A brief history of Australia's colonisation of Lutruwita
[Pictured above: Rosalind Langford’s Land of the Palawa People (2003)]
[Author’s Note: Happy NAIDOC Week! This is going to be a slight departure from what I typically write on here, as this is an essay I wrote for my Indigenous studies class last semester (proper formatting, APA7 referencing and everything, eek!). I think that truth-telling and amplifying First Nations voices is an incredibly important practice that Australian society seriously needs to commit to, and as a person with Palawa ancestry I hope that anyone who reads this learns something new about my ancestors :)]
Since the beginning of colonisation in Australia in 1788, paternalistic colonial laws created with the purpose of ‘civilising’ First Nations peoples have had devastating long-term impacts on Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. The declaration of terra nullius, meaning ‘no man’s land’ in Latin, by colonial forces in Australia paved the way for the systemic dehumanisation of Indigenous Australians, resulting in a long history of disempowerment of First Peoples inflicted by early colonial governments (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, 1998). In this essay, the dispossession of Australia’s First Nations peoples enacted by the establishment of missions and reserves, as well as the Aborigines Protection Act 1886, will be examined, with a particular focus on how the establishment of the Aboriginal reserve in Wybalenna, Flinders Island in the 1830s killed and dispossessed hundreds of Palawa (traditional term that refers to Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples), and the way that the Wybalenna establishment and subsequent legislature created long-term devastations for the impacted cultures, languages, and practices of the Palawa will be analysed.
The history of British colonisation in Tasmania, often referred to by the Palawa as ‘Lutruwita’ (Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations, 2020), is a starkly violent and ruthless history that is characterised by the mass murder of the Palawa by colonial powers, the forced displacement of them off of their traditional lands, and the harmful assimilation policies that were instated by the New South Wales government to disadvantage them. There were nine distinct Palawa nations and up to 100 different clans pre-colonisation, and upon British arrival in Lutruwita/Tasmania there was an estimated Indigenous population of 7,000 (Lyndall, 2013, p. 42). The British first arrived in Lutruwita in 1803 aboard two vessels carrying 48 settlers, led by Lieutenant John Bowen, who first settled at Risdon Cove (Monument Australia, 2013). With the settlers initially naming the island ‘Van Diemen’s Land’, hostilities quickly grew between the First Peoples at Risdon Cove and the British, starting with the Risdon Cove massacre in 1804 which saw 30 Moomairremener people killed by colonists (University of Newcastle, 2024). This then resulted in the series of massacres referred to by Indigenous Studies scholars as the Black War, a period of violence between the Palawa and settlers that lasted from the mid-1820s to the early 1830s (the actual years vary across multiple sources). Although the first incident of violence took place years earlier in 1804, this was considered an intensified period. Between 1823 and 1834, it is estimated that 878 Palawa and 201 colonists were killed in these conflicts and massacres (Lyndall, 2012, p. 143).
As the result of the mass murder of a large portion of the Palawa population and the growing power of British settlers in Lutruwita, the Black War had ongoing consequences in the decades that followed in the form of assimilation policies that further impacted both Palawa cultures and peoples. Going into the 1830s, the colonial government in Hobart started aiming to ‘protect’ the Indigenous population in Lutruwita, which had evidently taken a hit during the Black War. From this approach came the establishment of the Wybalenna Aboriginal reserve on Flinders Island by George Augustus Robinson, a London-born builder and preacher who was a prominent conciliator between the Palawa and the British colony (Rimon, 2006). Appointed by George Arthur in 1829, the reserve was the culmination of Robinson’s ‘friendly mission’ expeditions, which involved travelling around Lutruwita to round up surviving members of various Palawa clans with the goal of forcing them into exile at Wybalenna; he ultimately gathered hundreds of Palawa and forcibly removed them off of Country to live on the mission, and by 1834, 134 Palawa had been moved there (Shaw, 2006). Robinson achieved this with the help of Trawlwoolway chief Mannalargenna, who was a confidant of his and led several Palawa to Wybalenna with the promise of his people’s self-determination. In the 2008 book Friendly Mission (p. 427), a personal account written by Robinson in 1831 reads:
“I informed [Mannalargenna] in the presence of Kickerterpoller that I was commissioned by the Governor to inform them that, if the natives would desist from their wonton outrages upon the whites, they would be allowed to remain in their respective districts a good white man would dwell with them who would take care of them and would not let any bad white man to shoot them, and he would go with them about the bush like myself and then they could hunt. He was much delighted.”
With the promise of freedom to participate in cultural practices and protection from colonial powers after a long period of violence, Mannalargenna was enthusiastic about leading members of both his clan and others to Wybalenna. By 1845, 57 Palawa remained at the Wybalenna establishment, having been killed either by colonists or by malnutrition and illnesses introduced to the land by the British (Lyndall, 2012, p. 47). As a result of concerns surrounding the interbreeding of Palawa women and British sealers on the Furneaux Islands, Lieutenant-Governor of Hobart William Denison ordered that the remaining Palawa at Wybalenna be moved to an old penal station at Oyster Cove so as to separate them from the settler population on the islands, and as such they were subsequently moved back to mainland Lutruwita (Lyndall, 2012, p. 250-251). The early 1800s saw the massacring, mass displacement, and enslavement of the Palawa by British colonists in several brutish forms, which perceptibly had catastrophic effects on the Palawa population as well as their collective sovereignty, connections to Country, and general livelihood.
After the death of dozens of Palawa at Wybalenna proved protectionist policies to be detrimental to First Nations life, strategies of this nature still continued to be ardently enacted by colonial governments, reflecting genocidal intent in the British colony towards the Palawa. The denial of First Nations identity to children born to one white parent and one First Nations parent – a phenomenon that was particularly common amongst the Palawa due to the kidnapping of Palawa women by white sealers for sex slavery and domestic servitude (Lyndall, 2012, p. 250) – quickly appeared to be part of a larger scheme to erase the existence of the Palawa entirely. Under the Aborigines Protection Act (1886), ‘half-caste’ boys aged 13 or over were required to work for white farmers, and girls were required to be domestic servants in institutions or white families’ homes, exemplifying the legal push by the colony to assimilate Indigenous ‘half-caste’ children into white society and thus deny them their Indigeneity. Moreover, Lieutenant-Governor Denison declared that the children of Palawa women and sealers that lived on the islands in Lutruwita’s Furneaux group were ‘half-caste’ Aboriginals and not entirely Aboriginal, with an informational plaque about Denison’s attitude towards the Palawa in Wybalenna’s chapel reading “though fully alive to the destitute religious state of these people and lamenting its effect, [Denison] did not feel himself justified in advancing from the Crown revenue aid to people who could not fairly be called Aborigines” (Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania, n.d., ‘half-caste’ children). From this, the death of Truganini (continually considered by some Australian settlers to this day to be the last ‘full-blooded’ Palawa woman) in Hobart in 1876 meant that Tasmania could declare itself an “Aboriginal-free state” (Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania, n.d., Aboriginal women and sealers). The continued killing of the ‘full-blooded’ Palawa by colonial forces combined with the denial of Aboriginal identity for ‘half-caste’ Palawa children communicated a clear intention of colonial governments to decrease the Palawa population and assimilate them into white society – all components of the history of Tasmania which were studied by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin to establish the term ‘genocide’ and analyse the global history of the concept (Curthoys, 2006). Taking this perspective of the Palawa into account, it can be stated decisively that the actions taken by Australia’s early colonial governments to control the Palawa population were carried out with genocidal intent, and thus the outcomes of these actions have been destructive to Palawa culture and wellbeing.
Today, the colony’s vehement past attempts to erase the Palawa and their culture continue to not just partially affect but wholly shape Palawa identity. It is due to various colonial projects and personal settler undertakings that necessitated removing Palawa from country, such as the kidnapping of Palawa women by white sealers in Lutruwita and George Robinson’s relocation of sixteen Palawa men to Naarm/Melbourne in 1838, that a Palawa diaspora has been created in both Australia and internationally on islands in the Indian Ocean (Walter, 2006).
In summary, the strategy of various colonial governments in Australia to set up the Wybalenna mission and assimilate ‘half-caste’ Palawa children into white society resulted in the death, disempowerment, and destruction of cultural relations to land and language for many Palawa individuals. These legislative actions of white Australian settlers created devastating short and long-term consequences for the Palawa, ranging from mass murders and overtly genocidal practices to severance of culturally significant ties to land and mob and the creation of a Palawa diaspora.
References:
1. Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania. (n.d.). [Informational plaque about Aboriginal women on Flinders Island and sealers]. Wybalenna Chapel, Wybalenna, Flinders Island, Tasmania, Australia.
2. Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania. (n.d.). [Informational plaque about 'half-caste' children of Aboriginal women and white sealers in Lutruwita]. Wybalenna Chapel, Wybalenna, Flinders Island, Tasmania, Australia.
3. Aborigines Protection Act 1886 (Vic) pt 4 div 36.
4. Alexander, A. (2006). Mannalargenna. University of Tasmania.
5. Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. (1998, September 22). Terra nullius and sovereignty.
6. Curthoys, A. (2006, August 4). Raphaël Lemkin's ‘Tasmania’: an introduction. Patterns of Prejudice, 39(2), 162-169. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313220500106212
7. Monument Australia. (2013). Lieutenant John Bowen.
8. Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations. (2020, August 1). Breathing in Mannalargenna. Australian Government.
9. Rimon, W. (2006). George Augustus Robinson. University of Tasmania.
10. Robinson, G.A. (2008). Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829-1834. N.J.B. Plomley (Ed.). Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.
11. Ryan, L. (2012). Tasmanian Aborigines: A history since 1803. Allen & Unwin.
12. Shaw, G. (2006). Wybalenna. University of Tasmania.
13. University of Newcastle. (2024). Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788-1930.
14. Walter, M. (2006). Tasmanian Aboriginal Diaspora. University of Tasmania.