Today is an important day for Aboriginal people throughout Western Australia. The former Rottnest Island prison building, known as the Quod, ceases operations as a tourist resort.

The Quod, the Rottnest prison that was built by and housed Aboriginal prisoners. ( 720 ABC Perth: Emma Wynne )

Aboriginal people since the 1980s have campaigned for this to happen. From between 1838 and 1931 it is conservatively estimated that more than 3,600 Aboriginal men from around the state were imprisoned at Rottnest Island, known as Wadjemup to the Noongar people.

More than 371 men sent to the Island died as a result of disease, torture, execution and murder and their remains lie in an unmarked grave, once acknowledged by the former premier Richard Court as the largest deaths in custody burial site in Western Australia.

It would be correct to say, moreover, that this is the largest mass burial site in Australia.

The Act to Constitute Rottnest Island as a Legal Prison 1841 was designed to ensure that the "Aboriginal race… may be instructed in useful knowledge and gradually trained in the habits of civilised life".

But the Aboriginal prisoners at Rottnest lived in shocking conditions, working in chain gangs quarrying limestones, erecting buildings, collecting salt, and farming gardens and wheat fields.

Aboriginal people enslaved in their thousands

It has been estimated that at least 21 men died in each of the prison cells that have, for over 100 years, been used as resort accommodation.

Sorry, this audio has expired Wadjemup - Rottnest's other story

Slavery, as legally defined, has never existed in West Australia. However, the system of "assignment" under the various Native Protection Acts, ensured the enslavement of thousands of Aboriginal men, women and children.

European pastoral stations, agricultural developments, pearl shell enterprises, and domestic households relied on and exploited the Aboriginal labour relied on under the assignment system.

As historian Neville Green demonstrates, those who resisted were incarcerated at Rottnest Island "the final answer for holding those too wild and rebellious to submit to local service".

Theses practices were exposed and condemned as slavery by the Reverend JB Gribble and the British Anti-Slavery Society.

Aboriginal prisoners on Rottnest Island, 1889. ( Supplied: State Library of WA )

Rottnest prison evokes African slave forts

The Native Prison and the Roundhouse at Fremantle, which housed the Aboriginal men before they were deported to Rottnest, are unusual buildings in their design.

The Wadjemup Lighthouse was also built with Aboriginal prisoner labour. ( 720 ABC Perth: Emma Wynne )

The Roundhouse is a Dodecahedron, with 12 sides, and although the Quod design is more complex than the Roundhouse, the Chronological History of Rottnest Island suggests that it is "directly related in its plan form and general conception".

While the Roundhouse and Rottnest Prison have been portrayed as humanitarian in design, there are stories and fragments of evidence that throw another light on these buildings.

According to Noongar oral tradition, Aboriginal men who had broken no laws were sent to Rottnest to work in extremely harsh conditions. They were confined in deplorable conditions and subject to cruel and inhuman treatment.

The Rottnest Island Prison, and Roundhouse, are evocative of the slave forts of West Africa and connect our history and the treatment of Aboriginal people, to British slavery.

While non-Aboriginal families spent idyllic summer holidays at Rottnest, Aboriginal families never went to the Island. In the 1980's Aboriginal people formed the Rottnest Island Deaths Group and began their protests at the lack of respect and recognition of the Island's true history.

The Rottnest Island burial site is believed to contain the remains of 370 Aboriginal men. ( 720 ABC Perth: Emma Wynne )

This will never be a holiday isle for Aboriginal people

Following the excavations at the Quod that resulted in human remains being uncovered, I was a young person who took part in protests, which including a meeting of more than 300 Aboriginal elders from around the state.

It was shocking that the mass gravesite was being used as a "tent land", where non-Aboriginals were unaware that they were camping on top of the remains of so many Indigenous people.

Last Sunday, when the Rottnest Island Authority and the Rottnest Aboriginal Reference Group announced that the former prison would cease operations, a delegation of Aboriginal people were there to mark it as a historic occasion. They paid respects to the deceased Indigenous men who were so cruelly treated.

Rottnest will likely never become a holiday island for Aboriginal people: As elder Ben Taylor said, "my heart is heavy to come to this place". But the significance of remembering our past and what was done to Aboriginal people in the name of "civilisation" is something we must all do.

Aboriginal people in the 1980s said the prison must be returned to Aboriginal communities and be set up as a Museum of Remembrance. According to Mr Green this building could become the "most significant museum in Australia".

The view from Wadjemup Lighthouse towards West End is likened to a heavenly place for Aboriginal people. ( 720 ABC Perth: Emma Wynne )

Wadjemup should be UNESCO listed

Wadjemup should be considered for UNESCO World Heritage protection consistent with the recognition accorded to Robben Island prison in South Africa, because it meets the requirement of Outstanding Universal Value.

An aerial of a resort on Rottnest Island that was originally a prison for Aboriginal men. ( ABC News )

Wadjemup is an Aboriginal site of the highest significance. The burial site protected by the Aboriginal Heritage Act WA 1975, should be properly marked and respected with the true purpose and history of the prison being documented.

While the island land is Wadjuk, the men rounded up and taken to work on the island, and who died there, were from many lands and nations that now make up Western Australia.

Some of those men escaped, and the story of Mindum from Jerramungup who managed to escape the island — remembered as family by my great grandmother — is testimony to the resilience and spirit of Aboriginal people.

In remembering the past we can tell the truth about what is happening today, including the contemporary incarceration of Aboriginal people, a shocking reflection of colonisation and failure to acknowledge Aboriginal peoples' humanity and dignity as independent, free and sovereign people.

Dr. Hannah McGlade is a senior Indigenous research fellow at Curtin University.