Chris Owen 'Darkest West Australia' | Author
Chris Owen 'Darkest West Australia'
Address: Perth 6000 Perth, WA, Australia
Website: uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/every-mothers-son-is-guilty-policing-the-kimberley-frontier-of-western-australia-1882-1905
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25.01.2022 Well Facebook has told me my page has hit 3000 likes. That's amazing I'd like to thank you all for showing interest in the often dark history of Western Australia. Cheers ! I know I post a lot of horrendous stuff so to celebrate the survival of Aboriginal people here's a photo of 'Long Charlie' (6'4 tall!') and family group keeping culture strong in 1919 on Fossil Downs pastoral station (established 1883, West Kimberley - Gooniyandi country.) These strong people probably pa...rt of the local generations that built the Fossil Downs pastoral industry. Allowed to live if they provided free labor - they getting rations, no pay but making the owners wealthy beyond belief. Who owns it today? Gina Rinehart, the richest woman in the world. Wonder what became of the boy here?
25.01.2022 1958 Newspaper evidence from April 1958 that Aboriginal people continued, in what was reported to be a widespread practice, to be neck chained at Halls Creek (Kimberley District) of WA. (Previously 1956 was identified as the latest date.) So 1958. Post World War II economic boom, full employment and rising standards of living, on the cusp of social liberation and the age of civil rights of the 1960s and Aboriginal people are still being neck chained in derelict prisons.... Here you see the blame game being shared between the State and the Commonwealth. (The Commonwealth could not make laws for Aboriginal people until the 1967 Referendum.) And as ever you see here in the absence of any sensible humane policy or meaningful funding, disciplinary and punitive policing remained the default policy response. Wonder how much longer that went on for? https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspap/article/236324092/25622248#
25.01.2022 More Truth Telling Black lives matter This drawing was done was done by cartoonist Simon Kneebone. https://simonkneebone.com/2020/07/07/statement/ It is in a new review of Every Mothers son is Guilty in the Alternative Law Journal on Kimberley policing by Professor Kate Auty.... https://journals.sagepub.com/d/pdf/10.1177/1037969X20940099 Auty says 'Black Lives Matter marches across the world recently have brought into stark relief the plight, anger and demands of people of colour when exposed to justices systems which continue to disproportionately arrest them, punish and imprison them and ultimately kill them.' The cartoon speaks of Australian history and the nation in general. We are glad to celebrate the pioneering spirit, exploring and overcoming the harsh country, taming the land and establishing this lucky nation. But we are almost blind to how exactly this really occurred and affected Aboriginal people who were basically yet another (albeit unspoken) thing to overcome. As the cartoon suggests this history would/should all be lost. Indeed, apart from the relative handful of photographic evidence and references in books to Aboriginal people in chains most people do not even know this barbaric practice was common practice Australia wide and used until the late 1950s in Western Australia. Maybe it is time to recognise this?
24.01.2022 'Giving them a lesson.' The killing of Aboriginal people in Western Australia on their own country was undertaken to conquer the country for European use. These killings usually called punitive expeditions, (code for massacres) were also euphemistically called dispersals, punishments, to give them a lesson or 'being dealt with.' How do we know this? Because thats exactly how they justified the killing from the 1834 Pinjarra Massacre until some 92 years later in the 1...926 Forrest River Massacre and many in between. 1834 Battle of Pinjarra: Captain James Stirling declared that he had set out to punish the whole tribe and that his intention was to instill fear in the Aborigines and break their resistance. The only way to deal with Aboriginal people was to reduce their tribe to weakness by inflicting such acts of decisive severity as will appall them as people. 1868 Flying Foam Massacre [Dampier Peninsula]: Up to 60 shot. Alex McRae: I regretted much to have to take this step [shooting] with these misguided creatures but their escape without a lesson would only lead to further outrages.' 1888 Goose Hill Killings [East Kimberley]: Up to 80 shot: The blacks had been guilty of spearing cattle, and a punitive expedition was sent out to punish them. 1926 Forrest River Massacre [East Kimberley]: Station owner Leopold Overheu ominously wrote 'Im going to pilot the police out and give them any assistance possible, so as to make the place safe for myself in the future. In officially reporting the matter to police, Ive asked for a strong force to go out, and also that the natives be dealt with drastically.' This murderous activity was the language of the lawless frontiersmen but it was exactly the same language police and police authorities used. In the Kimberley in the 1890s senior police would advise that to prevent cattle losses and escalating Aboriginal resistance that they should get taught a lesson that is, shot and killed and the living, pacified. In late 1893 Senior Officer Inspector Overend Drewry added 'that the lesson they had been given be applied annually for the next three years. Western Australian police authorities used these terms as if they were normal and acceptable instructions for a civil police force. These illegal practices, widely known to the highest levels of government authority, were accepted in terms of colonising the country and not one person was found guilty of murder.
24.01.2022 Hope all you out there are staying well. Curtin University students and Noongar Danjoo produced this excellent summary of the still largely unknown (whitewashed from history) prohibited area for Aboriginal people in Western Australia. Mirrawong Historian and writer Steve Kinnane and State Records of WA archivist Damien Hassan explain exactly how enormous this effective apartheid area was and that operated for over 25 years from 1927 to 1954. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOXR7aK56nc&feature=youtu.be
23.01.2022 Hi All - I wrote this piece on the Pinjarra Massacre for The Guardian to compliment the Western Australian research on the Newcastle University 'Massacre Map' that was launched today. https://www.theguardian.com//the-pinjarra-massacre-its-tim The Newcastle map (I did the WA sites) is here. Just solid evidence based history. https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php
23.01.2022 West Australian Horrors; How the Nigger is treated. It is established beyond doubt that police (and colonists) shot hundreds of Aboriginal people in the colonisation period (1860s - 1940s) of the North West and mostly the Kimberley districts of Western Australia and arrested, neck chained and imprisoned many hundred, perhaps thousands others. A terrible question has to be asked: what did they do with the wounded victims who were maimed and often with broken limbs? If they ...could not walk (a prerequisite for police on bush patrol who would receive an allowance they called per knob for each prisoner they arrested) usually they were just left where they were often to die. What happened is revealed in this shocking 1893 account in the regional newspaper The Eastern Districts Chronicle. The Northern Township mentioned is probably Roebourne or perhaps Derby (administrative centres with prisons for the Northwest and Kimberley districts respectively). The prisoners were no doubt being sent to Rottnest Island Prison (Wadjemp) on the charge of cattle killing. They never made it. On one occasion I was standing outside the police station in a northern township, and saw a constable bring two natives out of the watch house to take them into the court. They were chained together by the necks, and as they stood outside the court, I saw one had been shot in two places, though struck probably by one bullet, above and below the elbow of the right arm. The bone was shattered, and left undressed or treated in any way. The poor fellow was holding it up with the other hand, while his comrade in misery occasionally chased away the myriads of flies which settled on the wounds. Two days afterwards I saw them again. The broken arm had not been touched by any kindly hand, and the natives still chained by the neck were fastened by another chain to the surcingle on the saddle of a policeman's horse, and being trotted along towards the coast, to be shipped south by steamer. The one with the broken arm died on the voyage, and was thrown over to feed the fishes. The other, given a taste of liberty while his mate was being 'buried,' decided to make his freedom permanent, and enfranchised himself by jumping overboard. There was no great fuss made about the affair. In fact, as far as I can remember, no inquiry of any kind was made. The natives were reported as having died on the voyage down, and that was all there was about it. A good many people knew how they died, but what odds a nigger or two less.
23.01.2022 *Cultural Warning: Racist language.* 1953 - Kalgoorlie, again. I don’t really know what to say about this (not unusual) headline though it speaks for itself about race relations. Mid 1953 The mining town of Kalgoorlie, yet again. The much maligned Wongai people were probably called this from the 1880s to, well, today. ... Kalgoorlie remains simmering away with racism to this day with Wongai people defensive and people wonder why? And check out the article next to it - Eastern Goldfields Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Full article https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/28540274
22.01.2022 Westralian Blacks how they are treated We have seen how allegations of slavery (blackbirding) and brutality towards Aboriginal people in Western Australia in the NorthWest and Kimberley from the 1880s through the 1900s was routinely denied by the government of the day. But here is an 1901 cartoon published in the Sydney magazine The Bulletin entitled Westralian Blacks how they are treated by the notable artist Alfred Vincent. Here he is suggesting justice was bl...ind for Aboriginal people. Even this fiercely white nationalist magazine that had a cover banner declaring Australia for the White man found conditions abhorrent. (The WA government had reintroduced whipping/flogging as punishment in 1892 after it had been abolished previously.) This is the caption: Vincent, the Bulletin, 1901. This graphic journalism makes no attempt at humour. An ex-policeman admitted at the time that whites set traps for Aborigines stealing meat. They were also flogged by whites who were paid ten shillings per flogging. In the heyday of white Australia (see the newspaper headlines in the cartoon) Aborigines were banned from membership of the Australian Workers union. The ban was lifted but not until 1969.
22.01.2022 'CHAINED LIKE ANIMALS Not a Rare Practice. April 1958. This article from the Sydney Tribune 9 April 1958 is the proof of the widespread practice of chaining of Aboriginal prisoners. As usual it is the Kimberley district, this time the remote East Kimberley town of Halls Creek on Kitja and Jaru country. Halls Creek was a former mining town notorious for massacres of Aboriginal people from the 1880s 1930s. Later it became the administrative centre for pastoral stations... in the area. The report the writer is referring to is from 25 March 1958 in the Sydney Tribune. 12 prisoners were chained together to a post on the veranda of the Halls Creek Police station probably because the prison was full. They were likely arrested for cattle killing or simply disturbing cattle on their own country. Described as barbaric, Halls Creek residents saw them chained like that for over a month. During the day they were probably on a chain gang building roads or infrastructure - slavery? But why were chains still being used in 1958? Expediency. Chaining being the cheapest option rather than hiring more police or building decent facilities. Chains werent even police issue - police would buy them from a blacksmith out of their own pocket. In 1905 in the infamous Roth Royal Commission a senior government official admitted chaining was an informal practice of the last thirty years in the Kimberley. In 1958 not much had changed. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspap/article/236324092/25622248 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspap/article/236326760/25622229
21.01.2022 'Native Prisoners, Wyndham' Hidden upon the hundreds of sedate posed colonial family photos in the South Australian Librarys James McColl Collection is this previously unseen photo from Wyndham (yet again) of neck chained prisoners (2.4 kg each over twice the weight of chains used in other areas) chained in threes gathering rocks and putting them in a train cart for making roads and buildings. Wyndham was so hot frequently (well over 40 C/110 F) that the rocks were ...reported to be too hot to touch. How then did these men, probably imprisoned for alleged cattle killing, endure the uncovered chains for up to 8 hours a day? The advent of digitisation and online access of historical documents and images has revolutionised the way in which Aboriginal history can be revealed. Previously unseen Western Australian images from personal collections, sometimes from other states and even countries, can be found revealing aspects of history that many at the time, and later, tried to hide. Few people outside of these local areas knew of these practices. But these men also look familiar they are likely strong Mirriwong Gadgerong, or Gija [Kija], Oombulgurri and Walmajarri men - with ritual chest scarification - no doubt from the same time period are part of the same group infamously photographed; a photo found in the State Library of Victoria I used, with Traditional Owners permission, as my book cover. How many more images out there are there? Building the real picture piece by piece. [Edited with help from Tjupurula Mulan in comments to name the men.]
21.01.2022 The Western Australia research that is part of the Newcastle University Massacre Map project led by Professor Lyndall Ryan will be launched on 11 November 2019. https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php The research outcomes are far more disturbing than I even imagined with large scale massacres of Aboriginal people occurring from 1829 to at least 1926. One of these is the notorious 1915 Mistake Creek Massacre in the Kimberley. Some years ago there was a conc...erted attempt by some conservative writers in the history wars to deny that this and other events occurred. It is very much real. In 1915 it was reported that telegraph linesman Mick Rhatigan and his two workers, Nipper and Wyne, shot and burned five or six [Kija] Aborigines. The charred remains of two bodies were found at Mistake Creek and the bodies of five others named Hopples, Nellie, Mona, Gypsy and Nittie were found some distance away. This was supposedly in reprisal for allegedly killing Rhatigans cow. (The cow was later found alive and well.) Rhatigan had charges of murder laid against him but they were dropped, as often happened, due to lack of evidence.' But who was Mick Rhatigan? He was a notorious former East Kimberley police constable bushman who did numerous well documented bush patrols in the mid 1890s the killing times where he shot an enormous number of Aboriginal people on their own country. Rhatigan had a very brutal reputation. How do we know this? Turkey Creek stockman Doug Moore blithely referred to him as one of the best shots in the country and he missed very few blacks if after them, especially on the Osmond River where they were pretty well cleaned up, that is, killed. Rhatigan died in 1920 and entered Kimberley frontier folklore. He became one of many characters in Keith Willeys 1971 book, Boss Drover, a biography of a Kimberley drover named Matt Savage. The Mistake Creek massacre is retold in the book and refers to an unnamed cold heartless bloke who killed plenty of Aboriginal people.
21.01.2022 Thanks Ian Wells - You might notice that 90% of what I post is commentary on European/Australian government records and primary sources. Is that utter tripe?
19.01.2022 '10 years old - Hard Labour' Reviewed recently in Australia was the minimum age of criminal responsibility. Here, under law, small children of 10 years old can be charged with criminal offences and sent to prison. (Criminal responsibility is 14 years old in most other countries.) This law vastly proportionally affects Aboriginal children. Despite being 5% of the population Aboriginal kids make up well over half of the nearly 1000 children currently locked up. Furthermore 70% ...of 10-13 years olds are Aboriginal. This is not a recent policy. In Western Australia over 100 years ago (and earlier) Aboriginal children in the Kimberley as young as ten were imprisoned with hard labour. That is, neck chained and building roads/buildings/jetties during the day. See this extract from Walter Roths 1905 Royal Commission where multiple children - a ten year old boy named Lungurin and others received ridiculously excessive sentences. But Elders were sent to prison also. Umberudgy, who was so old and weak he couldnt even walk was imprisoned dying 18 days later on the floor of the tin shed prison. [Leaving aside that there is no way a 10 year old boy or an invalid man of 70 or so could carry away killed cattle.] Again, it was just to get the traditional owners away from the stock and off their country, one way or another. Being Aboriginal was criminality in itself. This is the history of this country. On Monday 27 July 2020 the Australian Federal Council of Attorney Generals voted to defer any possible changes to the minimum age of 10. Source: https://www.parliament.wa.gov.au//Report+of+the+Royal+Comm p.103. DMO District Medical Officer. WER Walter Edmund Roth
19.01.2022 The legacy remains... This 1930s photograph of (probably) North Kimberley men neck chained epitomises the decades of injustices of the prevailing criminal justice system. This practice had been going on since the 1880s (and continued until the 1950s) and we see the always feared and supremely fit and strong proud Kimberley people (women are seen at the back) arrested as a group for alleged cattle killing usually regardless of any individual responsible identified, any warr...ant, any evidence or any rules of law. They would be marched out of their country (to get them away from the valuable cattle) for hundreds of kilometres to the nearest town (Derby, Wyndham) and tried in groups of ten (after being coached to plead guilty) and sentenced to up to two years in prison. Many men spent a life going in and out of prison - imprisoned on grounds that were barely, if at all, legal. The legacy remains
18.01.2022 *Cultural Warning: Racist language.* 1953 - Kalgoorlie, again. I dont really know what to say about this (not unusual) headline though it speaks for itself about race relations. Mid 1953 The mining town of Kalgoorlie, yet again. The much maligned Wongai people were probably called this from the 1880s to, well, today. ... Kalgoorlie remains simmering away with racism to this day with Wongai people defensive and people wonder why? And check out the article next to it - Eastern Goldfields Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Full article https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/28540274
17.01.2022 'CHAINED LIKE ANIMALS Not a Rare Practice.’ April 1958. This article from the ‘Sydney Tribune’ 9 April 1958 is the proof of the ‘widespread practice’ of chaining of Aboriginal prisoners. As usual it is the Kimberley district, this time the remote East Kimberley town of Halls Creek on Kitja and Jaru country. Halls Creek was a former mining town notorious for massacres of Aboriginal people from the 1880s 1930s. Later it became the administrative centre for pastoral stations... in the area. The report the writer is referring to is from 25 March 1958 in the Sydney Tribune. 12 prisoners were chained together to a post on the veranda of the Halls Creek Police station probably because the prison was full. They were likely arrested for ‘cattle killing’ or simply disturbing cattle on their own country. Described as ‘barbaric’, Halls Creek residents saw them chained like that for over a month. During the day they were probably on a chain gang building roads or infrastructure - slavery? But why were chains still being used in 1958? Expediency. Chaining being the cheapest option rather than hiring more police or building decent facilities. Chains weren’t even police issue - police would buy them from a blacksmith out of their own pocket. In 1905 in the infamous Roth Royal Commission a senior government official admitted chaining was an informal practice of the last thirty years in the Kimberley. In 1958 not much had changed. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspap/article/236324092/25622248 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspap/article/236326760/25622229
16.01.2022 Three feet, two skulls, five arm bones and a few fingers. Distressing Content and Cultural Warning In Western Australia (and Australia in general) Aboriginal peoples culture and country was taken, children were taken, Aboriginal women were exploited and (free) Aboriginal labour on the pastoral and pearling frontiers built the foundations of the countrys economy. But there was always more to exploit. ... You see this in the largely unknown but widespread nauseating practice of obtaining, selling (often trading) and exporting Aboriginal body parts. In the late 1800s through to the 1930s Aboriginal body parts were often preserved with bones, specifically skulls, being highly sought after curios or artefacts for European collectors, scientists and ethnographers. Thousands of Aboriginal remains were sent overseas to be displayed in museums and collectors houses. Skulls would be etched with a name and location. Many bones showed evidence of damage and abuse. In this horrifying anonymous account (Jackeroo) from Roebourne published in 1897 we see how the practice occurred. Under duress an Aboriginal relative would reveal a recent funeral and a body snatcher would exhume or obtain a body. The body parts would often be boiled to remove the flesh then sold. Just how many Aboriginal people from Western Australia were removed in life and in death? See the work by the Kimberley Yawuru (Sarah Yu and Naomi Appleby, Erin Parke) on the return of their ancestors who were blackbirded (slavery) for the pearling industry. The repatriation is ongoing. https://www.abc.net.au//indigenous-bones-returned/11078792
16.01.2022 Slavery in 1949. Today our Prime Minister Scott Morrison stated ‘Australia when it was founded as a settlement, as New South Wales, was on the basis that there be no slavery.’ Let us leave aside ‘blackbirding’ - the code name for slavery of Aboriginal people (and Kanakas or South Sea Islanders) in the Queensland sugar fields in the 1860s that lasted for decades. There's quite a lot written about it (in books) and it brings up hundreds of entries in a two second Google search.... See Raymond Evans work for a start. And let us leave aside in the North West/Kimberley districts of Western Australia through 1870-1900 Aboriginal people were blackbirded: kidnapped and neck chained and brought to the coast forced on boats and exploited diving for Pearl shell. This was well documented by government officials and concerned locals described it as slavery. They would be starved, bashed and often murdered for not collecting enough pearl shell. (See my post 19 Oct 2018 link below.) Then here the pastoral station manager of the Pilbara located Corunna Downs. 'Mr Bligh' openly admitted exploiting Aboriginal labour was slavery. He stated though it was 'a mild form of slavery, and declared that pastoralists could not carry on [make money/profit] without this slave labor.' And the neck chains were 'only light ones.' Aboriginal people built the WA pastoral industry with their free slaved labour. And what year was this? November 1949. Neck chains were used until 1958. Stan Middleton was the Western Australian Commissioner of Native Affairs. See https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=291859218086417&id=153928098546197 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspap/article/209392024/22669189
16.01.2022 'The Ten Point guide to Australian Aboriginal history.' In an interview (31 May 2020) with a protester in Los Angeles Channel Nine's Australian correspondent said 'people in Australia dont have the understanding of the history of police killings and things here.' This is how it happened:...Continue reading
16.01.2022 Civilisation in the Far North.' There is abundant evidence of slavery in the Northwest and Kimberley districts of Western Australia especially in the pearling industry where Aboriginal people were blackbirded or kidnapped from their country to be exploited for diving for pearlshell. Aboriginal people were also brutally flogged (at times to death) by some pearlers and squatters [pastoralists] for absconding. Many Aboriginal people were 'indentured' to this work - a forced l...egally binding contract to work for free. Critics of these practices were ignored by Government officials in Perth. Sympathetic Magistrate Robert Fairbairn asked one worker charged with Absconding why he had left the station. His reply was to lift his shirt to show his back. It was literally cut up by the lash. The Perth newspaper 'The Sunday Times' was a fierce critic of the pearlers and the squatters, often wrote multiple columns about it, and didnt hold back as this cartoon shows. This cartoon relates to this article. 'More About the Black North' https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/32632282/4103812
16.01.2022 'Ninety percent I should think.' Revealed in the infamous 1905 Royal Commission on the Condition of the Natives chaired by Dr Walter Roth (online link below) was the stark admission by Octavius Burt, the Sheriff responsible for all WA Prisons, that a staggering 90% of all reported Aboriginal crime, conviction, and imprisonment was for cattle killing or later called illegal possession of Beef. Pastoralists would claim that their stock losses were in the tens of thousan...ds due to Aboriginal attacks. From the early 1880s (when cattle were introduced) to well into the 1940s in the Kimberley hundreds of Aboriginal men were sentenced to imprisonment for this crime ('two years with or without a flogging.) But how real were these figures? In reality these figures are one of the largest fabrications in Western Australian history. Aboriginal people were a convenient excuse and pastoralists blamed them for all manner of stock losses that were caused by feed shortages, drought, wild dog attacks and, most damningly, mismanagement by simply loss of stock in unfenced areas on enormous tracks of country. But the overriding reason was the simple presence of Aboriginal people on their own country was enough to cause stock to lose condition and weight (and thus saleability and profitability.) Police then were called out to either arrest (and remove) or often kill people on their own country to get them away from cattle. This is not just my speculation. See here a letter from H. B. Perry stating 80% of allegations were invented I think I can surprise you with the numerous outrages that have taken place and does take place daily and I can give you proof that eighty percent [80%] of the cattle they say are killed are not and the charges are only trumped up and this goes to prove to you that hundreds of blacks that are suffering imprisonment and that the state is put to thousands of pounds of unnecessary expense to satisfy the vile nature and ways of a few men (Slave Drivers, Murderers.) Who was going to have the Kimberley? Blackfellas or cattle? It was never going to be the former and most Aboriginal men imprisoned were completely innocent.
16.01.2022 TRUTH TELLING TIME *Distressing Language and Content Warning* [Apologies for the newspaper heading but the term was widely used in Newspapers until the 1950s.] This distressing April 1927 article by anonymous Northerner follows the allegations regarding alleged killings of Aboriginal people in the June 1926 Kimberley Forrest River Massacre. But the writer reveals he was sent to the Kimberley by a Perth paper some 25 years earlier following the horrific finding of the ...Continue reading
15.01.2022 Distressing content warning. 'WHEN ANYONE MADE TROUBLE...' Aboriginal oral history accounts in northern WA tell of Aboriginal people being killed by station masters or white stockmen [Kartiya] for resisting, for access to Aboriginal women but also for the smallest indiscretion.... In the Kimberley district 'being cheeky' or talking back was enough to get a flogging or worse - a minor issue could mean their death. And this was not just in the late 1880s. Oral history accounts of the 1920s (recorded by Mary Ann Jebb in 1995) tell of a notoriously cruel stockman named Jack Carey of Gibb River Station who shot and burnt large numbers of men, women and even children. Carey shot dead Elder women who were fishing at a waterhole, shot dead a group of men because they dropped a box of chickens, shot a young girl for no reason, and shot three stockmen dead (Kapiningarri, Gunbungarri and Ngorru men) because they had left the goat yard gate open. These were not isolated events. in the 1920s Ginger Nganawilla of Noonkanbah station said (recorded by Steve Hawke in 1978) 'When anyone made trouble at the station they would lock him up, give him a hiding there inside [the station house], and kill him after.' (As a boy Ginger had witnessed the brutal assault of his father on Quanbun Station where he was tied to a tree and maimed with rocks.) Contrary to what many think some Police did investigate some claims of the murder of Aboriginal people and evidence of bones was often enough to start an investigation. (See the forensic scientific evidence produced in the 1926 Forrest River Massacre.) So what did the murdering frontiersmen do? Go to great lengths to hide the event. Bones could not be buried as bones could be dug up and bones were evidence. Often they would incinerate the bodies and crush all the bones (in a practice over several days) to unidentifiable ash. But other times they would be more perverse in hiding bones as this account, supported in other oral history accounts, by Ginger Nganawilla shows. These accounts are fully credible but not in the story of this nation. Sources in comments.
14.01.2022 'Keep your mouth shut.' All over Australia massacres of Aboriginal people occurred and Western Australia was no exception where from 1826 until at least 1926 (The Forrest River Massacre ) mass murder occurred. See https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php Colonists usually justified these murders calling them punitive expeditions, that is punishment or retribution parties. Usually the punitive expedition was not a one off affair but might have lasted for sev...eral weeks or months. Here often hundreds of Aboriginal people, guilty or not, were shot and the living terrorised into submission. Often thought to be the actions of rogue frontiersmen the reality was quite different. The Pinjarra Massacre (1834) and the later Pilbara Flying Foam Massacre (1868) was murder authorised by Governor James Stirling and Resident Magistrate Robert Sholl respectively. And in most accounts if the accused were ever caught or put on trial for murder they were rarely, if ever, found guilty. But if punitive expeditions were so common how did the wider population not know that these murders were occurring? It is because on the WA frontiers they were socially accepted - a bushmens code of Honour - as a way to successfully colonise the country. Kimberley colonist Donald Swan summarised it like this: Either stand in with the mob and keep your mouth shut or refuse to stand in and also keep your mouth shut. In either case you will be respected and no more will be required of you in the matter. So how was this conspiracy of silence maintained? The threat of death if you opened your mouth. This is the mateship of Australian history.
14.01.2022 Slavery in 1949. Today our Prime Minister Scott Morrison stated Australia when it was founded as a settlement, as New South Wales, was on the basis that there be no slavery. Let us leave aside blackbirding - the code name for slavery of Aboriginal people (and Kanakas or South Sea Islanders) in the Queensland sugar fields in the 1860s that lasted for decades. There's quite a lot written about it (in books) and it brings up hundreds of entries in a two second Google search.... See Raymond Evans work for a start. And let us leave aside in the North West/Kimberley districts of Western Australia through 1870-1900 Aboriginal people were blackbirded: kidnapped and neck chained and brought to the coast forced on boats and exploited diving for Pearl shell. This was well documented by government officials and concerned locals described it as slavery. They would be starved, bashed and often murdered for not collecting enough pearl shell. (See my post 19 Oct 2018 link below.) Then here the pastoral station manager of the Pilbara located Corunna Downs. 'Mr Bligh' openly admitted exploiting Aboriginal labour was slavery. He stated though it was 'a mild form of slavery, and declared that pastoralists could not carry on [make money/profit] without this slave labor.' And the neck chains were 'only light ones.' Aboriginal people built the WA pastoral industry with their free slaved labour. And what year was this? November 1949. Neck chains were used until 1958. Stan Middleton was the Western Australian Commissioner of Native Affairs. See https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=291859218086417&id=153928098546197 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspap/article/209392024/22669189
14.01.2022 Impaling Blacks Not widely acknowledged is that the treatment of Aboriginal people across all of northern Australia was very similar as colonisation spread from Queensland (1820s) across the Northern Territory [SA] (1860/70s) to the Kimberley Districts (1880s) of Western Australia. That is, brutal and murderous. ... This is pretty much what this anonymous 1902 writer Mindirrima is saying: 'the pale faces have been punctuating existence with a little slaughter now and then for the last thirty yearsThere is nothing to choose between the records of the three states - we are equally shady' he wrote. But also here again we come across Jack W who is of course the notoriously violent Jack Watson from QLDs Lawn Hills Station - infamous for having forty pairs of blacks ears nailed round the walls...' The writer recounts a drover saying Watson admitted to this horrific war-like account: Old Jack W was in charge.....you know what he was. Well, the third night out after we had camped and finished supper, the boss went away with the tomahawk to get a bit of wood. We passed by a deserted camp in which six pairs of aboriginal hands impaled on sharp-pointed sticks driven in the ground, mounted guard. It is very unsatisfactory to have to believe stories of this kind, but when one hears the "hero" of the incident making a boast of it in his cups, it makes one think tremendously. I have heard old hands talk of shooting blacks as glibly as a sportsman would relate his experiences with the gun among water fowl. "Dispersals" in revenge for the death of a white settler, more than once ended in the natives being driven into a waterhole and shot down, men, women and children all. Note how the author and Watson are anonymous? Why? Because the author would be threatened, assaulted or killed for informing on a fellow settler mate' and Watson because in the unspoken spirit of colonial Australian mateship you didn't inform on people, even if he was a murderer. This is just one paragraph the whole odious account is here: 'The Black North' The Sunday Times, 30 March, 1902, p.3. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/57215973/4236744
14.01.2022 Distressing Content and Cultural Warning My name is Frank Hann, I kill all I can Unfortunately, there exists more odious 'satirical' poems by Dryblower - Edward Murphy. This one was published two weeks before the other in the Sunday Times on 11 April 1909. The poem is a reply to Hanns letter to the paper about shooting an [Wongi] Aboriginal man and obtaining a skull for Fred Brockman. It is intended to be amusing (for the city based white readers) but in reality reflec...ts the open secret of how most explorers operated on the frontiers and how many people knew exactly what they were really doing. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/57611664/4528379 Hanns letter led to a complaint being lodged by the Chief Protector of Aborigines Charles Gale that prompted a police investigation. When interviewed Hann protested to police that he had never shot a black in his life. Hanns denial rings hollow when he wrote down in his own reports and diaries (since published) that he had done so previously - saying he hunted the Nigars, gave large Aboriginal groups a great dressing [shot them] and his shooting apparently being common knowledge amongst the colonist community. Despite Hanns admission, the Premier of Western Australia Newton Moore, ultimately dismissed it and said it was no doubt made with a desire to obtain notoriety. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspap/article/108178914/12261775 Overall, this evidence shows the systemic generational racism and criminality of the so-called criminal justice system. If you were accused of murdering Aboriginal people you simply denied it and usually no further investigation was warranted case dismissed. But, if you openly admitted you shot (and decapitated Aboriginal people) - as Hann did - the claim was put down to an individual seeking notoriety because he was a 'famous bushman'. No further investigation was warranted - case dismissed. In this way Aboriginal people across this country were murdered with impunity. There is no doubt that these events occurred. There exists overwhelming evidence that thousands of Aboriginal body parts were sent to Museums and universities is Europe and over 2000 full skeletons remain not repatriated. https://www.abc.net.au//indigenous-bones-returned/11078792
13.01.2022 Theft of a sheep' - 7 to 14 years imprisonment. From the early days of European colonisation of Western Australia in 1829 right up to the 1960s Aboriginal men were often illegally sentenced to terms of imprisonment for alleged cattle or stock killing on charges such as unlawful possession of beef. (Illegal as, in the Kimberley, the rule of law was ignored, they were often charged 10 at a time, coached to plead guilty - 'Did you kill the cattle? yes' - and all sentenced w...ith no evidence of who did what if anything.) They were then shipped by boat out of their country to places such as Rottnest Island prison. In reality this was to get them off what was now white cattle country as their mere presence on their traditional country disturbed the stock and affected their breeding. Those charging the men were sworn in Justices of the Peace (JP) who were usually the very people who owned the cattle stations. So what were the possible sentences? In the 1880s the convicted men under WA legislation could be imprisoned up to two years. In 1893 after pressure from the pastoral industry this was increased to 3 years with a flogging. (Whipping had been abolished in 1882 then reinstated in 1892.) But even many of these sentences were illegal. For example in 1899 pastoralist and JP Edwin Rose regularly sentenced the accused to six year's imprisonment for taking one animal. By the 1930s the maximum prison sentence for 'stealing' one sheep was an extraordinary 7 years to an even more outrageous 14 years 'for receiving'. Here you see four Noongar blokes at the South West town of Gnowangerup sentenced for taking one sheep. It's 1934 so it the Great Depression period and they no doubt were half starved taking the sheep to eat. The judge showed leniency and sentenced them to '9 months imprisonment with hard labour.' By 1968 the maximum sentence had been reduced to a merciful 7 years. Contrast these sentences to the pitifully small sentences given to white men (if they were even charged) for killing Aboriginal people?
12.01.2022 ‘Belle’ of Kalgoorlie 1900 More stories of survival. This stunning photograph is part of the State Library of Western Australia’s Storylines project. It is a woman named ‘Belle’ in the mining town of Kalgoorlie in 1900. We have seen the virulent racism around Kalgoorlie at this time and beyond with the Wongai violently pushed out of their own country, those that resisted, imprisoned or killed. But look how she proudly holds herself. And survived. ... Storylines is a project to explore, identify and return often unseen Aboriginal heritage material from the Library's collections. The project team work with community members to identify people, places and stories in the photographs and other materials. Check out this collection (J.J. Dwyer) and hundreds of others. They are amazing. https://storylines.slwa.wa.gov.au/archive-store/view/6/11267
10.01.2022 Mans Inhumanity to Man Though largely unacknowledged from the earliest period of European colonisation of Western Australia from 1826 at Albany through to the 1950s in the Kimberley Aboriginal people were central to the survival of the colonisers. Every notable exploration in WA had Aboriginal assistance and every pastoral station used free Aboriginal labour. They acted as guides, trackers, hunters, cooks and knew how to obtain food, and more importantly in barren desert ...areas, water sources. Of course revealing precious water sources was often not done willingly and involved elements of what Europeans called bushcraft - but this was really nothing less than torture. In this odious 1895 account (shared Australia wide) from the goldfields mining town of Coolgardie (near Kalgoorlie) we see the Christian white prospectors kidnap a Wongai man. Initially he was tied to a tree and fed dry damper and salt to dehydrate him. This didnt work so At midday they shifted him from the shade of the tree and turned his face towards the sun and left him to think things over, bound hand and foot, to quicken his mental faculties. By the next morning he still would not reveal a water source so: Then they opened his mouth and stuffed it half-full of salt, and propped his teeth apart with a stick. He stood that for three mortal hours in the sun whilst they stood revolvers in hand, waiting in the shade watching for the tribe. At last the nigger came to the conclusion that he had better give in or be pickled, and he murmured huskily through his baked lips, 'Me 'find 'm gabby.' Then they 'tied his hands behind his back, hobbled him with a rope so that he could walk but not run, covered him with their revolvers, and invited him to proceed where he led them to a water source. Celebrated explorers openly wrote about this practice. No one was ever prosecuted for it. Mans inhumanity to Man, The W.A. Record, 31 January, 1895, p. 9. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspap/article/211983874/22979389
09.01.2022 'A Progressive Settlement' for ‘White Australians.' The 'White Australia Policy' (technically the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act) sought to prevent 'prohibited immigrants' (code for non-European, non-white immigration) to Australia. It reflected contemporary virulent racism (across the white European world) and was targeted at 'Alien Coloured Immigration', that is, largely Asian people and Pacific Islanders. They could not only be prevented from coming to Australia but exis...ting residents could be deported. But how did it work in the WA Context? Here in 1909 you see the new suburban Perth housing suburb of Gosnells 'Estate'. It is marketed in boldly racist terms much like South African apartheid - a 'progressive settlement' for 'White Australians.' Jovially, the company selling the land promises dire consequences if the land were sold to an 'undesirable' or 'almond eye Chinaman.' Or course Aboriginal people, the traditional owners of their own country, were not even considered human enough to even be mentioned. The Immigration Act was not fully repealed until 1958. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/57613963/4528714
08.01.2022 'How We Civilize' - Roebourne Slavery. (Again.) We have seen how North West and Kimberley police captured and necked chained Aboriginal men for any alleged crime usually for some (often fabricated) offence relating to sheep or cattle or often leaving their 'indentured service' - that is legally bound as a free labor source to a white 'Master.' Some women from the same groups were ankle chained, walked alongside the men, and forced to testify against their own family. They... had to walk incredible distances often without food or water up to 400 km (50 km a day) out of their country to a town prison. How did they do this? This Roebourne account describes the terrible reality. The distance from Ashburton to Roebourne is over 200 km. One prisoner of 50 chained men, possibly a Yindjibarndi man, becomes ‘raving mad from thirst’ so the police unshackled him, shot him in the head, that is murdered him, and buried him. Then on they went. Once imprisoned the men were a labor force who worked in appalling conditions. ‘How we Civilize or White on Black,’ The Daily News, 10 May 1889, p. 3 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/77372579/7821261
08.01.2022 Distressing Content and Cultural Warning 'Ten Naughty Nigger-Boys' Ive been researching Aboriginal history for over twenty years and Im still shocked at what I find.... This nauseating, supposedly satirical (more sadistic) poem, by the anonymous Dryblower* is called Ten Naughty Nigger-Boys (a play on the poem Ten Little Indians) and was published in the Kalgoorlie Sun Newspaper on 25 April 1909. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspap/article/211591142/23086681 It speaks volumes that someone would write it, think it funny, and more incredible that a newspaper would publish it. The people are real and the incidents are documented. This is Wongi country. Frank Hann and his brother William were pastoralists and explorers from Queensland in the 1870s. Frank established Lawn Hill Station with Jack Watson; infamous for having 40 pairs of blacks' ears nailed around the walls. The Hanns were as notorious for violence towards Aboriginal people as Watson was. In mid-1890s Frank Hann subsequently explored the North Kimberley area of Western Australia. In 1903 he settled in Laverton. Hann openly admitted killing and beheading. 'If I shoot at blacks I shoot to kill. It does not do to play with them. Any man who would shoot a black in cold blood only to get his head would be nothing less than a murderer. Had I been lucky enough to have killed my man Mr. [Frederick Slade] Brockman would most certainly have had his head, and he may yet.'https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/10695213 In ten stanzas Frank Hann is killing ten Aboriginal boys. He is head-hunting (looking for Aboriginal body parts and especially skulls to sell to museums). He is using a Greener and Winchester Rifle to shoot them for museum curios. Shooting them because of jealousy of another fellow explorer [William] Carr-Boyd. Shooting them for their splendid skull. Shooting chained up boys because the boys were too thin to stew. And, shooting one because fellow explorer [Frederick Slade] Brockman would like a skull. In his Wikepedia entry (which mentions nothing of this) it states Frank Hann National Park, Hann River and Mount Hann are named in his honour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Hann Surely this is a thing that should not be. See Australian Dictionary of Biography entries for these explorers. http://adb.anu.edu.au/ *Dryblower is this celebrated poet Edwin Greenslade Murphy. http://wabushpoets.asn.au/pastpoets/Murphy/murphy.html The poem not linked and is censored by being renamed Ten little Shicker Boys. It's not hard to wonder why.
08.01.2022 More Mowla Bluff Massacre evidence. [Distressing content and Cultural warning] We have seen compelling Kimberley oral history evidence of the 1916 Kimberley 'Mowla Bluff massacre' (see post 22 March 2019) but what of police evidence? There was a detailed police investigation into the alleged murders and at least three witness statements from Aboriginal men were taken: Nanya @ Dick, Nullagumba @ Moon and Cadgery @ Mick all stated that they witnessed George Wye, Jack Tighe, G...eorge Lovell, George Layman and PC's Watson and Jury shooting (apparently 'emptying their magazines') Aboriginal men who were neck chained then building a fire over 7 foot tall with Aboriginal assistants ordered to place the dead men on it - then incinerating them. Then they went and had 'dinner'. Attached Police reports dismissed Aboriginal evidence. PC Jury denied everything saying the statements were contradictory and incredible. Inspector Edwin Overend Drewry said the scenes of the shooting produce no evidence whatsoever that any such event occurred there That is because, as stated in the witness statements, all remains of bones, wood and bullets were raked up and distributed somewhere else as was the mode of the time. But who was Inspector Drewry? He is a largely unknown figure but he was very influential. Drewry was an Inspector of Police in the Kimberley in the 1890s who reorganized the disheveled Kimberley Police force into a semi-military, barely legal and fiercely aggressive force pursuing Jandamarra and was probably most directly responsible for ordering the infamous police shootings of hundreds (at the very least) of Aboriginal people in both the East and West Kimberley that became known as the 'Killing times.' This was all to secure the prosperity of the Cattle industry. There is not much mystery why he would deny the evidence. In the early 2000's the then Commission of Police, Barry Mathews still denied this massacre ever happened. The evidence is overwhelming.
06.01.2022 Mowla Bluff Massacre 1916 There has been a bit of commentary online and in the media about the 1916 Mowla Bluff Massacre. Recorded in multiple Kimberley Aboriginal oral history accounts is where colonist Georgie Wye [Why] was assaulted by Mowla Bluff Station workers for killing an Aboriginal man and mistreating Aboriginal women. Wye was notorious for shooting Aboriginal men to take their wives. A reprisal followed where Georgie Wye, George Lovell, George Layman, Jack Tighe ...and various police launched a punitive expedition. The subsequent massacre occurred at Geegully Creek where anywhere between ten and a large number of Karajarri, Mangala and Nyikina people were caught, chained together, forced to collect wood, shot and then incinerated. This punitive expedition follows the now demonstrated and predictable pattern that we have seen established in the 1890s and operated through to the 1920s. That is, colonists abduction of Aboriginal women/abuse, Aboriginal reprisal, followed by colonists overwhelming reprisal to kill/pacify the offenders and terrorize the others into subservience. Elder John Darraga Watson recounts how the punitive party tracked a large group and sneaked into the camp and fired shots to frighten the peopleThey rounded up these people and chained them together. They were told to get wood under the pretense that they would be fed on a killer [Cattle killed for stockmen and stockwomens consumption]. Nobody suspected anything was amiss. So they got the wood together, piled it up, lit the fires and then got the people together again. Then they started shooting them and when they were dead, chucked them on the fire. Any woman, any little kid, they whacked them on the back of the head and chucked them on the fire, burned them up, lot of people got burnt. The remains were then destroyed. In the early 2000s the then Commissioner of WA Police Barry Mathews called this and other massacre events false. The evidence for these events is now overwhelming; they are anything but false. Photo these are Nyikina Mangala women. Georgie Wye has his arm around one woman and the man to the right is possibly Georgie Lovell. John Darraga Watson said These fellas used to take our women and make them stay at the homestead.
06.01.2022 Excuse the self promotion please - but UWAP are doing a discount on my book for just this week at 25% off. This via The Australian Holocaust page and publisher of UWAP Terri-Ann White. 'As Chris Owen's book has featured so often on this site, we thought we'd give followers the chance to purchase it at a more affordable price for the next week: just enter the discount voucher password 'Holocaust' at the end of the ordering process on our website for a 25% discount (from $50 to $37.50) at https://uwap.uwa.edu.au//every-mothers-son-is-guilty-polic Cheers again and thanks for your interest - it's really great! Chris.
03.01.2022 Derby 1922 This series of Kimberley photographs incredibly from 1922 soberly display the reality of police bush patrols in the Kimberley district. In what were effectively hunting parties Police are seen leaving Derby on horseback with neck chains. Theyd travel, often for hundreds of kilometres, until they tracked a group of traditional owners suspected of killing cattle. Actually they usually had no lawful warrant or idea who actually killed the cattle they just arres...ted the whole group situated anywhere near stock. (In the earlier 1890s they would have shot half of them.) The men, here with ritual scarification, are chained around a tree and have their hair forcefully cut off. Then theyd walk often hundreds of kilometres back to Derby. When resting the police (here Constable William Archibald and photographer Samuel Rea) eat whilst the prisoners are chained around a tree. They had to traverse large Kimberley waterways - here at Pigeon Creek (still neck chained) they are seen crossing holding their spears likely sold to collectors later. The prisoners would be sentenced in batches of ten to up to three years in imprisonment at Derby jail then transferred over 2000 km south out of their country to Fremantle prison (Rottnest prison was closed the same year.) Derby was designed to hold 30 men often had over 100. It operated up until 1975. You can still see the rings where the prisoners were bolted to the floor. *Update* - From comment by Tjupurula Mulan. His wife's father was in Derby Prison in the late 1960s for stealing a sheep to feed his family. He was sent to Fremantle prison and when released had to walk the 2100km home - taking 5 months.
03.01.2022 'The Aboriginal problem.' This disturbing video about the Aboriginal problem has been around for a while but it is worth revisiting. Its 1984 (not 1934) and Mining billionaire Lang Hancock openly and matter-of-factly advocates forced sterilisation of half-caste Aboriginal people whom he believes are unable to assimilate into European society. Hancocks virulent racism is on display apparently unaware (or is so privileged that he doesn't care) that he is openly endorsing... genocide; defined as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race. Hancock suggests they dope the water up so that they were sterile and would breed themselves out in future. It was probably a view supported by many in WA. So in 1834 at the Pinjarra Massacre guns were used to pacify Aboriginal people. 150 years later theyre suggesting genocide. Hancock, father of billionaire Gina Rinehart, was probably one of the richest men in the nation gaining his wealth through exploitative mining in the North West of WA on Aboriginal country usually paying zero compensation for doing so. And revealing hypocrisy rumors that he fathered many Aboriginal children are rife in the North West. The clip is taken from the documentary 'Couldnt Be Fairer' (1984). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMaRuk6pGOc
02.01.2022 Either harness him into slavery or shoot him. In August 1901 in the newly Federated Australian parliament the outspoken Federal Labor Member for Coolgardie Hugh Mahon put forward a motion for a Royal Commission into the treatment of Aboriginal people in WA. (Others had advocated for this since the 1880s.) Mahon was an early advocate for Aboriginal rights, a vocal critic of the former premier John Forrests Government, and demanded the end of the indenture system (forced to... work for free) that was a modified system of slavery. Here the unnamed writer reveals Mahons claims and John Forrests denials of any cruelty towards Aboriginal people in WA. The 1905 Walter Roth Royal commission which revealed a litany of extraordinary abuses and illegal behaviour what Roth called a brutal and outrageous condition of affairs- would not come until another 4 years later. This is 1901, the abuse of Aboriginal people, the way they were systematically exploited, abused, terrorised and murdered was so bad that White people and the black people in the Norwest in an almost endless state of semi-war. This is the legacy - and people wonder why there is so much distrust in Aboriginal communities today?
02.01.2022 Roebourne legacies... This horrific account is from 1886 in the remote northwest WA Pilbara town of Roebourne which was the administrative centre for the expanding pastoral and pearling industries. Administrative in as much as it had police, a courthouse and a prison where Aboriginal people were pulled from their country and incarcerated usually for some (often made-up) offence against cattle or sheep. It was a witness report, among multitudes of similar allegations, from... David Carley (who along with Reverend John Gribble) tried to publicise what was happening in northern WA as European colonisation expanded. These allegations (slavery, murder, rape, abuse) were published in 'Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land, or, Blacks and whites in north-west Australia' (p.48 entire book online link in comments) to great furor. Gribble was mocked, abused, assaulted and driven from WA for daring to state what was really happening to Aboriginal people. Despite the horrific injury the prisoner, possibly a Yindjibarndi man remained neck chained, was tried and duly found guilty of some questionable offence then shipped south to Rottnest Prison dying on the way. Beyond the horror this account answers so many questions: what did police do with wounded 'suspects'? Left them where they were to die or, if they could walk, this. Notice the complete indifference to Aboriginal suffering. There was a Resident Medical Officer in Roebourne though he was never called. Even innocent Aboriginal witnesses to alleged crimes were kept in Roebourne prison until they testified with many dying. Roebourne today remains with this scarifying legacy with deaths in custody continuing - its not difficult to see why.
02.01.2022 Here's an edited interview I did with Perth ABC radio 720 with Nadia Mitsopoulos and Russell Woolf this morning regarding the contentious issue of monuments/statues/parks/districts/roads etc named after explorers known for committing atrocities. For example the founding governor of Perth (Swan River Colony) James Stirling (roads, districts, parks, suburbs named after him) along with other celebrated colonists John Septimus Roe (multiple roads named after him) and Thomas Peel... (whole district named after him) basically brutally murdered a large number of Noongar people at the Pinjarra Massacre in October 1834 yet are celebrated to this day. Should they be? https://www.abc.net.au//p/breakfast/renaming-push/12335954
