The first recorded sighting of Australia was in 1606 by the Dutch captain of "Duyfken" William Jansz who described the natives as "...savage, cruel, black barbarians who slew some of our sailors". In the same year the Spaniard, Luis Vaez de Torres sailed around the strait that bears his name. He described the natives as "...very corpulent and naked. Their arms were lances, arrows, and clubs of stone ill fashioned". Jan Carstenz in 1623 described several armed encounters with Aboriginals, and judged the country "...the most arid and barren region that could be found anywhere on earth; the inhabitants too, are the most wretched and poorest creatures that I have ever seen in my age or time". As a result of such reports the Dutch government decided the land that was not suitable for colonisation.







Australia, was first declared as an "Empty land", otherwise known as "terra nullius". The first Europeans settled in Australia in 1788 in order to help Britain with its overcrowding problems. The rights of the European settlers were being created, however, the rights of the Aboriginal people were being removed. This was the first of many actions that led to the conflict between the two cultures and the racism towards the Aboriginal people of Australia.



Since this time in 1788, Australia has become heavily populated by European people. The Aboriginals who once made up 100% of the population now only make up 1% of it!

Ever Since world colonialism began in the 1500s, the 300 million indigenous and tribal peoples have suffered terribly from European conquest of their ancestral lands, through diseases and alcoholism and particularly through the loss of dignity, identity and self-respect.

100, 000 aboriginal children were taken by force between 1910 and 1970 away from their families by police or welfare officers. Most were under five years of age, and it was rare for their to be any legal enforcement involved.

??WHAT HAPPENED IN AUSTRALIA??

Most were brought up in church or state institutions.



Others were fostered or adopted by white parents.



Many suffered physical and sexual abuse.



Food and living conditions were poor.



They recieved little education and were expected to go into low grade domestic and farming work.



"Mr Neville holds the view that within one hundred years the pure black will be extinct. But the halfecaste problem was increasing every year. Therefore their idea was to keep the pure blacks segregated and absorb the half-castes into the white population....The pure black was not a quick breeder. On the other hand the half-caste was. In Western Australia there were half-caste families of twenty and upwards. That showed the magnitude of the problem In order to secure the complete segregation of the children..(they) were left with their mothers (only) until they were two years old. After that they were taken from their mothers and reared in accordance with white ideas."

A.P. Neville, Brisbane Telegraph, 1937.

WHAT HAPPENED IN TASMANIA

In the early years of the 1800s, the British began their massacre of the Black people of Tasmania. To the Europeans of Tasmania, the Blacks were a body of people who were fit to be exploited and dehumanised in the heartless of manners.



As UCLA professor, Jared Diamond, recorded:

"Tactics for hunting down Tasmanians included riding out on horseback to shoot them, setting out steel traps to catch them, and putting out poison flour where they might find and eat it. Shepherds cut off the penis and testicles of aboriginal men, to watch the men run a few yards before dying. At a hill christened Mount Victory, settlers slaughtered 30 Tasmanians and threw their bodies over a cliff. One party of police killed 70 Tasmanians and dashed out the children's brains”.



Despite the cruelty to the indigenous people, it was rare for a White settler to be punished, and even if they were, the punishment was very minor compared to their brutal attacks. For example, there is an account of a man who was flogged for exhibiting the ears and other body parts of a Black boy that he had mutilated alive. Another European punished for cutting off the little finger of an Aborigine and using it as a tobacco stopper. Twenty-five lashes were stipulated for Europeans convicted of tying aboriginal "Tasmanian women to logs and burning them with firebrands, or forcing a woman to wear the head of her freshly murdered husband on a string around her neck."



However, not a single European was ever punished for the murder of an Aboriginal Tasmanian. It wasn’t thought of as such a ‘big deal’ or ‘sin’ to the Europeans, to commit the unhuman crimes they performed upon the Aboriginals.



They tied Black men to trees and used them for target practice.



Black women were kidnapped, chained and exploited as sexual slaves.



Black people were regularly hunted by white people for sport, casually shooting, spearing or clubbing the men to death, torturing and raping the women, and roasting Black infants alive.





As historian, James Morris, graphically noted:

"We hear of children kidnapped as pets or servants, of a woman chained up like an animal in a shepherd's hut, of men castrated to keep them off their own women. In one foray seventy aborigines were killed, the men shot, the women and children dragged from crevices in the rocks to have their brains dashed out. A man called Carrotts, desiring a native woman, decapitated her husband, hung his head around her neck and drove her home to his shack."

A while later a bounty was confirmed on Blacks, commonly known as “Black catching”. Five pounds was paid for each adult Aborigine and two pounds for each child. The government settled on the bounties using mounted police, after they had considered capturing the Black people and selling them for slaves, trapping them and poisoning them or hunting them with dogs.



It was exclaimed that it was for the best, benefiting the Blacks, as the remainder of the Aboriginal people were taken into concentration camps.

In 1830 George Augustus Robinson, a Christian missionary, was hired to round up the remaining Tasmanian Blacks and take them to Flinders Island, thirty miles away. Many of Robinson's captives died along the way. By 1843 only fifty survived.





Jared Diamond recorded that:

"On Flinders Island Robinson was determined to civilize and Christianize the survivors. His settlement--at a windy site with little fresh water--was run like a jail. Children were separated from parents to facilitate the work of civilizing them. The regimental daily schedule included Bible reading, hymn singing, and inspection of beds and dishes for cleanness and neatness.

However, the jail diet caused malnutrition, which combined with illness to make the natives die. Few infants survived more than a few weeks. The government reduced expenditures in the hope that the native would die out. By 1869 only Truganini, one other woman, and one man remained alive."



In 1876, on May the 7th, Truganini, the last full-blooded Black person in Tasmania died. She was of seventy-three years of age. Her mother had been stabbed to death by a European. Her sister was kidnapped by Europeans. Her intended husband was drowned by two Europeans in her presence, while his murderers raped her.







"Don't let them cut me up," she begged the doctor as she lay dying. After her burial, Truganini's body was dug up, and her skeleton, strung upon wires and placed upright in a box. She became, for many years, the most popular exhibit in the Tasmanian Museum and remained on display until 1947. Finally, in 1976, despite the museum's objections, her skeleton was cremated and her ashes scattered at sea.

Aboriginal people on average now have a life expectancy of 20years shorter than the non-Indigenous Australians.



Indigenous people account for 20% of the prison population and 18% of all deaths in police custody, however, they only make up about 1% of the Australian population.



Is it possible that these percentages are a result from the harsh treatment that this nation was exposed to?