threat
Rio Tinto blew up a 46,000-year-old
Aboriginal site to expand their iron
ore mine in the Pilbara to make
billions of dollars in profit.

Title:
The secret country : the first Australians fight back : a
special report
Genre:
Documentary
Creator:
John Pilger
Published:
1985

Brief Summary
The secret history of Australia is basically the historical conspiracy
of silence. Aborigines were seen by British colonists as having no
proprietorial rights to the land. They had no treaty and therefore no
rights under British colonial rule. Little of their resistance is
recorded. John Pilger tells of their struggles as they were driven from
their lands and he follows events throughout this century as they
relate to aboriginal rights. John Pilger tells of their struggles as they
were driven from their lands and he follows events throughout this
century as they relate to Aboriginal rights.

Scenes from the Documentary British and Irish English slaves were made as a tool for the massacre of the
Aboriginal Australians with the notion of racial superiority. By the 1920,
British invasion caused the death of almost a quarter million Australians.

The deaths of Aboriginal people are 300
times higher than white people due to
infectious diseases and bad sanitary
conditions. A third world disease
Trachoma is widespread in Australia.
Picture taken in the northern territory in an Aboriginal
reserve in 1968

Picture showing the hunting
down of the Aboriginals.
The Aborigines were
considered as subhumans
and a little more than
animals. Aboriginals
were hunt down because
genocide had become a
part of government
policy. The British
labelled them as such in
order to justify their rule
over Australia and for
their extermination.

Australians begun to challenge
the greatest governments in the
world, disease, genocide and
neglect. The Aboriginals were
demanding their right to live and
they wanted more share of their
land than the Whitemen’s
charity.

The history of mining can be referred as
the story of brutal eviction without
compensation. In 1963, the Queensland
government awarded the mining sites in
Queensland to a company and the
Aborigines were forced to leave the region.
They refused to leave therefore, whole
community was arrested and their homes
were burnt.
The mining site in Queensland, Australia

Minerals were being dug up from the lands of
Aboriginals and shipped to China for the billion
dollars profit of British colonizers.
John Pilger, Australian
Journalist, writer and
film-maker

INDIGENOUS
AUSTRALIA
IN
LITERATURE:
WE HAVE ALWAYS
BEEN
STORYTELLERS

Historical Negationism
• “At the white man’s school, what are our children
taught?
Are they told of the battles our people fought,
Are they told of how our people died?
Are they told why our people cried?
Australia’s true history is never read,”

POLITICAL
FRONT;
“NEWSPAPERS
AND ARTICLES”

Notice the tin mugs placed
in strategic places on the tin
wall behind the prisoners - if
one wanted a drink or go to
the toilet the whole gang
would have to go with them.
Newspaper Name:
“The West Australian”
The Report Published:
Report: Royal Commission
'The condition of the
natives' Perth WA 1905
Published On:
11th
August 1905.

The tale of aboriginal
prisoners

Dr Roth, in his report to the
Government, writes:
“... In 1905, children, varying in age between 10 and 16, were charged with
killing cattle, and because they were Heathen Aboriginals, they were not
allowed to swear on the bible, therefore could not give evidence - and because of
language barriers they didn't even understand what they were charged or
sentenced for. Other children between 14 and 16 years of age were given two
years hard labor and neck chained for alleged cattle-killing ...”

Miriwoong:
The
Australian language
barely
anybody
speaks
- BBC News
European settlement wiped out half of Australia's
indigenous languages, and around 100 more are in
serious danger of being lost.
Miriwoong is one of them. Spoken for tens of thousands
of years in a part of Western Australia, the language has
now just a handful of fluent speakers.
But there is a huge push to keep the miriwoong alive. So
why is it so important?

In 1908 four
Aboriginal men
were hanged by
mistake.
In 1908 some Aboriginal
men were rounded up after
a doctor was killed by
mistake. In the confusion
regarding the languages
with Roebourne trackers
during the hunt, a number
of the wrong men were shot
and four were taken as
prisoners. After they were
hung it was established that
at least three of the men
were innocent.

More than 150 Aboriginal
massacres that occurred during
the spread of pastoral settlement
in Australia are now documented
in an online digital map, created
by University of Newcastle
researchers.
Massacres of Aboriginal people
have been mapped in Australia.
Source: University of Newcastle.

1
2
3
4
5
POSTCOLONIAL KEY TERMS
Aboriginals/ Indigenous people
Whiteness
Alterity
Ambivalence/ Binary
Dependency Theory

Aboriginals /
Indigenous
people
Examples from novels:
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin:
Army posted 'Keep Out!' signs, in English, for Aboriginals
to read. Not everyone saw them or could read English.
'They went through it,' he said….'How many died?'. 'No
one knows,' he said. 'It was all hushed up.” (Page 78).

Aboriginals /
Indigenous people
Examples from movies:
Where the Green Ants Dream by Werner Herzog:
Lawyer: Progress here… you talk about progress over and over
again and where does it lead the aboriginal? it is
progressing to nothingness. What are the last 200 years
brought? Extinction! and where that was not radical enough
cultural extermination by the word civilization simple
outright murder was only part of it?

Aboriginals /
Indigenous people
Examples from Documentary:
The Secret Country by John Pilger:
“John Pilger: In 1967 a referendum was held which allowed the
Aborigines to be counted as citizens in their own country. They
could own property and could get a job without permission. At least
on papers”.

Aboriginals /
Indigenous people
Example from Poem:
Always told I was a White Girl by Tara Shannon:
“Who are you to say I’m not Aboriginal?
Because the colour of my skin is white?
and I myself don’t believe in who you call Christ?
Educate your kids, Australia, get them to change their
behaviour”

Whiteness
“The whites had stolen his country, he
said. Their presence in Australia was
illegal. His people had never ceded one
square inch of territory. They had never
signed a treaty. All Europeans should go
back where they came from.” (Page 31)

Examples from
Poem:
Always told I was a White Girl by Tara
Shannon:
“Always told I was a white girl
But knew deep down my own inheritance
an Australian-Indigenous said my parents,
Constantly Criticised on my Appearance”

Examples from
Documentary:
The Secret Country by John Pilger:
John Pilger: Then a Black woman stepped
forward and made a courageous speech. In which
she pointed to White men who’d go secretly with
Black women and had fathered black children.
“Tell your wives what you have been doing. Go on,
they are just over there. Tell ‘em.”
That evening Black children were allowed to go to
swimming pools.

Alterity
“To wound the earth,' he answered
earnestly, 'is to wound yourself, and if
others wound the earth, they are
wounding you. The land should be left
untouched: as it was in the Dreamtime
when the Ancestors sang the world into
existence.” (Page 11)

Ambivalence /
Binary
The diﬀerence was one of outlook. The
whites were forever changing the world to ﬁt
their doubtful vision of the future. The
Aboriginals put all their mental energies
into keeping the world the way it was. In what
way was that inferior?” ( Page 124)

Dependency
Theory
“The black men were not at fault. For thousands of years, they'd
been cut oﬀ from the mainstream of humanity. How could they
have felt the Great Awakening that swept the Old World in the
centuries before Christ?” (Page 66)

REFERENCES 1. https://www.naidoc.org.au/about/indigenous-australian-flags
2. https://www.readings.com.au/collection/indigenous-australian-poetry
3. Northern Territory. Supreme Court, Milirrpum and Nabalco Pty.
Ltd Milirrpum v. Nabalco Pty. Ltd. and the Commonwealth of Australia (Gove
land rights case) Judgment of the Hon. Mr. Justice Blackburn. Law Book Co,
Sydney, 1971.
4. the post archive. “Where the Green Ants Dream (Dir. Werner
Herzog).” YouTube, uploaded by the post archive, 19 Feb. 2020,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZKBnM1XE9o.
5. “Songlines.” Common Ground Home,
www.commonground.org.au/learn/songlines.

References
ABC News, 4 July 2016,
www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-04/naidoc-week-indigenou
s-songlines/7557654.
“Australia's Songlines: An Ancient Network Known As The
'Footprints Of The Ancestors': Art of Letting Go, Aboriginal,
Aboriginal Dreamtime.” Pinterest,
www.pinterest.com/pin/115193702954515097/.
quotation from interview in 2007, printed in Currie J (2008) Bo-ra-ne Ya-goo-na Par-ry-boo-go Yesterday
Today Tomorrow: An Aboriginal History of Willoughby Willoughby City Council.
Chatwin, Bruce. The Songlines. Vintage Classic, 2017.
"THE NATIVE TROUBLE." The West Australian
(Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954) 11 August 1905: 5. Web. 28
Mar 2020 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article25520987>.
“Mapping the Massacres of Australia's Colonial
Frontier.” The University of Newcastle, Australia, 16 Oct.
2017,
www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/featured/mapping-the
-massacres-of-australias-colonial-frontier.

References
http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-secret-country-the-first-australians-fight-back
http://johnpilger.com/articles/return-to-a-secret-country
Sydney of City. (n.d.). Barani: Sydney’s Aboriginal History. Retrieved February 14, 2017 from
http://www.sydneybarani.com.au/
*NSW Department of Health. (2004). Communicating Positively: A guide to appropriate Aboriginal
terminology. Retrieved from
http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/aboriginal/Publications/pub-terminology.pdf
http://johnpilger.com/books/a-secret-country
https://theconversation.com/rediscovered-the-aboriginal-names-for-ten-melbourne-suburbs-99139
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAG3Zxeru18
Tilly, Charles. “Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. By Ben
Kiernan (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2007)” pp. 247-248.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
● Australia Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. (1997).
Bringing them home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families. Retrieved
from
https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islan
der-social-justice/publications/bringing-them-home-stolen
● Hoff, J. (Last updated 2017, February 19). Redfern Oral History - Timeline.
Retrieved from
http://redfernoralhistory.org/Timeline/Timeline/tabid/239/Default.aspx
● Smith, K. V. (2009). Bennelong among his people. Aboriginal History, 33,
7-30. Retrieved from
http://press.anu.edu.au/publications/aboriginal-history-journal-volume-33/
download
Additional resources
● Michelmore, K. (2012, September 3). Bungaree: an Indigenous perspective
[Audio file]. Retrieved from
http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2012/09/03/3581640.htm
● Stolen Generations’ Testimonies Foundation. (n.d.). Stolen Generation
testimonies. Retrieved February 14, 2017 from
http://stolengenerationstestimonies.com/index.php/testimonies/index.1.html

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