Coniston massacre: Nigel Scullion returns site to traditional owners 86 years after killings

Updated

The site of Australia's last recorded massacre of Aboriginal people has been returned to its traditional owners.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion travelled to Yurrkuru 274 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs to present native title deeds to traditional owners.

Here, in 1928, up to 100 Aboriginal people were killed near the Coniston cattle station in reprisal for the death of a white man. The murders later became known as the Coniston massacre.

Warlpiri and Anmatyerr people welcomed Senator Nigel Scullion on to their land with traditional song and dance.

Senior Anmatyerr man Teddy Long said generations of his family had been fighting to have the massacre acknowledged and the land returned.

"My old man, my father been explaining to me what happened to me, the shooting days," he said.

"In the massacre days many people were killed here and that's why [I've] been fighting real hard for this land"

Land returned decades after Land Rights claim

Traditional owners initially lodged a claim under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act for the land in 1985.

In 1991, the Aboriginal Lands Commission recommended the land be returned.

At the ceremony, Minister Scullion handed the title deeds to a one-square-mile plot of land to Mr Long.

Minister Scullion praised Mr Long's work to secure the land and said handing the land back to traditional owners would protect the site.

"Entrusting this land was handed over was the only way the traditional owners were going to have custody and care of this land, which is particularly significant site to all Australians," he said.

"He's worked so hard countryman right around this country, and the only thing he has ever said is this is his land and he is going to keep fighting for this piece of land.

"Very significant for Teddy, very significant for his family and his mob, and it's emblematic of what we can do if we get the symbolic and practical aspects right."

Massacre was self-defence: historical inquiry

Yurrkuru, or Brook's Soak as it is known in English, is at the centre of one Australia's darkest chapters.

In 1928 white dingo trapper Fred Brooks was killed by Aboriginal man "Bullfrog" Japangka at the site.

Local police led a series of reprisal killings that became known as the Coniston massacre.

Official records claim 30 Aboriginal people were killed, but oral histories suggest more than 100 were murdered.

The conflict was part of an ongoing confrontation between pastoralists and Aboriginal people.

In the late 1920s, Central Australia was experiencing its worst drought.

There was increasing conflict between Aboriginal people seeking water and pastoralists protecting limited supplies for their cattle.

The prime minister at the time, Stanley Bruce, launched an a board of inquiry into the actions of police and pastoralists.

It ruled the police had "acted in self-defence".

In Memory of Frederick Brooks Murdered on 7th August 1928. Old man in the early days of Coniston. Those days when our troubles were great In the years You and I worked together I found You a true and staunch Mate. His old Mate Randal Stafford. - Inscription on the dingo trappers' headstone at Coniston

Topics: native-title, rights, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, indigenous-culture, history, yuendumu-0872

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