(PDF) Tasmanian Genocide Revisited reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide V1 0

This paper presents what may be a unique approach to modelling and visualizing complex historical datasets involving mass violence in Tasmania and whether the evidentiary behaviours that drove colonial normative behavioural pathology may persist today in ecocide. Much has been written about the contested space of Tasmania, a small island off the southern coast of Australia that Britain first invaded in 1803. Surely we know the story comprehensively by now, what happened, why, and by whom? Perhaps not, as our thesis will show. The pure blood Aboriginal people of Tasmania were effectively destroyed within a generation, around thirty years or so, by the policies of Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur and other British administrators; only mixed-race survivors remain, those whose ancestors cohabited – willingly or unwillingly - with sealers in Bass Strait, and a small number from elsewhere. Palawa repression was a Lemkinian process, exhibiting the type characteristics of the UN Convention as we will show. These descendants now struggle for their rights. We exist, they say, we weren’t exterminated, don’t make us invisible. They try to reclaim some of their ancestral land through tortuous litigation. They try to reclaim their history and culture by reading wordlists from George Augustus Robinson, Jorgen Jorgenson, and others, the mercenaries and agents of death, complex individuals who claimed to be humanitarian but drove ethnic cleansing - and more - for personal profit.

Tasmanian Genocide Revisited reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Ray Gibbons i Copyright © 2022 Ray Gibbons Publishing history: First published 2022. All rights reserved. No part of this volume may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 percent of this volume, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Keywords: Aboriginal extermination, Australian colonial history, British imperialism 1803 1833, colonial genocide, comparative genocide morphology, deconstructing colonial myths, genocide studies, history as a behavioural landscape, history of violence, invasion and resistance in Australia, mass violence, modelling Lemkinian genocide, settler behavioural thresholds, Tasmanian genocide, Palawa depopulation, political science, post-contact Australian history, Queensland genocide, typology of destructive behaviour, unsustainable economic practices. Notes on this 2022 edition Over the last two years, many interested readers have contacted me wanting further clarification or expansion on various points involving the fraught question of Tasmanian genocide. This edition incorporates such material correspondence and updates. ii Abstract This paper presents what may be a unique approach to modelling and visualizing complex historical datasets involving mass violence in Tasmania and whether the evidentiary behaviours that drove colonial normative behavioural pathology may persist today in ecocide. Much has been written about the contested space of Tasmania, a small island off the southern coast of Australia that Britain first invaded in 1803. Surely we know the story comprehensively by now, what happened, why, and by whom? Perhaps not, as our thesis will show. The pure blood Aboriginal people of Tasmania were effectively destroyed within a generation, around thirty years or so, by the policies of Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur and other British administrators; only mixed-race survivors remain, those whose ancestors cohabited – willingly or unwillingly - with sealers in Bass Strait, and a small number from elsewhere. Palawa repression was a Lemkinian process, exhibiting the type characteristics of the UN Convention as we will show. These descendants now struggle for their rights. We exist, they say, we weren’t exterminated, don’t make us invisible. They try to reclaim some of their ancestral land through tortuous litigation. They try to reclaim their history and culture by reading wordlists from George Augustus Robinson, Jorgen Jorgenson, and others, the mercenaries and agents of death, complex individuals who claimed to be humanitarian but drove ethnic cleansing - and more - for personal profit. Can we visualize Aboriginal/ colonist conflict data for Tasmania? If so, can the analytical approach be used for other contested spaces? The answer is, yes. Modern data visualization techniques allow us to see through complexity for the hidden structure, like diagnostic imaging. This paper sets out a 4D dynamic geospatial rendering or time lapsed visualization of: • • NJB Plomley’s dataset on The Aboriginal/ Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1831 that we will compare with Lyndall Ryan’s Colonial Frontier Massacres 1788 – 1930 https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/ using Jane Morrison’s massacre data for Tasmania as a type comparative reference https://australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/ In this paper, we make extensive use of Nicholas Clements Frontier Conflict in Van Diemen’s Land https://eprints.utas.edu.au/17070/2/Whole-Clements-thesis.pdf From the executable MP4 files we will examine any underlying patterns and draw conclusions for investigating other conflict zones across Australia, using similar techniques. Beyond the largely unrecognised great Australian land war (1788 – 1934),1 a war of genocidal repression, the largest conflict in our history, there is now our sustained war with the environment: ecocide, a war that will determine our future. This paper asks the question: can we learn, and how? It is an existential question, whose answer may determine our biological fitness to survive. iii Facing page Robert Dowling: Aborigines of Tasmania (1859)2 Definitions Palawa is the preferred name of the surviving mixed-race Tasmanian Aboriginal people, who struggle to recreate their culture from remnant wordlists originating with GA Robinson and others. palawa kani means 'Tasmanian Aborigines speak'; it is the only Aboriginal language in lutruwita (Tasmania) today. ... As a result, palawa kani combines words retrieved from as many the original languages as possible.3 This name is taken from the Bruny Island language word for the Tasmanian mainland, which was recorded by George Augustus Robinson as Loe.trou.witter. Trouwunna Robinson also recorded the name Trow.wer.nar for Tasmania, likely from the Eastern or Northeastern Tasmanian languages. Introductory qualification I trust the reader will forgive my indulgence in presuming the Tasmanian genocidal hypothesis before we have determined its falsifiability, a subject we will pursue in this paper. iv Preface This paper reflects on the relationship between Australian post-contact mass violence, phenotypically expressed as Lemkinian genocide, and the fraught question of ecocide, the unsustainable destruction of Nature. Do they share common normalised values in their aggregated behavioural expression? Both genocide and ecocide – multicide - are displacive within some contested space. They each place economic and ideological considerations above humanitarian and ecological concerns. If they are behaviourally related, as appears to be the case, what can we do about it, if we so choose? Can we make calibrated observations, which after all is the Cartesian method, to test the multicide hypothesis and accommodate our options? Can we adapt our collective behaviours before we reach an existential reckoning? Can we reign in creeping inequality, unsustainable GDP growth, and the rape of the environment, before we face a tipping point? If free markets have failed in managing risk - consider the fallout from the global Covid crisis, or Putin’s war in Ukraine - do we need new strategies beyond globalism: sovereign wealth funds; more equitable taxes; greater resilience and self-reliance; a Declaration of Rights that sets out a pact with Nature and the rights of people; coherent Governments that value logic above ideology? Locke, Hobbes and Adam Smith helped us into this mess; Hayek and Friedman added more confusion; does Australia need a grand vision, like a New Deal, to guide us forward? As species hurtle into the abyss, so must we ineluctably follow. Everything, all nucleic acid based life, the Earth we came from, they are all interconnected, something known by Aboriginal society since the Dreaming. Why, then, are we intent on destroying ourselves? Australia’s 2021 State of the Environment report4 should shock us into action. Whenever we face a new crisis – flood, fire, global warming, an overseas war, the rise of a militant China, the disunity of the United States - the collapse of our supply chains should be a warning, a warning about the fragility of our economy and our unconcern as the world’s capital for species extinction. If we are to evade catastrophes of our own manufacture, perhaps, just perhaps, we can learn and adapt our behaviours before we become unfit to survive? As for Australia, so for the world, where we are an instance of the process - for better or worse - of a destructively metastatic process, a process that is up to us to rewrite if we are to persist across the millennia and beyond. As I write this, the world is silent; it is Christmas day and there is no constant hum of traffic from the nearby arterial road. For a moment, I can believe I’m in the country until my thoughts are broken by a small noise. I remember the quiet of Tasmania where I grew up. The world was a bike ride away. Friends, places. Picking blackberries near the North Esk. Swimming at Cataract Gorge baths. It was a kind of innocence, one unaware of Tasmania’s bloody history. v What I knew, I was taught or read for myself. There were few questions. Not about the past. It was not until years later that I found that bucolic reality was false. I learned of an Aboriginal history that was absent from my education, brutal, violent, where our ancestors murdered the original inhabitants for simple economic gain. We now call it genocide and, if we reflect on history at all, say, It happened in the past, nothing to do with me. Except we are now showing similar exterminatory behaviour towards the Earth and its living systems, and for much the same motivations as in the past: money, greed, indifference, the unbalanced supremacy of economics over humanitarian and environmental concerns. Ecocide is now the great enabler of our self-interest, unsustainable exploitation the credo. If we don’t do it, someone else will. We must get in first. I wondered how we can have multiple views of what we see. Or perhaps we don’t see, only interpret through a revisionist lens that occludes or distorts. In revising history to reflect our biases, we are being assailed with ‘nuanced’ narratives that purport to read ‘across the grain’, perhaps driven by ideology (economic determinism), or pseudo-science (Darwinian supremacism), or ‘subaltern feminism’ (the empowerment of a gender-centric view that looks for historical interpretation through the hints and whispers of liminality, the fuzzy borders of events, what was unsaid because it was repressed). What we are doing is giving voice to ‘alternative facts’, those less easily verified, the borderland between verifiable evidence and mere opinion, often the product of apprehended bias. This paper will resist the urge towards nuanced subjectivity and will rely on potentially falsifiable hypotheses, where events can be tested for their verifiability. Is it time to throw away our glasses and confront reality? Must we break our preconceptions to see? Do we understand human behaviour enough to predict any pattern of events from their behavioural origination? Behaviours are a patterned response by an organism to an external stimulus. For our species, the pattern can be inherited (genetic, for example, instinct), learned (memetic), or acquired (including epigenetic) and derive from our survival values: fight/ flight, self-preservation (acquisitiveness/greed v. altruism), the tragedy of the commons (exploitation v. sustainability). Palawa society had a sustainable culture; the British did not. It led to the ‘tragedy of the commons’. We are still paying the price. How can instinctual responses be inherited? We don’t know. How can acquired behaviours be inherited, for example, an obesity disorder. Once again, we don’t know but it is an area of intense experimental study. Is racism heritable? Probably, but we don’t know the mechanism. How can a 4-bit genetic code in our DNA be deciphered, along with its epigenetic overlay? We don’t know. It is extremely complex, but Nature does it routinely in an algorithm that is almost magical but happens before our eyes. What we do know is that corrupting values can persist in collective dysfunctional behavioural psychopathy. But such collective disorders generally fall outside the scope of our justice system. Nor do we have a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for defined groups – cohorts, cultures, societies - that can assess and treat collective behavioural health; what we do have are statistical methods for determining and managing the behaviour of individuals and an accreting domestic set of laws for handling index crimes.. But surely, you ask, Darwinian evolution would breed out behaviours that limited the long-term survival of the organism? Not necessarily. If violence and exploitation ensure the survival of a progenitorial line, then it will continue. It is why societies grow and collapse; the growth in whatever form was unsustainable. That is our dilemma. How do we change? Do we care? 5 vi Much has been written about the contested space of Tasmania, a small island off the southern coast of Australia that Britain first invaded in 1803, a pre-emptive move to forestall any French interest. Can we visualize Aboriginal/ colonist conflict data for Tasmania? If so, can the analytical approach be used for other contested spaces? Modern data visualization techniques allow us to see through complexity for the unifying structure. This paper sets out a 4D dynamic geospatial rendering or time lapsed visualization of: • • NJB Plomley’s dataset on The Aboriginal/ Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1831, which we compare with Nicholas Clements 2013 thesis: Frontier Conflict in Van Diemen’s Land , Appendix 3. Lyndall Ryan’s Colonial Frontier Massacres 1788 – 1930 https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/ using Jane Morrison’s massacre data for Tasmania as a type comparative reference https://australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/ We will examine any underlying patterns and draw conclusions for investigating other dispossessory conflict zones across Australia in its largest, longest, and still generally unrecognized land war between 1788 and 1928. The same analytical methodology can apply to our war with Nature; we will show that both instances of the type dispossessory conflict – against Indigenous people and against the environment - derive from shared pathological behavioural morbidities embedded in a repeatable displacive process. When I was geolocating the hundreds of Tasmanian ‘clashes’ over three decades following the 1803 invasion, I was struck by how apparently random the ‘collision’ events were across two thirds of the island but also how patterned, like the spread of a firestorm or some other ordered and destructive process that, for Indigenous Tasmania, increased in intensity as the remaining Palawa grew more desperate. The randomness seemed to reflect that Palawa resistance to the invasion was exercised through innumerable ‘hit and run’ tactics, a guerrilla war to compensate for their limited and steadily decreasing numbers; the pattern was in the heat map of clashes across the ‘settled districts’, what we will call a ‘contested space’, an expanding invasion front that metastasised like a malevolent necrotic chancre. This genocidal dispossessory pattern – of people, of families - and the guerrilla response was to repeat for all other invasion fronts across Australia. The paper is constructed from a set of modules, each of which is intended to be relatively self-sufficient, almost axiomatic, that allows the argument to be progressed through a series of ‘proofs’ towards verifying the hypothesis of British genocide in Tasmania. For this reason, we have allowed limited redundancy in the core concepts across the distributive modules. vii In an important sense, the intended audience for this work is the next generation who will bear the consequences for our actions. To them, I say, ‘we knew we were causing harm to the Earth, but we did it anyway because we were too greedy.’ As Shakespeare penned in an oration by Antonius: “The evil that [men] do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.” At least some values have improved since Shakespeare when women were property, subordinate to males; but not enough, not nearly enough. The methods of historiography seem inadequate when disinterring events that are buried in successive layers of time, that is, if we are to give the events some patterned context. How can we determine the multidimensional pattern of Palawa genocide, region by region, event by event, if narrative history is our method? For this reason, the question has been cast adrift by historians, some confirming, some denying the evidence, the puzzle lost in a babel of words. And so the matter has rested for more than two hundred years. This paper uses information science to deconstruct the historical data and draw verifiable conclusions. It is akin to the emergent discipline of data archaeology, which can explore the past without lifting a notional forensic shovel, merely by using a LIDAR device on a helicopter to determine the 3-D layout of ancient ruins. Using data analysis, we will ask the question: Did Tasmanian genocide happen? The answer will lead us to examining the reason why, sometimes a more perplexing question until we remember that motivation for violence at the homicidal pastoral frontier was not always so mysterious. It was about who owned the land. It was pastoralist against Aboriginal, economics against humanitarianism, self-interest against compassion, British laws of property against Indigenous land rights, racist Governments against the disempowered and dispossessed. The clash of cultures fomented genocidal violence from which we are yet to recover, although chronic unremembering besets us still. After all, we argue, we didn’t do the killing, the dispossessing, the deporting, so how can we be to blame? But the blame lies with us, like a necrotic skin we can’t shed, and its fetid odour is reinforced each time there is another Aboriginal death at the hands of the police, each time another Aboriginal dies an early death from a preventable illness, each time another land rights claim is rejected, each time an Aboriginal child falls sick from a lack of sanitation and clean water. We have inherited a culture of indifference, of forgetting. By ignoring or forgetting, we forgive the past or seek to plausibly deny its confirmable reality. We argue ‘times were different then’ a reflexive argument that does us no credit. Crimes against humanity can never be justified, never. Whether the alleged perpetrators and the Lemkinian agencies that spawned them are held accountable is another matter entirely. So enjoy the jigsaw puzzle as we carefully put the disparate pieces into place, allowing the four dimensional picture slowly to emerge. It is hoped that the instantiable model for the Tasmanian racist dispossessory process carried out by the British can then contribute to our understanding of the patterned fractal-like violence that consumed the pastoral frontier for well over a century, part of a series that we will call For We Are Young and Free, where case instances will anchor the primary narrative for each determinable event within a repeatable process. The reader will judge its success, even if it merely opens a discussion. viii The extermination of the Palawa then becomes a contextual referent, a bookmark, a cipher, an independent variable for the function of Tasmanian Lemkinian genocide and, as we will see, its behaviorally related comorbidity, ecocide. Sir George Murray to Lieutenant-Governor Arthur in February 1829: I am aware of the extremely difficult task of inducing ignorant beings of the description of those alluded to, to acknowledge any authority short of absolute force, particularly when possessed with the idea which they appear to entertain in regard to their own rights over the country, in comparison with those of other colonists.6 So continued the contrived fiction, begun by Joseph Banks, that Australia was unoccupied (or sparsely populated), and ripe for the taking, a de facto assumption that rapidly became de jure as a coercive legislative noose tightened its authority over Aboriginal land and asymmetric force quashed any Palawa resistance. In October 1831, while visiting Campbell Town in Tasmania’s north, George Robinson wrote there were: Great preparations to go against the blacks; with few exceptions they are extirpationers.7 Replace ‘the blacks’ with ’the biosphere’ and we readily see that behaviours have not changed that much; they’re merely redirected. ix Acknowledgements Throughout this journey of exploration, the quiet diligence and detailed research of NJB (Brian) Plomley has been my constant companion, without whose work so many of us would have struggled to disinter the important history of the Palawa people, for the past, for now, and for the future. x Table of Contents Preface ............................................................................................................................. v PART 1: Visualising mass violence datasets in Tasmania, 1803 - 1833 ................................ 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 Brian Plomley ‘clash’ dataset ............................................................................................................ 19 Nicholas Clements ‘conflict’ dataset ................................................................................................. 21 Lyndall Ryan ‘massacre’ dataset ....................................................................................................... 21 Jane Morrison’s ‘massacre dataset................................................................................................... 22 Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 22 Observations and findings .............................................................................................. 23 Conclusions .................................................................................................................... 30 PART 2: Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide ................................................................. 32 The Architecture of Imperial Power ................................................................................ 32 British Imperium ............................................................................................................................... 34 Imperial Plans and Processes ..................................................................................................................... 34 Imperial Model and Intent ......................................................................................................................... 35 Imperial Intent and Colonisation ............................................................................................................... 42 Imperial Colonisation: Planning Execution ................................................................................................ 44 Imperial Expansionism and Colonial Violence .................................................................................. 45 Obligations or Rights; Rights or Privileges?................................................................................................ 46 The denial of Aboriginal land rights ........................................................................................................... 48 Social Contracts and Sovereignty...................................................................................................... 49 Rules of Sovereignty .................................................................................................................................. 54 Rules of Conflict, Engagement and Accountability .................................................................................... 57 Rules of shared land use ............................................................................................................................ 59 Rules of evidence ....................................................................................................................................... 60 Rules of Cooperation and Sustainability ................................................................................................... 69 xi What are the mechanics of Australian genocide? ............................................................ 76 Genocidal scope ................................................................................................................................ 79 Genocidal intent................................................................................................................................ 81 Confronting Australia’s invasion ....................................................................................................... 91 History and repeatable processes................................................................................................... 123 Conclusions: genocidal processes and outcomes ........................................................................... 125 Palawa precontact society redux .................................................................................. 126 Palawa Prehistory ........................................................................................................................... 126 Proper names, quotes, and notation .............................................................................................. 128 Palawa geographic distribution (pre-invasion) ............................................................................... 130 Palawa demographics before invasion in 1803 .............................................................................. 134 Tasmanian Invasive Timeline: 1768 - 1858 ..................................................................................... 145 Frontier conflict datasets for Tasmania ......................................................................... 154 Plomley clash dataset ..................................................................................................................... 154 Normalization strategy for Plomley dataset ............................................................................................ 154 Normalized ‘clash’ data set after Plomley ............................................................................................... 156 Lyndall Ryan et al dataset ............................................................................................................... 157 Jane Morrison dataset .................................................................................................................... 157 Nicholas Clements frontier conflict dataset................................................................................... 158 Black Casualties pre-‘war’ (pre mid 1820s) .............................................................................................. 158 The Wartime Decline (mid 1820s – 1832) ............................................................................................... 162 Normalized Clements dataset .................................................................................................................. 165 Analysis of Clements dataset ................................................................................................................... 170 Lemkinian Dispossession: land grants, immigration, depopulation ................................ 197 Tasmanian land grants .................................................................................................................... 197 Land Grants: 1804 – 1823 ........................................................................................................................ 197 Land grants: 1825 .................................................................................................................................... 198 Tasmanian British population ......................................................................................................... 199 1804 - 1836 .............................................................................................................................................. 199 1824 – 1833 ............................................................................................................................................. 200 xii Tasmanian Palawa population 1804 – 1833 (preliminary) ............................................................. 201 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 205 The Semantics of Genocide ........................................................................................... 206 Logical Expression ........................................................................................................................... 206 The genocidal counter arguments analysed ................................................................................... 210 Henry Reynolds ........................................................................................................................................ 210 Inga Clendinnen ....................................................................................................................................... 215 Keith Windschuttle .................................................................................................................................. 215 Nicholas Clements.................................................................................................................................... 216 Lyndall Ryan ............................................................................................................................................. 217 Anomalies and inconsistencies in the counter arguments – summarised ..................................... 219 Characteristics of genocide – restated in the context of Tasmania ............................................... 219 Modelling Lemkinian genocide in Tasmania .................................................................. 222 Strategy for determining best fit models for Palawa Lemkinian depopulation ............................. 224 Model (a): Plomley linear depopulation model ...................................................................................... 224 Model (b): Reynolds model ...................................................................................................................... 227 Model (c): exponential depopulation model with annualized data bundles ........................................... 230 Model (d): continuous exponential depopulation model ........................................................................ 232 Model (e): Phased continuous exponential depopulation model ........................................................... 235 Model (f): logistic depopulation model ................................................................................................... 235 Summary of depopulation models .......................................................................................................... 237 Conclusions .............................................................................................................................................. 238 Methodology to refine exponential and logistic depopulation models: (d), (e), (f) ....................... 241 Preliminary Lemkinian calculations for Tasmania using different models ..................................... 244 Model (a): linear model after Plomley ..................................................................................................... 244 Model (b): Reynolds punctuating event model ....................................................................................... 245 Model (c): annualised exponential depopulation model ......................................................................... 245 Model (d): continuous exponential depopulation ................................................................................... 247 Model (e): phased continuous exponential depopulation ...................................................................... 248 Model (f): logistic model .......................................................................................................................... 248 Models [b], [c] and [d] compared ............................................................................................................ 248 Summary of the Tasmanian depopulation models .................................................................................. 249 Depopulation phases, 1803 – 1876 ................................................................................................ 251 xiii Weighted Tasmanian Lemkinian categorial agencies by phase ............................................................... 258 Depopulation model hypotheses revisited (1803 – 1834) ....................................................................... 260 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................ 264 Type Lemkinian agencies by phase: 1803 - 1834 ............................................................................ 265 Palawa depopulation due to killing and abduction: 1803 – 1834............................................................ 265 Palawa depopulation due to disease and age-related morbidities: 1833 - 1876 .................................... 268 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................ 269 Exponential depopulation model hypothesis (1803 – 1876) .......................................................... 269 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................ 270 History as a behavioural landscape ............................................................................... 277 Modelling settler behaviour as a rule-constrained, dynamic, complex, bounded system............. 280 Processes and events: modelling and falsifiability................................................................................... 282 Modelling the process patterns of complex systems .............................................................................. 283 Genetic algorithms ................................................................................................................................... 284 Flocking Behaviour in Settler Society ....................................................................................................... 286 Simplified diffusion model for settler expansionism ............................................................................... 287 Simplified wave model for settler expansionism ..................................................................................... 290 Modelling the displacive pressure of immigration and land grants ........................................................ 293 Simplified dispersal model for settler expansionism ............................................................................... 294 A wavelike politico-socio-economic model for settler behaviour ........................................................... 296 Hierarchical Self-Similarity in Group and Crowd Behaviours ................................................................... 300 Genocidal constraint rules for settler society and emergent behaviour ................................................. 304 The role of psychological obedience to authority in top-down violence................................................. 314 The role of human brain architecture in patterned behaviour................................................................ 314 Modelling an infinite dynamical system generated by time lags............................................................. 314 The Question of Colonial Genocide ................................................................................................ 316 The problem of denialism ........................................................................................................................ 317 Utilitarianism: the flawed argument for the ‘greater good’ .................................................................... 319 Intentionality and the problem of asymmetric power ............................................................................ 320 Conclusion: Intentionality and Lemkinian genocide ................................................................................ 321 Australia’s Dispossessory Contextual Landscape ........................................................... 323 On Values ........................................................................................................................................ 323 Analysis of Schwartz matrix ..................................................................................................................... 326 Conclusions .............................................................................................................................................. 335 Value-linked Behaviour and categorial agency ............................................................................... 349 xiv Authoritarianism ...................................................................................................................................... 356 Australian genocide, ecocide: facets (sub-classes) of omnicidal dispossession ...................................... 358 Sustainable development and the limits to growth ................................................................................. 368 Rule-based behavioural constraints......................................................................................................... 389 PART 3: Lemkinian Roles and Agency ............................................................................ 392 The patterned logistics and mechanics of Australian genocide ...................................... 392 The Question of Colonial Genocide ................................................................................................ 392 Typology for British genocidal land acquisition in Australia ........................................................... 406 Genocide as a type instantiation .................................................................................................... 427 Land as property: its role in genocide............................................................................................. 431 The Australian land war and Aboriginal depopulation: 1788 - 1928 ............................... 434 Indigenous population statistics (various sources)......................................................................... 435 Aboriginal Depopulation Summary and Conclusions ..................................................................... 452 Tasmanian Genocidal Roles: Actors and Agency ............................................................ 454 Mapping of Tasmanian targeted destruction with Lemkinian genocidal behaviour ...................... 455 Associative Lemkinian behavioural network .................................................................................. 459 Lemkinian behavioural schema ...................................................................................................... 462 Typology for British land acquisition in Australia ........................................................................... 465 George Arthurs’s role in Tasmanian genocide - reprised ............................................................... 466 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 469 Queensland genocidal land war: 1860 - 1920 ................................................................ 471 The role of land policy in Queensland genocide ............................................................................. 475 The role of immigration policy in Queensland genocide ................................................................ 480 The political uses of Queensland genocide .................................................................................... 482 Queensland political accountability................................................................................................ 485 Sexual predation and Aboriginal depopulation .............................................................................. 490 Summary and conclusion ................................................................................................................ 493 xv Tasmanian Palawa Lemkinian extermination: 1803 - 1846............................................. 495 Tasmanian Genocidal Roles: Actors and Agency ............................................................................ 584 Mapping of Tasmanian targeted destruction to Lemkinian genocide............................................ 586 Detailed modelling of the Tasmanian dispossessory process ......................................... 618 The concept of a border in Lemkinian space ................................................................................. 618 The Lemkinian dispossessory space as a dynamic type construct.................................................. 618 Correlation (covariance) and codetermination (causal association) .............................................. 620 Correlation is not causation – but it is an indicator ........................................................................ 622 Dispossessory graph structure for the I ↔ G sub-process ............................................................ 622 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 628 Dispossessory Tables ...................................................................................................................... 633 The role of settlement in Tasmanian genocide .............................................................. 662 Procedural phases of the British occupation process ..................................................................... 662 Secretary of State Bathurst ...................................................................................................................... 664 Settlement and pastoralism ..................................................................................................................... 666 The process of Tasmanian land grants before and during Arthur’s term ................................................ 666 Van Diemen’s Land Company .................................................................................................................. 668 Emerging conflict over land ..................................................................................................................... 669 Guides for immigrants ............................................................................................................................. 672 The rise of settler sovereignty from de facto to de jure .......................................................................... 673 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 676 The role of the British Government in Tasmanian genocide .......................................................... 678 Intentionality and the British Chain of Command ................................................................................... 678 British Sovereigns and Privy Council (1750 – 1870) ................................................................................. 680 British Prime Ministers (1803 – 1847) ..................................................................................................... 682 Secretaries of State (1803 – 1847) ........................................................................................................... 684 British Under-Secretaries of State for the Colonies (1803 – 1847) .......................................................... 685 British Home Secretaries (1803 – 1847) .................................................................................................. 689 New South Wales (Australian) Governors (1803 – 1847) ........................................................................ 691 Tasmanian Lieutenant-Governors and Commandants (1803 – 1847) ..................................................... 692 Tasmanian Colonial Secretaries (1813 – 1873) ........................................................................................ 692 Members of the Executive Council of Tasmania 1825 – 1856 ................................................................. 693 xvi Members of the Legislative Council of Tasmania 1825 - 1856 ................................................................ 694 Tasmanian Premiers (1856 – 1876) ......................................................................................................... 697 1823 NSW: Commissioner Bigge’s Report on the Sale of ‘Crown’ Land .................................................. 697 Bathurst and Bigge: a turning point in Aboriginal land allocation ........................................................... 698 Intentionality and Tasmanian Genocide .................................................................................................. 702 The shaping of Tasmanian history through Government redaction and continuing racism ................... 704 British redaction of Tasmanian genocide ................................................................................................ 706 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 716 The role of cultural destruction in Tasmanian genocide ................................................. 718 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 722 The role of pastoralism in Tasmanian genocide ............................................................. 724 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 732 The role of immigration in Tasmanian genocide ............................................................ 734 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 739 The co-determinate roles of immigration and land alienation in Tasmanian genocide ... 740 The meaning of racially targeted dispossession ............................................................................. 741 Co-determinacy and correlation: land and immigration ................................................................ 742 Dispossessory synopsis: the effect of immigration and land confiscation ..................................... 743 Dispossessory preamble: the functional process of violent colonization....................................... 752 Land grant inequality ...................................................................................................................... 753 Modelling key elements (agencies) of the dispossessory process - preliminary ............................ 754 Regression analysis – findings ......................................................................................................... 756 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 758 The role of British Law in Tasmanian genocide .............................................................. 760 British Government genocidal complicity ....................................................................................... 760 The tools of British genocide .......................................................................................................... 761 Case study: Arthur’s public hanging of four Aboriginal resistors ................................................... 765 Applicable land legislation 1833 – 1910 ........................................................................................ 769 Disposal of ‘Crown Lands’: 1787 - 1842 .......................................................................................... 771 xvii Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 774 The role of economics in Tasmanian genocide .............................................................. 776 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 779 The role of sexual predation, miscegenation, and abduction in Tasmanian genocide ..... 781 The seal slaughtering industry and Aboriginal depopulation ......................................................... 782 ‘Gin raiding’ ..................................................................................................................................... 784 Findings and Conclusions ................................................................................................................ 790 The role of Arthur’s final solution in Tasmanian genocide (1824 – 1831)........................ 794 Britain’s policy of militarized ethnic cleansing and its role in Tasmanian genocide....................... 800 Arthur’s genocidal timeline (1824 – 1831) ..................................................................................... 809 Tasmanian genocidal process in summary (1828 – 1831) .............................................................. 825 1830: Arthur’s administration in crisis ............................................................................................ 835 August 1830, a month of government turmoil ............................................................................... 841 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 885 The role of Martial Law in Tasmanian genocide............................................................. 888 Arthur’s first Proclamation of Martial Law, 1st November, 1828 .................................................. 907 Report of the Aborigines’ Committee, 19th March, 1830 ............................................................... 910 Report of the Aborigines’ Committee ............................................................................................. 913 Murray to Arthur, 25th August 1829. ............................................................................................. 937 Arthur to Murray, 15th April 1830. ................................................................................................. 938 Murray to Arthur, 5th November 1830. .......................................................................................... 947 Arthur’s second Proclamation of Martial Law: 1st October 1830 ................................................... 952 Van Diemen’s Land Company ......................................................................................................... 954 Case Instance: The killing of a woman at Emu Bay in the northeast under Martial Law ............... 956 George Arthur reprised ................................................................................................................... 959 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 962 The role of introduced disease in Tasmanian genocide .................................................. 963 xviii Introduced disease as a genocidal agency ...................................................................................... 964 Palawa Depopulation statistics caused overwhelmingly by disease: 1829 – 1876 ........................ 981 Palawa population dynamics summarized ..................................................................................... 996 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 999 The role of forced detention in Tasmanian genocide: Wybalenna................................ 1001 Conciliation through detention: Aboriginals as refugees and prisoners ...................................... 1001 Wybalenna: An extermination camp? ................................................................................................... 1008 Wybalenna: 1834 – 1836, Darling and Robinson ................................................................................... 1021 Wybalenna: 1834 – 1835, Nickolls ......................................................................................................... 1022 Wybalenna: 1836, Robinson .................................................................................................................. 1027 Wybalenna: 1836, the colonial administration’s view of the ‘peaceful mission’ .................................. 1027 Wybalenna: 1837 ................................................................................................................................... 1035 Summary: Wybalenna 1835 - 1847 ........................................................................................................ 1039 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 1045 Summary of depopulation vectorial agencies .............................................................. 1046 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 1048 PART 4: Semantics, Methodology, Referents, and Use Case ........................................ 1049 Terminology ............................................................................................................... 1049 Aboriginal ...................................................................................................................................... 1049 Massacre ....................................................................................................................................... 1049 Genocide ....................................................................................................................................... 1053 Crimes against humanity .............................................................................................................. 1066 Methodology.............................................................................................................. 1067 Type Process verification .............................................................................................................. 1069 Events and causality ...................................................................................................................... 1071 Civil society and behavioural shaping ........................................................................................... 1071 Australian Toponymy ................................................................................................. 1073 Genocide and its morphology ..................................................................................... 1082 xix The Semelin model as a referent .................................................................................................. 1082 Levenian Genocide Model ............................................................................................................ 1086 The Lemkinian model as a referent .............................................................................................. 1097 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 1103 Case Instance: Arthur’s declaration of martial law 1828 - 1830: the massacre at Emu Bay 1829 ........................................................................................................................... 1104 Contextual Timeline for the Emu Bay massacre ........................................................................... 1104 Case structure ............................................................................................................................... 1107 Emu Bay Case Instantiation .......................................................................................................... 1108 Emu Bay massacre: event flow diagram ....................................................................................... 1115 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 1116 PART 5: Analytical Framework ................................................................................... 1118 British genocidal land acquisition................................................................................ 1120 Lemkinian Genocide ..................................................................................................................... 1122 Tasmanian Genocidal Roles: Actors and Agency .......................................................................... 1142 Mapping of Tasmanian targeted destruction to Lemkinian genocide ................................................... 1142 Weighting of Lemkinian categorial agencies ......................................................................................... 1145 Lemkinian behavioural schema ............................................................................................................. 1150 The role of sexual predation in Aboriginal depopulation ............................................................. 1181 The role of ecocide, resource loss and starvation in Tasmanian genocide .................................. 1184 The role of settlement (categorial agency) in Tasmanian genocide ............................................. 1197 Lemkinian Logistics and mechanics ............................................................................. 1215 Type Process verification .............................................................................................................. 1215 The question of culpability and criminogenic intent .................................................................... 1216 Are we repeating the past?........................................................................................................... 1219 Tasmanian genocide recapitulated ............................................................................................... 1221 Logical fallacies in arguments against Tasmanian genocide ......................................... 1225 xx APPENDICES ............................................................................................................... 1233 Conversions................................................................................................................ 1235 Selected Bibliography ................................................................................................. 1236 xxi List of Figures Figure 1 The evolution of power, .......................................................................................................... 33 Figure 2 The British Imperium and its colonising model ...................................................................... 37 Figure 3 Timeline of events involved in political convict transportation to Tasmania ......................... 42 Figure 4 Encapsulated planning process with triggering conditions .................................................... 44 Figure 5 Conceptual British planning process ....................................................................................... 44 Figure 6 The self-reinforcing British administrative model .................................................................. 45 Figure 7 Enquiries into Aboriginal disadvantage .................................................................................. 68 Figure 8 Australian ecocide and genocide have a common systemic (type) determinant ................... 72 Figure 9 The fractal-like geometry of Australian genocide ................................................................... 76 Figure 10 Simplified model of the Australian Occupation Process, showing the role of Involved Parties ................................................................................................................................................... 77 Figure 11 Process Flow decomposition for Australian Lemkinian genocide ........................................ 78 Figure 12 Type Occupation Process showing actionable components................................................. 78 Figure 13 Genocidal phases in Australia ............................................................................................... 81 Figure 14 Fiduciary relationship between Aboriginal groups and their homelands............................. 88 Figure 15 British Transactional relationship between land and its ownership as property ................. 90 Figure 16 Dates of military-led invasions by area ................................................................................ 91 Figure 17 Preliminary typology of dispossession .................................................................................. 93 Figure 18 British legislated semantics of invasion .............................................................................. 108 Figure 19 The vocabulary of the British colonization process ........................................................... cxiii Figure 20 Territorial possession events ............................................................................................ cxviii Figure 21 Territorial events and initiating instructions ...................................................................... cxxi Figure 22 Type process and instantiation ........................................................................................... 124 Figure 23 Palawa family group (stylized) ............................................................................................ 130 Figure 24 Palawa population distribution (pre-invasion) ................................................................... 132 Figure 25 Distribution of Tasmanian Aboriginal groups (pre-invasion) .............................................. 132 Figure 26 Tasmanian Aboriginal Groups (names and geographical disposition pre-invasion)........... 133 xxii Figure 27 Expeditions to Tasmania ..................................................................................................... 138 Figure 28 Tasman's map of New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land, 1642-3 ....................................... 138 Figure 29 Naval lieut George Tobin's sketch of an aboriginal hut at Adventure Bay, drawn in 1792139 Figure 30 Map of Adventure Bay and Frederick Henry Bay in southern Tasmania ............................ 140 Figure 31 Tasmanian genocide timeline: 1768 - 1858 ........................................................................ 153 Figure 32 Normalized Palawa Casualties: 1804 – 1832 (after Clements) ........................................... 170 Figure 33 Modified Clements statistics ............................................................................................... 171 Figure 34 Number of Palawa killed or wounded: 1803 – 1834 (after Clements) ............................... 171 Figure 35 Distribution of Tasmanian killing events: 1804 – 1834 (adapted from Clements) ............. 173 Figure 36 List of multiple killings, 1804 - 1835 (after Ryan) ............................................................... 189 Figure 37 Aborigines Accounted for in the Literature ........................................................................ 190 Figure 38 Number of Europeans Killed by Individual Tribes. .............................................................. 191 Figure 39 Number of Palawa killed or wounded: 1804 – 1834, excluding those with no exact date.193 Figure 40 Cumulative reported Palawa casualties: 1804 – 1834 (after Clements)............................. 194 Figure 41 Plomley/ Clements datasets compared (no. of clashes v no. of casualties) ....................... 195 Figure 42 Register of Tasmanian Land Grants: 1804 - 1823 .............................................................. 198 Figure 43 GRANTS OF LAND, Surveyor General’s Office, Hobart Town, November 14th, 1825.......... 198 Figure 44 Van Diemen's Land population from 1804 to 1836 ............................................................ 199 Figure 45 Growth in British Population in Tasmania 1824 - 1833 ...................................................... 200 Figure 46 Number of Plomley identified clashes between Palawa and settler, by year: 1803 - 1831202 Figure 47 Tasmanian Casualties: 1803 - 1842 .................................................................................... 203 Figure 48 Palawa depopulation drivers (categorial mortality agencies) by phase ............................. 204 Figure 49 Extermination, Extirpation, Extinction, genocide .............................................................. 214 Figure 50 Graph of lineal population decline: 1803 – 1831 (after Plomley)....................................... 226 Figure 51 Mysterious sickness causing mortality pre-contact ............................................................ 229 Figure 52 There is a slight increase in the rate of depopulation between 1808 and 1814 ................ 230 Figure 53 Value table for a range of exponential depopulation curves ............................................. 232 xxiii Figure 54 Graph of P(t), where P0=4000, -0.05 ≤ r ≤ -0.15, compared with Plomley ......................... 233 Figure 55 Population data at hinge points using various analytical models against empirical data. . 233 Figure 56 Empirical exponential depopulation curve for hinge points............................................... 234 Figure 57 Hand drawn curve using empirical data for hinge points and interpolated datapoints..... 234 Figure 58 Cumulative Logistic (S) curve for Palawa Depopulation Arising from Multiple Genocidal Agencies .............................................................................................................................................. 236 Figure 59 Phases of Palawa depopulation: 1803 - 1876 ..................................................................... 243 Figure 60 Depopulation models compared. ....................................................................................... 249 Figure 61 Clements/ Ryan phases in the Black War ........................................................................... 253 Figure 62 Identifiable periods in the war for territorial possession .................................................. 256 Figure 63 Statistics of the Black War in the Settled Districts: 1823 - 1834......................................... 256 Figure 64 Palawa death toll by ‘phase’: 1823 - 1834 (est.) ................................................................. 256 Figure 65 Statistics of the Black War in the Settled Districts: 1824 - 1834......................................... 257 Figure 66 Derived genocidal phases: 1803 - 1876 .............................................................................. 258 Figure 67 Subjectively weighted Lemkinian categorial agencies by phase ........................................ 259 Figure 68 Subjective Lemkinian type category weightings by phase: 1803 – 1876............................ 259 Figure 69 Calculated Population decline: 1803 – 1826 (r= -0.0533)................................................... 261 Figure 70 Calculated population decline: 1803 – 1834 (r = -0.0533 for 1803 – 1826; r=-0.20 for 1827 – 1834) ................................................................................................................................................... 262 Figure 71 Calculated Palawa depopulation: 1833 – 1846 (r = -0.129), 1847 – 1876 (r = -0.15) ......... 269 Figure 72 Derived values of the rate of depopulation by phase ........................................................ 270 Figure 73 Exponential depopulation by Lemkinian phase: 1803 – 1876 ........................................... 273 Figure 74 Interpolated depopulation values by phase: 1803 – 1876 ................................................. 274 Figure 75 Summary: exponential depopulation by phase: 1803 – 1825, 1826 – 1832, 1833 – 1846, 1847 – 1876 ........................................................................................................................................ 275 Figure 76 Genetic rules for flocking behaviour in dynamical systems............................................... 286 Figure 77. Emergent dynamical behaviour of colonial society .......................................................... 297 Figure 78 Settler expansionism was driven by Government policies ................................................. 305 Figure 79 Genetic algorithm structure................................................................................................ 312 xxiv Figure 80 Simplified flowchart of genetic algorithm for Australian genocide (Lemkinian) ................ 313 Figure 81 Lemkinian genocidal model ................................................................................................ 320 Figure 82 Primary Lemkinian genocidal model for Australia .............................................................. 321 Figure 83 Summary Lemkinian genocidal model ................................................................................ 321 Figure 84 Schwartz value/ group matrix ............................................................................................. 324 Figure 85 Schwartz theory of basic values .......................................................................................... 335 Figure 86 Schwartz dynamic underpinnings of the 'universal' value structure ................................. 335 Figure 87 Continuum between emotions, values, rights, and constraint rules.................................. 336 Figure 89 Categorial mapping (unnormalized single thread hierarchy) ............................................. 338 Figure 90 Conformal-like mapping between two rule-based state spaces D1 and D2 (with adaptation) ............................................................................................................................................................ 345 Figure 91 Differential model for self-interest (S) constrained by a legislative framework (L) with boundary B. ......................................................................................................................................... 347 Figure 92 The procedural relationship between genocide, ecocide, dispossession, and authoritarianism ................................................................................................................................. 356 Figure 93 Conditional trigger typology for the type process of omnicidal land acquisition............... 360 Figure 94 Omnicide typology .............................................................................................................. 364 Figure 95 A degrading environment with declining resources is the primary cause of the limits to growth ................................................................................................................................................. 372 Figure 96 World GDP is declining (1960 – 2018) and was negative in the post-GFC ......................... 372 Figure 97 Comparison between population growth and GDP growth for Sub-Saharan Africa .......... 373 Figure 98 Australian GDP is declining (1960 - 2018) and was negative in 1984 and 1992 ................. 374 Figure 99 System dynamics for limits to growth ................................................................................ 375 Figure 100. Lemkinian genocidal model, triggered by intentionality ................................................ 396 Figure 101. Primary Lemkinian genocidal model for Australia .......................................................... 397 Figure 102 Summary Lemkinian genocidal model .............................................................................. 397 Figure 103 The fractal-like geometry of Australian genocide............................................................. 403 Figure 104 Simplified model of the Australian Occupation Process, showing the role of Involved Parties ................................................................................................................................................. 404 xxv Figure 105 Process Flow decomposition for Australian Lemkinian genocide .................................... 405 Figure 106 Type Occupation Process showing actionable components............................................. 405 Figure 107 Preliminary behavioural typology for Australian settlerism ............................................. 408 Figure 108 Typology of Lemkinian Genocide in Australia: Acquisitive, Predatory, Displacive, Genocidal ............................................................................................................................................................ 409 Figure 109 Queensland Occupation Process, showing Genocidal Phases .......................................... 410 Figure 110 Australian Occupation Process, showing Pre-Genocidal Phase ........................................ 412 Figure 111 Australian Occupation Process, showing Genocidal Phase .............................................. 414 Figure 112 Australian Occupation Process, showing Post-Genocidal Phase in context ..................... 417 Figure 113 Expansionary pressure ρv on boundary Vs as a function of D ........................................... 422 Figure 114 Simplified model of British Occupation Process (from de facto to de jure sovereignty) . 424 Figure 115 Summary system model for the State-driven Occupation Process in Australia ............... 426 Figure 116 ABS Year Book, 1994 (Ian Castles) .................................................................................... 435 Figure 117. ABS Year Book, 1911 ....................................................................................................... 436 Figure 118 . Derived Aboriginal population data, based on 1911 Census .......................................... 436 Figure 119 Radcliffe-Brown pre-contact Aboriginal population estimates ........................................ 437 Figure 120. Smith population estimates (based on Radcliffe-Brown) ............................................... 437 Figure 121. Aboriginal Population 1788 – 1986 ................................................................................. 438 Figure 122. Aboriginal population as a stacked area chart (after Prentis) ........................................ 438 Figure 123 Aboriginal population (1788 - 1986) showing trends. [data source: Prentis].................. 439 Figure 124. Estimated Aboriginal population 1986, 1991, 1996 ....................................................... 439 Figure 125. Aboriginal population 1788 – 2011................................................................................. 440 Figure 126. Data supporting the population graph 1788 to 2011. .................................................... 440 Figure 127 Aboriginal depopulation since 1788 ................................................................................. 442 Figure 128. Boyd-Hunter revised population estimates (pre-contact) .............................................. 443 Figure 129. Revised Aboriginal population estimates, by state (pre-contact) .................................. 444 Figure 130. Revised Aboriginal population estimates, Alan Williams (pre-contact) ......................... 445 Figure 131. Projected Aboriginal population estimates at 1911, ...................................................... 446 xxvi Figure 132. Actual depopulation caused by British invasion ............................................................. 447 Figure 133. Projected population without British invasion ............................................................... 448 Figure 134. Projected Aboriginal population estimates at 2014, ...................................................... 448 Figure 135. Projected Aboriginal population as a simplified exponential time series,...................... 449 Figure 136. Current Indigenous population by State, 2014 ............................................................... 450 Figure 137. Population pyramid of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, 2011 .................. 451 Figure 138. Projected Aboriginal population loss at 2014, ................................................................ 451 Figure 139. Population of various Southeast Asian countries (2010) ................................................ 452 Figure 140 Simplified Lemkinian genocide model. ............................................................................. 455 Figure 141 Intersection of Tasmanian Roles and Agency with Lemkinian Article 2 paragraphs ....... 458 Figure 142 Agency relationships (un-normalised) and their type vectors (or vectorial associations) for Tasmanian genocide ........................................................................................................................... 460 Figure 143 Vectorial associative directed graph network for level 0 (type) triggers ......................... 461 Figure 144 Lemkinian agencies (behaviours) overlap through shared Lemkinian sub-processes...... 463 Figure 145 The relationship between roles, agencies and Lemkinian sub-processes. ....................... 464 Figure 146 Categorial agencies intersect at shared Lemkinian sub-processes................................... 465 Figure 147 Typology for British Land Acquisition in Tasmania ........................................................... 466 Figure 148. Number of Queensland Aboriginals killed (Orsted-Jensen, Evans estimates) ................ 472 Figure 149. Number of Aboriginals killed in Queensland by decade ................................................. 472 Figure 150. Statistics for Aboriginals killed in Queensland ................................................................ 473 Figure 151. Queensland population counts: 1896 – 1915 (excludes Aboriginals) ............................. 473 Figure 152. Queensland projected Aboriginal population growth without invasion (1788 - 2011) .. 474 Figure 153. Occupied area of Queensland (1862) .............................................................................. 475 Figure 154. Land alienated for sale (1859 - 1863) ............................................................................. 476 Figure 155. Government land transactions, 1863 (1 of 3), ibid, p. 61 ................................................ 477 Figure 156. Government land transactions, 1863 (2 of 3), ibid, p. 62 ................................................ 478 Figure 157. Government land transactions (1863), (3 of 3), ibid, p. 63.............................................. 479 Figure 158. Comparative returns of electors on the Roll: 1860, 1861 and 1862............................... 480 xxvii Figure 159. Queensland budget allocation, 1862 .............................................................................. 480 Figure 160. Comparative Queensland census and estimated results (1861 – 1864) ........................ 481 Figure 161. Queensland population growth (1859 - 1863)................................................................ 481 Figure 162. Growth in livestock (1859 - 1863) ................................................................................... 482 Figure 163. Queensland statistics (1859 - 1863) inclusive ................................................................. 482 Figure 164. Murdering Creek massacre process flow diagram.......................................................... 484 Figure 165 Cumulative number of recorded massacres in Queensland, by decade .......................... 487 Figure 166 Cumulative Barambah Deaths: 1905 - 1939 ..................................................................... 492 Figure 167 Cumulative Barambah Deaths: 1905 – 1939 .................................................................... 493 Figure 168 Selected Bibliography, Historiography, and Changing Perceptions of Palawa Extermination ............................................................................................................................................................ 503 Figure 169 Lieutenant-Governor Arthur's property holdings in the Jerusalem district ..................... 509 Figure 170 Historical Records of Australia, Series 3, regarding the colonization of Tasmania........... 515 Figure 171 Statistics of the Black War in the Settled Districts: 1824 - 1834....................................... 533 Figure 172 Key Governorships and term of office: 1810 – 1831 ........................................................ 563 Figure 173 Register of Tasmanian Land Grants: 1804 - 1823 ............................................................ 566 Figure 174 Simplified Lemkinian genocide model. ............................................................................. 586 Figure 175 Intersection of Tasmanian Roles and Agency with Lemkinian Article 2 paragraphs ....... 589 Figure 176 Agency relationships (un-normalised) and their type vectors (or vectorial associations) for Tasmanian genocide ........................................................................................................................... 591 Figure 177 Vectorial associative directed graph network for level 0 (type) triggers ......................... 592 Figure 178 Lemkinian agencies (behaviours) overlap through shared Lemkinian sub-processes...... 594 Figure 179 The relationship between roles, agencies and Lemkinian sub-processes. ....................... 595 Figure 180 Categorial agencies intersect at shared Lemkinian sub-processes................................... 596 Figure 181 Article 2(a) ‘Killing members of the group’ as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process ...................................................................................................................... 598 Figure 182 Article 2(c) 'Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process............................................................................................................................. 600 xxviii Figure 183 Article 2(d) 'Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process ...................................................... 601 Figure 184 Article 2(e) 'Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process ...................................................................... 602 Figure 185 Summary system model for Britain's Occupation Process. .............................................. 623 Figure 186 The recursive cause-effect process model for Land Alienation and Immigration within the Occupation Process............................................................................................................................. 624 Figure 187 Van Diemen's Land Population Statistics: 1816 - 1823..................................................... 633 Figure 188 Van Diemen's Land Population Statistics: 1824 - 1833..................................................... 634 Figure 189 Van Diemen's Land Area in Cultivation: 1816 - 1823........................................................ 635 Figure 190 Van Diemen’s Land Population and Land Alienation (Sales and Rental): 1816 - 1833 ..... 636 Figure 191 Land Grants, Van Diemen’s land, 1824 - 1833 .................................................................. 637 Figure 192 Number of land grants (by size) and percentage of total number of grants: 1824 – 1833 ............................................................................................................................................................ 638 Figure 193 Land grants (by size) and percentage of total acreage granted: 1824 – 1833 ................. 638 Figure 194 Percentage of land grants (by number of grantees, and by size of grant): 1824 - 1833 .. 639 Figure 195 Land Revenue: 1828 – 1833 .............................................................................................. 640 Figure 196 Total Free male population by year and total acreage granted by year (10s of acres): 1824 - 1833 .................................................................................................................................................. 641 Figure 197 Bivariate analysis of the Total Number of Free Males by year and the Acreage Granted by year, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive ............................................................................................. 642 Figure 198 Total Free Male Population by year and Total Acreage Granted by year < 500 acres: 1824 1833 .................................................................................................................................................... 643 Figure 199 Bivariate analysis of the Total Number of Free Males by year and the Acreage Granted by year < 500 acres, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive .......................................................................... 644 Figure 200 Total Free male population by year and cumulative total acreage granted by year < 500 acres: 1824 – 1833 .............................................................................................................................. 645 Figure 201 Bivariate analysis of the Total Number of Free Males by year and the Cumulative Acreage Granted by year < 500 acres, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive ....................................................... 646 Figure 202 Bivariate analysis (QQPlots) of the Total Number of Free Males by year and the Cumulative Acreage Granted by year < 500 acres, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive ...................... 647 xxix Figure 203 Total Free male population by year and cumulative total acreage granted by year < 500 acres: 1824 – 1831 .............................................................................................................................. 648 Figure 204 Bivariate analysis of the Total Number of Free Males by year and the Cumulative Acreage Granted by year < 500 acres, between 1824 and 1831 inclusive ....................................................... 649 Figure 205 Total free male population by year and the cumulative acreage granted by year (> 500 acres) ................................................................................................................................................... 650 Figure 206 Bivariate analysis of the Cumulative Total Population of free male immigrants by year and the Cumulative Land Grants > 500 acres by year ............................................................................... 651 Figure 207 Total Free male population by year and cumulative acreage granted by year from 1824 – 1831 .................................................................................................................................................... 652 Figure 208 Bivariate analysis of the Total Number of Free Males by year and the Cumulative Acreage Granted by year, between 1824 and 1831 inclusive .......................................................................... 653 Figure 209 Relationship between the Number of Grants (by Year) and the Total Number of Free males (by Year, measured in 100’s) .................................................................................................... 654 Figure 210 Relationship between the number of grants of land over 500 acres, and the total acreage granted over 500 acres. ...................................................................................................................... 655 Figure 211 Bivariate analysis of the Total Number of Grants (>500 acres) by year, and the Total Acreage Granted (>500 acres) by year, between 1824 and 1831 inclusive ....................................... 656 Figure 212 Total Free male population by year and cumulative acreage granted by year < 500 acres, from 1824 – 1831 ................................................................................................................................ 657 Figure 213 Bivariate analysis of the Cumulative acreage granted (< 100 acres) by year and the Total free male population by year, between 1824 and 1831 inclusive...................................................... 658 Figure 214 Arriving free male population by year and total acreage granted by year < 500 acres, from 1824 – 1831 ........................................................................................................................................ 659 Figure 215 Growth of free male population, 1818 – 1831 ................................................................. 660 Figure 216 Graph of L from 1824 to 1831 ........................................................................................... 661 Figure 217 Summary phases of the British occupation and settlement process ............................... 662 Figure 218 Cumulative land grants in Tasmania (1804 - 1823) .......................................................... 667 Figure 219 Cumulative land grants in Tasmania (1804 - 1823) .......................................................... 667 Figure 220. Sketch map showing the Aboriginal population distribution around Tasmania at the time of early British settlement. ................................................................................................................. 668 Figure 221. Location of land grants to 1823 ..................................................................................... 669 Figure 222. VDL Acreage granted by year, from 1824 to 1831, ......................................................... 670 xxx Figure 223 George Meredith's elaborate headstone monument at Swansea ................................... 675 Figure 224 British Sovereigns: 1750 - 1870......................................................................................... 681 Figure 225 Privy Counsellors: 1750 - 1870.......................................................................................... 682 Figure 226 British Prime Ministers (1803 - 1847) ............................................................................... 684 Figure 227. Secretaries of State for War and the Colonies (1803 - 1847) ......................................... 685 Figure 228 Under-Secretaries of State for War and the Colonies (1804 - 1851) ................................ 689 Figure 229 Permanent Under-Secretaries of State for the Colonies (1825 - 1847)............................ 689 Figure 230 British Home Secretaries (1803 – 1847) ........................................................................... 690 Figure 231 New South Wales Governors (1803 - 1847)...................................................................... 691 Figure 232 Tasmanian Lieutenant-Governors and Commandants (1803 - 1855) .............................. 692 Figure 233 Colonial Secretaries of Tasmania (1826 – 1873) ............................................................... 693 Figure 234 Members of the Legislative Council of Tasmania 1825 – 1856 ........................................ 697 Figure 235 Tasmanian Premiers (1856 – 1876) .................................................................................. 697 Figure 236 Henry Bathurst (1762 – 1834) ........................................................................................... 698 Figure 237 John Bigge (1780 – 1843) .................................................................................................. 700 Figure 238 Distribution of Tasmanian Aboriginal groups (pre-invasion) ............................................ 719 Figure 239 Tasmanian Aboriginal Groups (names and geographical disposition pre-invasion)......... 720 Figure 240. Return of muster 1817 - 1819 ......................................................................................... 725 Figure 241 Exponential growth in Tasmanian sheep numbers from 1828 to 1847 ........................... 726 Figure 242 Annual Tasmanian Wool production by value (1828 - 1847) ........................................... 727 Figure 243. Total Van Diemen's Population (1824 - 1832), ............................................................... 735 Figure 244. Van Diemen's Land population from 1804 ..................................................................... 736 Figure 245 Cumulative Tasmanian Military Arrivals (Gross) 1829 - 1850........................................... 737 Figure 246 Net Tasmanian Immigration (1821 - 1850) ....................................................................... 738 Figure 247 Land Alienation up to 1850 (acres) ................................................................................... 749 Figure 248 Acreage granted and sold: 1828 - 1833 ............................................................................ 750 Figure 249 Male convicts arriving: 1825 - 1831 .................................................................................. 751 xxxi Figure 250 Arthur’s land grant system of patronage required assigned convict labour .................... 751 Figure 251 Summary of regression analyses between eligible grantee population and acreage granted ................................................................................................................................................ 758 Figure 252 Laws, edicts, regulations and proclamations around land allocation and Palawa insurgency: 1805 – 1832 ..................................................................................................................... 765 Figure 253 Disposal of Crown Lands in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land ......................... 773 Figure 254 Land Alienation up to 1850 ............................................................................................... 777 Figure 255 Van Diemen's Land Balance of Payments, 1822 - 1847 .................................................... 779 Figure 256 Death toll statistics: Black War (1823 - 1834) ................................................................... 798 Figure 257 Line Regiment ‘counter-insurgency’ deployment in Tasmania (1824 – 1836) ................ 807 Figure 258 Britain's genocidal timeline: 1824 - 1831 ......................................................................... 825 Figure 259 The Government documented events of Arthurian genocide.......................................... 828 Figure 260 Members of the Executive Council, 1825 - 1832 .............................................................. 829 Figure 261 1830 communications flow and the 'tyranny of distance'................................................ 840 Figure 262 Arthur's 'Black Line' ethnic cleansing operation October/ November 1830 .................... 860 Figure 263 Stylised frontier warfare (1820s) ...................................................................................... 865 Figure 264 George Arthur (1784 - 1854)............................................................................................. 888 Figure 265 Arthur to Murray, 15 April 1830, list of enclosures .......................................................... 947 Figure 266. Poster of Arthur's Proclamation of Martial Law. ............................................................ 953 Figure 267 Nicolas Baudin map of Australia, from the expedition of 1802 - 1803............................. 963 Figure 268 John Glover: Portraits of Aborigines: Calammanea, Maccame, Wanwee, Telliacbuya, Oredia, Kikadapaula, Umarah, Nanalagura, Ludawiddia (1832) ......................................................... 979 Figure 269 Medical terminology used in causes of Palawa detainee death (1829 - 1876) ................ 981 Figure 270 Records of deaths in detention, and their causes (1829 - 1876) ..................................... 982 Figure 271 Palawa detention death statistics: 1829 – 1876 .............................................................. 984 Figure 272 Palawa mortality: 1829 – 1876 ......................................................................................... 985 Figure 273 British introduced diseases in Tasmania ........................................................................... 991 Figure 274 Summary autopsy reports involving tuberculosis at Wybalenna: 1837 - 1838 ................ 993 xxxii Figure 275 Total recorded deaths from Acute Respiratory Disease (ARD) and other causes at Wybalenna: 1833 – 1846 .................................................................................................................... 994 Figure 276 Tasmanian cumulative deaths in detention: 1829 – 1876................................................ 995 Figure 277 Tasmanian cumulative deaths in detention: 1829 - 1876................................................ 995 Figure 278 Wybalenna mortality statistics (1833 - 1847) ................................................................. 1002 Figure 279 Wybalenna Commandants 1832 - 1847.......................................................................... 1003 Figure 280 JS Prout, Residences of the Aborigines, Flinder's Island, 1946 (ALMFA, SLT) ................. 1004 Figure 281 Flinders Island and the Furneaux Group ......................................................................... 1006 Figure 282 Location of Wybalenna detention centre on Flinders Island .......................................... 1007 Figure 283 Hull's Palawa population numbers: 1824 – 1865 ........................................................... 1010 Figure 284 Total recorded deaths from Acute Respiratory Disease (ARD) at Wybalenna: 1833 - 1847 .......................................................................................................................................................... 1016 Figure 285 Case notes for a child who died from acute respiratory disorder at Wybalenna in 1837 .......................................................................................................................................................... 1017 Figure 286 Furneaux Group from space, 1993 ................................................................................. 1035 Figure 287 Wybalenna health reports, 30th June to 15th August.................................................... 1038 Figure 288 Thomas Bock: Mathinna (1842) ...................................................................................... 1039 Figure 289 Placename toponymy across Australia ........................................................................... 1081 Figure 290 Semelin ‘Problematics’: Investigative Questionnaire for Genocide Analysis ................. 1086 Figure 291 Levene use case (worked example) ................................................................................ 1094 Figure 292 Lemkinian model for the British intentional genocide of the Palawa ............................ 1099 Figure 293. Emu Bay massacre - contextual history and event flow diagram ................................. 1115 Figure 294 Simplified Lemkinian genocide model. ........................................................................... 1124 Figure 295 Actionable process components in type Occupation process ........................................ 1126 Figure 296 Overlap of Lemkinian genocide with the type Occupation process ............................... 1127 Figure 297 Process Flow decomposition for Australian Lemkinian genocide.................................. 1128 Figure 298 Simplified system model of the Australian occupation process, .................................... 1130 Figure 299 Preliminary behavioural typology for Australian settlerism ........................................... 1132 xxxiii Figure 300 Typology of Lemkinian Genocide in Australia: Acquisitive, Predatory, Displacive, Genocidal .......................................................................................................................................................... 1133 Figure 301 Queensland Occupation Process, showing Genocidal Phases ........................................ 1134 Figure 302 Australian Occupation Process, showing Pre-Genocidal Phase ...................................... 1136 Figure 303 Australian Occupation Process, showing Genocidal Phase ............................................ 1138 Figure 304 Australian Occupation Process, showing Post-Genocidal Phase in context ................... 1141 Figure 305 Intersection of Tasmanian Roles and Agency with Lemkinian Article 2 paragraphs ..... 1146 Figure 306 Agency relationships (un-normalised) and their type vectors (or vectorial associations) for Tasmanian genocide ......................................................................................................................... 1147 Figure 307 Vectorial associative directed graph network for level 0 (type) triggers ....................... 1149 Figure 308 Lemkinian agencies (behaviours) overlap through shared Lemkinian sub-processes.... 1151 Figure 309 The relationship between roles, agencies, and Lemkinian sub-processes. .................... 1152 Figure 310 Categorial agencies intersect at shared Lemkinian sub-processes................................. 1153 Figure 311 Article 2(a) ‘Killing members of the group’ as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process .................................................................................................................... 1155 Figure 312 Article 2(c) 'Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process........................................................................................................................... 1157 Figure 313 Article 2(d) 'Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process .................................................... 1158 Figure 314 Article 2(e) 'Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process .................................................................... 1159 Figure 324 Originating regions for Barambah removals: 1908 - 1936 .............................................. 1160 Figure 325 Barambah normalized mortality statistics: 1905 – 1939 ................................................ 1162 Figure 326 Barambah actual annualized birth and death statistics 1905 – 1939 ............................. 1163 Figure 327 Barambah cumulative birth and death statistics by year 1905 - 1939 ........................... 1164 Figure 328 Barambah mortality statistics ......................................................................................... 1165 Figure 329 Barambah disease epidemics: 1905 - 1939 .................................................................... 1168 Figure 330 Barambah disease aetiology and ranking, 1910 – 1936 ................................................. 1169 Figure 331 Total recorded deaths from Acute Respiratory Disease (ARD) and other causes at Wybalenna: 1833 – 1846 .................................................................................................................. 1171 xxxiv Figure 332 British introduced diseases in Tasmania ......................................................................... 1177 Figure 333 Palawa deaths by age range (1835 to 1876) ................................................................... 1178 Figure 334 Cumulative number of recorded Tasmanian clashes by year: 1824 - 1831.................... 1179 Figure 315 Summary phases of the British occupation and settlement process ............................. 1198 Figure 316 Register of Tasmanian Land Grants: 1804 - 1823 ........................................................... 1201 Figure 317 Key Governorships and term of office: 1810 – 1831 ...................................................... 1202 Figure 318 Cumulative Tasmanian land grants: 1804 - 1823; 1824 – 1831...................................... 1207 Figure 319 Growth in livestock drove the demand for grazing land ................................................ 1207 Figure 320 Total Van Diemen’s Population (1824 – 1832) ............................................................... 1208 Figure 321. Sketch map showing the Aboriginal population distribution around Tasmania at the time of early British settlement. ............................................................................................................... 1209 Figure 322 Location of land grants to 1823 .................................................................................... 1210 Figure 323 Cumulative number of recorded Tasmanian clashes by year: 1824 - 1831.................... 1214 xxxv PART 1: Visualising mass violence datasets in Tasmania, 1803 - 1833 Introduction Historical truth has many guises. Some might call them narratives. Others, interpretations, that ‘truth’ is relative. This is the ‘true’ synoptic story - a summary - of our published colonial history in Tasmania told by the actors themselves, a set of eyewitness accounts, the story we are now asked by some politicians and historians to forget. Why? Because it is embarrassing. It exposes our human rights credentials, of how we prefer to see ourselves. For a more complete and comprehensive record, the reader must turn elsewhere.8 We include a selection of the key histories of Tasmania up to 2017 to show how the interpretation of Palawa extermination tends to avoid the troublesome word ‘genocide’. Many of us do not want to be reminded. Perhaps, we may hope, if we can ignore the past, if we discourage criticism of our history, the problem can somehow be made to go away, like an unwanted illness we refuse to have diagnosed, or a story we don’t wish to hear. Tasmania established the pattern set by New South Wales: the oppression, the extermination, the displacement, the deportation. Other Australian colonies adopted strategies developed in Tasmania – roving paramilitary, pitting Aboriginal against Aboriginal, dispersal, ethnic cleansing, ‘friendly missions’, segregation, managed detention, labour racketeering, sexual predation, eugenics - and adapted their methods in the mechanics of genocide. For Imperial Britain, Tasmania was like a small branch office in a global enterprise aimed at blocking the influence of other European powers and securing access to local resources for mercantile gain. That it also provided a penal settlement was a short-term benefit, with the convict assignment system providing a powerful added inducement to wealthy capitalists (and less wealthy service personnel who could call up a favour, people such as ex-military officers and excolonial administrators), British immigrants all, for whom the Government provided subsidized land grants and ‘free’ convict labour, apart from the cost of their food and lodging. In Tasmania, the wholesale extermination of Aboriginals and the removal of survivors to an island detention centre had a conjoined political and economic use. Britain measured the utility of Tasmania through economic growth and its initial deterrent role as a transportation destination for a carceral population. The politics of induced suffering became an industry. Britain discounted the economic value of Palawa society and its territories to almost zero; therefore, no indemnification was required, and none was offered. Under British law, Palawa land belonged to no one and hence became the property of the Crown, which was then free to grant (or later sell) it to an increasing flood of avaricious settlers, primarily British. 1 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide In British Government thinking, the Palawa should meekly accept their dispossession; if not, they would be destroyed. The primary calibrated means or policies employed by Britain for economic self-sufficiency in Tasmania were land alienation of ‘Crown’ land (followed by grants, later replaced by sale), and a phased amount of subsidized settler immigration, with the considerable advantage of the free use of assigned convict labour by settlers until the mid-19th century. The British methods of Tasmanian genocide included martial law, a bounty system for the capture of any Aboriginal, 9 unceasing extermination, sexual predation, child kidnapping, land and resource expropriation, unsustainable exploitation, ethnic cleansing, unconstrained occupation of prime grazing areas (the legacy of careful Aboriginal firestick farming over millennia), imposed starvation, restrictions on Aboriginal movements, forced detention with associated high mortality, and a racist legislature that failed to prosecute a single white for killing or mistreating an Aboriginal. Britain would not tolerate Aboriginal resistance, which became a criminal offence under the imposed system of laws. When the Palawa presence was finally removed, all that remained was to rewrite history, expressed as humanitarian concern for a doomed race. We should not measure the ‘state’ of a process, for example the consequent state arising from violent Tasmanian occupation, by some bland economic measure as Gross Domestic product at a certain time. The measure discounts the sum of how the state was achieved. The bucolic green pastures of today’s Tasmania do not carry an engram or CT scan of bloody Aboriginal conquest. The end state is not a preferred progression from benign occupation to pastoral triumphalism, where the original occupants ‘mysteriously’ disappeared. It may be one view, but it is not the only view as it confuses myth with reality. We will use the stylistic device of a storyboard-like narrative to engage the key aspects of Tasmanian genocide as it played out between 1803 and 1846. How else to express the horror of British Government infamy, of ‘enduring the ending of the world’ as Doctor Wooreddy describes it, as the Palawa are implacably destroyed.10 In considering the hypothesis of Tasmanian genocide by the British Government and its settlers, we must wonder why the possibility has been resisted for so long. After all, early Tasmania between 1803 and 1833 (then Wybalenna to 1846) has one of the most welldocumented histories among all the Australian colonies where the colonial archives are replete with correspondence, official and unofficial, detailing Palawa persecution. Part of the answer lies in Governor Arthur’s meretricious and devious behaviour 11 in carrying out British policies during his long and pivotal term of administrative office from 1824 to 1836, where what he wrote and what he did could be quite different. It is something we will carefully examine in Part 2 of Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide,12 where there is also evidence of British Government censorship of certain facts that might have placed their conduct in a condemnatory light.13 But another important aspect of that period of calibrated and purposeful Palawa extermination up to the 1830s is in how the conflict was reported by many writers. We have 2 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide valuable firsthand accounts from some of the participants, including Government despatches between senior Government figures; but many other more contemporary published accounts show apprehended bias and, in some cases, a tendency to revisionism. Finally, much of the primary source material has only become readily available in the last twenty years if we discount microfilm records and other relatively inaccessible repositories. We are left with an observation. If, as Kuhn first identified, knowledge within any subject area or discipline tends to be managed by a closed club with a recognized cabal of gatekeepers,14 then the doors to epistemic perception can only be widened by persistent objective questioning, not a heavy reliance on orthodoxy. How do we verify this historical unfolding of how we view Palawa extermination? We will set out some of the key documents, a representative panoply of published books, key Government despatches, and their release date. From them, we will discern a pattern where the core narrative changes over time: from exploratory, to defiant, expository, exculpatory, revisionist, defensive and – more recently - accusatory. Some historians are now beginning to accommodate the evidence-based reality of Tasmanian genocide. Why the changing perception? After all, the events have not changed. Arthur has not changed. The cast of characters have not changed. The answer is complex: as we commented earlier, much of the primary source material has only become generally available quite recently, perhaps in the last forty years; some of the primary material has been edited and censored by the British Government and we are only now beginning to discover where documents were censored; Arthur sought to present himself as a humanitarian in his written legacy, when he was far from that; some historians have a reflexive view that reflects their cultural bias and ‘standards of the time’ arguments; some have an agenda where they want to focus less on the undoubted violence and more on reconciliation. But some are also beginning to consider the facts objectively, within the exigencies of an empirical Cartesian modality. There are also those who are extending the interdisciplinary investigative reach by examining past events within a legal framework; but I am less sanguine about a juridical approach, even though it is the primary basis for criminal and civil accountability within a bounded society; jurisprudence is caught up in its own world of rules and conditions that are less about justice than the administration of whatever set of laws we invent for the protection of various parties and their ambitions. How do we deal with things unseen, the measure of words unsaid? Perceptual reality is often considered the sum of what we know through the senses; but much of what we know depends on faith, or on the observations of others. It leaves much that we don’t know – how life is created, or how the body maintains itself in a way that is invisible to the mind, or how consciousness works, many things that we see happening before our eyes but remain a mystery. We exist in a cloud of unknowing. A cognitive gap perfuses our lives, yet we live. The grainy pattern that resolves through this documented retrospective is not complete, but it is indicative, like a fuzzy picture that reveals itself in greater detail through increasingly 3 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide dense pixilation where each pixel is a verifiable event within a canvas painted by various observers from a variegated palette of Aboriginal blood, Palawa blood. That is, the Plomley and Ryan datasets reveal a pattern, although the individual datapoints may fuzzy or the dataset incomplete. The pattern allows us to visualize the emergent destruction as Britain imposed its will on an ‘inferior’ group of people; we do not get lost in the panoply of separate events that prevent us seeing the ‘big picture’. Sometimes the patterned imagery that emerges is distorted through interpretive reconstruction. In an age of ‘fake news’, the person uttering the word ‘fakery’ can themselves reasonably be accused of historical reframing, of hermeneutics, of apprehended bias, of adapting the facts to suit their observational perspective. Social history The study of history – in particular, social history - is not the only soft discipline to grapple with issues of structuralism and functionalism, of objects (things) and systems (a collection of objects and their interactions), of trying to understand the relatedness of things (the typology), cause and effect (dynamics), without falling through a recursive mirror of ‘thing’ interactions, the system behaviour over time. Sociology has had a similar dilemma, which some practitioners attempt to avoid by rejecting the distinction between statics and dynamics in order to accommodate time-space relations in a functional view. For example, the social theorist Anthony Giddens argues that theories are undetermined by fact: that no amount of accumulated fact will in and of itself determine that one particular theory be accepted and another rejected, since by the modification off the theory, or by other means, the observation in question can be accommodated to it.15 . It is an argument that misunderstands the nature of scientific enquiry, of how science moves from the known into the unknown through a considered mix of hypothesis and empiricism. This book considers ‘structuralism’ and ‘functionalism’ as verifiable aspects of the same observed phenomena, say a hypothesized pattern of categorial behaviour that can be verified through the occurrence of type events and their physical instantiation. To counter such historical embellishment, such myth-accretions, deconstructive analysis will be our tool. We will go back, where possible, to the original event or related set of events based upon whatever primary sources we can find and limit secondary and other sources to providing narrative social context. It is an analytical process of data renormalization and counters the observational problem of referring to successive layers of interpretation, any of which may introduce reflexive bias as we will see from this synoptic series of publications, each of which purports to be the real history of colonial Tasmania. Data renormalization Data renormalization to first-order form: for any primary fact (say person name), remove those keydependent attributes (such as a multiplicity of roles and events) that relate to each other, that is, through a transitive dependency. Such redundant dependencies can be introduced by accretion over time from different interpretations of historical events. 4 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide For example, if we are interested in Arthur’s role in genocide, we might want to identify the date of a massacre event, what happened and why, together with who was involved and their role. Renormalization requires us to show who, how, what and when in a separate dataset from event. With successive historical reinterpretation, we may find multiple, possible conflicting, entries for each event. For optimal database management, to avoid update anomalies, it is more reliable to separate out timestamped historical interpretations of any event as records in a separate database. That is, we separate event from person/ role from interpretation. This renormalization minimizes duplicate, recursive, redundant data and simplifies search queries. Deconstruction is simpler: pare back the event - layer by layer - to its primary source material. In this sense, deconstruction follows the principle of first-order forms. And because collective human behaviour tends to be predictable, given certain triggers such as land policy we can hypothesize the processes that shape the dynamic system behaviour over time, the critical period between 1803 and the 1840s, and test the resultant model for falsifiability.16 We will see the categorial agency of genocide take root in British Imperialism as it swept Aboriginal (Palawa) society aside. Our selected bibliography shows, by publishing chronology, how our reporting of early colonial Tasmanian history has changed its focus and impact across time. It is intended to be representative, but not exhaustive. Only published books are included. Each is assessed as a contextual referent.17 Have the facts and events changed? No, what has changed is the way we assess those facts. For each type reference, we will later provide a brief deconstructive analysis within the context of dispossessory Lemkinian genocide. For 19th century writers of Tasmanian history, we will see their focus was on economic development, but they were not afraid to talk about Aboriginal extermination. For the 20th century and beyond, we begin to see a culture of forgetting as new priorities take hold, priorities such as Tasmania’s place in the world. A similar pattern is evident across Australia, although the detailed investigation is outside the scope of this paper. We have forgiven the past but carry the same exploitative behaviours into the future. We have failed to learn. It is through writing that we can convey meaning, and it is through the collective weight of historical writing that an interpretation of history is imposed for a time or briefly revealed in some original guise when new facts emerge. All that is reliably common between different interpretations of past events are the verifiable or partially verifiable event facts, the attributive data around an event. But in examining evidentiary data around an event or related set of events that are embedded in some replicable causal chain or network (that is, a repeatable process or directed graph), how do we understand the event causes, the why? ‘Why’ confers knowledge, the epistemic agencies, the conditional triggers that invoke any process instantiation like genocidal territorial occupation by an invading power that originates – for Australia - through a declaration of sovereignty and a policy of land confiscation from the Indigenous population for the benefit of incoming settlers and accelerated immigration. 5 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide By understanding type causes, what once was believed true, with re-evaluated evidence we may now question. And what we now question may become new truths of historical authenticity or, alternatively, with misquoted or misconceived evidence, may lead us into further forms of myth. Henry Reynolds is an exemplar of such a retrograde myth-creation journey where Australian past and present genocide may be rejected through contrarian arguments that are based, not in verifiable facts and coherent logic, but on questions of Aboriginal identity and becoming, of ontology, of what we choose to believe rather than falsifiable hypotheses that are measured against empirical evidence. For Reynolds, as for Blainey and Manning Clark, there are deeper meanings, principles, even ideologies, that support what we prefer to see, and that provide ways of seeing as though our visual cortex was filling out the observed retinal image with an imagined information typology creating a false or distorted perception.18 It is the path of reflexive bias. As Thomas Kuhn pointed out, truth of any kind can be relative, hostage to a form of group thinking and dominant paradigms, where facts become subordinate to ideology and collective thought. In this distorting socio-political environment, Interpretation of facts becomes more important than verifiable evidence. It was so when Aboriginals were being legally dispossessed by racist asymmetric power in the service of Imperial aspirations. It is so now, when the facts of climate change are being assessed through the lens of short-term neoliberal economic determinism. What, then, is reality? How can it be verified? When misinformation and disinformation can create alternative facts, how do we respond to the merchants of doubt and the fog of uncertainty they create? Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential race. Sars-Cov-2 did not originate in Wuhan. Global warming is not real. Tasmanian genocide did not happen. Economics and ideology are more important than humanitarianism and the environment. Coal is good. This paper sets out the arguments for Tasmanian genocide as a verifiable instance of Australian mass violence from 1788 to 1930 and contends that the pathological behaviours which drove Lemkinian repression in Australia’s great land war are now implicated in ecocide. In 1992, NJB Plomley 19 developed an invaluable dataset of settler/ Aboriginal ‘clashes’ for the period 1803 to 1831, 20 the year when Arthur’s declaration of martial law was terminated under a cloud of war crimes that Lord Goderich was to redact from the official British Government record.21 Plomley’s thesis? Through examining all clashes between Aborigines and settlers, compiling graphs of frequencies and maps of occurrences, shows loss of hunting grounds and threat of starvation main cause of Black War 1824-1831 in Tasmania.22 Plomley writes: 6 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide From the very beginnings of British settlement in Australia, the invaders considered they had a right to absolute possession, and in spite of the official line of conciliating the natural inhabitants, the settlers went ahead with gaining possession. This applied throughout Australia, wherever the British intruded.23 Despite the trauma inflicted and lives lost in this genocidal Lemkinian war – an entire race was targeted and destroyed, although mixed race survivors from the Bass Strait sealing community managed to persist and later thrive - there has been no other dataset of comparable quality and detail ever developed until 2013, when Nicholas Clements expanded Plomley’s dataset, 24 and Lyndall Ryan obtained a research grant to develop a massacre database for Australia.25 Jane Morrison has been researching Australian massacres from 1971, her work represented by the website AustralianFrontierConflicts.26 Lyndall Ryan picked up the challenge for further investigating Tasmanian massacres in 2008, building on work from her earlier books,27 but it is a work in progress supported by the efforts of many researchers, including – of course – NJB Plomley, but also Shayne Breen, Graeme Calder, and many others, all engaged in disinterring history and giving it some measure of forensic meaning. Should we focus on massacres? Lemkin doesn’t. He defined genocide as the intent to destroy a targeted group in whole or part through various repressive modalities including forced removal, extermination, limiting births, psychological and cultural destruction. Indeed, Palawa depopulation over three decades between 1803 and 1833 was probably given effect more through sexual predation, STDs, and female abduction than direct killing, cultural destruction, and psychological trauma, although that was lethal enough. Lemkin’s definition was incorporated into the United Nations Convention on Genocide (1948) with some revisions.28 The Term "Genocide" The term "genocide" did not exist before 1944. It is a very specific term, referring to violent crimes committed against groups with the intent to destroy the existence of the group. Human rights, as laid out in the US Bill of Rights or the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, concern the rights of individuals. In 1944, Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) coined the term "genocide" in a book documenting Nazi policies for systematically destroying national and ethnic groups, including the mass murder of European Jews. He formed the word by combining geno-, from the Greek word for race or tribe, with -cide, from the Latin word for killing. Noting that the term denoted "an old practice in its modern development," Lemkin defined genocide as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves." The next year, the International Military Tribunal held at Nuremberg, Germany, charged top Nazis with "crimes against humanity." The word “genocide” was included in the indictment, but as a descriptive, not legal, term.29 This exterminatory process in Tasmania was no ‘unintended consequence’ of British policies. Some notable historians, Reynolds among them, have argued against Palawa (and Australian) genocide because the destructive racial consequences of invasion were (they say) unplanned, therefore they were unintentional,30 therefore no genocide could occur because genocide 7 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide requires intent. That is, there is a delay between some Government edict or action and the consequence, where the consequence could not reasonably be anticipated from the progenerative action. Logic attempts to provide a quality argument as to the reasons for accepting the truth of some claim. Reynolds’ logic in this instance proceeds from a false premise of unintended Government actions and (therefore) their unintended consequences (which is an oxymoron; Reynolds seems to be arguing that British expansionism and settlerism was a natural economic force that caused collateral but unintended and unplanned Aboriginal genocide; therefore it could not be genocide), or that Government actions arose from dispossessory motives, policies and triggers (leading to unintended genocidal consequences; therefore it could not be genocide): If British actions were unintentional [p], then the consequences of those actions were unintentional [q]. British actions were unintentional. Therefore, the consequences were unintentional. This is summarized as modus ponens: p ⊂ q, p, therefore q. The logic fails if [p] is untrue. That is, if the premise is false, the conclusions are also likely to be false. As we will see later in this paper, the argument of ‘unintended consequence’ is untenable. Genocide is rarely planned; it almost always arises out of other motives: cultural, ideological, racial, and economic. Britain did not sit down as a Government and decide: ‘We must kill the Indigenous population’ and dutifully record the policy in some written Government record that admitted their culpability. Genocidal policies are rarely formulated in such a way; instead, they arise from other policies. There may be a policy to ‘identify Jews with a star of David tag’ or ‘claim a territory for the Sovereign’ or ‘declare martial law’, or ‘remove Aboriginals from an area by force’, or ‘oppose force by force’, or ‘refuse to punish any settler for willful murder’ or ‘deny Aboriginals any land rights or rights to their country’ and so on. A policy such as land alienation initiates a purposeful dispossessory process involving a patterned set of type actions and their expected type consequences. All that remains for the usurping power is to instantiate the policy-enabled process modalities where the imagined realities are shaped and given substance by predictable events, actioned by the Players according to their scripted roles and obligations, the alienation of land, the economic power of Empire, the chain of command discipline, the compulsion to cruelty in the service of duty to nation and obedience to authority. Can the outcome of Government policies therefore be unintentional? The consequences of intentional policies are almost always known (or at least expected). That is the meaning of ‘intent’. When Britain confiscated Aboriginal land, it was with the intent to dispossess the Indigenous population knowing it was inevitable that there would be some resistance. Such insurgency was punished with extreme force using the provisions of British Law. The punishment did not cease until all resistance was quashed. The survivors were then usually deported, where they died in droves from their detention conditions or suffered in other ways, the loss of hope, the violation of their women, the insidious effect of imposed disease. The consequences of Aboriginal displacement were known and being known, intended. Britain did not resile from the dispossessory process or its class-based hegemonic duty, not until it was complete, or the policy reins had been transferred to vassal states prior to Federation; things barely improved after. 8 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide A racist Government policy of Indigenous segregation (apartheid) and disenfranchisement continued into the 1960s; it derived from a 1901 White Australia policy, where our borders were protected from unwanted immigrants, and eugenics was practiced on Aboriginal peoples to ‘breed out the colour’. Why? The degree of whiteness supposedly determined the level of intelligence. By 1911, more than 90% of the pre-contact Aboriginal population across Australia had ‘disappeared’ through some ‘mysterious agency’ or process. At the time, the process was called ‘civilizing the Blacks’, or extirpation, or extermination, or ‘dispersal’, or other names, but we know it now as Lemkinian genocide, having a persistent pattern that allows its identification. 31 The genocidal process repeated across all colonized areas in Australia, among them Tasmania. Writing in An Indelible Stain? Reynolds questions any British culpability; he invites us to accept that the ‘killing of indigenous people’ is justified if it is accidental or ‘unintentional’, if it was a consequence of some other motive, an argument that reframes the debate in an alternative disingenuous context; but he also misunderstands or misrepresents the meaning of Lemkinian genocide; he encourages the reader to believe that it means the total destruction of a targeted group when the Convention is quite clear: apart from other agencies specified in Article 2, there can be destruction ‘in whole or in part’. This is what Reynolds writes: Was the killing of indigenous people done with the specific intention of destroying particular groups, or did it happen as a consequence of action that had other motives, such as the taking of land, the imposing of a new order or the pacification of a violent frontier? 32 Deconstructing: Was the [killing of indigenous people] (p) done with the specific [intention of destroying particular groups] (q) or did it happen as a [consequence of action that had other motives] (r) such as [the taking of land], [the imposing of a new order] or [the pacification of a violent frontier]. Parsed Logic: If p then q: p ⊂ q, p, therefore q Or If r then p: r ⊂ p, r, therefore p That is (disambiguation): 33 Killing may have been the cause of Aboriginal destruction but Aboriginal destruction (killing) was not intended to cause Aboriginal destruction; therefore, killing was not intended, nor Aboriginal destruction. Therefore, there was no genocide. Or Killing was the unintended consequence of violent dispossession; Aboriginals resisted their dispossession; therefore, Aboriginals resisted lawful ‘pacification’. Therefore, there was no genocide. Reynolds’ sophistry is that ‘killing’ was both a cause and a consequence of Aboriginal dispossession. It is correct that conditional triggers into and out of a repeatable displacive process can be co-determinate, but this only happens through re-instantiation of the invasive occupation process that proceeds from confiscation of Aboriginal land to bloody repression of Aboriginal resistance to confiscation of more Aboriginal land in a multiplicity of policy-driven dispossessory iterations. In confusing cause and effect, Reynolds argument is flawed. In suggesting that British actions were justified, Reynolds is denying Aboriginals their human rights. In claiming that indiscriminate killing of Aboriginals was 9 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide an unintended consequence of other motives, Reynolds ignores that Britain did not choose to resile from its actions or expected consequences, and in not resiling, was prepared to accept the consequences of Aboriginal destruction as the necessary price for transforming the land into British property. Plomley’s dataset, with its attention drawn to ‘clashes’, gives us an insight into how we may analyse history through an instrument whose focal length we can change, from massacres to disruptive displacement to multiculturism to respect for human rights to respect for the environment to sustainable economic development. That is, we can feasibly construct a multi-dimensional dataset using a faceted classification schema that allows us to question the data in nuanced ways, which may help us determine the shape of past and future history. Plomley is the start. Mathematical ecology is the investigative tool, why societies grow and die. Hypotheses 1. If we accept that clashes in Tasmania - however they may be defined and selected occurred between Indigenous people and British invaders over some period, motivated by British hegemonic and economic priorities, do the clashes form a pattern? 2. Did the clashes follow an s-curve (or in the limiting case, a logarithmic curve) that leveled off as most of the opposition to the land heist was overcome or excised? 3. Was the pattern of clashes widespread or were there repeated clashes in any one area for a short period, say a year? 4. Was the pattern racist? Or Lemkinian? Or follow the process land alienation? Or immigration? 5. Did clashes follow an expanding pastoral frontier? Or did clashes spread outward in waves, like some necrotic metastasis, from loci determined by major points of infectious settlement? 6. Will any pattern be determined by geography, with areas unwanted by Britain escaping the conflict, say the central tiers or the rugged west coast? 7. If ‘settlers’ were primarily interested in fertile grazing land, will we expect clashes to be defined by contested spaces along the waterways and rich grasslands of the midlands and northwest? 8. Can we liken the British invasion of Tasmania to an infective disease pathogen with similar vectoral dynamics: invasion, resistance, necrosis, metastasis? 9. Did the clashes occur across an entire area simultaneously until ethnic cleansing was accomplished, or did the instances of violence follow some sort of ordered geometry, perhaps defined by the expanding limits of settlement? Or did the relatively small dimensions of an island mean that it could be expropriated within a decade or so through a single tsunami of settlerism followed by consolidation, without any displacive advancing frontier as happened in Queensland and other colonies.34 10 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide These are the questions we will test in our 4D dynamic model of Plomley’s dataset from which we will determine the pattern of Lemkinian vectoral agency within Tasmania between 1803 and 1833. Preliminary analysis We may consider Plomley’s list of ‘clash’ events, what Queensland was to call ‘collisions’ or ‘dispersals’, to be the lower limit of actual ‘clashes’, which in general he ascribes as a violent altercation between opposing parties, or a disruptive act of some kind, say burning or plundering, many of which have escaped the notice of history if they weren’t the subject of a newspaper report or Colonial Secretary’s Office (CSO) despatch. Unlike the colonies of Tasmania or New South Wales, Queensland never declared martial law after it became a separately governed state in 1860; instead, theirs was an undeclared war, for which the chosen Government instrument was the Native Police force, a secretive paramilitary organization reporting to the Police Commissioner (DT Seymour) that operated in flying detachments much like roving, mounted cavalry units or Arthur’s pursuing parties that acted as death squads, usually operating at night when they could locate Aboriginal groups by their campfires. Their operational rule was simple: disperse or destroy any gatherings of Aboriginals on their own hunting grounds, if settlers felt threatened, or many times if not. 35 Keep few records to avoid culpability. A similar paramilitary policing model to Queensland’s was adopted by other emerging Australian colonies in a vicious form of protracted Lemkinian warfare that was driven by racism, settler sovereignty, and pastoral triumphalism. An early form of Native Police originated in Tasmania in the 1820s and then New South Wales in the 1840s. The war against Aboriginal people was the longest in Australia’s history, from 1788 to at least 1928, one that the Australian War Memorial refuses to recognize. Such a limited view of ‘clash’ can lead to downplaying the cause and scope of the territorial conflict. Today, we similarly downplay bullying or catfishing or gaslighting or social media disinformation or reframing or alternative facts or wilful negligence (say unlawful ‘robodebts’) or financial misrepresentation as type behaviours that carry no criminal penalty, even if the victim is traumatised. Does it matter, this revisionism, or faulty recollection, or partial historical memory, or cultural amnesia, or denial of the past, or lack of accountability for the determined actions of our forebears? Can we ever know history in its entirety? A firestorm is a firestorm, we may argue, acute in our memory, whether we recall the individual incidents of burning, a tree here, an animal there. Yes, it does matter that we flesh out the firestorm with a catalogue of its impact; the death of each plant or animal is important, if only to give poignancy to history so that we may learn. And perhaps change our future. The Palawa who died at the hands of the British had names, they had families, they had cultural memories, they were people. 11 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide But it is not necessary that the historical catalogue of contextual referents be complete, the archive rounded out. A meta-pattern is falsifiable, as is a false narrative that is woven around verifiable events. Nor should we reject a ‘black armband’ view of history because its shows us in a bad light. In summary, there may be – and are - many ways to interpret history, many narrative threads, but there can be no alternative facts if they cannot be verified. The same argument applies to meta-patterns. What is a Plomley ‘clash’ and can it be broadened? If we expand the definitional scope of a ‘clash’ to include extrajudicial homicide, sexual predation, forcible detention, and crimes against humanity, then Plomley’s list increases significantly, but it would no longer be his originating list. Should we be concerned that the dataset is unfinished, or incomplete at best? Not if Plomley’s list is used merely as a type reference to establish a baseline model from which we can extrapolate a verifiable pattern or sum over history of events within some contested space defined by geography and time. Consider that, with modest research, we can potentially identify far more clashes than Plomley listed. For example: a) .. in 1829, Trucanini’s mother had been killed by sailors, her uncle shot by a soldier, her sister abducted by sealers, and her fiancé brutally murdered by timber-cutters, who then repeatedly sexually abused her. 36 Were these ‘clashes’ or were they indictable criminal assaults? They were certainly not reported in a newspaper of the time. b) In 1833, when GA Robinson imprisoned twenty-seven Toogee and Tarkiner Aboriginal people on Sarah Island in the hellhole of Macquarie Harbour and callously allowed many of them to die in putrid conditions in order to guarantee his bounty payment from Arthur, was this a ‘clash’ or a crime against humanity carried out on the back of Government sanctioned ethnic cleansing? Our only record is from Robinson’s journal. Perhaps he did not consider his behaviour blameworthy. Cassandra Pybus’ account has not been bettered: And so it was they died like flies as soon as they were penned up in the disease-ridden gaol on Sarah Island. Robinson blamed the doctor, he blamed the weather, he blamed the convicts, he even moved the sick and dying to the adjacent outcrop of Grummett Island. What he steadfastly refused to do was acknowledge the overwhelming desire of the people to return to their own country. 37 c) Many massacres noted by Ryan, Breen, and others do not appear in Plomley’s list.38 d) When kangaroo hunters were murdering Aboriginals in 1809,39 were these ‘clashes’ or Lemkinian homicide? When a female Aboriginal was captured as a 12 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide sex slave, was this Lemkinian deprivation of liberty with a catastrophic effect on births or was it merely a gender imbalance with no victims under British law. When colonists were shooting Aboriginal people for sport, was this a criminal act or a crime that Britain tolerated because it did not allow Aboriginal witness testimony. None of these clash types are included in the Plomley list because they were not reported in newspapers. Robert Hughes provides a raw account of the kangaroo hunting culture: Small settlers tended to neglect the long-range pursuits of farming and instead concentrated on killing whatever they could. Before long, the kangaroos around Hobart were hunted out, and men and dogs had to push further into the bush, competing against the Aborigines for game. Thus, the pattern of ambush and murder between white and black began; it would end, in a few decades, with the near-extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Hunger had put guns in the hands of convicts – and this had never been allowed to happen in New South Wales. It soon caused a fringe class of armed, uncontrollable bushmen, most of whom regarded Aborigines as vermin. They would go out for days at a stretch with their “mates” and their kangaroo-dogs (halfwild mongrel lurchers with jaws like mantraps) and bring back whatever they could corner and kill. Very soon these mountain men of Van Diemen’s Land shed whatever vestiges of obedience they might have felt to the System. They became the first bushrangers. 40 Here, Hughes is conflating the bush-foraging behaviour of settlers with that of armed convicts. Most settlers were bushmen, some convicts became lawless bushrangers. Both groups indulged in extrajudicial killing, knowing they would not be prosecuted. However, it is true that Murray approved Arthur’s unprecedented request to despatch from the UK and arm more than a thousand convicts as a paramilitary group against Aboriginal resistance. Murray to Arthur, 5th November 1830: You have proposed , as a means of mitigating the evil complained of, that an encreased number of convicts should be sent out to Van Diemen’s Land …your wishes will, if possible, be complied with.41. Therefore, we can conclude that the Plomley ‘clash’ dataset is generally limited to those incidents where there was damage to property, or some other ‘outrage’ where breathless settlers could vent their concern against ‘savages’ in a form of one-sided propaganda where truth – the factual basis of the conflict - was a casualty. In this sense, each reported ‘clash’ represents a racial collision where damage to property was often involved and, in some cases. Injury and death on either side. Massacres, they are another dimensional consideration in some contested space such as Tasmania, more circumscribed than ‘clashes’, for which we can turn to Jane Morrison’s peer researched Tasmanian frontier conflict website,42 Lyndall Ryan’s Newcastle University website, and the Historical Records of Australia, all of whom present us with detailed lists culled from the extensive archives. Assessing the ‘clash’ evidence How, then, should we approach the Plomley clash evidence? If we examine his dataset more closely, we find it difficult to determine any inherent pattern to the clashes over a contested 13 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide space, other than they almost all occur in prime agricultural land along the midlands and east to the coast and that, by 1828, they had drastically escalated, causing British landowners to demand largescale armed intervention. This should not surprise us. Settlers were avariciously pursuing prime grazing land for their livestock, land that was expropriated from the Palawa. Plomley attempts to help us reduce this complexity by providing two dimensional maps of clashes by period: 1803 – 1823, 1824, 1825, 1826, 1827, Jan – Jun 1828, Jul – Dec 1828, Jan – Jun 1829, Jul – Dec 1829, Jan – Jun 1830, Jul – Dec 1830, 1831. These maps provide a picture of clashes marked by location for different periods to help us visualize the nature of territorial invasion across Tasmania. Do the maps succeed? Yes, in that they show a similar pattern of conflict events (‘clashes’) across all maps. No, because the data bundles are for unequal time periods, therefore not directly comparable in terms of the number of clashes. Determining a ‘clash’ pattern Because the Plomley maps are self-similar in the geographical disposition of clashes, we do not see a wave of clash events spreading across the island. Rather, we notice that a persistent area of prized land along the midlands was contested almost from the beginning of the invasion in 1803. This should not surprise us. The midlands had been turned into a garden estate over millennia by Aboriginal people using firestick farming to provide an easy hunting ground for kangaroos and wallabies, their main protein food source, apart from shellfish along the coast. It was the Palawa supermarket and encouraged an easy, ambulatory lifestyle across country, singing the land. They could not conceive of a smash and grab raid by invaders arriving by ship intent on easy plunder. Their world would soon end. Ironically, the fertile grasslands of the Tasmanian midlands, so prized by British sheep farmers that they wanted to prevent Aboriginal trespass, were mostly created through Palawa fire stick farming. Rhys Jones writes: Aboriginal people used fire as a sophisticated tool to continually manage and modify the landscape. At certain times of the year, Aboriginal people set fire to the bush to encourage new growth or ‘green pick’, which subsequently provided productive feeding grounds where browsing animals would mass to exploit the fresh shoots. The higher concentration of animals made them convenient targets for Aboriginal people to hunt and kill. [...] Long term, Aboriginal fire management can still be seen today in the healthy coastal plains of the West Coast and the open grasslands of the Midlands Valley, an area now favoured by sheep farmers.43 In summary, Plomley’s concept of ‘clashes’ is restrictive. Not all ‘clashes’ were benign. And not all clashes originate from ‘settlers’, surely a euphemism for land grabbers; non-landowners also cut a swathe through Palawa society by kidnapping and mistreating Aboriginal women, all drawn together by their commonly shared motive of 14 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide exploitative behaviour, of greed and lust, of what they could get away with under Britain’s one-sided laws. If a ‘clash’ resulted in murder, none – not one - of these wanton killings were ever punished unless they were carried out by an Aboriginal; the white perpetrators were a grab-bag of British people collectively called settlers, but included military, kangaroo hunters, stockkeepers, landowners, sealers, convicts, timber-getters, and whalers. Sealers operated along the islands to the north and east. Plomley does not include offshore islands in his maps of clashes, which are restricted to clashes between settlers and the Palawa on the main island of Tasmania. Why did ‘clashes’ occur? The question of categorial agency. Can the Plomley list of clashes give us any insight into why they happened? Or what we can learn, surely of more overriding importance in our contemporary age of anxiety where we seem less able than ever to manage ever present threats and more inclined to become defensively inward looking? Yes, to some degree we can learn. The colonist’s motivations were complex but can be reduced to fear and greed. The behavioural constraints on exterminatory policies and practices were few; Britain Inc or Pax Britannica was driven by a class-based system of inherited privilege, and for a while the colour red painted the globe. The red slowly faded in a march of folly. The exploitation was unsustainable for as long as Britain’s capacity to exploit petered out. In Tasmania, the resources were prized timber like cedar, Huon pine, kangaroos, whales, seals, swans, shell middens for lime, Angasi oysters, and within a few tens of years they all became a ‘tragedy of the commons’.44 If the resources were not coveted for their commercial value they were destroyed as unwanted vermin: the thylacine, the Palawa. The lesson is that we are all one, us, other cultures, the environment. We cannot harm one without damaging the other. The effect may be delayed but it will happen. What can we learn? So: whose was the superior culture? Why must we take until there is nothing left to take? We have the example of iron ore mining in the Pilbara. What seems inexhaustible will, in time, be exhausted. Must our descendants then scavenge in ancient rubbish tips to salvage metal scraps? We did not learn then; we do not learn now. The Palawa became collateral damage for our insatiable greed. We, our emerging society, may follow. Unsustainability inevitably leads to collapse; it is why cultures and cohorts rise and fall. 15 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Therefore, if we are to make any observations about the Plomley statistics, we would question the restrictive nature of what he calls a ‘clash’ , the territorial limitations, and that important dimensions of ethnic cleansing are excluded: female abduction, killings, sexual predation, and the demographic impact caused by loss of hunting grounds. It is easy to see why. If the basis of a ‘clash’ was an outraged newspaper article, the Aboriginal perspective was usually written out of social media and the official despatches. Clash implies a collision of some kind, usually between opposing groups who come into brief conflict. No, for the Palawa it was a guerrilla war, fighting for survival, desperate to protect their country from invasion. We are left with the indelible impression that Britain regarded Palawa society as mere fauna, to be removed as feral pests if they resisted the occupation of their land, an outcome that Murray bleakly foretold.45 Analytical methodology We would expect that these clashes followed the allocation of land grants as ‘settlers’ took over Palawa land. Plomley thought so too. He provides us with a time series of maps showing the erosion of the ‘favourite haunts of the Natives’, who did not accede quietly to their dispossession. They fought through hit and run guerrilla tactics in an increasingly one-sided struggle against superior numbers of British who were pouring into the colony under accelerated immigration schemes, often subsidised. Plomley provides us with a series of land grant maps from 1813 to 1823, broadly derived from Morgan,46 that show there are two main areas of land alienation, to the north around Launceston, and the south around Hobart. But land allocation is not the same as settlement, although they overlap. Based upon his own research, Plomley also sets out two maps of settlement for the periods 1804 to 1818, and 1819 to 1828. Interestingly, the pattern of clashes most nearly resembles Plomley’s settlement maps rather than those for land alienation. Plomley is not rigorous in tagging the clash events with numbers killed or injured. Nor does he attempt to tabulate the incidents of sexual predation, or kidnapping, or deaths from introduced disease. It is a difficult exercise, at best. What we do know is that there was an estimated number of Palawa pre-contact – perhaps 5,000 or so - and a close to actual number of full-blood Palawa – around 200 - at the time the survivors were rounded up in an ethnic cleansing programme under Arthur’s orders and relocated to Wybalenna where they ‘pined and died’ with a fearful rate of mortality, out of sight and, we may presume, out of mind as ‘settlers’ went about their work of making money from stolen land, a practice that included Arthur and his cronies.47 GA Robinson was different: he made money out of ethnic cleansing and stolen land. 16 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, between 1828 and 1836 Lieutenant Colonel Arthur bought 15,048 acres of land, for a total price of £9,765 and in 1833 he had lent £14,000 on mortgage to settlers, at an interest rate of 10%. When he left Van Diemen’s Land, he arranged in 1839 to sell nearly all of his land for about £50,000, which he lent out for an expected annual income of £5,000, or £250,000 pa in today’s money.48 Arthur profited from the enormous increase in land value during his term, due in greater part to his removal of the Aboriginal problem. When he returned to Britain, a grateful Government promoted him to Colonel and K.C.H. for services rendered to the Crown. For the pattern of early Tasmanian settlement, we note from Shirley Franks that: Geography had largely limited settlement to the two ports, Hobart Town, and Launceston, and to the broad belt of plain country between. Generally, the two great river systems of the Derwent and Tamar formed the basis for settlement, as the settlers spread themselves along the Derwent, the Jordan, the Clyde, the Ouse, and the Dee in the South, and in the North along the North and South Esk, the Meander, the Lake, the Elizabeth and the Macquarie Rivers. These areas provided the type of savannah country so suitable for sheep, especially fine wool production. 49 Lyndall Ryan elaborates further: Van Diemen’s Land was opened up for pastoral settlement to free settlers with capital. The colonial population dramatically increased from 7,185 in 1821 to 24, 279 in 1830 (Rimmer, 1969:349; Hartwell, 1954:118). 6,000 free settlers took up land grants along rivers on the Eastern Midland Plain between Hobart and Launceston and along the Meander River west from Launceston. Supported by at least 5,000 convict stockkeepers and shepherds, they established sheep runs to produce fine wool for the textile mills in northern England. The entire area became known as the “Settled Districts” A further 60,000 hectares were granted to the Van Diemen’s Land Company in the north-west. The colony was transformed into a rapidly expanding wool export economy of nearly one million sheep, occupying about 30% of the island (Hartwell, 1954:118; Ryan, 1996:83-85). This area also contained five Aboriginal tribes and at least one other in the north-west, with a combined population in 1823 estimated at about 2,000.50 In a separate paper, the author sub-types Palawa deaths over time – targeted killing, disease, starvation, kidnapping, loss of resources, sexual predation - and concludes that there is no mystery in how an entire race of people disappeared in little more than a generation. The loss of 50 or less women of childbearing age per year will result in calamitous population loss within thirty years.51 Could sexual predation - with a corresponding collapse in procreation - have been the smoking gun for massive Palawa intragenerational depopulation, where there was a catastrophic fall 17 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide in births over a few decades? With limited demographic data, is it a hypothesis we can test? Perhaps it can be modelled? A model would allow some verification against known facts. Clearly, if there were no births, then the entire Indigenous population would disappear within a generation or so, depending on co-morbidities such as reduced lifespan through poor diet, general induced ill-health, sexually transmitted disease such as gonorrhoea, and the imposed effects of dispossession and targeted racial repression. What if there were catastrophically reduced births due to indiscriminate murder, sexual predation, female kidnapping, miscegenation, STDs, infertility, genocidal displacement, loss of territory, starvation, homelessness, and destruction of family groups along with their polity and moiety, their cultural traditions and memories? How might we calculate the demographic effect, given the variables? Can a potentially falsifiable demographic model explain intragenerational population collapse for a defined group, say Aboriginal society and all its different people, the Kabi, Palawa, and so on? Calculation: We wish to determine the demographic effect of a falling number of Aboriginal women of childbearing age over some period t and how this might compare with the impact of Lemkinian extermination through direct killing. If we divide the Palawa depopulation s-curve into thirds, each third is called a tertile. We are particularly interested in the shape of the s-curve: how the value of r varies over time within the standard logistic function; and the value of r in the second tertile when r had its maximum value. We can calculate r if we know the population (P) in the beginning and end of some period t, where dP/ dt = rP, and P(t) = P0 e rt If the overall value of r between 1803 and 1833 is calculated to be around -12% pa then we can hypothesize an approximate tertile distribution for r, say: 9%, 18%, 9%. These tertiles correspond to the time periods: 1803 – 1813; 1814 – 1823; 1824 – 1833. Suppose this is the total Palawa population loss by tertile: 1000; 4000; 600 for which the tertile depopulation distribution is 17%, 70%, 10%. For the moment, ignore the population effects of the first tertile. Assume zero births within the second tertile, that is, a female born at the beginning of the second tertile will not reach reproductive age until halfway into the third tertile. Assume half the population in the second tertile were women and of these, a quarter were able to reproduce. Assume linear depopulation per second tertile. Therefore a 10% annual reduction in such potentially child-bearing women is a mere 50 per year over the ten-year tertile, or a modest one per week across the island. The reduction can be caused by removing the women from the reproductive pool by various means: killing, trauma, kidnapping, loss of stable family groups, disease, sexual predation and so on. We conclude that the loss of women capable of childbearing had a catastrophic effect on Palawa depopulation, greater than the effects of killing and disease, significant though they 18 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide were, and may explain the heretofore mystery of how the fullblood Palawa became extinct so rapidly. And not just the Palawa, when we remember that over 90% of Aboriginal people across Australia ‘disappeared’ between 1788 and 1911. Sexual predation now becomes a potent smoking gun, one that is identified in the context of Lemkinian genocide. What does this mean for our preconceptions? We should urgently move beyond the simplistic analysis of killings and massacres, the lingua franca of violence, and allow for the other vectoral agencies and modalities of targeted depopulation, for it is only by expanding our analytical net that we will find purchase in our more destructive normalized behaviours, those that can erode our professed values. It is tempting to dismiss this human rights catastrophe as ‘survival of the fittest’ – indeed Darwin did just that on writing of his visit in 183652 – but we would be wrong. This was no natural law where the strong supplant the weak, it was an avoidable disaster caused by simple acquisitive greed. If we consider such catastrophes as an aberration, we should remember that we are now living through another extinction event of our own manufacture, implacably rolling forward on the back of anthropogenic global warming. We are not so removed from our murderous antecedents after all. Can we revisit Plomley’s dataset, using it as a reference point for a metastudy? That is the purpose of this paper. We will set out as an objective to develop a time-lapsed geospatial map of Plomley-identified ‘clashes’ and determine if this reveals a dynamic pattern to the nature of the conflict. Perhaps it will also show us how avoidable the Lemkinian process outcome was, with a different British Government mindset. It may even give us some insight into how we can choose our future, one that is more mindful of the costs of what we do in the name of shortterm economics and ideology that subordinate humanitarian and environmental concerns. Summary This paper provides the reader with a dynamic 4D map of ‘clashes’ in Tasmania between 1803 and 1833, using a normalized Plomley dataset as a type reference. The reader will find the executable MP4 geospatial time-lapsed model in Conclusions on page 30. The author concludes that a similar representation may be useful for understanding complex conflict narratives in other Australian colonies, using techniques of animated data visualization.53 Hypothesis Did forced ethnic displacement – characterized by Plomley ‘clashes’ lead to the destruction of the Palawa as a group, in whole or part? That is the hypothesis we will test, using Plomley’s empirical data and other sources. 19 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Many researchers have engaged in the task of identifying clashes and massacres in colonial Tasmania, among them Plomley, Clements, Ryan, and Morrison. Such carefully exhumed historical events are a generally verifiable marker of societal conflict but are incomplete in clarifying a pattern of behavioural abnormality, the type invoked by Lemkinian genocide. Whether that type sociopathology is generally recognized by our society reflects more on apprehended bias than testable evidence. Brian Plomley ‘clash’ dataset The data visualization dimensions for Plomley’s clashes are: number of clashes by GPS location by year. The MP4 executable file in Conclusions clearly shows the patterned and calibrated process of Palawa dispossession through an animation that takes about three minutes to play through. The effect is sobering. Plomley’s primary sources are: Knopwood, Colonial Secretary’s Office, Hobart Town Gazette, Colonial Times, Launceston Advertiser, Tasmanian and Port Dalrymple Advertiser, Van Diemens Land Company records, and Historical Records of Australia. Plomley’s ‘clash’ data may be considered at the lower bound of enumerated actual clashes. For Plomley, a ‘clash’ was some incident reported in a newspaper, for example, a Palawa attack on a stock keeper’s hut, go away, or the 1804 Risdon Cove incident when Lt. Moore indiscriminately slaughtered a large number of people – no one knows exactly how many – among a considerable group who were peacefully engaged on a kangaroo hunt on their farmed land near Hobart.54 For Plomley, a ‘clash’ may or may not include a massacre, either against whites, or against blacks. That is, the canonical 55 granularity of Plomley’s individual clash events is broad, the metadata inconsistent, and the real number of ‘clashes’ is underreported and incomplete. Nevertheless it is a start point. These ‘clashes’ would generally be associated with pathological psychosocial morbidities such as unlawful killings, rapes, abductions, and introduced disease, all of which led to what we now call Lemkinian genocide within a contested space where asymmetric force imposed the authority of the oppressor. But Plomley type ‘clashes’ restrict the instantiating events to the almost mundane where grisly realities lurk at the margins instead of centre stage. It raises the question: what is psychopathic behaviour? We may think we know the answer when our criminal justice system deals with index crimes like murder. But what happens when an entire society is infected, if that is the right verb, with some normative destructive behavioural pathology? At this scale, our system of laws breaks down. Which may be why we are so inept at handling global warming. The impact is so large and systemic that we are unable to cope as a group. There is no Statistical Diagnostic Manual for large cohorts or cultures. But there should be. The reader will therefore forgive my indulgence that genocide – as a hypothesis – can be stated outright. Of course, it is not beyond debate, and we must present the evidence in some 20 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide ordered manner and then make a reasoned assessment. The 4D rendering then becomes a visual tool, like watching weather statistics or economic summaries on the nightly news. Or the progress of extermination. The author proposes an extended approach for mapping other contested places that saw the dispossession of Aboriginal people in successive waves of displacive pastoral expansionism across Australia between 1788 and 1928, the time of the Coniston massacre in the Northern Territory. Each datapoint has normalized attributes or metadata: who, what, when, and geographical location. Tasmania will be the place we start and Plomley will be our initial guide. We will introduce the Plomley dataset, make findings and observations, and draw conclusions that are vividly summarized in a dynamic MP4 model. Nicholas Clements ‘conflict’ dataset Clements extends and deepens the Plomley dataset, using a broader range of sources. Lyndall Ryan ‘massacre’ dataset We will draw upon the University of Newcastle’s Australian Frontier Conflicts dataset 56 to map their geospatial massacre data for Tasmania. The data visualization dimensions for Tasmanian (and other) massacres are: number of Aboriginal people killed by GPS location by year. Each event or datapoint can be expanded into its metadata and historical supporting details, including primary sources. Ryan defines a massacre as six or more killed in a single event. But it immediately raises the question: what is an event? Can it occur over several days? If the event played out across a wide territory, can the GPS location have precise meaning? And what if one or two people were killed at any one time, but the overall event saw the killing of a much larger number, would this be a massacre or a series of related homicidal skirmishes? For this reason, the list of Ryan’s massacres may be underreported or incomplete. We will assume, however, that they are representative and that we can therefore induce a pattern of massacres from verified instances.57 Another way to examine the effect of massacres, however they may be defined, is through a sum over history where we consider outcomes across a defined period within a geographically circumscribed area. If more than 90% of the pre-contact Aboriginal population ‘disappeared’ between 1803 and 1911, where did they go? George Robinson asked the same question from a different perspective: If the British colonists took Aboriginal land, where were they to go? The MP4 executable file in the earlier URL on page x clearly shows the patterned and calibrated process of Palawa dispossession through an animation that takes about three minutes to play through. The effect is sobering. Jane Morrison’s massacre dataset xxxx that has been under development since 1971 also provides a visual mapping, using Google Maps, of massacres across Australia, but it is less easy to navigate. 21 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Jane Morrison’s ‘massacre dataset Summary In the Appendix we will re-examine the fraught question of Tasmanian genocide and, using the evidence of our 4D maps along with depopulation modelling, form testable conclusions. 22 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Observations and findings Observations The Plomley ‘clash’ data has inconsistent granularity or metadata; who, what, when, where, and how many killed or injured. A Plomley ‘clash’ has inconsistent weighting. A major incident involving murder has the same significance as a small robbery. The Plomley ‘clash’ selection criterion is, did the incident get reported in a newspaper or CSO, so the actual number of incidents may be underreported. A ‘reported ‘clash’ is usually one-sided. Each dataset instance generally reports a ‘clash’ based upon a newspaper article that writes about some outrage, as it was often called in colonial times, a Palawa hit and run act against dwellings or livestock. How else were Indigenous people to express their resistance when the British Government was unwilling to recognize their ownership of the land? These newspaper reports of a ‘clash’ usually showed apprehended bias, verging on one-sided propaganda. The ‘lawful’ settlers were consistently portrayed as the aggrieved party; the Palawa were savages. The other side of the frontier war was rarely portrayed. Nevertheless, the Plomley list of ‘clashes’ can be used as a type reference dataset that we know is understated by at least an order of magnitude. We can expect that whatever pattern is revealed in the dynamic analysis of the Plomley dataset is merely consolidated and reinforced with access to more data, although this hypothesis has yet to be tested. The question of granularity and relevance Can Plomley’s 1992 dataset be recreated with better granularity, and wider reach? Clements thought so. He expanded his sources to include xxx. But his dataset shows significant type exclusions such as female abduction. Therefore, we still get an incomplete picture, as he readily admits. A better definition of a ‘clash’ might be an incident involving white and black in the context of a contested space, where there was killing or injury or constant armed harassment or female abduction or sexual predation or wilfully causing loss of life through introduced disease and imposed conditions of captivity that were inimical to life. However, we conclude that, with all its limitations, the Plomley dataset can be used as a type reference to calibrate our understanding of how to approach some bounded conflict domain. In this contemporary time of self-interest, identity politics, and multicultural pluralism, this paper uses modern analytical tools that let us examine in some forensic detail the contested Tasmanian space. 23 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Our critical examination may suggest a template to help us better understand our emerging conflict with the biosphere. How do we change our normative behaviour from competition to cooperation? There may be a way, but it won’t be easy. Findings This URL provides an executable 4D geospatial map of Tasmanian ‘clashes’ identified by Plomley from official reports between 1803 and 1829 inclusive. https://www.academia.edu/video/6jQ5vj Can beliefs corrupt values? In the end, or perhaps from the beginning, the British believed the Palawa were inferior, almost fauna, to be pushed aside for the advancement of Empire. And if the Palawa resisted, which they eventually did after two decades trying to accommodate the invaders, they resorted to desperate guerrilla warfare, while Britain believed the Palawa could be destroyed like feral pests or vermin, at worst, or enemy combatants at best. What are normalised ‘values’ and ‘beliefs’? How do they interact? What is their effect on group agency? Values: the worth or importance of something; the accepted principles or standards of a person or group. Beliefs: acceptance of truth of something; a statement, principle, or doctrine that a person or group accepts as true. Ideology: a closely organized system of beliefs, values, and ideas forming the basis of social, economic, or political philosophy or program; a set of beliefs, values, and opinions that shapes the way a person or a group such as a social class thinks, acts, and understands the world.58 What are a society’s values? Have they changed over time since Australian ethnic cleansing was being carried out in the name of Britain? Are they primarily a product of culture, a set of rules for how we may choose to act as a society in different specific circumstances? Or are they prescribed by normative ethics? Or behavioural adaptation? Are they entirely anthropocentric? Are there ideal values against which our actions can be measured? Do values reflect our evolving concept of sovereignty and social order? What role do values have in a social contract between the involved parties, typically the ‘state’ and civilians? Do our values – innate, imposed, or emergent – drive history’s events, or do events determine our values? Is there a hierarchy of values, where compassion and equitability are subsumed by economics and geopolitics, as they were for Imperial Britain and its class-based culture of hereditary privilege? Are events outside our control, an act of Nature, or are they the result of our collective actions? If we assume that some values derive from a social structure, then what social structure should apply if we wish to optimise our values in some direction? And if there are many alternative social structures, are the corresponding values incompatible? Is there a typology of values? For the interested reader, these are the questions we’ll address in a companion paper.59 In summary, if we believe in self-interest, the rules of owning property, and that other races and ecologies are subordinate to our pursuit of power and capital and material reward, then our values, including unsustainable exploitation will reflect those beliefs. It was righteous genocide without consequence. Britain had God on its side. Or at least, God had been co-opted into British servitude. Colonisation became a virtuous cause. 24 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Britain professed to have Christian values and believed that if they coerced the Palawa into accepting Christian teaching they might absorb them into indentured servitude, a lower class that knew its place. It didn’t work. Above all else, the Palawa simply wanted their land, something that Britain would not cede. And above all else, Britain’s god was money and capital, to which Indigenous rights were forfeit. We do much the same today, pushing aside the environment for a short-term economic return. We listen to science when we confront a novel coronavirus but dismiss science when it comes to the emerging crisis of global warming. Therefore, yes, we might believe in something, say ‘a fair go for all’, but if we do not practice that belief because we value self-interest more, it is a question of ‘do as I say, not as I do’. Or we may organize all life into sub-classes with humanity at the top and declare ‘the subclasses have no soul [therefore] they can be exploited, slaughtered even’, for which it is a small extra step through Darwinian pseudoscience to classify the races of humanity, with the flawed conclusion that the designated lower classes can be exploited as part of the ‘natural’ order. Hyam picks up the story: Reared in a strongly hierarchical society, the British arranged the races of the world in a hierarchy too.60 Consequently, we should not be surprised by Britain’s rabid march across the bodies of the Palawa towards empty capitalism. Britain’s type agency was true to its behavioural phenotype. Britain’s hypocrisy was that simple greed - a belief or motivation towards self-interest that wore the clothes of Imperialism - outweighed its professed humanitarian values. Barbara Tuchman called it a ‘march of folly’. My own belief is that all life is precious and that we should aspire to do no harm. It is why I don’t eat meat: I eschew animal cruelty – the very concept of slaughterhouses and abattoirs conjures up images of inhumanity - and I am frighteningly aware that the livestock agribusiness contributes to significant habitat loss, water pollution, degraded soil, and climate change that is driving a mass extinction event within our generation. But the world is on a different course; our destructive agency is accelerating, global warming is reaching a tipping point, and humanity has grown like a cancer; there can only be one outcome unless we change course, which – based on the evidence - seems unlikely, at least in Australia unless our behaviour is curbed by tariffs and other penalties, the price of noncompliance with recently more urgent global action led by a Biden administration in the United States. Australia can help solve the problem or be part of the problem. We will assert that, if beliefs – including self-entitlement, ideology, economics, private wealth, and the accumulation and protection of property and capital – determine the rule-based shape of a society, its structure and order, its trajectory through time, then it is values (rights-based meta rules or rules about rules) that can modify our rule-based vectorial momentum. Such meta-rules have more effect if they are formally specified, we suggest, in a Constitution or a Constitutionally recognized Bill of Rights. Values reflect beliefs but at a different level of abstraction. It is when sometimes irrational beliefs or poorly thought through statutes and regulations overtake considered – but uncodified - values that we have a spaghettified and potentially unwieldy rule-based order, assuming we can ignore the myriad inconsistencies of statute, common and equity law that require a cabal of lawyers to interpret. Values are – or should be – contextually independent, whereas beliefs often reflect apprehended bias. 25 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide If rules reflect beliefs rather than values, they may embed disorder. Similarly, if rules embed belief and values, the rule-based order becomes more confused, requiring further rule amendments (statutes and regulations) to address introduced inconsistencies. For example, we might have a rule: drive on the left-hand side of the road unless directed otherwise. The meta-rule (if it exists) might be: if we are to protect human life and the right to drive, we must standardize on which side of the road we drive, that is, a meta-rule that we humans have the right to life and security, excluding for the moment a similar right that might be expressed for animals and ecosystems. In the forgoing example consider the consequences of an insufficient rule, meta or otherwise, consequences that are then expected rather than unintended: So many animals die on our roads that we morbidly accept the situation as ‘roadkill’; and the road system has so overtaken our means of transportation that we accept the consequential damage to ecosystems. It may be unsustainable; it is certainly corrosive on social capital. All around us, the familiar certainties of life are becoming more unpredictable, evidence of an increasingly unstable global biophysical system. In 2022 Australia, emerging from this instability, we have a looming energy crisis, a climate crisis, a food crisis, a global security crisis, a cost of living crisis, a lingering pandemic crisis, a housing crisis, an inflationary economic crisis, a potential recessionary crisis, an inequality crisis, a flooding (and heatwave) crisis, a small government crisis, a debt crisis.61 Can we link these crises back to a fundamental originating agency: the punctuated collapse of our values62 and the disequilibrium – the societal fault lines - that can result? Can we adapt through negative feedback mechanisms to recover conditions of life that are more predictable and sustainable, back towards homeostasis in the way the body manages to maintain its extraordinarily complex biochemical processes,63 that is, until a viral or traumatic breach overcomes our defences in the same way that our species is causing a hastening collapse of the Earth’s biosphere? Do value-driven behaviours shape repeatable processes? The antipodean dispossessory process was driven by Anglo-Celtic racism, Britain’s belief that it was superior and could use asymmetric force in pursuit of its territorial and economic ambitions. It resulted in Lemkinian genocide, a derivative word that many historians remain unwilling to use because of its emotive connotations. It presents us with an ethical divide that has split us since, a societal flaw, a schism, a fracture of our values: the priority of economics and capitalist ideology over humanitarian and environmental concerns, where greed and – yes – violent predation left curiosity and compassion as orphans. Nature and Indigenous culture are not museum pieces, to be objectified as artefacts; they have a living spirit. And we are part of it. That is what we must relearn, something that Aboriginal people have always known. Towards a learning society To learn or relearn, to grow and adapt, we must ask questions. We must challenge patterned ways of seeing, and question our modes of perception, our ideological biases. 26 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide For me, I’m an idealist. I’m drawn to Fichtean philosophy, and, more recently, Weyl and Leibniz. Riemann anchors my thought in how we model reality. Could I recognize my limitations through self-reflection? It’s difficult to confront what we cannot objectively measure. How do ‘we’ understand our collective behavioural pathology, assuming we recognize the disorder? Are our values lacking? Is our inherited rule-based order suspect? Where do ‘we’ begin and end? What does ‘we’ mean? Or ‘begin’, or end? There are fundamental puzzles at the bottom of Nature that we still don’t understand: Space? And time? Or matter and energy? Consider the conundrums of quantum entanglement at a distance; or dark matter and dark energy. Or consciousness. Or how life is created. What we do know is the interconnectedness of everything we see. We are all equal. We are all one. Our bodies - what we call our ‘self’ - do not finish with our skin; they extend outwards with the reach of our tools and capacity for thought, and inwards with our microbiome; our atoms are billions of years old; our identity depends on memory that can be fallible. Who are we really? Are we now mediated by technology? Are we becoming more diffuse, smeared across the environment and social media. Part of a living ecosystem? Part of our smartphone? Are we no more than organized information? It is our sense of ‘selfhood’ that is suspect. Most of our behaviour is shaped by nature (genetics) and nurture (epigenetics and memetics). Our cells are constantly being replaced but are patrolled by our immune system that can sometimes fail to identify ‘you’. We incorrectly think of our future self as different from that of the past. Our sense of ‘free will’ can be predetermined, with action able to precede conscious thought, or be affected by conditioning and bias without which we might be overwhelmed with stimuli. Yet our derivative legal framework of crime and punishment depends upon ‘mens rea’ or guilty mind, with index crimes receiving the most attention from our justice system. Where we begin and end is not so simple. Are we responsible for our actions or are we not? Can we have more than a guilty mind, but also a guilty act? Yes. Actus reus is commonly defined as a criminal act that was the result of voluntary bodily movement. This describes a physical activity that harms another person or damages property. Anything from a physical assault or murder to the destruction of public property would qualify as an actus reus.64 What happens when actus reus is normalised, when an entire society shows a behavioural psychopathy? Our system of laws proves inept when it comes to state-sponsored mass violence, when the arbiter of the law is also the perpetrator of its abuse. For Aboriginal people, identity and culture was wholly bound up with country and kin, the need to care for the land and family so they could look after you in return. It is something our cash and carry culture seems to have forgotten with accumulating waste and suffocating cities the result, along with the casual indifference to ecocide and human rights violations. Over there, we say, doesn’t directly involve us. But our extended environment is an extension of ourselves, like arms and legs we cannot always see but without which we cannot properly function. 27 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide That is the pity and that is our failure. Until we care for the Earth as part of us, the divide will remain. And a nagging whisper that something is missing from our lives. Behavioural failures have consequences The British sense of racial superiority led to Lemkinian repression, something we have been denying since. It is now leading us into global warming, a take now, pay later society that will soon enough have to pay the price, there is always a price, when we squandered the Earth’s biosphere and its resources for a brief economic return. Our descendants will become a stolen generation, and not just one generation, indefinitely. Where once we confronted genocide, now it is ecocide, both rooted in collectively shared behavioural morbidities, what Hardin presciently called ‘the tragedy of the commons’ over fifty years ago., where individuals acting in their own interest can cause group agency that is antipathetic to individual well-being. The pressing issue for us remains, the consequences of taking beyond renewability. No one is listening or, if they are, it is with an ear to competitive advantage, however transient. The problem is and has always been our capitalist compulsion to exploit unsustainably, selfinterest over common interest. The unhappy result is extinction on a rolling scale. Humanity has become a cancer. Behavioural science tells us how humans will behave as a group, as a rule-based order, but it is our values that will collectively define us as individuals and as a society. In the third decade of the third millennium, it is not too late for us to learn. Or as a species, we may be unfit to survive. What happened in Tasmania must be a lesson for us all. The shape of history Why should we care about our shameful colonial history? After all, it was a long time ago. Surely things have changed. Must exploitation always be so and collapse therefore inevitable as unsustainability extracts its price? Well, no. In November 2020, the editors of the Scientific American reminded us: Systemic inequality, injustice and racism resulting from centuries of colonialism and slavery provide the scaffolding of the global economy, which was built not only by the ingenuity and entrepreneurship of a few but also the abuse of many.... Across nations, inequality correlates with worse environmental indicators – probably because the marginalised often lack the clout to fend off polluting facilities, from which the wealthy are more likely to profit....Climate activists have long argued that saving the Earth and fighting for justice and equality are one and the same. That conviction undergirds the Green New Deal, a package of social, environmental, and economic reforms advocated by progressive U.S. politicians. Ensuring that this vision and its international counterpart, the Global Green New Deal, are transformed into reality will require sustained pressure from social movements.65 Just as we have a United Nations Charter of Human Rights, one not yet adopted into domestic law by Australia, we also need a Charter of Earth Rights, what Prince Charles aptly calls the Terra Carta. 28 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide With recognition comes action, not always, but usually; conversely, action invariably requires purposefulness and intentionality. We can choose not to recognize the rights of the biosphere to our own common loss. Australia is now on notice. In our formative history we condoned genocide in the interest of short-term economic development when we should have condemned it. Our exploitative behaviour has now turned to the biosphere and for much the same reasons as in the past. Time is running out. Our politicians must respond meaningfully, or they too will be reviled by history and by our children. Can we change the past? Revisionist historians sometimes try. Can we choose our future? We must if we are to survive. Yet humanity seems to have a poor collective memory, or if it remembers, asserts ‘it had nothing to do with me, so why remind me.’ We still allow the sale of junk food that will cause degenerative diseases. We still allow scammers to prevail on the vulnerable. We still allow increasing inequality. Free from independent oversight, we still allow corruption in our political class. If we accept that Lemkinian repression happened in Australia, we dismiss it as an ‘unintended consequence’ of brutal dispossession. If anything, cultural amnesia allows us to repeat past mistakes: environmental degradation, species loss, the erosion of social capital, financial predation; we now stare at a long tail of Indigenous disadvantage but tut-tut that nothing can be done, not Constitutional recognition, not using the criminal justice system as an instrument of racial oppression, not compassion. Consider a recent calamity, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis caused by avaricious American financial institutions. The United States Government bailed out the banks to prevent their collapse. Many of the banks, in turn, gave themselves a large bonus. No banker went to gaol. The Federal Reserve encouraged the huge growth in junk property bonds. The Rating Agencies gave the bonds AAA status, so they could continue receiving large commissions from the banks. The people who suffered were the millions who lost their homes through foreclosure. The Collateralised Debt Obligations became worthless. Therefore, we can predict that as climate change pressures mount on the global economy over the next century, those with capital or influence may retreat to terrestrial or off-world enclaves, while the rest of humanity suffers a lingering existential assault. Climate crisis: 2020 was joint hottest year ever recorded. Global heating continued unabated despite Covid lockdowns, with record Arctic wildfires and Atlantic tropical storms. Last year had the joint highest global temperatures on record. Only 2016 was as hot, but that year saw a natural warmth-boosting El Niño weather event. Temperature data released by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service showed that the past six years have been the hottest six on record. “Despite the absence of the cyclical boost of El Niño to global temperatures [we are] getting dangerously close to the 1.5 °C limit,” says climate scientist Dave Reay. “Unless the global economic recovery from the nightmares of 2020 is a green one, the future of many millions of people around the world looks black indeed.”66 29 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Conclusions The 4D time lapsed geospatial rendering of Plomley clashes in Tasmania between 1803 and 1829 shows a pattern that supports – but does not verify - the hypothesis of genocide by forced ethnic displacement. https://www.academia.edu/video/6jQ5vj For verifying arguments, we must turn to a companion work: The British Political and Economic Uses of Tasmanian Genocide. This dataset dependent pattern is a start, but it is incomplete. Incompleteness leads to a faulty collective historical memory and cultural amnesia. It leads to forgetting. The act of forgetting or unremembering does not mean that what we forget or try to forget does not exist, although successive Governments and settler societies attempted just that, through killing, introduced disease, cultural and mental destruction, detention facilities for remnant populations, repressive legislation, and intragenerational displacement. Nevertheless, the pattern of clashes by GPS coordinates over time becomes a rendering of our hypothesis that violent invasion led to unconstrained intragenerational Lemkinian depopulation across an expanding Tasmanian frontier until few Palawa remained, from which we conclude that more datapoints subtyped by agency and geographic area would further instantiate the pattern with finer-grained detail. Conversely, the model or pattern of clashes is falsified if we find a significant number of datapoint outliers that suggest the clash events did not follow the expansion of ‘settlement’. We have not discovered such outliers although we have determined that the categorial agencies of depopulation – killing, imposed disease, abduction - varied by geographic area according to the type of resource exploitation, from kangaroo shooting to exclusionary stockkeeping to seal and whale and timber exploitation to people trafficking, sexual enslavement and labour racketeering, each of which shaped the type of Lemkinian event inflicted on a local Aboriginal population by British predation. As a nuanced expression of British genocide in Tasmania, it is a subject we examine in Part 3. Lemkinian vectorial agency ( primary to quaternary) varied by Tasmanian geographic area and dispossessory phase. Primary Armed, invasive colonisation → displacive exploitation Lemkinian repression/ racism → killing, abduction, displacement, sexual predation, depopulation (Invasive colonisation and Lemkinian repression are codeterminate) Secondary Pastoral exploitation → exclusionary stockkeeping → killing, abduction, displacement Kangaroo exploitation → killing, abduction, displacement Seal exploitation → killing, abduction, Whale exploitation → killing, abduction Timber exploitation → killing, abduction Human trafficking → abduction, Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) Tertiary Abduction → sexual enslavement, labour racketeering, forced detention, imposed disease Displacement → Breakdown of family structures, psychological stress, starvation, guerrilla raids for food Quaternary Forced detention → Acute Respiratory Disorders (ARDs), psychological stress, breakdown of family structures 30 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide If Palawa culture was recognized at all by British invaders, Tasmania was a zero-sum collision of cultures and ideologies where asymmetric power trampled upon Aboriginal and animal rights, the right of the biosphere to exist, the right of Indigenous people to exist and hold onto their country and customs. What was a carefully managed Palawa garden estate became an environmental catastrophe within a few decades, with swans, whales, oysters, cedar, seals, the thylacine, and Huon pine driven to the brink, along with its Indigenous people. The Palawa lived sustainably, the British – through unsustainable exploitation, through a rapacious foraging economy, through mindless slashing and burning until the unwanted forests had been removed, until the soil was eroded and turned to dust beneath the feet of livestock, until once plentiful game became scarce, causing accelerated Aboriginal deprivation. Nature was there to be exploited, and exploit Britain did, with febrile hubris, biblically exerting dominion over the Earth. It was a co-determinate eco-dance, where the new British arrivals shaped the environment, not usually for the better, and the degraded environment shaped the transplanted immigrants as they scrabbled in search of easy money. The Palawa garden estates were lost, along with the people who created them. Where one culture believed in communalism and sharing for the common good, for the other, capitalism - private ownership - was their God. The good of all – collectivism – battled the good of self, selfishness, the pursuit of greed, where official and individual avarice dominated compassion and kindness. What began with the destruction of the Palawa soon extended to other lifeforms and ecologies in a form of necrotising chancre, with virulent exploitative growth causing the ‘tragedy of the commons’. British settlerism can therefore be characterised as an invasive pathogen that found a foothold in some ecological niche and metastasized, leaving a degraded landscape and calamitous Aboriginal depopulation through killing, sexual predation, kidnapping, and disease. British law took no action. The economy was more important. We conclude that Lemkinian repression in Tasmania was a failure of our values, something that led to collective dysfunctional behaviours, gave shape to our inherited society, and can only be reshaped through adaptive learning. We began this paper with how we might visualise complex datasets involving mass violence. We will end this chapter with the hope that humanity is perfectible or, if not, may well become irrelevant, another failed species, insufficiently intelligent or adaptable to survive. Perfectibility requires self-knowledge, a subject we will now address. 31 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide PART 2: Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide Systemic mass violence almost always originates in a power structure of some type. We will examine if British Imperialism and its evolving rule-based order made Australian genocide inevitable, for which the extermination of the Tasmanian Palawa people is a case instance. The Architecture of Imperial Power Power has structure, which is resolved through intent. How did the human tragedy arise in what became known as Australia, after it was first invaded and occupied? The answer: it was intentional. By the late eighteenth century, Britain - with a population over ten million - had developed the administrative, industrial, and military machinery for worldwide imperial expansion.67 Imperialism is a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through establishing colonies or by military force.68 Such behaviour was often motivated by economics, by the desire to exploit cheap labour or raw materials or the opportunity to open new markets, perhaps with superior power or other means of persuasion. However, nationalism, racism and political influence are also implicated in the pursuit of a country’s naked competitive advantage. The sub-text of Britain’s opportunistic foray into what became Australia was further brushed by the compulsion to limit the Pacific reach of other European powers, especially the French, and to cauterize the possibility of a French style revolution by removing the disaffected section of the British population, those who were politically and economically dispossessed, as well as providing for emigration. Britain Inc. was becoming more concerned with power and influence, economic gain, and achieving greater territorial reach to counter the spreading influence of other European states. Behind these concerns, but no less pressing, was the problem of a burgeoning prison population as the disadvantaged underclass became more vocal and fractious, and the emerging need for expanded emigration from an apparently overcrowded (or at least underemployed) Britain69 to the colonies that, in the case of Australia, was increasingly expedited through the allocation – at first through grants, then from 1831 through sale - of confiscated Aboriginal land. The British Government’s intent was clear enough and, for the recently claimed east coast of New Holland, Aboriginals were an easy sacrifice for Britain’s carceral and then commercial aspirations. Thus was laid out the eventual enticing prospect in the South Pacific of profitable bilateral mercantile trade, wool for clothing manufacture, and so on, but beginning with the exploitation of flax (for ship’s cordage) and Norfolk Pine timber (for ship’s masts). The evolution of power Power is the ability to control people or events. Most human social organisations still embody the primitive concept of hierarchical power: the desire, intent and ability to extend or control an organisation’s sphere of influence (or territorial boundary) for some often short-term advantage (military, financial, commercial, social or political) using the various means at hand (armed force, legislation, contractual). The social cohesion architecture is primarily exploitative and generally imposes costs on future generations for short-term advantages that favour those in power. 32 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide We might ask the questions: why do states rise and fall? Or societies? Jared Diamond goes further: over the last one thousand years, why did Aboriginal and Chinese society stagnate while those in Europe thrived? Diamond concludes that geography provides the answer. Chinese power waned as the Fertile Crescent east of the Mediterranean became semi-arid. He makes a similar argument for Australia, that its aridity encouraged a nomadic lifestyle rather than the development of intensive agriculture and fixed settlements, although he agrees that aquaculture was common across the Murray-Darling and elsewhere that fish resources were abundant.70 But China has seen a rapid political and economic rise in the last thirty years, suggesting that knowledge is the new commodity, with information highways the new infrastructure. STAGE I STAGE II STAGE III Offense, defense Families, Familial groups, Alliances Vertically integrated power structures (tribes, social groups) Cooperation, competition Alliances between power structures (nations) Figure 1 The evolution of power, showing the evolution of vertically integrated power as an emergent property of social groups Stages of social evolution. On this simplified scale, Imperial Britain was just rising from Stage II, where the global family of nations today is mostly a mix of Stages II and III. An important question is: can we determine our future or is it beyond our control? Can societies choose a path by popular consensus, or do Governments choose for us? We will examine selforganising structures later, in the context of the adaptive emergent properties of hierarchically organised complex systems (functionalism) within directed graph network structures (intentionalism). Societies can organise themselves (functionalism), but they are also shaped by policies, legislation, regulation and enforcement (intentionalism). That is, functionalism and intentionalism of civil society are co-determinate, within a parametric envelope largely defined by Government. They are not mutually exclusive. We can ask the question: what is the next stage? The evolution of human societies tends to be non-linear, punctuated by generally - but not always - unpredictable catastrophes and newly stable states of being (equilibria). The next logical stage (Stage 4) is either a society that is technologically competent, equitable and sustainable, or a society that has failed. There is little in between. Most societies (and corporations) tend to follow a logistics function (also known as a sigmoid curve), which has been extensively analysed by researchers. Other writers have proposed alternative models for the evolution of human societies. For example, Quigley proposes a pessimistic process that entails rise and inevitable decay through: 1. Mixture; 2. Gestation; 3. Expansion; 4. Age of Conflict; 5. Universal Empire; 6. Decay; 7. Invasion.71 The Kardashev scale is more ambitious again but posits our present stage of energy use as a lowly 0.72 33 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Some researchers forgo discussions on the stages of civilisation and only focus on the causes of failure, for example: Jared Diamond, Collapse How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In this focus, Diamond falls squarely into intentionalism. Britain’s global aspirations (intentions) were quite simple: to impose its power for the economic benefit of the few and the glory of Empire. In the 17 th, 18th and 19th centuries, the instrument for extending the reach of British power had a name, and it was maritime. Ships were the pathway to global range and dominance, supported by the military. Maritime power quickly became mercantile power. Britain could count upon the force of arms to gain a quick economic return, particularly for remote parts of the globe that had not been ‘claimed’ by other European states. British Imperium The marbled 17th and 18th-century certainties of the British Imperium metamorphosed from the questionable right of Sovereign possession and resulted in careful and negotiated territorial expansionism as European maritime powers jostled to carve up the world as property. Connor, a military historian, writes: During the eighteenth century, Britain developed the bureaucratic framework and the transport and logistical resources to deploy forces worldwide, and British soldiers served during the period 1788 – 1838 on every continent.73 Imperial Britain was run like a centralised business through a hierarchical chain of command, with a Head Office and local Branch Administrators, many of them with a career in the military. Intentionality was key. Businesses need plans. What we now call the ‘annual budget’ for Governments or ‘business plan’ for businesses – comprising strategy, administrative organisation, policies, procedures, budgets - was determined by Government and its functionaries. Ministries changed regularly, as political alliances changed, but the plan for Britain’s global presence remained steady for a century or two. There were strong economic motives: slavery, maritime trade, and wealth for some powerful people in and near Government who could pull strings and exert influence. Imperial Plans and Processes The plan was all-important for Britain Inc., as it fundamentally determined the national objectives and shaped its course through history and geopolitics, navigating the rough waters of other European powers, addressing questions such as: Should Britain establish a colony in New Holland? How quickly could the colony be made self-sufficient? Could nearby Norfolk Island be a source of timber (for masts) and flax (for rope)? Would the transportee destination deter rising crime and political dissent at home? Would the beachhead settlement deter French aspirations in the South Pacific and establish a strategic outpost? Who should be appointed to administer the colony: the Governor, Attorney General, head of marines, surveyors, and so on? What role should the Secretary of State and the Foreign Office play? 34 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The Government ‘plan’ was not written down as a single document, but arose out of numerous meetings, discussions in the two Houses of Parliament, deliberations, and Government orders by those in power. Because it was not written down and called ‘the plan’ is not evidence it did not exist. It existed across the Government administration of the day in a myriad of redundant and overlapping forms - letters, despatches, and meeting notes - with the threads pulled together by those with the responsibility to execute the agreed plan and issue the all-important orders on behalf of Government. Imperial Model and Intent A key part of the strategic British Imperial business model was economic: to provide goods and services from and to its colonies and generate some economic benefit for Britain. Plans evolve and can go awry, but without plans, actions become undirected and chaotic. The model was executed by an autocratic and hierarchical chain of command, as Government plans were transformed into operational actions on the ground through an administrative bureaucracy. We can model this planning structure as: Mission → Objectives → Strategy → Tactics. But national plans, to be effective, must be transformed into actions, where management of processes and people become vital: Plans → Policies → Legislation and Regulations → Procedures → Enforcement. Britain knew this from competitive experience with its neighbours, and the birth of the Anglo-World resulted.74 The structure (type process with state transitions) is logically determinable rather than emergent, in that the property of ‘tactics’ can be derived from the property of ‘strategy’ for example. The properties are logically encapsulated in a natural order or progression, in the same way that, in the ordered set ready, aim, fire it is illogical to fire before you aim, although it is possible. That is: in the ordered set a, b, c, it is a property of the members of the set that a contains b, and so on. In order to progress from state m of member a to state n of member b, the procedural step x is required with property b. The instantiation of the structure (comprising an ordered set) can be tailored. A specific ‘state’ is the particular instantiation of any procedural ‘property’. In other words, the structure is not ’designed’ but logically exists and can be purposefully adapted. So it was for Imperial Britain and its colonial reach. We will show later that Lemkinian phases can emerge as meta stable properties of a complex, bounded dynamical system and that these phases conform to certain constraint rules defined by some initiating agency. The structures would be familiar to any CEO or management consultant, as it enables Business Objectives to be transformed into operational plans that can be subject to metrics such as Key Performance Indicators or their colonial equivalent, allowing management (say the British Government) to monitor and adapt their strategies, within the overall ‘business’ objectives. Upon these feedback mechanisms are the all-important bonuses paid today, or knighthoods, lordships, and other bestowments of recognition for loyal service in the Imperial past. The British Imperium was an exercise (or model) in the basic and unapologetic imposition of raw power, the power of an asymmetric advantage, of gun against spear, or a heavily armed navy against a lightly armed opposition (such as the Chinese). Sometimes it worked, for as long as resistance was relatively weak. 35 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide When we look at Imperial Britain, we can see the reach of armed influence amid a complex network of privilege and a chain of command centred on Government. The process complexity can overwhelm us. But the power structure is quite simple, little different from that of a slime mould, as it extends its biological influence, driven by a primitive imperative to survive and thrive, to which we can equate the British ruling class of the Imperium. Analysis reduces complexity, with a little effort. For example, today most Banking systems are by any measure quite complex. Improving them can be challenging. The usual way they are improved is by first modelling them, breaking them down into discrete inter-operating elements and layers, and then logically rebuilding them in a form where planned enhancements can be automated. For Imperial Britain, their strategy was to plan something, do it, observe how it worked, and then introduce mechanisms such as policy refinement and targeted legislation that better achieved the desired outcomes, usually economic and territorial. The particular instantiation of power structures or models survives for as long as they can adapt. What can suffer in a biological competition for survival are the species who may be supplanted, a process that Darwin and his supporters called the ‘survival of the fittest’, assuming a hierarchy of species and sub-races, with Britain preeminent. In fact, it is the ‘super co-operators’ who ultimately survive; they survive through a mutually supportive pact, akin to symbiosis, or shared biological objectives. Consider bacteria in the animal gut; or any complex and interdependent ecosystem; or cooperation between plants and animals that allowed pollination and the possibility of flowers and fruits; or mitochondria in the human cell, without which we (and they) could not live; or insects that make up about 75% of the animal kingdom, removing detritus, performing husbandry, and any number of other useful activities. Although Britain would not have explicitly modelled its power structure, nevertheless its intent was singular, simple, and wholly transparent: to achieve global range and reach for the advantage of Empire and the privileged few who controlled it. We do not always need to understand a process to give it effect. After all, none of us understands how the miracle of life is created, abundantly and routinely before our eyes, but many of us are enthusiastic participants in procreation, a mindless thrusting resulting in a miracle beyond our comprehension. Britain was no different, as it followed its simple strategy for the self-enrichment of a minority, careless of the global consequences as other races were driven into the ground. Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History. Wolf’s central thesis is that ‘the world of humankind constitutes a manifold, a totality of interconnected processes, and inquiries that disassemble this totality into bits and then fail to reassemble it falsify reality. Concepts like ‘nation’, ‘society’, and ‘culture’ name bits and threaten to turn names into things’. The British Empire fractured and dissolved because Britain failed to adapt to this fluid interconnectedness. Aboriginal genocide was one result. Perhaps Australia would be much different for Aboriginal society if the French had colonised New Holland. 36 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide In this respect, using a biological trope, British ambitions were like a cancerous metastasis, for which we now reap the questionable results, a predatory legacy that still sees overwhelming Aboriginal disadvantage across a despoiled landscape. Sometimes geopolitical power structures can fail. They certainly failed when Britain lost its American colony. Britain believed it had the authority to tax the colonies. America disagreed. Britain believed it could use force. War resulted and the global map was redrawn. Britain’s failure was that of hubris; it behaved as though the haughty imposition of power could replace cooperation and mutual development.75 Britain was determined that Canada and Australia would not go the way of America, that it would fight the republican movement where it might appear, that Britain would not become another France. Mission, Overall Intent Establish British supremacy over other European states Objectives Colonise as much of the world as possible Strategy Build a strong maritime presence Tactics Establish beachhead settlements and consolidate Figure 2 The British Imperium and its colonising model The model is hierarchical, with each level describing the bounded contextual parameters for the lower level, and each lower level providing adaptive feedback to the higher level. The model was not specifically planned, but logically emerged from the need for the power structure to sustain itself through vertical imposition and control. With the French pressing their territorial ambitions and following the loss of the Americas, Britain had to find a new destination for the bulk of its transportees, comprising in the main a disadvantaged underclass who might contribute to dissent and revolution at home. Thomas Paine was invoking the treasonous idea that the English working class had rights.76 Britain considered the options. New Holland seemed to provide an answer. Britain might have learned from its experience in North America, that its sovereignty might not be absolute when it came to humane social policy. Instead, it sailed into New Holland with the mantra to ‘conciliate the affections’ of the natives’ by dispossessing them. What were the Crimes of the First Fleet Transportees? 37 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Was transportation Britain’s answer to a burgeoning social problem? Since we have access to some of the primary accounts, we can analyse the facts without regard to secondary or other derived sources. But first, we must remind ourselves that The First Fleet was an initial attempt by Britain to clear the prison hulks, anchored and rotting in the filth of the Thames because of overcrowded gaols and the loss of the Americas as a destination for Britain’s unwanted intransigents, its dissidents, its disaffected. Many more transportation ships were to follow. When Phillip arrived at Sydney Cove, he had to find a way to put a carceral population to work. In the First Fleet, according to Cobley, there were 778 transportees. Between 1788 and 1792, there were about 3546 male and 766 female convicts. The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) states, in its biography of Phillip, ‘Historians no longer regard them as the innocent victims of adverse social conditions and a harsh penal code. In dispelling this myth recent research has presented them as including a high proportion of professional criminals drawn from the more worthless element in society’. 77 ADB does not provide a source for this ‘recent research’ or who the ‘historians’ may have been. The ADB assertion is a little like pleading that the Guantanamo detainees are the ‘worst of the worst’, in G. W. Bush’s terminology, when most were never charged with an offense (although some pleaded guilty under torture, or as the CIA prefers to call it ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’), and many have been repatriated, mostly without charge. John Cobley, a meticulous historian, has compiled a complete list of the crimes caused by convicts who were transported on the First Fleet, which shows that, far from being, in ADB’s words ‘professional criminals drawn from the more worthless elements in society’ were in fact the underprivileged and often destitute, the victims of British industrialisation (where the benefits of the efficiency of production went increasingly to the oligarchic few) and the assault by ‘nobility’ on the free use of the commons (the enclosure of the ‘commons’). This was commonly shared land which was used at one time by the less fortunate for farming, until the aristocracy restricted its use through punitive legislation, and caused a drift of agricultural workers to the cities, where they were prey to exploitation and poverty. With revolution in France and North America, Britain was determined to cauterise the threat from its disadvantaged underclass and put them to work in the service of Empire, preferably far away from home soil. It leaves the ADB without credibility on this important matter, as we will see. Cobley informs us that there were 778 convicts in the First Fleet, most of them charged with petty theft, a few for mutiny, and none for political dissidence (that would come later), for which the usual sentence was seven years, often commuted from a verdict of death. Cobley writes: ‘Neither youth nor old age was a disqualification to transportation; both the very old and the very young embarked. The administration gave no consideration to the date of expiry of sentences, and several of the First Fleeters had been tried as early as 1781 and 1782. As seven years’ transportation was the most common sentence, many had 38 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide already served five-sevenths of their time at embarkation, and six-sevenths on disembarkation at Sydney Cove. It is curious that the first Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, was not provided with a list of these sentences and thus had no means of knowing when each convict became free.’ 78 As an example of a transportee, consider Elizabeth Beckford, aged 70, transported for 7 years, ‘indicted for stealing, on the 26th of October last, twelve pounds weight of Gloucester cheese, value 4s. The property of Henry Austen’.79 Clearly, Elizabeth was a ‘professional criminal’, in ADB’s parlance. But ‘The First Fleet Australian History Research’ website gives slightly different figures to Cobley (there is a difference of 22 people) and also provides a gender breakdown. It says: ‘The Fleet consisted of six convict ships, three store ships, two men -o-war ships with a total of 756 convicts (564 male, 192 female), 550 officers/marines/ship crew and their families. The planning of Britain's colonisation of New South Wales was not the best.’80 Hughes’ account Although some people dismiss Robert Hughes as overly theatrical (in fact, he had a wonderful use of the English language, and a myriad of facts to support him, provided by many able helpers), he also confirms Cobley’s view that most of the First Fleet convicts were simply disadvantaged people who suffered the excesses of a flawed and one sided legal system, where those with money had the power, a rigidly class based hierarchy imposed their criminal penalties on poverty, and poverty begat theft in order for underprivileged people to survive, when there was no social security safety net. The convicts were not blameless; but they were often victims. As Hughes says: The ‘criminal class’ threatened middle-class property, but what most worried the authorities was the moral contagion it offered to workers and their impressionable children. They had tried to remove the bad apples from the lower classes before they could contaminate the good. The New Poor Law had tried to separate the independent labouring poor from the paupers; the ragged schools tried to keep the offspring of the lowest and most depraved paupers apart from the respectable. Transportation sought to remove, once and for all, the source of contamination from the otherwise decent bosom of the lower classes, and ship it ‘beyond the seas’ to a place from which it could not easily return. There it would stay, providing slave labour for colonial development and undergoing such mutations toward respectability as whips and chains might induce. The main point was not what happened to it there, but that it would no longer be here. The final aim of the transportation system, then, was less to punish individual crimes than to uproot an enemy class from the British social fabric.81 Hughes’ epic has rarely been bettered as florid entertainment and brings the early British colony to life in a unique way. We may reflect that little has changed today, where money buys justice in our inherited jurisprudence, and those without money are cast aside as 39 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide unworthy citizens, where what is ‘right’ is what is ‘lawful’, and what is ‘lawful’ is what is imposed or bought by a powerful elite. Hughes also describes the convicts of the First Fleet.82 So where does that leave the ADB, except as a revisionist attempt at history that ignores the facts or demonstrates clear bias. Their frequent hagiographic biographies can therefore be questioned as too often unreliable, and not presenting a balanced view of history where the good and the bad are appropriately weighted. Without such objective balance, it devolves to ‘the greater good’, where going to Church on Sunday compensates for indiscriminate violence through the week, little better that the Catholic system of selling indulgences to wipe away misdeeds, a practice that led to the Luther’s reformation. Contemporary account In a synoptic account of Tasmanian convict history, Maxwell-Stewart writes: Between 1803 and 1853 approximately 75,000 convicts served time in Van Diemen’s Land. Of these 67,000 were shipped from British and Irish ports and the remainder were either locally convicted, or transported from other British colonies. This represents about 45% of all convicts landed in Australia 83 and 15 – 20 percent of all those transported within the British Empire in the period 1615 – 1920. 84 In the years to the ending of the Napoleonic Wars prisoners arrived in Van Diemen’s Land intermittently, as during times of warfare increased military recruitment resulted in lower rates of unemployment. The reverse was true in periods of peace where demobilisation appears to have created hardship, particularly in urban areas. The first convicts shipped to Van Diemen’s Land were sent following the partial demobilisation of the army and navy during the short-lived treaty of Amiens in 1802. The next convict transport to arrive direct from Britain was not despatched until 1812, and it was only after the post-1815 general demobilisation of the British armed forces that Van Diemen’s Land became a regular port of call for convict ships. As a result the number of serving convicts in Van Diemen’s Land rose from just over 400 in 1816, to a peak of over 30,000 in 1847. Thereafter numbers declined rapidly, especially following the cessation of transportation in 1852. By 1862 only just over a thousand serving convicts remained.85 In this comparative assessment, Maxwell-Stewart errs to revisionism when he goes on to quote Robson’s conclusion that convicts were neither “village Hampdens” nor merely “ne’erdo-wells from the city slums”,86 in effect disputing his own analysis that unemployment (poverty) was the primary factor in arraignment and conviction before an assize court, resulting in a sentence of transportation. Stewart then goes further, perhaps in deference to Manning Clark 87 when he writes that ‘Hughes depicted the transportation system as one vast gulag populated by convicts who were predominantly drawn from the ranks of a professional criminal class and produced crime in the same way as hatters produced hats and miners coal’.88 This excised comment does not reflect the thrust of Hughes colourful thesis that narrates abject human misfortune as comedic entertainment (perhaps with the thought that it is better to laugh than to cry) and is certainly not the conclusion of Cobley, whose detailed list of crimes within the First Fleet transportees 89 Stewart ignores. 40 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide What began with British violence towards transportees was no Government behavioural aberration that could be dismissed with a pejorative justification ‘they were criminals’ because they could not find work, because they found it difficult to feed themselves, because they were “ne’er-do-wells”. Although the problems of poverty found their primary cause in Government policies, official brutality towards any fractious underclass was systematic and normative. Beyond the carceral victims of British social policies, Government violence became further magnified against any threat to Britain’s territorial claims of sovereignty. Britain rewarded Aboriginal resistance with quotidian genocide, where extermination became normalized, where collective behavioural dysfunction became accepted, where colonial society became blindly subverted - as in a Milgram Petri-dish - to human suffering.90 In this way and across a spectrum of considered and deliberate social inequity we can see British mistreatment of its suffering poor as one step on the road to its ultimate rejection of Aboriginal rights, a road that led to genocide. A brief timeline of Britain’s system of convict transportation to Tasmania The subject of convict transportation is ancillary to our purpose in the companion book: deconstructing Tasmanian genocide. Yet the origins of genocide in Tasmania cannot fully be understood without some knowledge of Britain’s system of carceral punishment. Only a society that could conceive of a monstrous transportation system for the removal of a disadvantaged underclass or political dissidents to harsh penal captivity on the other side of the world could also consider dispossessory Indigenous genocide as the reasonable action of a civilizing race, a race dominated by aristocratic Imperialism, by the imperatives of wealth and influence. Between 1788 and 1868, when transportation ended, Britain despatched around 3,600 political agitators into antipodean exile.91 As unrest became fomented at home, provoked by poverty, dissent and continuing social agitation, Britain’s answer was not to improve the conditions of the working poor or acknowledge the political rights of Irish and Welsh citizens. Britain’s answer was amputation and cauterization, the removal of its unwanted citizenry from civil society. Transportation became a pernicious form of slavery, long after Wilberforce had stopped the British slave ships in 1833.92 In Britain’s Imperial system of managing crime and justice, criminals were often made, and justice was all too illusory, an instrument in the service of a heavy-handed ruling class intent on keeping power and dominance. Year Convict transportation of political prisoners – originating event 1788 Transportation to New South Wales begins 1798 Society of United Irishmen 93 is formed. One of the leaders of the Irish rebellion is Phillip Cunningham. The rebellion is put down with great loss of Irish life. Cunningham, with many of his Society, is transported to N.S.W.94 1804 Cunningham leads other Irish convicts into the Castle Hill rebellion95 in N.S.W. Cunningham tries to negotiate a surrender, but he is captured under a flag of truce. The rebellion is put down. Cunningham is hanged. 41 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 1838 • Chartist movement is formed, 96 driven by the working classes, who objected that the vote to elect Parliamentary representatives was limited to property owners. On multiple occasions over the next two decades, Britain rejects the petition for a People’s Charter, which had six simple (although sexist) and reasonable demands: All men to have the vote (universal manhood suffrage); voting should take place by secret ballot; Parliamentary elections every year, not once every five years; constituencies should be of equal size; members of Parliament should be paid; the property qualification for becoming a Member of Parliament should be abolished. The Chartist movement continued until 1857, during which time there were many political arrests of their members, with sentences of transportation. 1839 Linus Miller (1817 – 1880),97 an American lawyer, tries to encourage a rebellion in Canada along the lines of the American revolution. He is captured, along with his companions, but cannot be tried for treason because he is not a British subject. Nevertheless, in 1839 he is convicted and transported to VDL, where he is pardoned in 1844. In 1846, he publishes the evocative Notes of an Exile to Van Diemen’s Land.98 1845 1849 A three-year potato blight causes the Irish potato famine. 99 Britain is slow to act, contributing to a rebellion by the Young Ireland Movement. The famine kills around a million people – an eighth of Ireland’s population. Millions more emigrate from Ireland, heading abroad to the United States, Canada, and some to Australia.100 Ireland’s population of almost 8.4 million in 1844 fell to 6.6 million by 1851. Hundreds of thousands of Irish tenant farmers and labourers are evicted during the years of the crisis. Throughout the entire period of the Famine, Ireland continues to export enormous quantities of food to Britain, which is shipped under British military guard. 1848 Young Ireland Movement is formed in an attempt to overthrow British rule and introduce a republic. The leaders – John Mitchel, William Smith O’Brien, and Thomas Francis Meagher - were charged with treason and transported to Van Diemen’s Land. 101 1848 William Cuffay, the son of a freed slave and a leader of the Chartist Movement, is sentenced to deportation in 1848 and pardoned three years later. 102 After his release, he begins a radical movement in Tasmania to amend the Master and Servant law.103 In 1870, he dies in poverty. 1848 William O’Brien, 104 Irish nationalist and son of a wealthy aristocrat, is sentenced to death for high treason and transported to Tasmania in 1849, despite a mass petition on his behalf. 105 In 1856, he is pardoned. That same year, he publishes the Principles of Government or Meditations in Exile. 106 Figure 3 Timeline of events involved in political convict transportation to Tasmania Imperial Intent and Colonisation Historians often remind us that, under the Lemkinian Genocide Convention, intent is key; but then they tend to ignore intent when they examine the events of history, which are often set out as: ‘This happened, then this happened’, sometimes quoting various incomplete or inaccurate primary sources, or developing a conclusion that does not always derive from the evidentiary facts or is inconsistent with those facts. Intent equates to ‘why’ something happened. The question ‘why’ is concerned with behavioural motivation, which many historians avoid as speculative. Yet ‘why’ is determinable. The consequence of an intended act cannot, therefore, be unintended unless 42 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide there is diminished responsibility for the originating action or the consequence could not reasonably be anticipated. Consider, for example, the response of an Involved Party to some procedurally107 determined stimulus, such as ‘What will we do to handle the increasing number of convicts on the Thames prison hulks. Can we send them anywhere, preferably far away from Britain, where they are unable to cause insurrection in the homeland? Perhaps they can be used as a form of cheap labour, to establish new colonies for the greater good of the British Empire.’ Clearly, the consequence – deportation and imprisonment - is intended as a condition of the accused being convicted, according to some system of justice. If the prisoner dies in captivity, we cannot then argue that the death was unintended; the death was a predictable consequence of harsh incarceration, within some ‘normal’ distribution of mortality for the targeted population.108 The fact that not all such prisoners die in captivity does not mitigate the conclusion that, when the living circumstances are not conducive to a healthy life, then morbidity and mortality may follow in a proportion of the targeted group. Nor can extreme punishment be justified as a necessary and sufficient deterrent for social misconduct. The key measure of any society is in its capacity to care for the vulnerable, for the poor, for the elderly, for those unfortunate beings who were not born into a privileged environment. Yet the 19th century British political initiative of transporting ‘miscreants’ into a far-off gaol environment is analogous in a strange way to our preferred treatment of boat refugees today. The analogy is in an electrical circuit, where the undischarged potential of a number of refugees is ‘stored’ as capacitive energy in a detention centre, sometimes being slowly released as controlled Temporary Protection Visas, and diffuses into the rest of the circuit (or environment) as useful work energy. Nearly everything we see can be reduced to cause and effect, even if the interactive process is probabilistic, the result of emergent complexity. Such causal systems, including those that are behavioural (reward-response) and human-centric, can be modelled within a deterministic envelope, as we will show.109 Plans follow intent and produce a potentially iterative refinement of actionable components, from policies to administrative responsibilities. For a time, Britain Inc. was successful, if only because of the administrative strength of its Colonial Office with its far-flung Branch Administrators (colonial Governors and Executive Councils), all reporting to the British Foreign Office (Company Head Office), and being managed accordingly, for the ‘greater good’ of Britain. If we encapsulate the unspoken but agreed British planning process for achieving Imperial hegemony, it becomes: 43 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Iteration Planning Intent Mission, Overall Intent Establish British supremacy over other European states Objectives Colonise as much of the world as possible Strategy Build a strong maritime presence Tactics Establish beachhead settlements and consolidate Figure 4 Encapsulated planning process with triggering conditions We can simplify this planning process conceptually: Planning Intent British Planning Process Planning Completed Figure 5 Conceptual British planning process Showing possible iterations between actionable components within the process, where a phase of planning is completed when objectives for that phase are reached. Imperial Colonisation: Planning Execution Because Britain Inc. was run like a militarized business corporation, it required a comprehensive two-way exchange of despatches with its colonial outposts to ensure that the overall Government intent and colonial objectives were not compromised and that the Imperial strategies were effective in meeting Britain’s national priorities for wealth and European pre-eminence. Britain supported some of its colonies through mercantile trading entities such as the East India Company, established in 1600, which operated as an arm of Government. Britain saw New South Wales initially as a transportee destination, with the Governor having the assigned power to grant land to officers and ticket of leave ex-prisoners, and with the early settlement expected to grow through immigration and further land grants. However, power structures need functionaries, people with roles and responsibilities whom the organisational entity (in this case Britain Inc.) could effectively manage according to its overall objectives. 44 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide There is the appearance of lawfulness when in fact the power structure is organised to further the objectives of those in power. Conclusion The roles operate as a chain of command, to support the power structure. Plans were enforced through policies, which devolve to regulations and procedures. Until 1838, Britain enforced its chosen course of action for its Australian colonies through the military, after which – as a cost transference measure – enforcement was moved to colonial police. 110 Policies Establish policies for land alienation, immigration and criminal code Legislation, Regulations Introduce legislation and regulations In support of policies Procedures Adopt administrative procedures in support of legislation and regulations Enforcement Enforce policies through military, police and judiciary Figure 6 The self-reinforcing British administrative model The self-reinforcing British administrative model, which enabled Lemkinian genocide in Australia. Imperial Expansionism and Colonial Violence With Imperial reach came violence. There are many historians and political figures who claim that, in Australia, early frontier violence was usually aberrational and one-off, reacting to the circumstances of isolated and individual confrontations, but we shall see that violence was the midwife of British imperial policy, not just for Australia, but all Britain’s colonies. We have not escaped our history. As Hyam says,’ the interests that were the genesis of 19thcentury colonial policy still live as ghosts’.111 Australia continues to carry, as cultural heritage, the misdeeds of our past, a past many of us suggest we should ignore as ‘the black armband view of history’. But we are who we were. From the early 19th century, British arrogance began to replace the principles of Enlightenment thinking. Hyam notes that ‘reared in a strongly hierarchical society, the British arranged the races of the world in a hierarchy too’. 112 James Mill’s History of British India (1817) was a utilitarian text, which was important in shaping social attitudes. It purported to show a scale of civilisation for all races, with the British at the top. Other ethnographers extended Mill’s work on racial classification or racism. Darwin’s doctrine of the survival of the 45 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide fittest, according to Hyam, ‘lent further pseudoscientific authority to the notion of a racial hierarchy’. With talk of the Enlightenment and revolution in the air, Britain Inc. was careful to stamp out social dissent and silence its spokespeople, writers such as Thomas Paine (1737 to 1809), whose works were subject to official censure, including the laws of blasphemy and sedition. Also see The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, collected, and edited by P.S. Foner, Citadel Press, New York, 1945. Paine’s influential works include The Rights of Man (1791) and The Age of Reason (1794). Paine argued that Government must be based on the consent of the governed, a concept which threatened the values of a class-based society where inherited privilege was the raison d’être. His support for democratic government, and his vigorous attacks on moieties based on sovereign monarchies and an aristocracy, led the French and Americans to praise him as a noble defender of the struggle for freedom, but predictably caused his denunciation by the British ruling class. In 1837, following a British Select Committee of Enquiry113 into Aborigines in the various colonies and the disastrous effect that land dispossession was having on the original inhabitants across the globe, Britain had the chance to step back from ethnic cleansing. However, Britain largely ignored the report, as ‘economic expansionist motivations overshadowed humanitarian ideology’.114 Racism, clothed in imperial expansionism, reared its head, and showed its teeth through the settler Imperium. After all, if Britain wanted to extend its power and influence through colonisation and force, why would colonists not continue that imperative on the invasive frontier? Obligations or Rights; Rights or Privileges? Rights (or entitlements) are usually defined by duties (or obligations). For this reason, rights are often legal in nature, with enforceable obligations. In colonial Australia, British citizens had the right to life, but this did not mean they had the right not to be killed. Under 19th century British law, or the loose compendium of laws at the time, people could be executed for a variety of reasons including theft. Property owners could kill trespassers if they were in ‘fear of their life’, or if property was being stolen. Aboriginal ‘citizens’ could be shot merely for existing. In an epistemic sense, entitlements – their truth or falsity - depend on the fine print, the legal conditions, and these conditions can be arbitrary indeed, or if not arbitrary, then open to legal interpretation and ideological whim. The problem is: entitlements become spaghetti when they are not expressed within a parametric envelope defined by something equivalent to a Bill of Rights. Today, Australia does not have a formal Bill of Rights, apart from some contentious clauses in the 1901 Constitution and its amendments. Many of our politicians argue that such ‘rights’ are unnecessary to be explicitly set out for a humane society, where ‘humanitarian values’ are supposedly innate. But for rights to be enforceable, they must be based on legally specified duties and obligations. Otherwise, rights can become mere opinions, not evidence based, such as the ‘right to free speech’, which by extension includes the right to deny the evidence of Aboriginal genocide or the right to make racist remarks or the right to deny the reality of climate change or any other such logically falsifiable point of view. 46 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The right to be wrong must have legal consequences if apprehended harm obtains in certain circumstances, for example, the health effects of continuing Aboriginal alienation with the confiscation of their mother, the land. We have some way to go for as long as we deny the social right to a Bill of Rights. The partial evidence of inaction is in continuing Aboriginal misery, especially for those who choose to live in remote communities, a ‘right’ that certain neoliberal Governments question on ideological grounds. Such Governments argue, for example, the right to welfare has the condition to live near cities, where Aboriginal lives can be more easily monitored and managed. A Bill of Rights would impose forcible obligations, in some cases bilateral, on Government and citizenry. It imposes a top-down legislative framework for what can otherwise be a sticky febrile mess of opinion masquerading as fact, of racism and specism replacing evidence-based policy, of a focus more on pre-eminently humanitarian and environmental values than predominantly short-term economic criteria. It would allow Aboriginals to be treated equally under the law rather than be targeted for unequal punishment, with incarceration becoming an expected way of life, with little or no hope of release from the ongoing normalised despair, with communities self-destructing, with carpetbaggers and consultants preying on their misery, with a profound sense of loss shaping their future, with the destructive process a form of late-stage Lemkinian genocide that is playing out before our unseeing eyes. It is an important subject – the role of a Bill of Rights - to which we will return later. It is the subject of how we can shape group behaviour to be less damaging (measured by outcomes) and more egalitarian, where our children may thank us for our trans-generational foresight and not condemn us for our exploitative intra-generational self-interest, where even the environment has become an adversary to be brutalised into submission. We deserve better. Aboriginal society deserves better. It is time for us to learn the lessons of sustainability from our First People and incorporate those rememberings into a document of Universal Rights. What of the Aboriginal right to own their traditional land? The British colonial office, especially under Glenelg, and emphasized by the 1837 Buxton report, acknowledged Aboriginal usufructuary (or shared) use of the land,115 or appropriate compensation for exclusive use of the land, as a right; the British pastoralists and settlers regarded Aboriginal ‘intrusion’ onto ‘their’ land as a privilege, most often denied at the point of a gun, with occasional compensation in the form of basic rations and the discretionary annual allocation of a blanket (a form of census). Either were an expression of British superiority, the ability by one party to express the terms of subjugation on an oppressed party, like the imposed conditions of a gaoler on a prison population for which disobedience might mean the withdrawal of ‘special rights’. Although Britain nominally had a policy of shared land use, it was never enforced. Britain was far away, and settlers had an immediate need to protect ‘their property’ from encroachment by ‘trespassers’. The two positions could not have been further removed when they should have been synonymous, like listening to Schubert’s D960 piano sonata in B flat major and questioning if morality has a place in human existence, questioning the obligation of compassion, or fair play, when altruism has little economic advantage in the way such things are currently measured. 47 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Britain Inc. never introduced a social contract with the Aboriginals. They did not have to. They could take what they wanted by force and misuse of British Law and its notions of property. It meant that any intrusion on ‘property’ might expect lethal force, a measure that could extend to trespass by man or beast, including ‘feral’ animals and unwanted vegetation. We have yet to abrogate this war against Nature and other ‘intruders’ as adversarial combatants against our concepts of ‘private ownership’. Since first settlement, many hundreds of thousands of Aboriginals have lost their lives over this basic point of disagreement. A right usually has the force of law; a privilege is discretionary. Where it becomes blurred is when a right, such as shared land use, is entirely ignored. The right then becomes discretionary, tacitly abrogated through the force (and superior right) of armed authority. The denial of Aboriginal land rights When Justice Blackburn denied any Aboriginal continuing land ownership after 1788 (with his infamous 1971 Gove decision),116 he ignored American and Canadian precedent and also the expressed intent and direction of the Colonial Office for shared land use, but (it must be said): not the U.K. Land Commissioner’s office, which saw the sale of South Australian land as a means to fund accelerated immigration to that colony; nor a succession of colonial governments, who saw leasehold fees and the sale of legislatively declared freehold land as an important revenue stream, all of course at the expense of the Aboriginals. From early settlement, common law has largely overridden or modified statute law, but the right to shared use of the land was arguably never legislated away, except for a clumsy attempt by Queensland in the late 20th century, and therefore land use contrary to the principle of sharing can therefore be challenged legally. Justice is not served while common law provisions and the jurisprudential excrescences and overburden of two hundred years hold sway. As Justice Deanne said: … yet almost two centuries on, the generally accepted view remains that the common law is ignorant of any communal native title or other legal claims of the Aboriginal clans or peoples even to the ancestral lands on which they still live.117 Conclusion Since the late 20th century, the recipients of middle class welfare, with vociferous claims for the right to an unencumbered ‘inheritance’, unencumbered by death duties, and with the ‘right’ to negative gearing for multiple property ownership, or the right to minimise income tax through family trusts and overseas accounts in tax havens, have deplored any attempt by Aboriginals to claim conceptually similar entitlements in respect to native title. While intellectual obfuscation and moral posturing holds sway against simple justice, we are all accountable. They are driven back in the Spinifex ranges and when I was up the Nicholson they were living on ants. They dare not come on to where there was game for fear of kidnapping parties. They were the poorest things I ever seen – perfect skeletons … nothing to eat and sleeping in holes in the ground… 118 48 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Social Contracts and Sovereignty119 The idea of a social contract has a long history that probably gained more recent traction with the writings of Thomas Hobbe (Leviathan 1651), John Locke (Second Treatise of Government 1689) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract – Du contrat social - 1762). Beginning with the question, ‘How is social order best maintained?’, it was generally argued that individuals should give up certain freedoms – including personal sovereignty such as selfprotection – to an authority such as a government or ruler, in order to maintain social order. Therefore, there is an implicit agreement or social contract between those that are governed and those that govern, made possible through a set of rules or laws. The problem is in deciding who is to govern, what freedoms should be relinquished and what sort of laws should obtain to manage the social order? An authoritarian monarch, through a constitutional monarchy, who can dictate the laws? A more liberal monarch with an elected body, as in Australia’s liberal democracy? Or liberal republicanism as in America? Or authoritarian republicanism as in China, where a small number of descendants from Mao’s long march continue their hold on centralised power? Or a dictatorship in its various forms? The dilemma was artificially created by these philosophers because they made the structure of governing and governed the pre-eminent consideration. They wanted to define the structure first rather than the negotiated agreements, the rights and obligations of two (or more) parties who have come together for some kind of mutual benefit. If Locke et al had focussed on the ‘laws’ mediating the behaviour of the two (or more) parties, then the structure becomes secondary, because the outcome is for the most part structurally invariant, with any number of structural implementations possible for some agreed outcome. The governing body is or should be simply a cipher or conceptual placeholder for one of the parties, the logical entity, to ensure that the agreed outcomes between parties are achieved. However, when the governing entity is allowed to dictate the terms of the relationship, the governed party begins to lose power and becomes potentially oppressed rather than an equal party. In such a way, in the extreme case, are master – slave relationships conferred. The social contract can become hijacked by those with the most power and the social order is likely determined by might rather than the negotiated rights of popular sovereignty or general will. To use a technical example, the Internet is based on a network of primary hubs or nodes which help regulate the traffic between any number of clients or service requesters. But this is not to say that all requesters cannot be equal or peer and this is currently under development, through file sharing or peer to peer networks, for which the ‘social contract’ is constantly altering as new service arrangements are being defined by cooperating parties. This example can be likened to a set of families, each with equal sovereignty, able to outsource certain services to third parties such as providing food or security. However, we are still far away from this fully democratic social model today. And while we are willing to forgo some of our rights to another party in return for certain benefits, it is relatively easy and unnecessarily commonplace for those assigned rights to be abused and the benefits downplayed. For example, the New South Wales Labour Government under Kenneally prorogued parliament for 5 months from December 2010 to avoid an investigation into a hasty sale of 49 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide communal electricity assets. Peer to peer networks are perceived as a threat to social order, and perhaps they are, while they confer equal rights to all. Power once obtained is difficult to wrest away. A social contract is a means of forcing or coercing or encouraging a certain kind of order onto a population, typically through some form of legislation or sovereign edict. But why should an individual, acting in rational self-interest, give up essentially unrestricted personal freedom in order to obtain the benefits of political order, particularly if that order is repressive? A limited form of social contract is Australia’s recent dabbling with ‘Work Choices’, which the electorate believed took more freedoms than it provided in benefits, so was rejected. In America, the 1776 Declaration of Independence set out a number of democratic rights that became enshrined in constitutional law, and this formed the social contract. Australia does not have a Bill of Rights, its 1900 Constitution does little to protect the rights of Aboriginals, and we are still torn between a liberal democracy with a monarch, or a liberal republic, or democratic socialism. In 19th century Australia and beyond, there was no proper social contract with the Aboriginals, who were made entirely subservient to the British; for many years Aboriginals were regarded as no better than animals or ‘vermin’, able to be shot or destroyed on a whim. As social policy matured, Aboriginal status evolved to forced dependency, amounting to a slave economy, where Aboriginals had few rights, their children could be removed supposedly out of compassion for their welfare, black servants could be exchanged as chattels, wages were optional, and voting was denied them until the late 20th century, along with their participation in representative government, the very body charged with refining the ‘social contract’. For Aboriginals, the social contract available to the whites did not exist. A succession of Governments across Australia, for over 150 years, were wholly repressive towards the original inhabitants; it could not be otherwise in the British social order, hierarchical, with all power devolving from the British sovereign; and for the greater part of the 19th century the British sovereign was Queen Victoria and her parade of privy counsellors, through to local British Government and colonial governments across Empire. At the level of the United Nations, countries tend to operate as peers, with some countries being more equal than others – these are the members of the Security Council, any of which has the right of veto over any member submission or general resolution. Sometimes the right of veto is self-justified because it is argued the resolution may be perceived as ‘meddling in the internal affairs of a country’, for example China’s invasion of Tibet; at other times the veto is exercised to prevent self-incrimination, such as human rights abuses. For this reason, America did not admonish the excesses of Pol Pot because they also could have been accused of such atrocities as the invasion and bombing of Cambodia. 50 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Nevertheless, the United Nations is the best opportunity we have at this time for a Charter of Rights to be agreed to and implemented by each sovereign state or member, with the right of penalties or sanctions if those resolutions are not complied with. The idea of a social contract is simple enough: to give up a certain amount of personal sovereignty (such as self-protection, water and electricity supply, waste disposal, and so on) to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order through the rule of law and the imposition of taxes. The concept has evolved through many forms over time because of the many different ways it can be implemented. The main difficulty is in the structural ideas: who is to be governed, who is to govern, through what set of rules (laws), and how is agreement to be reached. This was certainly the difficulty for Enlightenment thinkers, as we will see. As for a value proposition (buying/ selling model), a similar cost/ benefit equation applies in the relationship between civilian and state through a social contract: an obligatory bilateral arrangement for supposed mutual benefit. The civilian gives up some freedoms and pays certain dues (taxes) but expects the state in return to provide border security, internal protection, a welfare safety net if necessary, and infrastructure through laws, shared services and public administration facilities. Increasingly, as elected Governments have found themselves inept, financially incompetent, or administratively ineffective, expected ‘public’ services are now provided on a user pays principle, the cause of further fraying in the perceived expectations, often ideologically based, that individuals have of the state. It was not always so. The nature of the social contract can depend on the social structure and the meaning of sovereignty, and these can change. Without checks and balances, the political system drifts to authoritarianism. Before Socrates, the impulse of a particular social group was to defer to some leader who coordinated the interests of everyone to common advantage. Socratic Greece argued that civil (or civilian) society intrinsically implied the concept of an ideal state that included all civilians acting rationally for the common good. That is, civilian and state could coexist in the one individual. Such an ideal republic was only possible at the time through indentured labour or a slave economy, with a privileged few able to indulge their philosophical whims and public duties, supported on other people’s labour, as for the 19th century British upper class through hereditary entitlement and noblesse obligé. This early Greek idea of a social contract between ‘civilian’ and ‘state’ for collective benefit was revisited during the Enlightenment by Wolff, Leibnitz, Vattel, Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke among others who agreed that starting from the point where there is no structured social order, it was nevertheless in an individual’s rational self-interest to relinquish some individual freedoms for the benefits of social order, including shared protection from other warring groups and general economic advantage. In so doing, they departed from the Socratic ideal, insisting on a separation between civilian and state. However, from this common starting point, none of them agreed on how the resulting twopart social structure or moiety should be ordered. Hobbes (Leviathin 1651) argued for an authoritarian structure through an absolute monarch or sovereign, to enforce social cooperation. Locke (Second Treatise of Government 1689) agreed the need for a sovereign (or 51 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide monarch) but believed that their powers should not be absolute. Rousseau (Social Contract or Du contrat social, 1762) did not concede that the structure required a sovereign and instead posited a liberal republic. Among them, Vattel was the most influential. Borrowing from the natural philosophy of Wolff (Institutiones juris naturae et gentium or Institutes of the Law of Nature and of Nations, 1750) and through his own work called The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law Applied to the Conduct and to the Affairs of Nations and of Sovereigns (first English edition 1759), he set out rules for nations (or ‘states’) to claim sovereignty over others, the mutual rights and obligations between states, and how to wage a ‘just war’. When much of Europe had been divided between sovereigns and their principalities, Vattel was readily accepted as the most relevant, and Britain with its constitutional monarchy was no exception. According to Vattel ‘Every nation that governs itself, under what form soever, without dependence on any foreign power, is a Sovereign State’.120 This sidestepped the question of where the power of sovereignty should lie, with a person or with the state or both, by anthropomorphising the ‘state’ as the conceptual equivalent of a ‘moral person’ acting for the common welfare through a ‘Constitution’ or set of rules, and where the ‘state’ had the authority to oppose external interference in its domestic affairs, including political interference by different religious persuasions (in Europe’s case, Catholic or Protestant). Where Vattel had difficulty was this: if a ‘nation’ was a society of individuals freely coming together for their common good, whether there was also a society of nations which could act as a ‘moral person’ according to agreed rules, the rules of mutual external relations, the law of nations. That is, is there a higher set of rules, a higher sovereignty, to which individual states must submit their sovereignty? On the one hand, Vattel is arguing that individuals must accept the authority of the state, and a state can reject interference by another state in its internal affairs; but it logically follows as a contradiction to Vattel’s position, that if nations are to agree on their mutual obligations involving the externalization of sovereignty, then states must also agree to the authority of a higher sovereignty or ‘supra-moral person’, using Vattel’s concept. Vattel’s muse, Wolff, proposed that the conundrum was solved by a civitas maxima, or an overarching authority, or a universal civil society, of which all nations would be members, and each of which would accept the voluntary supra-laws. Vattel rejected this idea of a supra-civil society because he believed there were practical difficulties in agreeing the common rules; nor did he believe there could be a higher authority above a nation. Expressed another way, how could sovereign nations with their own laws expect to harmonise them across national boundaries? The same problem arises when national values are inconsistent across borders. Instead, he proposed a society of nations, each independent, but each agreeing to a voluntary set of laws. But where were these voluntary laws to come from, if not through a civitas maxima, which he rejected? In the context of the murderous European wars in the 16th and 17th centuries, Vattel’s rules were an attempt to make war safer for civilians and less likely through a rational balance of 52 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide sovereign power across national borders. But he never overcame the logical inconsistencies between his different levels of sovereignty and the laws that might apply. Today, we have the United Nations with all its faults and power blocs, where some nations are more equal than others and there are non-binding Conventions for resolving supranational issues. The U.N. has become our civitas maxima. But while the rights of each nation are paramount, while different cultures, political systems and economic objectives try to co-exist, then conflict of varying types is bound to occur, like a dysfunctional family not bound by common values. The problem largely evaporates if the rules and values of the civitas maxima comprise the rights of something we all share, the rights of the biosphere, and our common obligation to support those rights, unless we are intent on self-destruction. Those rights are historically best expressed through a Constitution, through a Bill of Rights. If the rights of the biosphere are paramount at the different levels of sovereignty, then we normalise our expectations around a shared framework, which still allows individual state differences at the level of culture and politics and internal affairs but does not allow those differences to subsume what we have in common. Differences of this type are usually caused by confusing physical with logical mapping; a logical model allows any number of physical implementations; there is a degree of freedom between the two levels. Aboriginal society consisted of many societies across Australia, tribes and families freely associating, bound by culture, complex kinship, and shared values, resolving conflict through ceremonial engagements with mostly stylised aggression, all subscribing to tribal law and tradition, all modulated by the dreamtime and shared respect for the land. From time immemorial, Aboriginal societies had lived together; they had worked out the rules of civitas maxima well before European fiefdoms had seen the need; they had developed ideas of internal and external sovereignty; they had agreed an inclusive multi-level and multipart social contract. Historically defined pathways for communication and trade crisscrossed the continent. Goods were bartered between Aboriginal communities - often at a remote distance from each other - for mutual advantage. And they did it sustainably, their carbon footprint slight, moiety, and polity in practice. Their complex system of kinship, art and mythology was their major contribution to civilisation. They used no alcohol or other drugs and had little resistance when introduced. Moiety is the distribution of [something] into two parts, not necessarily equal. Examples include: yin and yang; or the British upper class and the rest; or ‘older’ and ‘younger’; or the contemporaneous 1% and the 99% in the division of wealth. For Aboriginal society in Australia, it separated people at birth so that marriage could only take place between different moieties. It was a form of sustainability management, allowing individuals to integrate with groups and groups with groups, and nations with Nature. Indigenous moiety formed the basis of a complex kinship system that prescribes an individual’s role within the universe, their responsibilities towards other people and the Earth. T his kinship system of Aboriginal culture was for the most part destroyed by the British invasion through the intentional breaking up families and tribes, through a Christianizing mission structure, through violent colonization that often crossed over to genocide, and through ethnic cleansing on a continent-wide scale. 53 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The British uncaringly destroyed Aboriginal civilisation. The British knowingly introduced the drugs and European diseases. They caused the sexual predation and degradation. They destroyed the families and clans and tribes and system of kinship. They destroyed the culture. They employed one Aboriginal group to murder other Aboriginals. They stole the land by force and left Aboriginals without the means to feed themselves. They drove off the game and sullied the precious waterholes. They broke the rule of law. They committed the massacres. They introduced the concept of ‘property’ and ‘ownership’. They began the environmental damage and unsustainable exploitation. They are now us.121 Aboriginal society would have been puzzled by Vattel’s earnest appraisal of sovereignty and his Law of Nations. They would have been disturbed that their authentic form of multi-tier and multi-nation government was not recognized because it was not European and that, according to the Law of Nations and Blackstone’s derivative Laws of England, they did not exist except as subjects of a European sovereign or power, therefore that they had no rights except the right to be occupied by force. Rules of Sovereignty The rules of sovereignty had vexed European thinkers for centuries, but the most influential was Vattel (Law of Nations, 1759), from whom Sir William Blackstone,122 the eminent British jurist, derived many of his ideas in the four volume Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765 to 1769), just in time for Britain’s occupation of New Holland. The question for sovereign nations, including the British, was how to give a semblance of legality to annexation of another state or country and avoid unnecessary territorial conflict. Blackstone set out these detailed rules as a kind of Catch 22 for those who were occupied, which we will shortly come to. With these rules, I am inescapably reminded of Douglas Adams, where he has the Vogons demolishing the Earth to make way for a galactic superhighway. When the hitch-hiking hero protests, the Vogon commander says matter of factly that ‘all the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in Alpha Centauri for fifty years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaints.’ During the 18th century, there was a frenzy of sovereignty claims and initial colonization by European powers. In 1765, Blackstone attempted to distinguish settled colonies from those conquered or ceded through what became known as the ‘doctrine of reception’: Plantations or colonies, in distant countries, are either such where the lands are claimed by right of occupancy only; or where, when already cultivated, they have been either gained by conquest, or ceded to us by treaties. And both these rights are founded upon the law of nature, or at least upon that of nations. But there is a difference between these two species of colonies, with respect to the laws by which they are bound. For it hath been held, that if an uninhabited country be discovered and planted by English subjects, all the English laws then in being, which are the birthright of every subject, are immediately there in force. But this must be understood with very many and very great restrictions. Such colonists carry with them only so much of the English law, as is applicable to their own situation and the condition of an infant colony […] But in conquered or ceded countries, that have already laws of their own, the king may 54 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide indeed alter and change those laws; but till he does actually change them, the ancient laws of the country remain, unless such as are against the law of God, as in the case of an infidel country.123 Blackstone, set out the rules for native dispossession where he proclaimed through tortured reasoning in his Commentaries that if the invaded country was ‘inhabited’, the British could declare it ‘uninhabited’ through a convoluted definition of the meaning of inhabited: to be inhabited, the land must be worked for agriculture; the ‘occupants’ of the land must be ‘civilized’, with a system of laws and settlements and productive (‘cultivated’) land use and Christian religion; if ‘uninhabited’ all British laws immediately applied. If conquered or ceded, British law overrode local law. If claimed in the name of the Crown, because no other recognized power had made a prior claim, the land and its ‘inhabitants’ or ‘occupiers’ – including ‘uninhabitants’ or ‘unoccupiers’ - immediately became British citizens, subject to British law. However, if the country was ‘inhabited’, it may not necessarily be ‘occupied’, because there were no recognized settled communities, within a narrow British definition; or there was no system of property laws acknowledged by Britain to give prior title; therefore, all land belonged to the Crown. And if ‘inhabited’ and ‘occupied’, but ‘conquered’ and ‘non Christian’, the local laws could be supplanted by Britain. Ergo, Aboriginal and other indigenous people who were confronted by Britain’s global territorial ambitions: checkmate. Britain gave itself the right, through the British Sovereign, to occupy any ‘unclaimed’ country by force if necessary. The legal framework for British Imperialism included the intentional and structural idea of ethnic cleansing, both globally and in Australia. The act of sovereign possession generally overrode indigenous rights. The aetiology of any mass psychosis such as ethnic cleansing devolves to modality and rules, the rules for legal dispossession, rules for sovereignty, evidence, land ownership, enfranchisement and citizenship, rules based on the canon of English Law, given local juridical interpretation and augmentation. Rules provide some procedural certainty and inevitability, even self-justification. Such rules usually require hard work to implement and the implementers are typically very industrious. I can imagine them getting a bonus of some kind for diligence, perhaps a promotion or a grant of land, and so in Australia they did. For Nazi Germany, the extermination of large numbers of Jews and other unwanted subpopulations was built upon procedural automation; assigning a code124 developed by Hollerith that could be encoded onto an eighty column punched card and then sorted, collated and tabulated by an IBM accounting machine. After all, millions of records were involved, far more than the concerted efforts of even an army of clerks could reliably handle in a reasonable timeframe. Nazi Germany was a major IBM customer, the commercial relationship given special sanction by the U.S. Government. In the case of Britain Inc., rules of sovereignty in Australia drove ethnic cleansing with carefully calibrated legislation, the authorisation of military and police to protect land and property on behalf of the sovereign and its state and citizens, the establishment of a judiciary to give legal effect to the implied and evolving social contract between property owners and Government, 55 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide and an empowered multitude of self-interested squatters, an organised army of civilians all dutifully employed, well removed from polity and reasonable notions of civil society, not quite authoritarian, rigid, definitely exploitative and racist. Sovereignty is a curious concept. It had its origin in the ethos that ‘might is right’, where tribal affiliations and competitive disagreements inevitably threw up leaders who were often inclined to pass on their role through hereditary entitlement, securing their post-generational hold on power, supposedly for social order and cohesion. Thus were dynasties born. British sovereigns were no exception, often claiming entitlement through ‘divine right’. Many African states today still do not accept that leaders can be elected and continue to ignore the democratic process. We have Mugabe as an example (although he is now deposed, given immunity from prosecution, allowed to keep his ill-begotten wealth), but there are many others. Tribalism struggles with democracy. So does inherited privilege. Any meaningful social contract must balance the needs, rights and obligations of all individuals with those of the state. But if the duties of either party are voluntary, how should non-cooperation be managed? And what rights? Freedom of speech? Freedom of religion? Freedom to bear arms? Freedom to dismiss the Sovereign? And what duties? Duties to support measurable and fair standards of societal health, education, and welfare? Duty to wage war against ethnic minorities or other countries? Rawls attempts to achieve the balance between justice, equitability and moral philosophy,125 in his classic modern update on social contract theory, after the logical inconsistencies arising from Hobbes, Locke and others in their structural implementation of moiety and polity. Rawls, in a country that already has a form of explicit socially contracted rights in the American Constitution, grapples with the question of aligning normative social values with the equitable execution of Justice. That is, how can Justice be made fair and equitable for all. He concludes there is a long way to go while social conservatives battle liberal democrats across an ideological divide, what Tony Abott approvingly calls ‘Battlelines’126 in Australia, perpetuating the ‘us’ and ‘them’ tribalism. If America has a long journey to achieve a coherent social policy, Australia is arguably further behind without even a constitutionally framed set of Rights. With the slow march of British Imperialism through time, until Federation had lost its training wheels, the social contract was tacit and social order was hierarchically structured, with a monarch as titular head. Citizenship was limited to non-indigenous populations, mainly white and preferably anglo-saxon. Indigenous people were invisible until well into the 20th century, segregated, abused, not able to vote. Rights in self-governing Australia devolved from British rules of sovereignty, including the individual and state (Crown) right to claim land where they chose; the state (Crown) right to exclude Aboriginal evidence; the state (Crown) right to wage war against certain ethnic groups defined as citizens (civilians) for the purposes of prosecution under British Law; and the right to legally protect land and stock through violence if necessary. 56 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The right to own land, or vote, or be protected by the law, or be shielded from racial discrimination, or receive a fair wage, or be free of sexual predation and slavery, these rights did not extend to Aboriginals. Not until 1967. Perhaps not even now, if we consider the Aboriginal incarceration rate, the widespread self-harm, the ongoing sense of despair. Normative British values of the last two centuries define our culture and remain our legacy: defiant Aboriginal extermination; exclusive ownership of land and other property under British Law; unsustainable exploitation. They are the values of normative deviance against a moral ideal, a deviance we can characterise as a collective psychosocial behavioural disorder that was sustained across generations, a profoundly pathological disorder that enabled ethnic cleansing and carried the sword of genocide. Tasmania is small, but representative of the dysfunction, as Part 3 will show. It is not clear that our society has evolved to any degree, or become better, however that may be measured. All we can claim is that it we are different, different from our ancestors. Rights, such as they are, have been muddied and overtaken by issues such as multiculturalism and border protection. Aboriginal disadvantage continues. Our society is increasingly unequal. Justice and fairness is available to those with sufficient money. We struggle to properly manage and protect the environment. Our major cities are bursting, while regional Australia suffers. For many, housing is becoming unaffordable. Gay rights have become more important than Aboriginal rights.127 Politicians like to remind us ‘It’s all about the economy’, while the vulnerable are left behind. No less so than Tasmania. What began with post-contact generations, we now continue. Past mistakes we tend to misremember. So we repeat the mistakes anew. We are adept at niche construction. Now we must lie in the bed we have made for ourselves. Unless we change. Rules of Conflict, Engagement and Accountability An important question we will examine is: was the collision between a predominantly exploitative pastoral society and a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer society with deep affinity for their tribal lands inevitably going to result in ethnic cleansing? Was ethnic cleansing inevitable? The preliminary answer in short is: no, with a different British mindset, if usufructuary (shared land use) principles had been followed, if the British Colonial office had enforced those principles, for their enforcement would have meant that squatters had to negotiate with Aboriginals rather than shooting them off the land that was theirs by native right if not title, according to the British laws of property. The British settlers were driven by an innate sense of racial superiority and rampant greed, unlike, for example, the French whose philosophy and actions in the South Pacific were somewhat tempered by Enlightenment thinking, republicanism and laissez faire. With few moral or legal constraints on British conduct as a civil society, we will show that genocide was the inevitable result. 57 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide In his illuminating and involving book, Blood on the Wattle,128 Bruce Elder takes us beyond bloodless historical objectivity to the poetry and pity of human frailty. Bruce writes: The best thing that can be done is to shoot all the blacks and manure the ground with their carcases. That is all they are fit for! It is also recommended that all the women and children be shot. That is the most certain way of getting rid of this pestilent race.129 Bruce attributes this widely referenced quote to William Cox, landowner, 1824, whom he says made this comment at a public meeting in Bathurst,130 at the time when Governor Thomas Brisbane had just issued a Proclamation of Martial Law to be in force in all the country west of Mount York, west of New South Wale’s Blue Mountains, west to the Darling River and down to the Murray, west into Wiradjuri country. So far as I can determine, the reference to the quote may originate with Threlkeld,131 probably quoting Cox or the meeting generally. We don’t know who was present, except that it was a public meeting, although Threlkeld reports the location as Windsor, not Bathurst. However, it is possible there are multiple sources for the quote, or that different public meetings at the time had a similar objective: Aboriginal extermination. Threlkeld writes: Not very long before these events, it was recommended at a public meeting at Windsor that the blacks were only fit to make manure for the ground, and when martial law was proclaimed at Bathurst the cry was shoot the Women and Children, and it was done!132 We immediately notice that the two quotes, although strikingly similar in sentiment and wording, have different phrasing. So Bruce’s quote may have originated from a different source than Threlkeld. I have checked the Cox memoirs and could find no similar quote to that used by Bruce. William Cox’s biographical comments derive from his anodyne memoirs of 1901. Obviously if William Cox made his memoirs in 1901, he would have been over one hundred years old (137) in 1901, and aged 60 if he was also present at a council meeting in 1824. I have checked the memoirs of Cox from the Mudgee Shire Library. The memoirs confirm that William Cox (1764 - 1837) 133 according to his tombstone in a Windsor cemetery was the ancestor of George Cox - probably referring to George Henry - who later wrote or compiled the 1901 memoirs.134 The Cox memoirs are coy on Aboriginal extermination, as most such memoirs lend themselves to a rosaceous view of the deceased, but Threlkeld is more revealing. William Cox did well out of his association with Governor Macquarie135 in building the Cox road across the Blue Mountains, which helped open the Bathurst plains to settlement. He was awarded large grants of land in the Mudgee area by Macquarie at the expense of Wiradjuri, who – from 1822 - fought a desperate and unsuccessful guerrilla war against him and his fellows with the British squatters claiming God on their side, or at least the Government. Cox’ family went on to become major landowners in the area, once the ancestral property of the Wiradjuri from the Blue Mountains to the central west. 58 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide If the Cox memoirs do not mention this 1824 public meeting at Windsor (or Bathurst), how are we to confirm that William was responsible for the genocidal quote. Or that he was present. On this basis alone, denialists such as Windschuttle would deny that the Cox quote was ever made. Such denialists use partial and selective facts and small factual errors in other people’s opposing arguments to support their intellectually dishonest position. But errors, regrettably, are inevitable with the reporting of history, where sources must be pared back to their origin as closely as possible. It is an inexact process that requires careful corroboration across a patchwork of evidence. It is likely that Wm Cox made the quote, as he was in the Windsor/ Bathurst area at the time. He was also a prominent local figure with extensive land holdings who would have objected to the Aboriginal insurgency as a financial threat. But we only have Threlkeld as the attributable source, and he was not at the meeting. Nor does Threlkeld say who told him. And Bruce cannot remember his source. That does not mean we should dismiss the sense of the quote, which remains historically illuminating, as it confirms the many other reports of virulent settler antipathy to Aboriginals as a race. Rules of shared land use Until 1838, 136 and indirectly thereafter until Australian states formed a Federation in 1910, Britain could choose to enforce certain policies, such as usufructuary land use, where the land could be shared for mutual benefit, but the indigenous owners would keep the overall rights. They could also have chosen to resile from other racist measures, such as the discriminatory implementation of the rules of evidence and common law, the one-sided process of land alienation, and accelerated immigration. Britain did none of this. Therefore, their behaviour was intentionally genocidal, knowing that their actions wilfully caused extreme harm to a certain ethnic group. What Britain undertook, through its policies and practices, was targeted destruction of the indigenous population across the invasive frontier, until the continent became property in one form or another according to British law. Usufructuary land use was the nominal British policy that land could be shared between Aboriginal and pastoralist for overlapping purposes, one for grazing stock, the other for hunting and cultural enjoyment. The shared land policy was ineffective, and negated by actual practice, where settlers had the louder voice. The British Government ignored its own nominal land policy. Britain could also manipulate the criminal code concerning rules of evidence, which meant for example that the laws of culpable homicide were meaningless if an Aboriginal was murdered because Aboriginal witness testimony was disallowed. The land alienation laws were merely an opportunity for Governments legally to dispossess Aboriginals, making them trespassers if they attempted to return to their homelands, or able to be shot or removed on sight, without fear of prosecution. What happened in the bush, stayed in the bush. Witnesses were either mute, without a voice, or dead. 59 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide There was further imposed legislation to make Aboriginal detention and incarceration lawful under the discriminatory rules of the oppressor. In this sense, the British laws were an extension of Imperial power, usually racist in their application. In Australia, they formed part of a Lemkinian genocidal process. When we have a crime scene, whom do we blame? Some of us inexcusably blame the victims. Rarely is Britain held to account, or its policies, or its intentional actions. Rules of evidence Under the one-sided 19th century British rules of evidence, sworn witness testimony could only be accepted from someone, a Christian, who could putatively swear on the bible. Nowhere were the rules of evidence more misused than in Tasmania and no Governor manipulated them more than Arthur. Although British rules of evidence required the ability to swear an oath on the bible, nominal Christianity transpired to be conditional on other gating factors, among them the requirement to be white or a ‘property owner’; for when some Aboriginals became Christian, they were still precluded from providing witness testimony, and were never allowed to own property until well into the 20th century. Therefore, the rules of evidence are exposed as racist; they were not changed to allow sworn Aboriginal evidence until 1876 in New South Wales, 1854 in Victoria and 1884 in Queensland. During this extreme killing period, many Aboriginal lives were lost in a frenzy of homicidal excesses by white colonists, extrajudicial murders that were tolerated by successive Governments who, in cultivating genocide, turned a blind eye to its consequences. Perversion of British Law allowed the systemic (and genocidal) mistreatment of Aboriginals. Almost from the beginning of the British invasion in 1788, British law was one-sided in its interpretation and execution. The racist pattern of British Government behaviour was established at least from 1799 (although there are earlier incidents from 1789, during Phillip’s administration),137 when settlers were displacing Aboriginals from the fertile Hawkesbury Valley, preventing them from accessing their usual highly valued food sources such as yams and oysters. Consider these early but key judicial events as brief synoptic evidence of a pattern of apprehended bias that was to be sustained in Britain’s administration of justice before selfgovernment was granted at various times to the different Australian colonies. These events were to establish the rules of British occupation, the Government’s behavioural constraint rules. There are other examples, but these will suffice: Lord Hobart to Acting-Governor King, 30th January 1802138 In 1799, two Aboriginals were brutally murdered by colonist-settlers, who were pardoned an unconscionable three years later by Hobart.139 Hunter and then King, New South Wales Governors, refused to convict the five white Argyle Reach settlers responsible for the brutal murder, in August 1799, of two young 60 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Aboriginal men on the Hawkesbury River, which had become the food bowl for the Sydney settlement. One of the Aboriginals was ‘cut into pieces with a tomahawk and a death spear run through his yard and came thro’ the back part of his neck’.140 The perpetrators were allowed to go free into the community, awaiting their appeal to Lord Hobart, who pardoned them three years later.141 King’s subsequent ethnic cleansing policy for the Hawkesbury area was efficient and total. Hobart sat on a decision for nearly three years, before he noted in 1802 the difference of opinion which prevailed amongst the members who composed the Court, as well as of the length of time that has elapsed since their several sentences were passed upon them and he decided to recommend them as proper objects of His Majesty's mercy, and I have in consequence received His Majesty's commands to direct you to grant pardons to each of those persons respectively for the offences of which they were convicted before the Court to which I allude, annexing to those pardons such conditions as you shall think most adequate to the due attainment of the ends of justice. Hobart then goes on to ‘lament’ that cultivating the good-will of the natives, do not appear to have been observed in earlier periods of the establishment of the colony before advising that on future occasions, any instance of injustice or wanton cruelty towards the natives will be punished with the utmost severity of the law. Justice for Aboriginals never recovered from this point. Hobart’s words were merely that. No one, not a single colonist, was convicted with ‘wanton cruelty’ during the entire period of colonization up to the mid-20th century, apart from the hanging of some of the Myall Creek perpetrators in 1838, for which colonists’ reaction was so belligerent and outraged that successive Governments were chastened not to repeat the experience and cause a similar white backlash. Hobart further opined: [...] I have perused with great attention the reports transmitted by Governor Hunter of the trials of these persons, and on a full consideration of the circumstances attending those trials, and of the difference of opinion which prevailed amongst the members who composed the Court , as well as of the length of time that has elapsed since their several sentences were passed upon them, I have ventured to recommend them as proper objects of His Majesty's mercy, and I have in consequence received His Majesty's commands to direct you to grant pardons to each of those persons respectively for the offences of which they were convicted before the Court to which I allude, annexing to those pardons such conditions as you shall think most adequate to the due attainment of the ends of justice. Before I dismiss this subject, I cannot help lamenting that the wise and humane instructions of my predecessors, relative to the necessity of cultivating the good-will of the natives, do not appear to have been observed in earlier periods of the establishment of the colony with an attention corresponding to the importance of the object. The evils resulting from this neglect seem to be now sensibly experienced, and the difficulty of restoring confidence with the 61 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide natives, alarmed and exasperated by the unjustifiable injuries they have too often experienced, will require all the attention which your active vigilance and humanity can bestow upon a subject so important in itself, and so essential to the prosperity of the settlement, and I should hope that you may be able to convince those under your Government that it will be only by observing uniformly a great degree of forbearance and plain, honest dealing with the natives, that they can hope to relieve themselves from their present dangerous embarrassment. It should at the same time be clearly understood that on future occasions, any instance of injustice or wanton cruelty towards the natives will be punished with the utmost severity of the law. Governor King to Earl Camden, 20th July 1805:142 The apprehended bias of British Law was further exposed by legal advice on 8th July 1805 from the New South Wales JudgeAdvocate on the admissibility (or not) of Aboriginal witness testimony. King submitted a lengthy despatch to Camden in July 1805 that enclosed advice from the NSW Judge-Advocate, Atkins, that Aboriginal witness testimony was inadmissible and therefore should be disallowed. Britain never reversed or amended this advice. The result was a catastrophic failure of British justice, or conversely, the triumphant success of colonist-settler supremacy during the period of rampaging displacive pastoral expansion into the 20th century, where colonists could use force to defend their property and Aboriginals could not legally object if members of their group were murdered. Atkins upheld the legal right of colonists to defend their ‘property’ with lethal force and that Aboriginal witness testimony would be a ‘mocking’ of juridical procedure so should therefore be inadmissible. The object of this letter is to impress the Idea that the Natives of this Country (generally speaking) are at present incapable of being brought before a Criminal Court, either as Criminals or as Evidences; that it would be a mocking of Judicial Proceedings, and a Solecism in Law; and that the only mode at present, when they deserve it, is to pursue and inflict such punishment as they may merit. The colonists’ legal right to ‘use force against force’ was reinforced by Bathurst to Darling in 1825,143 advice that was quickly circulated by Arthur in defence of heavily armed counter-insurgency measures against the Palawa resistance. This is Atkins’ opinion to Governor King on the admissibility of Aboriginal witness testimony. It was quickly made Government policy and later cited by Arthur. With such racist policies, Aboriginals had little chance under British justice for having any of their rights protected, including the right not to be murdered: JUDGE-ADVOCATE ATKINS' OPINION ON THE TREATMENT OF NATIVES.144 62 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide IN obedience to your Excellency's Injunctions to me, I have given the two Paragraphs in the Letter of H.M. Secretary of State to the Executive Government of this Colony, respecting the Treatment of the Natives, all the consideration in my Power. I have further read the whole of the Correspondence of Mr. Arndell and others with your Excell'y, stating the Outrages committed by the Natives of the Hawkesbury, &c., and I am now to give my Opinion thereon, which I do with the greatest deference. It is in vain to make it a Question from whence those excesses originated - from the inherent brutality of the Natives or from real or supposed Injuries they may have sustained from the Settlers. It becomes more the Object to consider of the best method to prevent it in future; and here two Paths naturally present themselves - that of rigor or lenity. If the first is pursued, can it be done legally? I mean, can it be done conformable to the existing Laws? I think it cannot; for the evidence of Persons not bound by any moral or religious Tye can never be considered or construed as legal evidence. Your Excellency well knows that the Members of the Court of Criminal Judicature are sworn "to give a true Verdict according to the Evidence"; and however strong the necessity of making Public Examples of the Offending Natives may appear, can it supersede that Obligation on their (the. Members) consciences? And should the Members of the Court apply to me for my opinion as Judge-Advocate, can I say it is legal , and according to Law? The Natives are within the Pale of H.M. protection; but how can a Native, when brought to Trial, plead Guilty or not Guilty to an Indictment, the meaning and tendency of which they must be totally ignorant of? Plead they must before Evidence can be adduced against them, and Penal Laws cannot be stretched to answer a particular exigency. Under these conclusions, it may be asked, What remedy can be applied? In any other Country Arms would be put into the hands of such persons who might be the most likely to suffer, that they might materially protect each other; but this experiment might be subject in this Colony to great inconveniences, and it is what must be submitted to the Executive Government. It would have been a fortunate Circumstance had Villages been built for the residence of the Settlers, and their Farms have radiated, as from a Center; but as it is, they must devise some means of protecting themselves by dedicating part of their time to their mutual protection, and no doubt will receive from Government all that assistance within its power to give. Might not such Settlements most subject to the visits of the Natives be divided into Districts, and a certain number of its Inhabitants be daily employed in guarding that District? Lenient measures with the Natives adjacent to the Hawkesbury I fear (from experience) will avail but little. It appears that the Evidence of Henry Lamb and Rich'd Morgan goes very much in favor of Dunn; for therein it is stated that Dunn was only defending his own property from common Depredators, who, at the time he wounded one of them, were in the act of Stealing and carrying away that property, and resistance against them the Laws justified. 63 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Major Johnston's letter to Your Excellency states that Talloon, one of those who Murdered Mrs. McArthur's Stockmen, was shot by the Party. And'w Thompson's Letter of the 27th April to Mr. Arndell says that a considerable Number of them were killed by his party. Ob. Ikin's letter states his party as having destroyed many of them. It fully appears from the above that a considerable number of them have fallen Sacrifices to their excesses. This may possibly (through fear) point out to the Survivors the necessity of regulating their future conduct by other means than those hitherto adopted; if not, self-defence will justify the most coercive measures being exercised against them. The object of this letter is to impress the Idea that the Natives of this Country (generally speaking) are at present incapable of being brought before a Criminal Court, either as Criminals or as Evidences; that it would be a mocking of Judicial Proceedings, and a Solecism in Law; and that the only mode at present, when they deserve it, is to pursue and inflict such punishment as they may merit. As Your Excellency wished me to write fully on this subject, the above is submitted to Your Excellency's consideration by Yours, &c., Sydney, July 8th, 1805. RD. ATKINS, J.-A. To quote a truism: the absence of ‘evidence’ does not mean the evidence of absence. Aboriginal evidence was mostly disallowed by 19th century British law, thereby disproving ’British culpability’, surely a false syllogism: x is disallowed, therefore y is false. Aboriginal testimony was disallowed for the greater period of ethnic cleansing, which peaked in the mid-nineteenth century for the south and continued into the 20th century for the north. In one hundred and fifty years of sustained killing of Aboriginals, there were only a small handful of prosecutions, notwithstanding Aboriginal witnesses whose testimony was disallowed by British Law. After all, it was not in the best interest of the settlers to support changes to the laws of evidence until the Aboriginal ‘problem’ had been substantially removed as an impediment to British land ownership. The Law, especially British derived common and statutory law, did not have to be and was not just. Land could be, and was, unilaterally expropriated in the name of the Crown. Aboriginals were expendable. The sooner they could be made to disappear, the sooner the land could be made profitable. There was little prospect and less will from the British government or its colonial authorities to prevent squatters moving into the interior. Instead, an attempt was made to derive government revenue from the uncontrolled Aboriginal dispossession. An initial act was passed in 1833 to protect the Crown Lands of the New South Wales colony but illegal squatting remained rampant. In 1836, a further Act was passed that required pastoralists beyond the limits of location to pay an annual license fee of 10 pounds to de- 64 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide pasture their stock, and also divided the interior into seven squatting districts, each to be administered by a Land Commissioner. The well-known 1838 Myall Creek massacre, on the Liverpool Plains, was a result of the squatters’ antipathy to sharing the land, but it was certainly not the first example. The rights of Aboriginals to own their tribal lands were barely or never considered, and only acknowledged by default as dispossession by right of conquest, their resistance declared illegal by the Secretary of State, Glenelg, where Aboriginals were Subjects but not Citizens. Through a carefully worded piece of legal tap-dancing, Lord Glenelg declared Aboriginals to be ‘nominal’ subjects of the Crown, the original possessors or owners of the land, but not citizens or combatants: […] all the natives inhabiting those Territories must be considered as Subjects of the Queen and as within H. M.’s Allegiance. To regard them as Aliens with whom a War can exist, and against whom H. M.’s troops may exercise belligerent right, is to deny the protection to which they derive the highest possible claim from the Sovereignty which has been assumed over the whole of their Ancient Possessions.145 so they were responsible before British law for any acts of resistance and ineligible for any treaties, their legal rights as British subjects were not supported by any Act of a Legislative Council or the British Parliament; nor was one ever considered; therefore Glenelg’s exhortation to Bourke can be seen as a simple stratagem to avoid the recognized legal rights of enemy combatants engaged in a war through the pretense that they were British subjects, but without any agreed rights as subjects, and certainly not as citizens. In South Australia, Governor Hindmarsh proclaimed, in December 1836, that all the colony’s Aboriginals had the status of British subjects; but the legality of this was questioned in 1840 by William Smillie, the Advocate-General and Public Prosecutor, who argued that the only Aboriginals to be offered protection as British subjects were those who lived close to the settled districts, in harmony with white settlers; all others were a separate nation, posing a potential threat to the colony. Smillie relied on Roman law, but also a passage in Vattel, which ‘establishes that savage and erratic tribes are to be considered as nations’.146 However, without any statutory support, a proclamation - even for Martial Law - was perhaps legally unenforceable, although this did not stop Proclamations occasionally being made as if they had the force of law, particularly in the early days of settlement, before colonial self-government, when the Governor was the law, acting on behalf of the British Government. The legal principles in suppressing hostilities through the use of the military, instead of a formal declaration of martial law, are still being debated today, but can easily, through the shimmering and superficial attractions of debating slippery legalisms, forget and ignore the moral and legal rights of the Aboriginals, with or without their status as British subjects. The circumstances of practical necessity, protecting the boundaries of invasive settlements, often over-rode the principles of British law if they existed at all for certain situations; but Britain Inc. attempted to preserve and record the niceties of law to defend their actions, prospectively and retrospectively, against the Aboriginals. In this, and the consequences of ethnic cleansing, they can be judged. 65 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide As Lisa Ford notes,147 with Britain occupying Australia and claiming sovereignty by right of its being defined as ‘uninhabited’, thereby by right of settlement, between 1788 and 1837 Britain Inc. was evolving its system of laws to accommodate the perplexing dilemma that Australia was already occupied and inhabited - by Aboriginals. In exploring the story of British claims to sovereignty, jurisdiction, and territory, Ford reminds us that these claims were played out between settlers and indigenous people in various locations of British occupation, not just in Australia but also other places such as Georgia in North America and elsewhere. She writes: As the Empire fretted endlessly about its rights to punish crime on the streets of Gibraltar, on the frontiers of the Cape, or in the manufacturing villages surrounding Bombay, indigenous legal status in settler colonies presented a logical anomaly not only in common-law order in North America and the Antipodes, but also to the global system of exchange presided over by the British Empire. As rising producers of cotton and wool for the factories of Britain – endeavours supported by unfree, non-indigenous labour – Georgia and New South Wales had little space for indigenous orders or for indigenous peoples. Settler polities met the British call for raw materials to support a new global order with a new juridical scheme for orderly settlement and orderly exchange. In the process they styled themselves modern states with perfect territorial sovereignty.148 Although Aboriginals were given the status of subjects under the Crown, which allowed them to be discriminated against by British law on the basis of their race, yet not protected by that same law149, they were not granted full and equal citizenship rights until a 1967 referendum; but the referendum did not end Aboriginal discrimination on other civil matters, for example, wages, which were handled through a mire of industrial relations processes and a mix of state and federal awards. The right to vote in federal elections was legislated in 1962,150 and the right to vote in all state elections in 1965. The main result of the referendum was to confirm the Federal Government’s constitutional head-of-power over the states, giving them a mandate to implement policies to reduce Aboriginal disadvantage, and potentially to end discrimination against Aboriginals by state governments, particularly Queensland and Western Australia. Queensland delayed the Aboriginal right to vote in State elections until 1965. However, it was not until a federal referendum in 1967 that Aboriginals were formally recognized as Australian citizens, and therefore with the right to vote in all elections, the right to be counted in a census, and the right to be proportionally represented. Technically the referendum was a vote on the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginals) 1967, to amend section 51 (xxvi) of the Constitution, which stated that the Federal Government had the power to make laws with respect to ‘the people of any race, other than the Aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws’. This was known as ‘the race power’ and referred to the constitutional ability of the states to manage Aboriginal affairs without federal oversight. The referendum required a vote to remove the phrase ‘other than the Aboriginals in any State’, giving the Commonwealth the power to make laws specifically in relation to Aboriginal people. The referendum was also a vote to change Section 127, which said: ‘In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, Aboriginal natives shall not be counted’. The referendum deleted this section from the Constitution. The section related to calculating the population of the states and territories for the purpose of allocating seats in Parliament and per capita Commonwealth 66 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide grants. This section was highly racist, as it prevented the large Aboriginal populations in Queensland and Western Australia from gaining proportional representation in senate legislative bodies, either state or federal, and prevented the allocation of discretionary funds based on population data targeted towards redressing Aboriginal disadvantage. However, the discrimination continues. Indeed, we could argue, and will, that many Aboriginals still remain second class citizens living in third world conditions in a country generally recognized as belonging to the ‘developed’ world. Although Aboriginals were nominally ‘British subjects’ since first settlement, and therefore subject to British law, they were not made nominal ‘citizens’ until 1948, which in principle allowed them various civil rights, including the right to vote in federal and state and council elections, unless that right was abrogated by the states. And it was, except for South Australia. Theoretically, the Constitution of 1900 gave all Aboriginal peoples the right to vote in state and federal elections, but it had a different legal interpretation prior to 1949, and the right was suppressed through politically endorsed racism. Aboriginals got the formal right to vote in Western Australian state elections in 1962, and Queensland state elections in 1965. The 1967 referendum gave the Commonwealth the power to override state laws, but the Federal Government did not use its powers for a further five years. Aboriginal people from Queensland and Western Australia gained the right to vote in Federal elections in 1962. The Commonwealth Act in 1949 confirmed that right in all states, but some state governments refused to allow the right to be exercised. Before 1961, many Aboriginals could not marry without the permission of Government authorities; after 1961, an Aboriginal might qualify for an exemption card, but the state director of Aboriginal Affairs could revoke the card at any time. Little has changed since the 1967 referendum, with a succession of expensive investigations, enquiries and reports failing to address the ongoing Aboriginal disadvantage. The modest attempts at redressing the racial inequality, so urgently pressed by Faith Bandler and others, are like ripples on the wind of economic determinism. Enquiry Date Result Aboriginal deaths in custody enquiry 1991 https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/law/royalcommission-into-aboriginal-deaths-in-custody Forced removal of children enquiry 1997 https://www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/pdf/soci al_justice/bringing_them_home_report.pdf https://www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/pdf/soci al_justice/submissions_un_hr_committee/6_stolen_generations.pdf Report of the Council for Aboriginal reconciliation 2000 http://www.50yearjourney.aiatsis.gov.au/stage7/item1.htm Closing the gap enquiry 2008 https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/closing-gap-nationalindigenous-health-equality-targets-2008 http://theconversation.com/deaths-in-custody-25-years-after-theroyal-commission-weve-gone-backwards-57109 67 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Closing the Gap Prime Ministers’ Report 2017 http://closingthegap.pmc.gov.au/ Indigenous Australians don't live as long as other Australians. Their children are more likely to die as infants. And their health, education and employment outcomes are worse than non-Indigenous people. Australia has promised to close this gap on health, education and employment. But a new report card finds we are failing on six out of seven key measures.151 Figure 7 Enquiries into Aboriginal disadvantage Until 1838, the British military were used against the Aboriginal resistance, but increasingly, Britain wanted to shift the funding responsibility for internal security onto colonial administrations. As Glenelg wrote to the Governor of Western Australia, Governor Stirling in 1837: The Settlers must not be led to depend on a Military Force for internal protection. It is the desire of H. M. Govt to encourage the establishment of local Corps in the different Colonies and to induce the Colonist to provide as much as possible for their own defence. In cases where it is unfortunately necessary to adopt active measures for restraining the aggression of the Natives, military aid may be indispensible in support of the Civil Force, but the latter ought to be the principle means on wh[ich] reliance is habitually to be placed for internal security. [I cannot] too strongly deprecate the habitual employment of the Military on such a Service.152 Until 1838, border protection at the frontiers of settlement was handled through Border police (reporting to a Land Commissioner) or Mounted Police (generally reporting to a Police Commissioner), often redeployed from British military detachments. After 1838, the British War Office demanded that Mounted Police be removed from the active strength of the military regiments, instead to be paid for and resourced by the colonial administrations. …the inexpediency of allowing the men, while serving in the Police, to continue on the regular establishment of their respective Regiments […] As the Secretary of War intimates that he has obtained the concurrence of the general Commanding in Chief in this arrangement […] I have accordingly intimated to the Secretary at War that you will be directed to propose to the Legislative Council to make the necessary provision..153 1838 was a defining point in Australian history, one where we could have yet again embraced a more humanitarian future, perhaps closer to Canada in societal values, where there were no frontier wars and treaties were offered by the Canadian Dominion government to indigenous inhabitants, and where the law and order administered through the North-West Mounted Police was impartial and fair. Instead, in Australia, the recommendations of the 1837 Buxton Report were comprehensively ignored and law and order were summarily handed over to armed mobs of squatters, later supported by Mounted Police, all intent on ethnic cleansing. From the moment that British policy forced internal border security onto the settlers, there was little possibility or desire for a peaceable resolution to the conflict with the Aboriginals, the warfare becoming more violent, the settlers expected to fight for themselves. So they did. 68 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Vigilante parties were formed of armed and mounted settlers. Summary justice was executed. Settlers became the law and above the law. As weapons became more reliable, through breech loading rifles, settlers enthusiastically took the conduct of the war further into their own hands, often supported by Mounted Police. Aboriginal sovereignty was vehemently and forcefully swept away, to be replaced with an alien culture and government. The ethnic cleansing was so overwhelming, continuing well into the 20th century, that it has defined the nature of our society since. In the 19th century, if an Aboriginal was unlawfully but intentionally killed because, as happened often, poisoned flour was left out for them to eat, the culprit could plead under British law that there was no direct intention to kill anyone, and that the flour was eaten accidentally, and therefore that the evidence was circumstantial. Such special pleading was a favored device under British law but was rarely required to be presented because the culprits were almost never prosecuted, a result of the rules of evidence, the likelihood of a conviction therefore being negligible. A similar unconscionable and disingenuous argument can be advanced in defense of the intentional but indirect – therefore circumstantial - killing of Aboriginals through introduced but otherwise wholly preventable disease, communicable disease. Self-quarantining by the British was never considered, nor was Smallpox inoculation, readily available from the late 18th century. Indeed, it is wholly possible that, just as in North America, smallpox, and syphilis and so on were an early form of germ warfare, knowingly communicated to their victims. Rules of Cooperation and Sustainability Cooperation and altruism across different biological systems, although common in balanced and sustainable ecosystems, in Nature itself, is often fraught, missing or diminished in Australia’s colonial socio-economic power imperative, which is equivalent to a an introduced ‘slash and burn’ invasive behavioural disorder or the biological imperative of a destructive oncological lesion that destroys its host in the process of metastasis. Imperial Britain could have resiled more quickly from human slavery, from drug trafficking, from Indigenous exploitation in all its forms, from the imposition of armed force to achieve its ends, but it almost always chose economic self-interest for a class-based hierarchy. It invariably chose to postpone change that would diminish economic gain for its privileged classes with the argument ‘not just now because the effects will be too disruptive’.154 And so it was with the consequences of the violent occupation of New Holland and other places, where British economic considerations override humanitarian concerns, and where an exploitative and aggressive culture confronted one that had lived sustainably with its environment for millennia. As a society, we have not learned or have failed to learn adequately from our blotted past since Australia was first invaded by Britain. We are not alone in this lack of insight. For example, in the 1850s, after cholera outbreaks ravaged London, a local doctor - John Snow determined that the disease originated from contaminated water sources. His proposed 69 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide solution was to build sewers. Politicians questioned his findings and claimed that sewage pipes would be too expensive. Do the arguments sound familiar? We have a similar situation today, particularly with climate change, but also wealth inequality. The status quo is protected in the interests of key stakeholders. Our present society is neither equitable nor sustainable. The 1% contra-argument is gathering traction, but it is the 1% who also holds the political and financial power. The flawed use of annualized GDP as a measure of progress is still predominant, although it means that we eventually may need many Earths to sustain us, as non-renewable resources are exhausted. And we have the old arguments rehashed, this time against global warming: that the science can be questioned and that the solution is too expensive.155 Eventually, we may have no choice but to act in mitigation. 156 Whether we act in time is another matter. Curiously, Aboriginal society was both equitable and sustainable. And had been so since 65kya.157 Do we have something to learn? But Aboriginal moiety and polity, its environmental sustainability, was overturned by a disruptive incoming society intent on short-term exploitation at the point of a gun. The Palawa were to suffer more than most, but there was little pity in their passing. The British reaction was more relief than concern as the process of ethnic cleansing reached its full term. In Tasmania, Aboriginals were considered an encumbrance on economic development, so like any feral pest they were removed, as they would be for the rest of Australia. Our imposed Anglo-centric society may fail if disruptive stressors of our own making come into play, in particular global warming. For example, it may become out of our hands to do anything, should the land-based Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets finally melt, or the arctic deposits of clathrate methane are released into the atmosphere. Methane (CH 4) is a considerably more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) as a greenhouse gas. This would likely be ‘game over’ for most human civilisations, although the Earth would go on without us. Closer to home, our resolve to combat anthropogenic climate change is also exposed. Australia has committed to a modest carbon pollution reduction target of 26 to 28% by 2030, compared with 2000 levels, 158 but the evidence is suggesting an increase on 2000 levels, not a decrease. Should politicians be held criminally accountable? Global warming is overwhelmingly a moral question, not economic. In Australia, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions including methane 159 from cattle exceed those for all motor vehicles. In 2015, there were around 18m cars160 each generating on average about 6 tons161 of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions per year, or a total of 108 megatons. This compares with the emissions of approximately 28.5m cattle (2011-12) 162 each responsible for around 4 tons of CO2e emissions per year, or 114 megatons.163 While any particular set of Australian statistics can be challenged endlessly, and often are for less than pure motives - what cannot be disputed is that harmful emissions into the atmosphere are continuing on an industrial scale, the result of human activity, and that cows and cars contribute significantly to the pernicious effect of global warming, along with coalfired power stations and land clearing. 164 In Australia, neither cars nor cattle attract a carbon penalty,165 nor did they when a right wing conservative Government abolished the pejoratively-named ‘carbon tax’ in 2014. Indeed, 70 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Australia still has no carbon emission trading arrangement, unlike Europe. Instead, the liberal coalition Government has a ‘direct action’ policy where certain polluters are financially subsidized. It is possible that cars may become less polluting over time. The same is not realistically possible for a cow unless there is an unlikely change in bovine biology. So livestock methane eructions will continue to account for a significant proportion of Australia’s GHG emissions but will probably be ignored as a result of interest-group lobbying. As for land clearing, it is increasing. Just as we can determine a fractal pattern of genocide – both transnational and intranational – when European powers scrambled to deplenish the Earth like armed burglars looting a house of its resources and exterminating the inhabitants, so too does anthropogenic climate change effect a similar melancholic behavioural trajectory. Consider Australian genocide. It’s not that colonial Australian society couldn’t do anything about Aboriginal ethnic cleansing; it’s that it chose not to, not until it was too late when all that remained was the mopping up: forcible detention, eugenics, suppression of basic Aboriginal human rights that were disavowed on the back of racism and commercial gain. Unsurprisingly, Australia still does not have a Charter of Rights. Today, we face another existential threat, a threat caused by our own behaviour, a threat to ourselves and not just those we choose to target: other races, other species, other ecosystems. We have forgotten that in the biosphere we are all one. ‘Us’ and ‘them’ no longer works. We know that a catastrophe is coming yet we avert our eyes and say ‘not yet, don’t do anything yet because there are still short-term economic gains from exploitation’. Scientists warned us in 1992. They have continued to warn us. Now, in 2017, after 25 years, they warn us again: a 26% reduction in the amount of fresh water available per capita; a drop on the harvest of wild-caught fish despite an increase in fishing effort; a 75% increase in the number of ocean dead zones; a loss of nearly 300 million acres of forestland, much of it converted for agricultural use; a 35% increase in human population; a collective 29% reduction in the numbers of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish; continuing significant increases in global carbon emissions and average temperatures.166 The destruction of the Earth and the destruction of other societies share a similar behavioural modality: greed. Genocide and ecocide are linked through time; they are linked through a collective behavioural morbidity, through the excessive pursuit of short-term economic selfinterest by some involved party acting with all other such similarly motivated parties with a normative dysfunctional consequence, that is, a pernicious inability to act for the common good, for the good of all nations, all races, all species, all ecosystems. 71 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Invasion Multicide Displacive Occupation Genocide Ecocide Figure 8 Australian ecocide and genocide have a common systemic (type) determinant Let us accept for the moment that Aboriginal dispossession and extermination have the defining characteristics of Lemkinian genocide. What were the behavioural motivations? If greed seems important to our understanding of Imperial expansionism, the rise of settler sovereignty and collective behaviour, then it deserves further investigation, particularly: whether greed was the primary driver for Australian genocide or whether there were cofactors; whether there is a reward mechanism involved that reinforces normative genocidal behaviour; whether there is a threshold or tipping point for a society coalescing around genocidal conduct; and whether the destructive genocidal behaviour can be modelled. We define greed as: strong and selfish desire for possessions, wealth, or power, 167 where greed can be both learned and innate. Is greed an emotion or a behaviour? If we subtype greed, we find categorial behavioural agencies such as exploitative, acquisitive, and so on. Categorial behaviour is a patterned response to certain events or stimuli that can form an originating type of action to assert control over some found environment. Emotions on the other hand are more atavistic, lower level, mire primal, involving prewired sub-cortical regions of the brain that invoke threshold stress responses such as how we react to threats and rewards, instinctive responses that may help ensure survivability of the group. Emotions underpin behaviour. Both are encoded in our genes, although the mechanism is unclear. They are also embedded in cognitive function. But what does this mean? Environmental adaptation and niche construction can cause epigenetic changes that may be intra- and trans-generational, the inheritance of acquired ‘characteristics’, in our case, the acquisition of behavioural characteristics through a neuro-endocrinological mechanism we are just beginning to understand. Are instincts – a form of hard-wired behaviour - epigenetic? 168 Probably, in part. Are behaviours in general epigenetic? 169 They can be, in that they may involve changes to the epigenome, in how genes are switched on and off in response to persistent environmental stressors. Is racism heritable though an epigenetic mechanism? It now seems likely. 170 But behaviours are also learned, reward-based adaptations that can form part of our psyche, our neural network, through goal directed repetition.171 Depending on the goal, we can learn – individually and as a group - to cause harm, as the Milgram experiment in obedience shows.172 Let us consider genocide as a form of patterned, reinforceable, learned behaviour that amplifies certain inculcated - and also trans-generational epigenetic - characteristics such as greed. For genocide typology generally, the subordinate behaviours or categorial agencies can have different weightings that can make each genocide have a unique fingerprint. The genocidal weighting may be cultural, ideological, political, racial, economic or territorial. In 72 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Australia’s case, the genocidal weighting was overwhelmingly determined by exploitative greed, that is economic, although it originated from a territorial expansionary motivation augmented by the British Government’s political desire to solve the problem of a burgeoning carceral population. Greed as a normative behaviour was fuelled by racism where the British believed they were superior to Aboriginals and all Australia’s native species, a belief in a zero-sum game where the invading group perceived themselves as the ‘winners’, entitled to ‘take it all’ through superior force, with a cemented belief that such force implied a superior culture. Imperial Britain’s rallying cry: to subdue the Earth, make money and extend the geographical reach of its power. The Imperial objective: territorial expansionism through sovereign possession for which the corollary was Indigenous dispossession. If blood was spilled, so be it. Ultimately, it was exploitative economically driven greed and the defence of ‘property’ that triggered the widespread Indigenous killing, not politics or ideology, although hegemonic British Imperialism sustained by invasive armed force was the originating trigger. In Australia, genocide and ecocide are comorbidities of inadequately constrained greed. Greed therefore becomes a normative psychopathy within Australia’s statistical and diagnostic national character, a defining attribute of who we are as a nation, an acquired response to self-interest. We are less a nation of the ‘fair go’ than an opportunistic societal group of Government led immigrants who sought to take from Indigenous society and the biosphere for our personal and collective enrichment. To the extent that we have failed to recognize the fact of enforced dispossession – of Indigenous society, of the ecosystem - or have failed to acknowledge our historical ‘black armband’ or make ourselves accountable for genocidal and ecocidal excesses, then we are forced into denialism and whitewash. The result is lingering and chronic Aboriginal oppression. The result is continuing environmental degradation. Political and ideological arguments tend to outweigh evidence-based science. Opinion masquerading as fact gives voice to the merchants of doubt. With the British invasion of New Holland, the equitable solution was to recognize Aboriginal sovereignty and seek some fair accord. It wasn’t done. Humanitarian and ecological values are almost always suppressed or subsumed by economics, by the politics of power, by collective self-interest. Just as they were in colonial Australia. Just as they are now. Pragmatism is not always rational. Today, the rational solution is to impose a price of carbon on all emissions, including each head of livestock, every car, all land clearing, and coal-fired power stations. Alternatively, we can forcibly reduce those emissions by reducing the number of emitters or reducing the rate of emission. For example, we could choose to reduce the cattle population by around 30% (on year 2000 numbers) in 2030 in line with our committed Kyoto carbon reduction target, and considerably more thereafter. Or we could choose to reduce the amount of land clearing by 30%. But the farming lobby is powerful. According to the ‘future farmers’ website, nearly 15% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, and of that amount, 67.4% is methane from ruminant animals such as sheep and cattle. 173 Methane (CH4) is a highly damaging carbon-based gas when it is released into the air, over 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The downside risk of our failure to act: the Earth’s future is compromised. 73 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Australia’s Department of the Environment shows that total CO2e emissions are projected to increase from 550 megatons in 2000 to 592 megatons in 2030, a 7% increase, when we have committed to a 26 to 28% reduction on 2005 levels. Of this, electricity generation will remain steady at about 32% of emissions, while transport will grow from 14 to 19%, and agriculture with land use will change from 26% to 15%, although agriculture (including livestock eructions) will remain steady at around 14%.174 It is only logical to include the cattle methane load in a carbon offset policy in some carbon intensity abatement scheme that includes a trading market. But it may make the cattle industry less viable, and those other sectors that seek to be excluded from sharing the carbon reduction load. So be it. Otherwise it is unclear if we will participate in managing the global problem fairly through lowered world-wide GHG emission targets, not without a panoply of firm but politically unpalatable measures where so many special interest groups are concerned: farming lobbies, coal lobbies, manufacturing lobbies, venture capitalists, and investment bankers, all concerned about their restrictive economic agendas. The Australian pastoral industry led us into violent Aboriginal dispossession for which the brutal destruction of the Tasmanian Palawa was an early example of what followed across the continent. It now leads us into environmental dispossession with rising animal GHG emissions, habitat destruction, land degradation and soil runoff. Our exploitative behaviours, particularly in resource use (land, water, air), have become transgenerational. We have little desire to curb the exploitation until there is little left to exploit, at which point the marginal rates of return, the economics of profit and loss, become more important in a cold economic equation, an equation where morality is generally not considered as a variable. In this equation, there further arises a social exclusionary pact: that Aboriginal society continues to be marginalized, the consequence of pernicious, lingering, embedded racism, the belief that Aboriginal society is economically parasitic, that the Aboriginal trait must be punished by excessive incarceration and early death from preventable diseases. Racial discrimination still broadly determines Aboriginal policy. Funding programmes are cynically milked by middlemen. The extermination of the Palawa should have woken us to the comprehensive and collectively shared failure of morality and natural justice. It did not. Rather, the Tasmanian dispossessory model, so brutally executed by the British Government, was propagated across Australia as the most effective way to rid the land of Aboriginals, first by extermination, then by deportation to detention centres. Subjugation followed, along with segregation, what we now call apartheid, an inhumane process that was still evident in the late 1960s. Things have barely changed since. Aboriginal society continues to suffer. They plead for a treaty and a change to the Constitution that recognizes the First People. We say, ‘not yet’. There is no truth that mindless repetition makes it so. Our society’s values and behavioural constraint rules have barely adapted in two hundred years. As a collective organism, Australians have seen the societal stressors evolve from war, economic hardship and disease to depletion of natural resources, downward refugee antagonism (‘why benefits for them and not me’) that led to harsh border protection policies, upward envy (‘why do the rich get 74 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide richer’), and inexorable global warming while we dither over the ideological politics. But we are slow to adjust. Our normative responses are stubbornly atavistic. They are more economic than moral. We continue to seek asymmetric transactional advantage. Our mantra of mateship and a fair go is no longer a rallying cry as we drift into pluralism. Increasing wealth inequality is tensioned between falling or static wages and rising returns on capital. In 2017, Australian discretionary trusts held over 3 trillion dollars in assets 175 for which most of the generated income is tax free. We would recognize our post-contact 19th and 20th century ancestors in ourselves. We remain driven by self-interest, by security needs and economic determinism for which the defining categorial agencies (unsustainable exploitation, antipathy to ‘otherness’ and so on) become structurally subordinate. We may not change until it is forced upon us. By then, it may be too late to avert the consequences of our persistent dispossessory behavioural modality towards other races, other species, other environments. What happened to Aboriginal society, with the Palawa in the vanguard, could now descend upon our own. The Earth may yet be the judge in our march of folly.176 Conclusion We conclude with a question: if we or our society intentionally (mens rea) cause harm (actus rea) to other people or to the environment, does that make us evil? In a moral sense, this is undoubtedly true, but morality’s voice is muted in our inherited British legal system where concepts of harm depend on criminal law and rules of evidence rather than value judgments on what is right and proper, the standards of common decency. Our system of jurisprudence does not have to be just, but it is available for a price. In the originating period of Australian territorial occupation, it was not a criminal offence to kill Aboriginals. Today, it is not generally illegal to use the environment (air, water, land) as a dumping space for unwanted waste or take financial advantage of our neighbour through the myriad protections and loopholes afforded by corporate law. It seems the more normative the crime within civil society, the less likely it is to be prosecuted. It is a subject – aberrant normality as a social construct - we’ll now investigate as it exposes how dysfunctional psychopathy might infect an entire society. 75 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide What are the mechanics of Australian genocide? Australian genocide was driven by acquisitive British land and immigration policy; it shaped a fractal-like pattern of massacres, self-similar at different scales, state-sponsored, a brutal colonizing process where the more effective exterminatory methods were replicated across areas and regions and thence for all Australia: invasion, militarised beachheads, land confiscation, pastoral expansion, Aboriginal resistance, one-sided laws, British roving death squads, sexual predation, cultural destruction, deportation, subjugation, the Lemkinian use of asymmetric force to destroy in whole or part, stolen land, stolen generations, stolen dreams. Like a metastatic cancer corrupting civil society, distorting our values, giving form to our inherited rule-based order, exploitative, unsustainable, the seeded flaw of our coming collapse, genocide begetting ecocide, the retreat of reason. Australia Territorial/ State Regional Local Figure 9 The fractal-like geometry of Australian genocide Fractal is a mathematical concept that some historians have adopted to explain the pattern of massacres involved in violent colonization. This pattern is fractal-like but not fractal. The term ‘fractal’ was first suggested in 1975 (Les Objets Fractals) by Mandelbrot to describe an irregular line that was self-similar at all scales, say a coastline or the shape of a snowflake. The mathematical expression for a fractal or Mandelbrot set is the recursive expression for the set of points on a continuous non-differentiable complex plane, where: and Z = a + bi, C is a constant In our case, we represent genocide as a reinstantiable multi-level mapping decomposition, where the parametric event space within an event layer (say the instantiation of the Australian type Occupation process) is potentially differentiable, for example, the rate of depopulation for an area bounded by time and space, or the rate of immigration as a function of land alienation, or the cumulative number of homicides as a function of the number of dispersals over some area for some period, or the rate of depopulation as a function of land alienation for a certain region over bounded time. 76 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The process architecture of Australian genocide had a repeatable pattern that was enabled through the Occupation Process and driven through Government policy. The Process Flow decomposition derives from the process architecture and reflects the political and economic purpose for the Occupation Process. The identifiable pattern of mass killing commences with the initial armed occupation for an area, peaks through the consolidation phase when all land is being acquired through alienation followed by grants and sales, and levels off as larger nominated areas are being portioned off and reportioned for closer settlement. Ethnic cleansing slightly lags the mass killing curve and continues strongly with other forms of removal and subjugation until the Aboriginal problem is finally solved for each pastoral property and territory and state. Unencumbered land had greater value for Governments and pastoralists. Usufructuary use was rarely tolerated unless Aboriginal labour could be exploited, and rarer still after a system of Government detention centres was established. Figure 10 Simplified model of the Australian Occupation Process, showing the role of Involved Parties We will deconstruct some of these genocidal roles and agencies in this paper and more comprehensively in Part 2 of Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide, the extermination of the Palawa. 77 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Figure 11 Process Flow decomposition for Australian Lemkinian genocide Figure 12 Type Occupation Process showing actionable components 78 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Genocidal scope What of genocidal scope, the range and reach of State sponsored inhumanity. Consider Tasmania. If the extermination of the Tasmanian Palawa was intentionally genocidal177 the result of official Government policy, there are some who may still deny the evidence of British infamy because only a few thousand Aboriginal lives were impacted, as though the categorial behaviour of genocide is inextricably linked to the numbers killed. This argument is false. It ignores the key principle of Lemkinian genocide that there is an indictable crime when a targeted group is destroyed, culturally, mentally or physically, ’in whole or in part’. But the British Government’s genocidal behaviour steps to another level on the continent of Australia, where hundreds of thousands of Aboriginals were targeted. Nowhere was this brutal process more determined and the assault on human values more acute than in Queensland, the most populous Aboriginal state, where the Queensland Government conducted an open war of aggression against its original landowners, using the latest British weapons and misuse of the Law in the service of overt racial oppression. The 1897 Queensland Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of Sale of Opium178 was an odious example of professed concern for Aboriginal welfare when it was a stalking horse for racist Aboriginal discrimination, what Aboriginals fearfully called ‘living under the Act’. Queensland continued to issue amendments to this Act until 1971.179 As recently as this century, we have examples of Aboriginal murder by police, one well-known event eloquently documented by Chloe Hooper.180 We are cajoled by some historians into believing that we cannot judge the past by the standards of the present. But our predecessors knew what they were doing was wrong (mens rea), the historical evidence is quite clear; yet they continued their behaviour (actus rea), motivated almost solely by self-enrichment, knowing that British Law would never prosecute them, if they were circumspect. They were right. In spite of the tens of thousands of Aboriginals who were massacred by whites and the hundreds of thousands who disappeared, the effect of the British invasion, not one British person was ever convicted for over one hundred and fifty years (apart from the perpetrators of the Myall Creek massacre). The slaughter would not stop until British supremacy was realized and Aboriginal land had become white property. Violence became quotidian, the thread from which a racist fabric was woven. Australia was built upon the blood of Aboriginals. Legislation was the boot on the neck. In the publicly available Government orders, proclamations, and Acts, we see the military and legislative process that shaped our nation and its genocidal incubation. It is not an alternative history. 79 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide It is our formative history, and bequeathed our national character, if mateship and racism can be called such. It was a determined, intentional, and directed process with a genocidal outcome, as defined by the United Nations Lemkin Convention,181 but at the time was simply called ‘extermination’, or ‘dispersal’, or a ‘war of the races’, or ‘martial law’, or ‘land alienation’, or ‘Aboriginal protection’, or ‘black velvet’ (women were scarce in the bush). Government land policy, first established by the British, drove Aboriginal ethnic cleansing in the form of genocide. Land policy was calculated and intentional. Aboriginal land was sold or taken from under the original owners, leaving the Government and pastoralists to push Aboriginals aside, usually at gunpoint. But pushed aside to where? To barren wildernesses? To detention centres? To tin shanties on the edges of towns, where they became the object of police harassment? The conclusion is therefore inescapable: that ethnic cleansing was also intentional and sustained for as long as the land was fought over, the intended consequence of land dispossession, an extended home-grown conflict that the Australian War Memorial refuses to recognize as too self-condemnatory. As the Aboriginal Protector G.A. Robinson sadly and presciently observes in one of his journal entries – where were the Aboriginals to go?182 Where are the natives to go? Question: the settlers or rather squatters do not allow the natives to stop at their home or out stations, then where are they to go? As many of the squatters claim for their runs from 2, 3 and 400 square miles of country, the home station and out station, in many instances in a bad water country, secure all the water and the sheep and cattle graze the intermediate space. Then where are the natives to go? Where are they to procure food? Or are they to live? Are they to throw themselves on the mercy of other tribes because no British humanity exists in the hearts of British Australian squatters towards the original occupants of the soil? Robinson was almost a lone voice of protest when he observes the genocidal effect of land dispossession: Where are the natives to go? Britain never had an answer, beyond ethnic cleansing, beyond deportation, beyond eugenics in an attempt to ‘breed out the colour’. When the British Government expropriated Aboriginal homelands, it began a genocidal process. Aboriginals were simply removed from their land, by force if necessary, backed up by British law and openly racist legislation. It led to rolling genocide across the continent, as the pastoral frontier advanced. The message from Britain was clear. Aboriginals could legally be evicted from their land. If they resisted, they could be shot. And without their land, Aboriginals would simply struggle to survive, both culturally and physically, a process helped along by roving death squads and forced deportation. 80 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Genocidal intent Our preferred myth is that ‘we are young and free’,183 the words of Australia’s national anthem speaking to the pastoral triumphalism and accelerated immigration that followed the British occupation process and the rise of settler sovereignty. But the myth ignores ancient Aboriginal society, which was ruthlessly displaced and marginalised. We still see the consequences today. Aboriginals continue to suffer through high levels of suicide, incarceration and systemic disadvantage. We do not heed. Perhaps we do not care. Australia’s repressive history will haunt us for as long as we allow Aboriginal injustice to continue. Genocide embodies the concept of intent, and intentionally is embedded in any process at different levels of abstraction. If we examine the overall type model of the invasive occupation process184 we will see the living process played out across the chronological presentation of the documents that collectively shaped Australia, finishing in a subjugation phase, which we continue to live through right now, where increasing Aboriginal disadvantage should be a measure of our national dishonour and humiliation: Occupation Protection Consolidation Repression Subjugation Figure 13 Genocidal phases in Australia Occupation: First, Aboriginals were removed from prime pastoral lands; beachhead settlements metastasized; squatters assumed de facto sovereignty; military forts and outposts were set up. Protection: If Aboriginals resisted the occupation process, they were killed; military (up to 1838) and police were used to protect occupied land; squatters were encouraged to arm themselves, with few questions asked, if they took the law into their own hands. Aboriginals were driven off their homelands, but they had nowhere to go. Consolidation: Laws were introduced to make dispossession legal (land legislation, Aboriginal Acts). Repression: When Aboriginals became homeless, they were progressively forced into detention centres and their children taken away; Aboriginal culture was deliberately eroded; eugenics was used in an attempt to erase the Aboriginal traits; then they were forcibly assimilated; wages were ‘managed’ or stolen. Subjugation: Many Aboriginals, particularly those in remote areas, now live in third world conditions, under the beneficent eye of Government. Preventable disease rages. Suicide is high. Harsh policing is used as a social weapon. Hope is a luxury. When some Aboriginals wanted to return to remote areas they once called home, and because the land had no commercial purpose (for a time), they were allowed to move,185 with the Commonwealth providing rudimentary services that, even these, the Commonwealth now plans to withhold,186 once again to force them to move back to cities. But where? And why? And for 81 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide how long can this cruel, genocidal process continue, where the conditions for Aboriginals to support some less than normal life are further squeezed by Government? In Australia today, the genocidal process continues in our full view. This time, it is characterised by the Aboriginal loss of hope, the pain of transgenerational despair, the erosion of health by preventable diseases, the escape into alcohol and petrol sniffing, the physical and mental impairment, the excessive incarceration, the domestic violence, the family destruction, the fostering of children, the trans-generational trauma. While we watch. Our continuing mistreatment of Aboriginal society is sustained by the same behaviours that drive racism and social inequality. Everywhere around us, we see humanitarian concerns made hostage to mob rule, to normalized self-interest, to far-right conservatism, to the right of rapacious exploitation without end, to the derogation of ‘otherness’ as an existential threat, to the inexorable rise of inequity, to the phenomenon of the 1% doctrine, to the excessive power of economics and self-interest. We sacrifice altruism and democracy to Mammon, to the politics of why me (or why not me), to a contrived ‘us and them’ divide, where the rights of others, other races, other species, are of small account compared to our own. There is always a price to pay. We are our predecessors, although we may protest our beginnings. At the end of the millennium, when Manuel Castells was talking hopefully about the information age and the rise of the network society, 187 anything seemed possible, the future better than before, with automation (we were told) bringing massive improvements to productivity, and the efficiency gains being shared by all workers, with increased wages and fewer working hours. The reality was different. Yes, Australia’s productivity is steadily growing, along with GDP, but most people are working longer for less financial reward. For many, owning a house has become a receding dream. And although Australia is one of the most energy-abundant nations on earth, the average householder now pays more than double what they did a decade ago. An increasing number of people can’t afford power at all. Kurzweil and others are now urgently predicting the rise of the machines, with artificial intelligence about to overtake our own.188 Some futurists such as Elon Musk suggest the answer is to sequester a proportion of the economic efficiency dividends to provide a fair living wage for all.189 82 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide It is unlikely to happen. What is more probable: the benefits of automation will be diverted to an increasingly smaller part of our society. Once it was our labour that capitalism inexorably devalued; now people themselves are becoming irrelevant to a capital driven future. How is any of this relevant to our discussion of the British invasive impact on Aboriginal society? The answer is that the past and the present have followed a similar pattern with a shared exploitative trajectory. For Aboriginals, first their land was taken, then their labour, and they were left in what some have derogatively describes as parasitism, refugees in their own land. Aboriginals are now us. Once we were the aggressors; now we (many of us) are the aggrieved. Now we are all (as a majority) becoming redundant, encumbrances on society, displaced and now discharged. Exploitation has evolved to a terrifying new form that the British Imperium would still approvingly recognize. Now we are all beginning to know the disruptive loss caused by invasion. This time the invader is technology. This time the killing won’t be overt. We will die slowly, along with the environment. While a small number prosper. 190 Exploitation, gaining advantage at someone else’s expense, was little different in colonial times except in the manner of its doing. We did the killing and the cultural destruction. We brought the disease, the settler death squads, the roving military and police ethnic cleansing campaigns. We introduced the toxic land legislation, the racist apartheid policies. We broke up the families. We still carve the huge pastoral and mining lease holdings from Aboriginal land. We defiantly cause Aboriginals, particularly those in remote communities, to be among the most disadvantaged on Earth. Today, we unconscionably and implacably force many Aboriginal children to spend more time in gaol than school. As a nation, we are shamed. We are also becoming superfluous. Capital is the new master. And capital has no morality, only a return on investment, just as pastoralists sought in colonial Australia where there was no better investment than stolen Aboriginal land and where displaced Indigenous human capital could be removed without legal consequence. Aboriginal vulnerability to unconstrained market forces is now our own.191 It was the longest war in our history, a war for land. Wars have victors, not perpetrators. In some sense, the war continues today, a war of social inequality where many Aboriginals remain excessively disadvantaged.192 83 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Yet little is done. Commonwealth Government funding to ‘close the gap’ on Aboriginal disadvantage is being scaled back. The Commonwealth says it is a State problem, to deflect accountability, and the States return fire. Seventeen years after the Lavarch report was issued, there is still little progress in addressing the problems. The despair, poverty, and alienation, which the detailed reports identify, has morphed into high levels of suicide, disproportionately excessive incarceration, and widespread drug abuse, particularly for regional and rural areas. Aboriginal communities are consistent on what they want: Constitutional recognition; economic selfdetermination; adequate infrastructure and services; mining rights; and the protection of land, language, and culture.193 Yet Government continues to erode remote Aboriginal basic rights with excessive regulation, work for the dole schemes, sequestered pensions, and the push for 99-year leases over Aboriginal land. It is yet another wave of imposed Government subjugation, for which it is unsurprising that Aboriginals remain among the most disadvantaged ethnic groups on Earth. Victors tend to write history as they see it. In consequence, the past is open to distortion and reflexivity, the future too easily biassed on a contrived divide of conquerors and conquered, winners and losers. Victors are rewarded, not punished; those responsible for crimes are left unaccountable, the ugly truths left unsaid. The spread of the pastoral frontier was ‘good’; Aboriginal resistance was ‘bad’. We still see the historical evidence, a lingering echo of violent subjugation, but it is becoming dimmer as Australia marches into pluralism. 194 In a recent book, Yuval Harari 195 argues that the old societal stressors of ‘plague’, ‘war’, and ‘famine’ - what we may generalise as disease, conflict, and food security - are no longer a significant problem. This may be partially so for First World countries. But it also ignores that some populations in First World countries are surviving in Third World conditions, groups such as Aboriginals living in remote areas, or those who depend on Government assistance to survive. That is not to say there are no other emerging threats that Harari barely mentions. These are global warming, surging refugee migrations, the rise in wealth inequality, and the accelerating destruction of the biosphere. Unsustainable exploitation along with non-renewable resource depletion are the new constraints on our future, a dilemma of our own construction, but instead Harari asserts that war is obsolete, we are more at risk of obesity than famine, and data is the new religion. In fact, the new enemy is ‘us’. Within an economic pyramid, as fewer people demand more of what exists in the global pie, it becomes a scramble for deck chairs on the Titanic. No, we have not changed that much from the time when Aboriginals were reduced from free possessors of the soil, to trespassers, to insurgents, to deportees, to welfare recipients. 84 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Now it is ‘we’ who are becoming marginalised through the casualization of labour. Once, we might expect a job for life. Now, we may be lucky to have a job at all. Democracy has become vulnerable. The oppressive pattern that began this story with British Imperialism and the erosion of Indigenous rights has now been further normalized as an exploitative social cancer. We are now all at risk. Normative genocidal behaviour: a learned response or obedience to authority? Each generation builds its prejudices anew, a skin of flesh bound to the bones of the past. The environment significantly shapes our biological phenotype: the physical characteristics of an individual organism, or collectively that of a society. It is the fast-developing science of epigenetics, the inheritance of acquired characteristics, the role of ‘nurture’ in the Lamarckian expression of the genome and the transgenerational consequences, of how nurture shapes nature. Or why all cells share the same DNA, but a skin cell is different from a neuron. Or how society shapes heritable individual behaviour in a codependent embrace. That is not to say we aren’t responsible for our actions, that we don’t have choices. But those choices become harder to make, depending on our circumstances in a found environment (whether we are rich or poor, black or white, the accidents of birth), an environment that imposes behavioural constraints, much as the shape of a football field and the governing rules determine the fluidic movement of the players and the strategies of the game, like a societal imprint on the individual psyche and its heritable mapping across generations. To a determinable extent, we are what we were; what our predecessors acquired through adaptation can now be us. Racism and other normalized behavioural disorders can form part of our cultural – and quite possibly epigenetic - inheritance.196 With sufficient numbers of a population sharing these destructive behaviours, they can form part of our collective identity, a social identikit, as for an extended Gini coefficient.197 When we read the post-contact history of Australia, we are struck by the determined racism of Britain and its cohort, the collective denigration of Aboriginal society, the single-minded occupation of Aboriginal land, the transgenerational imprinting of normalized psychopathic morbidity, the pursuit of economics over humanitarianism. If, for the moment, we accept that Britain’s occupation of Australia was genocidal in its intention and in its effect, we can ask the questions: Why? What were the determinants? Was brutalising British behaviour an unintended consequence of violent Indigenous dispossession, as unreasonable as that contention appears? 198 Could Britain have avoided large scale Aboriginal depopulation by changing its discriminatory policies? Or was the racially displacive conflict shaped by the role and agency of the British State through its endorsed practices and procedures (both legislative and administrative), enabled by the armed enforcement of its territorial ambitions? Were colonists induced to respond, in an almost Pavlovian manner, to self-enriching behaviours that were encouraged by the State? 85 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide These are some of the questions we will examine, through the lens of official British documents, in this book. It may make for uncomfortable answers if we listen. Or reflexive denial if we don’t. This, then, is the true summary story of our history told by the actors themselves through official documents, the story we are now asked to forget. Why? Because it is embarrassing. It exposes our human rights credentials, of how we prefer to see ourselves. Many of us do not want to be reminded. Some Australian politicians go further and encourage us to forget. And perhaps, we may hope, if we can ignore the past, if we discourage criticism of our history, the problem can somehow be made to go away, like an unwanted illness we refuse to have diagnosed. The important documents that shaped our nation199 through a demonstrably Lemkinian genocidal process include an intentional Government policy of dispossession (stolen land) and extermination (stolen lives), but also extends to ‘stolen children’, ‘stolen wages’, and then an elongated subjugation phase of physical, mental, and cultural destruction (stolen hopes) that is still with us. They are not all that easy for any individual to put together (it certainly took me some considerable time as many of the documents are relatively inaccessible) and are rarely collected within a theme of legislated extirpation and repression. It is more common to find episodic treatment of historical events, with a rash of inserted quotes weaving a reflexive narrative. An edited and deconstructed compilation of official documents may address the difficulty of ‘the great Australian silence’, the miasma of a cognitive gap, and provide a single repository that allows us to see, perhaps for the first time, a cruel and genocidal process in action, one that was racially and economically motivated. We provide this information in a companion document.200 Whole document sections are provided, rather than transcribing carefully selected phrases and paragraphs, from which it is possible to support almost any line of argument when fragments are excised from their context. The documents reveal a pattern of sustained oppression, of considered intentionality, of mens rea, that is difficult to ignore but has rarely been acknowledged, not by the reasonable standards of a professed civil society. The pattern defines the occupation process, which overlaps that of genocide, the common actionable components being mass killing and calibrated societal destruction. From the documents we present in this companion book, we conclude that ‘they’ are ‘us’. And we (for the most part) are who we were, the descendants of our bloody predecessors, with further immigration influxes augmenting the racially disruptive process, both dispossessory and displacive, leaving Aboriginal society to be absorbed or pushed to the margins. And many are, living in isolated groups where services are stretched, and opportunities are few. In summary, these documents are primary sources, which are presented in full, each with a brief analysis. They communicate with us directly, free of a syncretic narrative that might 86 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide impose almost any interpretation on the original material through unintended (or intended) observer bias or selective quoting. Unmodified, they have a powerful voice, requiring no hermeneutics for their rendering. Perhaps they are too confronting, the sentiments almost too raw. Together, they reveal an intentional genocidal process in action. Is Australia’s post-contact past based on lies and mistruths? Britain subjected Indigenous Australia to a military takeover, an invasion enacted at multiple points and different times around the coastline from 1788 until the mid-19th century; Aboriginal society became fodder in the frenzied process of claiming possession. British territorial reach was at stake, to counter the influence of the French and Dutch and other European powers; Britain at no time sought the consent of the Aboriginal people/s to the intended occupation process, the granting of land, the dispossession, the ruthless repression of any resistance. The word ‘conciliation’ rang hollow before the reality of armed and calibrated expropriation of Aboriginal homelands, what Aboriginal people call ‘country’, not ‘my country’, not ‘my land’, but simply ‘country’, mother to the group, and group of groups, all carefully woven together by songlines and totems, but torn apart by a protracted act of bloody British vandalism. Britain arrived with a plan and there were no unintended consequences. British military invasions began the process for each beach head area (what we now call Sydney, Perth, Hobart, Melbourne and so on) and sustained it until paramilitary civilian groups of police and pastoralists could take over from 1838. At first, Aboriginal society was tentatively accommodating, but as British intentions became evident, Indigenous resistance grew. Adelaide was the exception to a military led invasion, but it was a military invasion, nonetheless. In a measured sense, the Wakefieldian experiment – endorsed by the Duke of Wellington – was more duplicitous and dishonorable than the armed occupation of the other beachheads: the South Australian land commissioners and their coterie simply went back on their word for the Letters Patent that protected the Aboriginal peoples’ right to their land. It is a tradition that has continued: Alexander Downer, one of those illustrious gentlemen’s descendants, probably authorized the 2004 ASIS bugging of the Timor meeting to agree territorial borders between the two States as a prelude to deciding the commercial share of rich oil fields on behalf of Woodside Petroleum. Downer continues to defend our spy agencies being involved in criminal acts for national commercial interests. Timor is one of the poorest countries in the world. 201 We invent ourselves day by day, putting roots into the past and future. Those roots may be predetermined if we are collectively shaped by our inherited and learned behaviours, by our ancient beginnings as a species. We recall our cultural imaginings through story capture. For Aboriginal society, those stories of landscape and kinship become songlines to remember the country and where they came from as a group. It is why culture is vulnerable to any genocidal assault. If the storytellers are lost, who will remember us. Beyond physical death, it is the death of memory. 87 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Who, then, can speak up for the voiceless? Our violence against Nature – ecocide – has little accountability because we regard the environment as a free resource, much as we exploited Aboriginal society in the past, because we did not believe that Indigenous people had rights. The behaviour leads to unsustainability, to unrestrained growth followed by a collapse we seem unwilling to avoid. Greed and force are comorbidities in dysfunctional psychopathy. Figure 14 Fiduciary relationship between Aboriginal groups and their homelands202 Aboriginals had an entirely different relationship with the land from the British: they viewed their country as their Mother; they used the bush as a supermarket; they cared for their Mother over millennia; 203 theirs was a sustainable culture; firestick farming preserved their Mother and made it bountiful; they did not own the land (country), they belonged to it; their relationship with the land was timeless, each Indigenous group with its own territory and song lines going back to the dreaming. Their world was about to end, group by group, under the covetous eyes of the invader. There was almost nothing benign about Anglo-settler society or its methods; ‘settlement’, a euphemism for armed territorial occupation, required that the land be wrested from the Indigenous population causing them to become trespassers, then insurgents, genocidal victims, and finally refugees. Ours is a culture of waste, the consequence of unremitting exploitation, an invasive culture, predatory and acquisitive. We are who we were. And will probably remain so while our motives remain capitalist and speculative. The invasive British society regarded the Palawa as primitive hunter-gatherers,204 a pejorative term connoting backwardness. Britain viewed sustainability with derisive contempt; in Imperial ideology the land was there to be exploited. 88 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The archaeologist, Josephine Flood, writes of this misconception: Hunter-gatherers have been described as the original affluent society, and an examination of archaeological and ethnographic evidence lends support to this view. Whether gathering bogong moths or hunting seals, leaching poison out of cycads or replanting yams, Aboriginal people evolved a series of successful and varied economies. These broadly based economic systems allowed them to exploit, and to survive in, a wide range of environments where European agriculture proved to be an abysmal failure. Extensive use was made of fire as a hunting tool, modifying the Australian vegetation so profoundly that contemporary flora has been called an Aboriginal artifact. A far cry from the usual view of Aborigines as nomadic, hungry hunters is the picture of well-fed people living in groups of well-built huts beside their eel and fish traps, traps that were cunningly engineered to ensure an abundant and reliable food supply. And these experts of stone age economics had a healthier, more nutritious diet than have many Europeans today.205 And exploit they did, at first through a foraging economy when they barely survived. Confiscated Aboriginal land became a means to further individual wealth; grants were readily available to capitalists of means and the right connections, or those who served the Empire; Britain rapidly transformed Indigenous homelands into private property, an arrangement that excluded Aboriginals. Land ownership meant a mercantile system of transactions where ‘property’ could be bought and sold.206 We have barely changed today. A transaction is a bidirectional exchange (including money, gratuities, favours) of some kind (say goods or services) between two or more parties that can be formalised by an agreement (for example, a contractual arrangement). The details of the transaction can be held in a persistent data store, perhaps the land surveys and titles office or its equivalent. The transaction is of the form: Do [something] to [something] by [some party] with [some result]. For example: [Take land] from [Aboriginals] by [British Government] in order to [Grow economic development]. The effect of the transaction is a state change in [something] from [state A] to [state B], for example: [a parcel of land] [was owned by A] and [is now owned by B]. The state change may involve a financial or other transactional arrangement. 89 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Figure 15 British Transactional relationship between land and its ownership as property In the time of early Tasmanian colonization when confiscated Aboriginal land was the prize, the relationship was between a grantor (the Government) and a prospective grantee that potentially changed the ownership status of a piece of land.207 This can be illustrated by a model. The logical data model in Figure 7 shows entities and their relationships. The data model is updated by a transaction, say a financial or other negotiation that may lead to an agreement. The model transforms land into a form of property, completely at odds with Aboriginal thinking. The cultural and ideological collision could only be resolved through violence. 208 Once land could be owned as a form of property, the transactional vocabulary and semantics grew. Instead of the comprehensive Aboriginal ‘belong to my country’, Britain brought with it a multiplicity of words with overlapping meanings: take, confiscate, alienate, conquer, possess, claim, invade, occupy, discover, own, seize, expropriate, sequester, acquire, grant, buy, sell, bestow, permit, bequeath, award, donate, subsidise, allocate, cede, displace, transfer, exploit, annex, colonize, settle, and so on. Each of these brought their antonym: dispossess, trespass, sell, disown, and others as we will see. With the partial exception of Adelaide, 209 these initial New Holland invasion points were led by military personnel, either at the time of invasion, or pre-invasion, or consolidated postinvasion: 1788 New South Wales (led by military); 1803 Tasmania (led by military); 1824 Moreton Bay (military invasion); 1828 Western Australia (with a military pre-invasion in 1826 at King George III Sound); 1834 South Australia (military post-invasion); 1836 Port Phillip Bay (military invasion); 1863 Northern Territory annexation (with a military pre-invasion at Fort in 1824 at Fort Dundas and 1827 at Fort Wellington). 210 Invasion Date Invasion Beachhead 1788 Sydney Cove, New South Wales (after an earlier abortive attempt at Botany Bay) 90 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 1803 Risdon Cove, Tasmania 1824 Moreton Bay, Queensland 1824 Fort Dundas, Northern Territory 1826 King George III Sound, Western Australia 1827 Fort Wellington, Northern Territory 1828 Swan River, Perth, Western Australia 1834 Adelaide, South Australia 1836 Port Phillip Bay, Victoria211 1863 Northern Territory (annexed) Figure 16 Dates of military-led invasions by area 212 Confronting Australia’s invasion When the British Government tap-danced around issues of territorial sovereignty prior to establishing its military beachheads in Australia, these were the form of words and instructions it carefully chose in order to disavow Aboriginal rights to their land for each invasive point, if they acknowledged them at all. We have highlighted the vocabulary of British dispossession in these instructions that authorized various form of initial invasion of Aboriginal land, from ‘discover’, to ‘claim possession’ to ‘annexation’ and ‘settlement’. 91 Official British Government instructions for territorial takeover within Australia213 We are interested in the form of words Britain used in its instructions – sometimes marked secret - to its military personnel for the invasion of Australia at various points and different times around the coastline. 214 Did Britain order its people to respect Aboriginal land rights? No; if Britain sometimes encouraged the ‘consent of the natives’, in practice it was totally ignored, so we must regard the words as window dressing for the real purpose, which was an armed takeover, both military and paramilitary. Did Britain order its people to share the land with Aboriginal groups? No, ‘conciliate their affection’ were empty words, empty of meaning. Did Britain order its people to unilaterally ‘claim possession’ for the Sovereign, as it extended its reach around the continent. Invariably, yes. There has been much revisionist febrile discussion on whether Australia was ‘settled’ or ‘invaded’. To resolve the issue, we must go back to what Britain actually said rather then what people think was said. We have highlighted the key words and phrases used by Britain that give sharp focus to argument for invasion, ‘(of an armed force) enter a country so as to conquer or occupy it’. From the word sets found in primary British source documents, we can construct a classification schema, a typology. The typology has one major root: predatory acquisition of a territory for which the intended result was the bloody displacement of the Aboriginal population. Nowhere in the typology is there evidence of altruism or respect for Aboriginal culture and identity. The invasion was certainly not a ‘settlement’, ‘making one’s home in a new place’, as this implies that the process was benign. Unless we redefine ‘settlement’ to include the violent takeover of an area at the point of a gun. This is the preliminary British occupation typology, which we will later expand upon as we present more evidence for the type characteristics of the invasionive process. ‘Territorial acquisition’ is sub-typed into ‘predatory’ and ‘non-predatory’. Further sub-typing will follow in Part 2 of Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 92 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Figure 17 Preliminary typology of dispossession We are left with a simple conclusion that arises from the following observation: people define polices; policies define behaviour; and behaviour is embedded in processes for which human policies are usually the trigger or originating condition. Therefore, we conclude that Britain, in its invasionled occupation process, must stand accused of racial extermination and subjugation, of genocide, arising from the process of invasion. The genocidal agencies are deconstructed in Part 2.215 93 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Territory British Government’s Instruction East Coast of New Holland 1770 These were Cook’s 216 secret instructions from the British Admiralty, certainly clear enough, although they were intended for his possible discovery of Terra Australis Incognita, what we now call Antarctica, not for New Holland: You are also with the Consent of the Natives to take Possession of Convenient Situations in the Country in the Name of the King of Great Britain: Or: if you find the Country uninhabited take Possession for His Majesty by setting up Proper Marks and Inscriptions, as first discoverers and possessors.217 These were Cook’s secret instructions after he had explored New Zealand: You will also observe with accuracy the Situation of such Islands as you may discover in the Course of your Voyage that have not hitherto been discover’d by any Europeans and take Possession for His Majesty and make Surveys and Draughts of such of them as may appear to be of Consequence, Secret Instructions to Captain Cook, 30 June 1768 Page 2 of 2 without Suffering yourself however to be thereby diverted from the Object which you are always to have in View, the Discovery of the Southern Continent so often Mentioned218 For the 22nd August, this is Cook’s partial log entry for Possession Island: … and on the Western side I can make no new discovery the honour of which belongs to the Dutch Navigators [and as such they may lay Claim to it as their property (deleted)]; but the Eastern Coast from the latitude of 38 degrees South down to this place I am confident was never seen or viseted [sic] by any European before [and therefore by the same rule belongs to Great Britton (deleted)] us, and Notwithstand[ing] I had in the Name of His Majesty taken posession [sic] of several places upon this coast, I now once more hoisted English Coulers [sic] and in the Name of His Majesty King George the Third took posession [sic] of the whole Eastern Coast from the above Latitude down to this place by the name of New South Wales [the name is written in over an erasure], together with all the Bays, Harbours Rivers and Islands situate [sic] upon the said coast… .219 New South Wales 1788 When Lord Sydney 220 appointed Captain Arthur Phillip 221 as leader of the First Fleet to Australia and Governor of the new colony of New South Wales, he was given certain draft instructions (the original has never been found). Among these instructions was that he should ‘conciliate the affections of the Natives’, a directive that Britain was to repeat for all subsequent NSW Governors into the early 19th century. There is no evidence that this directive was ever treated seriously by colonial administrative appointees. How could it be so, when Britain’s objective was to occupy the land and dispossess the Aboriginal inhabitants, by force if they resisted.222 94 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide This is an extract from Phillip’s facsimile instructions: With these Our Instructions you will receive Our Commission under Our Great seal constituting and appointing you to be Our Captain General and Governor in Chief of Our Territory called New South Wales extending [DOCUMENT FIRST PAGE ENDS HERE] extending from the Northern Cape or Extremity of the Coast called Cape York in the Latitude of Ten Degrees thirty seven Minutes south, to the Southern Extremity of the said Territory of New South Wales, or South Cape, in the Latitude of Forty three Degrees Thirty nine Minutes south, and of all the Country Inland to the Westward as far as the One hundred and Thirty fifth Degree of East Longitude, reckoning from the Meridian of Greenwich including all the Islands adjacent in the Pacific - Ocean within the Latitudes aforesaid of 10 º 37' South, and 43º 39' South, and of all Towns, Garrisons, Castles, Forts, and all other Fortifications, or other Military Works which may be hereafter erected upon the said Territory, or any of the said Islands, with directions to obey such Orders and Instructions as shall from time to time be given to you under Our Signet and Sign Manual, or by Our Order in our , Council; 223 You are therefore to fit Yourself with all convenient speed, and to hold [DOCUMENT SECOND PAGE ENDS HERE] hold yourself in readiness to repair to Your said Command, and being arrived, to take, upon the execution of the place and trust We have reposed in You, and as soon as conveniently may be with all due solemnity to cause our said Commission under our Great Seal of Great Britain constituting you Our Governor and Commander in chief as aforesaid, to be read and published. […] According to the best Information which We have obtained, Botany Bay appears to be the most eligible situation upon the said Coast for the first Establishment, possessing a commodious Harbour and other Advantages which no [DOCUMENT EIGHTH PAGE ENDS HERE] no part of the Coast hitherto discovered affords. It is therefore Our Will and Pleasure that you do immediately upon your landing after taking Measures for securing Yourself and the people who accompany you, as much as possible from any attacks or Interruptions of the Natives of that Country, as well as for the preservation and safety of the Public Stores, proceed to the Cultivation of the Land, distributing the Convicts for that purpose in such manner, and under such Inspectors or Overseers and under such Regulations as may appear to You to be necessary and best calculated for procuring Supplies of Grain and Ground Provisions. […] You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an Intercourse with the Savages Natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all Our Subjects to live in amity and kindness with them. And if any of Our Subjects shall wantonly destroy them, or give them any unnecessary Interruption in the exercise of their [DOCUMENT FIFTEENTH PAGE ENDS HERE] their several occupations. It is our Will and Pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment according to the degree of the Offence. You will endeavour to Governor Phillip’s Instructions 25 April 1787 (UK) Page 7 of 10 procure an account of the Numbers inhabiting the Neighbourhood of the intended settlement and report your opinion 95 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide to one of our Secretaries of State in what manner Our Intercourse with these people may be turned to the advantage of this country. And Whereas We have by our Commission bearing date given Governor Phillip’s Instructions 25 April 1787 (UK) Page 9 of 10 [DOCUMENT NINETEENTH PAGE ENDS HERE] given and granted unto you other acknowledgements whatsoever full power and authority to emancipate and discharge from their Servitude, any of the Convicts under your superindendance, who shall from their good conduct and a disposition to Industry, be deserving of favor; It is our Will and Pleasure that in every such case you do issue your Warrant to every such to the Surveyor of Lands person as you may think competent to the discharge of that trust to make surveys of, and mark out in Lots such Lands upon the said Territory as may be necessary for their use; and when that shall be done, that you do pass Grants thereof with all convenient speed to any of the said Convicts so emancipated, in such proportions, and under such conditions and acknowledgements, as shall hereafter be specified . Viz To every Male shall be granted, 30 Acres of land, and in case he shall be married, 20 Acres more, and for every child who may be with them at the Settlement, at the time of making the said Grant, a further quantity of 10 Acres, free of all Fees, Taxes, Quit Rents, or, for the space [DOCUMENT TWENTIETH PAGE ENDS HERE] space of Ten years, provided that the person to whom the said Land shall be been granted, shall reside within the same, and proceed to the cultivation and improvement thereof. Reserving only to us such Timber as may be growing, or to grow hereafter, upon the said Land, which may be fit for Naval purposes, and an annual Quit Rent of Bushel of wheat after the expiration of the term or time before mentioned. You will cause Copies of such Grants as may be passed to be preserved, and make a regular return of the said Grants to the Commissioners of Our Treasury and the Lords of the Committee of Our Privy Council 224 for Trade and Plantations.225 Tasmania 1803 In 1802, Governor King 226 decided to invade the southeast part of Australia to forestall any French aspirations in Van Diemen’s Land. 227 King appointed Bowen 228 as Commandant until he could find ‘a proper officer’. On 13th September 1803, Lieutenant John Bowen landed at Risdon Cove, where he ‘pitched upon an eligible spot for the settlement, and named it Hobart.’ 229 Bowen writes: Having succeeded beyond my most sanguine expectations, and established His Majesty’s right to the island of Van Diemen although with much inconvenience and many difficulties to encounter naturally occurring in a rude uncultivated country, inhabited by unfriendly savages, I despatched the Lady Nelson, with an account of my success, to the Governorin-Chief, who signified his approbation by sending me a commission appointing me Commandant of Hobart and of the whole island of Van Diemen. 230 96 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide This is an extract from Collins’ 1803 appointment as Lieutenant Governor231 by Lord Hobart: 232 appoint you to be Lieutenant Governor of a Settlement or Settlements to be formed on the Southern Coast of New South Wales to the northward of Basses Streights and on King’s Island, or any other Island within the said Streights. You are therefore as Lieutenant Governor to take the said Settlement into your care and charge, and carefully and diligently to discharge the Duty of Lieutenant Governor thereof, by doing and performing all and all manner of Things thereunto belonging. And we do hereby strictly charge and require all Our Officers and Soldiers, who shall be in Our said Settlement, and all others whom it may concern, to obey you as Our Lieutenant Governor thereof; and you are to observe and follow such Orders and Instructions from time to time as you shall receive from Us, Our Governor of Our Territory of New South Wales and the Islands adjacent for the time being, or any other your superior officer, according to the Rules and Discipline of War, in pursuance of the trust We hereby repose in you.233 King George III Sound Western Australia; Western port and Port Phillip, Victoria 1826 Western Australia 1828 On 1st March, 1826, Bathurst despatched secret instructions to Darling to forestall French interest in the southeast and west of New Holland. Bathurst followed up these instructions 10 days later. Earl Bathurst to Governor Darling, Downing Street, 11th March, 1826. With reference to the dispatch, which I did myself the Honor of addressing to you on the 1st Instant, directing a Survey To be made of the Country around Shark’s Bay on the Western Coast of New Holland, I have to instruct you, previously to your making the Survey as therein directed, to cause one to be made of the Land bordering on King George's Sound, in Latitude 35° South, Longitude 117° 50' East, in order that if the Soil should be found good (that around Shark's Bay being by every information extremely barren) and if the circumstances of the place be in other respects favorable, a Settlement may be first made in that quarter. Among other advantages which it is understood to possess, it has that of lying in the tract of Vessels from England, and by that means enjoys an easy communication with Port Jackson. I have, &c., BATHURST.234 The British occupation of Western Australia has direct parallels with that in Tasmania: both were occupied in response to a perceived territorial threat from France. In Tasmania’s case, Governor King made the decision with the support of the Secretary of State at the time (Lord Hobart); for Western Australia, it was Governor Darling, 235 with the support of Earl Bathurst.236 Between Darling (NSW Governor 1824 – 1831), Bathurst (foreign secretary: 1812 – 1827, secretary of state: 1828 – 1830) and Arthur 237 (Tasmanian Lieutenant Governor 1824 – 1836), the heart of Aboriginal society was broken in the period from 1824 to 1830. 97 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Under this succession of appointed Governors, British sovereignty over Australia became absolute. The landscape was renamed after the invaders: Swan, Melville, George sound, Western Port Melbourne, Brisbane. Arthurs’ military operations against the Palawa between 1826 and 1832 broke their resistance in a final solution. Arthur’s genocidal strategy became a template for other invasive beachheads, as Britain tightened its always dubious grip. Darling’s miliary invasions in the south and west of Australia made the outcome inevitable for the Indigenous population. Socalled ‘settlement’ would proceed unchecked. Britain believed that its competitor was France; but the real victims were never consulted; any Aboriginal resistance anywhere led to extermination with the endgame of ethnic cleansing. It is difficult to purge any group; it is generally bloody and requires hard work; but Britain was equal to the task. In November 1826, Darling issued secret instructions to Major Lockyer to establish a military outpost On King George Sound, and Captain Wright at Western Port, to thwart French interest and make a claim of sovereignty over the entire continent. Darling then sought the agreement of Bathurst in June 1827. Until this time, Britain’s claim of sovereignty over the whole continent or the designation of New South Wales was unclear. Frederick Watson comments on this important development in unilaterally extending Britain’s territorial borders. This was the first claim made on behalf of the British crown to the entire continent of Australia. Prior to the commission given to Governor Darling, the territory of New South Wales had been defined as that portion of the island continent lying to the east of the one hundred and thirty-fifth degree of east longitude. Maps of the period divided Australia along this meridian, calling the eastern portion New South Wales, and the western New Holland. In Governor Darling's commission, the western boundary was moved six degrees further west in order to include the settlement on Melville island. In and before the year 1825, the western half of the continent was considered to be too barren for any nation to think of it as a site for settlement. Possession of the eastern coast from thirty-eight degrees of south latitude to Cape York was taken by captain James Cook on the 22nd of August, 1770.238 GOVERNOR DARLING TO EARL BATHURST. (Despatch per ship Regalia ; acknowledged by Viscount Goderich, 1st June, 1827.) 98 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide My Lord, Government House, 24th November, 1826. I have the honor, in reference to Your Lordship 's Private Letter of the 1st of March last, and to my Despatch, No. 95, of this date, to transmit to Your Lordship a Copy of the " Secret Instructions ," with which Major Lockyer and Captain Wright were furnished, the former proceeding as Commandant of King George's Sound, and the latter of Western Port. Your Lordship will observe the explanation, which I directed might be given, should any information be necessary with respect to the Western Boundary of this Government ; though, as the published Maps are marked through the Centre from North to South, and my Commission adopts that line as the Western Boundary , it would be difficult to contend or to satisfy any Nation, desirous of making a Settlement on the Western Coast, that we have an indisputable right to the Sovereignty of the whole Territory. I, therefore, beg to repeat the Suggestions, Contained in my Private Letter to Mr. Hay, dated the 9th of October, that I may receive a Commission describing the whole Territory, as within this Government. If generally known that we had actually assumed the Sovereignty, and were proceeding to Settle the Western Coast, it might possibly tend 'to prevent the interference of any Foreign Power and might set the matter at rest. I have, &c., RA. DARLING.239 [Enclosure No. 1.] GOVERNOR DARLING TO MAJOR LOCKYER. Sir, Government House, 4th November, 1826. As the French Discovery Ships, which are understood to have been preparing for these Seas, may possibly have in view the Establishment of a Settlement on some part of the Coast of this Territory, which has not yet been colonized by us, I think it necessary to apprize you, confidentially, of What may possibly be their object ; and I am to desire , in the event of their touching at King George 's Sound , that you will be careful to regulate your language and Communications with the Officers, so as to avoid any expression of doubt of the whole of New Holland being considered within this 99 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Government, any division of it, which may be supposed to exist under the designation of New South Wales,240 being merely ideal , and intended only with a view of distinguishing the more settled part of the Country. Should this explanation not prove satisfactory , it will be proper in that case to refer them to this Government for any further information they may require. But should it so happen that the French have already arrived , You will , notwithstanding, land the Troops agreeably to your Instructions , and signify that it is considered the whole of New Holland is subject to His Britannic Majesty’s Government , and that orders have been given for the Establishment of King George's Sound, as a Settlement for the reception of Criminals accordingly. I have, &c., RA. DARLING.241 Given the amount of exploration carried out by the Dutch along the coastline of Western New Holland between 1616 and 1699, it is surprising they did not ‘claim possession’, nor the French who came later, between 1772 and 1825. Bartlett writes of quickening British interest in the area: In 1818-22, Lieutenant Phillip Parker King, in the first place in the colonial cutter ‘Mermaid’, eighty-four tons, and secondly in the brig ‘Bathurst’, 170 tons, both vessels having been specially purchased for the purpose in Sydney, carried out a careful survey of the greater part of the western coast from King George III Sound to the Cambridge Gulf, and continuing along the northern coast. King’s instructions from the Admiralty were to explore the yet undiscovered coast of New Holland and to complete, if possible, its circumnavigation, also to examine minutely all gulfs and openings in the northern coast for any river on that part likely to lead to an interior navigation of the continent. Mr Allan Cunningham was the botanical collector of the party, and one of the two masters’ mates was Mr John Septimus Roe, afterwards the SurveyorGeneral of the Swan River Colony. King’s charts and sailing directions still formed the basis of those in use a century later. He died a Rear Admiral in 1855.242 Bartlett continues the story, to the point where, in 1826, Britain establishes a military settlement on King George Sound and Shark Bay to forestall suspected French interests in Western New Holland: In June 1825, the French vessels ‘Thetis’ and ‘Esperance’, commanded respectively by De Bougainville and du Camper, were cruising about the southern coast. As it was at that time strongly suspected that France, recognizing the maritime strength derived from the possession of suitable colonies, desired to found a settlement in Australia, Lieutenant- 100 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide General Sir Ralph Darling, then Governor of New South Wales, acting under instructions from the Earl of Bathurst, (to whom, however, in his despatch of 10 October 1826, he reported unfavourably on King George Sound and Shark Bay for settlement, offering the opinion that the French would find it difficult to maintain themselves on so barren a coast) sent Major Lockyer, of the 57th Regiment, with a detachment of the 39th Regiment, and a party of convicts, numbering all told about eighty, to found settlements at Western Port and the Sound. The expedition, consisting of H.M.S. ‘Fly’ (commanded by Captain F.A. Wetherall) and the Colonial Government brigs ‘Amity’ (commanded by Lieutenant Festing) and ‘Dragon’, sailed from Sydney on 9 November 1826. The ‘Amity’ reached King George Sound on 25 December and the proposed settlement was established. The troops and convicts stationed at King George Sound were, however, about four years afterwards withdrawn by order of the Home Government and the settlement was annexed to that on the Swan River by proclamation dated 7 March 1831.243 Why did Britain decide to establish a ‘settlement’ on the Swan River? There was nervousness about French interest in the area, particularly from Darling. But James Stirling also made a strong case for its occupation, claiming it was superior to the Sydney basin, with better soil and more fresh-water springs. Bartlett writes: In 1826, Captain James Stirling, R.N., when commanding H.M. frigate ‘Success’, was ordered to New South Wales on a special service which the monsoon prevented him from at once undertaking. He pointed out to Governor Darling the advantages of Swan River for settlement,244 and was consequently authorized in the meantime to explore that part of Western Australia which King, on the ground that it had already been visited by the French, had omitted from his survey. On 17 January 1827, having on board Mr Charles Fraser, the Colonial Botanist of New South Wales, he sailed from Sydney with a view to make up the French survey deficiencies and to examine the country in the vicinity of the Swan River. The result of his mission was detailed in a report forwarded by Captain Stirling to His Excellency General Darling on 18 April 1827. This is an extract from the instructions by George Murray,245 the Secretary of State, to the Admiralty in November 1828 to take formal possession of the western side of New Holland: I have the honour of signifying to your Lordships His Majesty’s pleasure that you will give immediate orders to the officer commanding His Majesty’s Naval Forces at the Cape of Good Hope to dispatch one of the Ships of War under his command, without the smallest lofs of time, to the Western Coast of New Holland, with directions that he take formal pofsefsion of the Western side of New Holland in His Majesty’s… The Lords Commifsioners of the Admiralty (Document first page ends here) Majesty’s name. It is desirable that the place, on which he shall take the pofsefsion, be at, or as 101 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide near as pofsible to Swan River, and that he maintains, on that spot, an uninterrupted pofsefsion, on behalf of His Majesty, until the arrival of further Instructions, which I will very shortly enable your Lordships to communicate.246 On 5th March 1829, Fremantle acknowledged his Admiralty instructions with a despatch to Lieutenant General Darling, Governor of Sydney, New Holland: 247 […] In consequence of instructions from My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to proceed in Hs Majesty’s Ship under my command to Swan River to take possession of the West Coast of New Holland, where it is the intention of His Majesty’s Government to establish a Colony […]248 On 2nd May, Fremantle landed at the Swan River: [..] on that day formal possession was taken of the whole of the West Coast of New Holland in the name of His Brittanic Majesty and the Union Jack was hoisted on the South head of the River.249 However, when we turn to Fremantle’s diary for 21st April to 28th August 1829, 250 the entry for 2nd May does not mention ‘claiming possession’, as Fremantle states in his letters to the Admiralty, nor does the rest of his diary. The questions then are: Did Fremantle claim the ‘the whole of the West Coast of New Holland’ or ‘all that part of New Holland which is not included within the territory of New South Wales’; and if he only claimed the coastline, was Stirling’s ‘settlement’ unlawful under Britain’s limited claim of sovereignty? Just as Aboriginal dispossession was gathering pace, so were native birds and animals being exterminated: kangaroos, shags, parrots, plovers, ducks, cockatoos, seals,251 penguins, gannets, seagulls, sharks, anything; there was British pleasure in killing; prayers were on Sundays. On May 27th Fremantle writes: I walked afterwards into the interior about two miles; it is good walking; many trees, & altogether a very pretty spot, & one of the most desirable places I have seen to settle on. Saw many Parroquets & some black Cock-a-toos, but I could not kill one of the latter. I shot an immense Kite, resembling our own with very tremendous talons; returned to the Tents in the Evening. The Pinnace had brought on shore Stakes for the ditch. Walked to the Mineral Spring to try & find the natives, but they had removed & we could not see them anywhere; I suppose hunger had driven them in search of food. Killed some Parroquets & a Jackdaw,,[..] 252 102 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide On 12th August 1829, Fremantle records in his diary: Another ship the Marquis of Anglesea arrived from England in Gages Roads with Settlers about 120 in all, & altogether there must now be nearly 300 persons at the Swan River. The Governor has much to do to divide & survey the Country, as all the Settlers are very anxious to be put in possession of their grants of land..[…]253 In Fremantle’s diary, on a return voyage to the colony, he shows little understanding of Aboriginal rights to their land; he seems to regard them as fauna. However, he does recognize that the British have taken ‘possession of their country’. He records: I was sorry to find that there was a very bad understanding with the Natives, who were most troublesome & did much damage, spearing the sheep, pigs, &c. in great abundance. Many deaths have also been occasioned by them & in return many of them have been killed. I am induced to believe that amongst the lower Classes it has almost amounted to a war of extermination & they are shot whenever they are fallen in with; indeed it is considerably dangerous to move about unarmed or alone. It is laughable to see a Shepherd with a Musket instead of a Crook, & every flock is obliged to have two if not three men to guard it. It is hoped in time that a better understanding may be established with them, and that means may be taken to remove them to some Island or distant part of the Country not settled, where they may be allowed to hunt & if necessary be supported. There is much to be said & allowed for the poor Savages. We take possession of their Country, occupy the most fertile parts, where they are in the habit of resorting to for nourishment, destroy their fishing & Kangaroo, & almost drive them to starvation, & they naturally consider themselves entitled to our Sheep & Stock whenever they can get hold of them; they lately took from Mr Bull’s farm upwards of 70 sheep & destroyed them; at another time they took from Mr Brown 40; they approached the shepherd, calling out “Kangaroo”, & when he turned his head round to look the way they pointed, the Savages knocked his brains out with Clubs after spearing him; they then drove off the Sheep. On its being discovered they were pursued, & at night having established themselves they were found preparing to enjoy a meal from their plunder; 11 of the sheep were found roasting whole, having been killed & skinned as dexterously as any English butcher could have done. The tribe consisted of about 30 including Women & Children; they made their escape, & nothing was regained but the half roasted mutton. They are so cunning & sly that no confidence is to be placed in them, & if a tribe is in the Neighbourhood, you may depend upon having your house attacked & plundered if the men leave it for any time. I believe one tribe was nearly exterminated by two or three soldiers who followed them after they had stolen some sheep, & coming upon them unawares the Natives were nearly all bayoneted. This is really a most awful warfare, but I am sorry to think at present necessary.254 103 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide In December 1828, Downing Street issued Lieutenant-Governor James Stirling255 his instructions, for which this is an extract. His instructions make no mention of what would happen to the Aboriginal population: It having been resolved by His Majesty’s Government to occupy the Port on the Western Coast of New Holland, at the Mouth of the River called "Swan River", with the adjacent Territory, for the purpose of forming a Settlement there. His [DOCUMENT FIRST PAGE ENDS HERE] Majesty has been pleased to approve the selection of yourself to have the Command of the Expedition appointed for that Service, and the Superintendance of the proposed Settlement.256 South Australia 1834 In 1833, Robert Gouger formed the South Australian Association in Britain to found a colony (South Australia) on the principles of EG Wakefield. In 1834, the British Parliament passed the South Australia Foundation (Colonization) Act for the occupation of ‘waste and unoccupied’ land. 257 The legislation was a lie, legal trickery to conform with British law; the land was neither ‘waste’ nor ‘unoccupied’. This is an extract: Whereas that part of Australia which lies between the meridians of the one hundred and thirty-second and one hundred and forty-first degrees of east longitude and between the southern ocean and twenty-six degrees of south latitude together with the Islands adjacent thereto consists of waste and unoccupied lands which are supposed to be fit for the purposes of colonization And whereas divers of his majesty’s subjects possessing amongst them considerable property are desirous to embark for the said part of Australia And whereas it is highly expedient that his majesty’s said subjects should be enabled to carry their said laudable purpose into effect And whereas the said persons are desirous that in the said intended colony an uniform system in the mode of disposing of waste lands should be permanently established Be it therefore enacted by the King’s most excellent majesty by and with the advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal and commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same that ^ it shall and may be lawful for His Majesty, with the Advice of His Privy Council,258 to erect within ^ that part of Australia which lies between the meridians of the one hundred and thirty-second and one hundred and forty-first degrees of east longitude, and between the southern ocean and the twenty-six degrees of south latitude, together with all and every the islands adjacent thereto, and the bays and gulphs thereof;xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ^ with the Advice of His Privy Council,259 to establish one or more provinces, and to fix the respective Boundaries of such provinces^ and that all and every person who shall at any time hereafter inhabit or ^ reside within his majesty’s said province ^ Or provinces ^ shall be free and shall not be subject to or bound by any laws orders statutes or constitutions which have been heretofore made, or which hereafter shall be made ordered or enacted by for or as the laws orders statutes or constitutions of any other part of Australia but shall be subject to and bound to obey such laws orders statutes 104 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide and constitutions as shall from time to time in the manner hereinafter directed be made ordered enacted for the government of his majesty’s xxxx province ^ or provinces ^ of South Australia […] And be it further enacted that it shall be lawful for his majesty his heirs and successors by warrant under the sign manual to be countersigned by his majesty’s principal secretary of state for the Colonies to appoint three or more fit persons to be commissioners to carry certain parts of this act and the powers and authorities hereinafter contained into execution and also from time to time at pleasure to remove any of the commissioners for the time being and upon every or any vacancy in the said number of commissioners either by removal or by death or otherwise to appoint some other fit persons to the said office and until such appointment it shall be lawful for the surviving or continuing commissioners to act as if no such vacancy had occurred And be it further enacted that the said commissioners shall be styled “The Colonization South Australia Act, or Foundation Act of 1834 (UK). Page 3 of 7. Commissioners for South Australia” and the said Commissioners or any two of them may sit from time to time, as they deem expedient as a board of commissioners for carrying certain parts of this act into execution And be it further enacted that the said commissioners shall cause to be made a seal of the said board and shall cause to be sealed or stamped therewith all rules orders and regulations made by the said commissioners in pursuance of this act and all such rules orders and regulations or copies thereof purporting to be sealed or stamped with the seal of the said board shall be received as evidence of the same respectively without any further proof thereof and no such rule order or regulation or copy thereof shall be valid or have any force or effect unless the same shall be so sealed or stamped as aforesaid And be it further enacted that the said commissioners shall and they are hereby empowered to declare all the lands of the said province or provinces (excepting only portions which may be reserved for roads and footpaths to be public lands open to purchase by british subjects and to make such orders and regulations for the surveying and sale of such public lands at such price as the said commissioners may from time to time deem expedient and for the letting of the common of pasturage of unsold portions thereof as to the said commissioners may seem meet ∧ for any period not exceeding three years ∧ and from time to time to alter and revoke such orders and regulations and to employ the monies from time to time received as the purchase money of such lands or as rent of the common of pasturage of unsold portions thereof in conducting the emigration of poor persons from Great Britain or Ireland to the said province ∧ or provinces ∧ provided always, that no part of the said public lands shall be sold except in public for ready money and either by auction or otherwise as may seem best to the said commissioners but in no case and at no time for a lower price than the sum of twelve shillings Sterling per English acre provided also that the sum per acre which the said commissioners may declare during any period to be the upset or selling price at which public lands shall be sold shall be an uniform price (that is to say) the same price per acre whatever the quantity or situation of the land put up for sale provided also that the whole of the funds from time to time received as the purchase money of the said lands or as the rent of the common of pasturage of unsold portions thereof shall constitute an “Emigration Fund” and shall without any deduction whatsoever except 105 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide in the case hereinafter provided for be employed in conveying poor emigrants from Great Britain or Ireland And to the said province ^ or provinces^provided also that the poor persons who shall by means of the said “Emigration Fund” be conveyed to the said province ^ or provinces ^ shall, as far as possible, be adult persons of the two sexes in equal proportions, And not exceeding the age of thirty years xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 260 In 1835, a Letters Patent was issued to legally create the Province of South Australia and define its boundaries, an area larger than France. The Letters Patent was ignored by Justice Blackburn in his 1971 Gove decision, as having no force in law, being overridden by the SA Foundation Act. Why? Because the Letters Patent specifies Aboriginal land rights, not mentioned in the Act: Nothing should be done to ‘affect the rights of any Aboriginal natives of the said Province to the actual occupation or enjoyment in their own person or persons of their descendants of any lands therein now actually occupied or enjoyed by such natives’. The Letters Patent admitted that the land was occupied by Aboriginals, but was contradicted by the Foundation Act, which asserted the land was unoccupied. An area the size of France was annexed, the homeland of several Aboriginal nations, including the Kaurna (of the Adelaide Plains), the Narrinyeri (Coorong), the Ramindjeri (Encounter Bay) and the Pitjantjatjara (to the north) whose resistance was quickly overcome and whose society was destroyed within thirty years.261 The most populous Nation were the Ngarrindjeri (Murray Lakes). 262 They were signed out of existence by an Act of the British Parliament. Gouger deviously manipulated the Secretary of State, Glenelg, to ensure that the Act did not specify how the Aboriginals would be compensated. Gouger was therefore responsible for much of the human toll. Many of the SA Land Commissioners became very wealthy, buying and selling what was Aboriginal land. Adelaide streets and other places are named in their ‘honour’. The founding of South Australia was all about a legal grab for more land, for more landed wealth. The Foundation Act was quickly followed with the South Australian Commission Land Sale Regulations 1835 (issued by the Commissioners in the UK). The pattern of genocidal dispossession continued, as for the other British colonies in Australia, first by ‘legally’ taking the Aboriginal homelands, then by exterminating and finally repressing the surviving Aboriginals. 263 Within thirty years, most of the Indigenous population had ‘disappeared’. 106 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The only legal document that guarantees Aboriginals the free use of their land (apart from Native Title arrangements since Mabo) was granted by King William IV in 1836 under a Letters Patent that established South Australia as a British colony and where: Always that nothing in those our Letters Patent contained shall affect or be construed to affect the rights of any Aboriginal Natives of the said Province to the actual occupation or enjoyment in their own Persons or in the Persons of their Descendants of any Lands therein now actually occupied or enjoyed by such Natives. 264 However, successive South Australian Governments and generations of colonists have ignored the document and still deny Aboriginals open access to their country by invoking the laws of trespass, land titles, Fisheries legislation and the like, which Courts rule must override earlier agreements. Northern Territory 1863 ‘Foundingdocs’ informs us: In 1787 Governor Arthur Phillip’s Commission established as his domain all land from the east coast charted by Lieutenant James Cook to 135 degrees east longitude (covering the eastern one-third of the future Northern Territory). In 1824, during Governor Brisbane's term of office, the British Government decided to set up a military and trading post on the north coast of Australia. Fort Dundas, on Melville Island, 265was some 5 degrees west of the defined boundaries of New South Wales, so the Colonial Office included in the Commission issued to the next Governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling, an extension of the western boundary of New South Wales to 129 degrees east longitude. In 1829 this became the permanent boundary of the new Colony of Western Australia. The three British military/trading posts set up on the north coast (Fort Dundas, 1824–1829); Fort Wellington, Raffles Bay, 1827–1829; and Victoria, Port Essington, 1838–1849) marked Britain's claim to the whole of the Australian continent. In practice each was mainly concerned with British commercial and strategic interests in the Indian Ocean. They failed as trading posts and by the 1840s it was clear that no other country would challenge Britain's claim to the whole of Australia.266 This is an extract from the letters patent of 1863, signed by Queen Victoria, that annexed the Northern Territory to South Australia. The letters patent assigned the name of the Northern Territory to what had previously been part of New South Wales and established the legal basis of its government. The South Australian Government passed the letters patent into law through the Northern Territory Act 1863. And We do hereby annex to Our said Colony of South Australia until We think fit to make other disposition thereof or of any part or parts thereof so much of Our said Colony of New South Wales as lies to the Northward of the twenty sixth Parallel of South Latitude and between the One hundred and twenty ninth and One hundred and thirty eighth degrees of 107 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide East Longitude together with the bays and gulfs therein and all and every the Islands adjacent to any part of the mainland within such limits as aforesaid with their rights members and appurtenances.267 The Northern Territory Act of 1863 (SA)268 provided for ‘the regulation and disposal of wastelands’, something that the South Australian Government began to pursue with unseemly haste in 1864. There was no consideration of Aboriginal land rights. The Act expedited the establishment of Palmerston,269 now part of Darwin, and mapped out the area in half-acre lots. In just six months around 250,000 acres were sold, mostly to land speculators in Adelaide and London. Figure 18 British legislated semantics of invasion 108 What are we to make of this British process of antipodean territorial expansionism? Was it driven by the ‘European-only’ ‘discovery’ of ‘uninhabited’ or ‘unoccupied’ land, using their own narrow definitions of the terms? If land was already ‘discovered’ by other European powers (the only yardstick that Britain recognized), did the colonizing powers have to negotiate with each other to secure territorial rights? Did ‘discovery’ of a territory lead to taking ownership or possession of something that was already clearly ‘inhabited’, ‘occupied’ and owned by an Indigenous population through rights of continuous descent? If so, how did Britain justify its actions? Did Britain have to redefine what ‘inhabited’ meant? And ‘occupied’? 270 Did taking ‘possession’ necessarily prefigure an armed invasion? Why did Britain never obtain the ‘consent of the Natives’ in its takeover of New Holland? In New Zealand, the ‘consent of the Natives’ led to the belated 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.271 No such treaty was ever negotiated in Australia. Was Imperial expansionism no more than benign colonialism, a confected myth for establishing a ‘peaceful’ (armed) presence in an area and then ‘settling’ it (with military support) where Aboriginal resistance for each area was merely an infraction of the British criminal code, not a desperate insurrection by the local Indigenous people? Or was Imperialism something more malevolent, driven by a sense of racial supremacy and greed, the land takeover reinforced with weaponry and armed superiority, a genocidal process we now choose to ignore or forget? Was genocide inevitable, a corollary to violent colonization when the original inhabitants resisted their dispossession? Was British Imperialism enabled through a military chain of command and troop deployment, where the Colonial Office regional administrators were drawn from those with a military background? These are the issues we will now address. They are prefatory to our deconstruction of Tasmanian genocide in Part 2, which is contextually dependent on British hegemonic motivations. We will examine the language of conquest used in official Government instructions, the key events of territorial dispossession, and the military chain of command structure in enabling the takeover. cix Synopsis Each Australian beachhead invasion point 272 was established through some intentional British Government act, an instruction of some kind, perhaps to ‘take possession’ or ‘annex’ an area, or ‘establish a settlement’. The invasion event was in almost all cases supported by military force.273 Armed settlers came with each invasive force or followed in migratory waves soon after. Aboriginals were quickly displaced from their homelands to become refugees, then deportees, dependent on Government handouts for their ongoing survival. The invasion/ annexation event (conquest/ occupation) led to uneasy settlement/ subjugation until the Indigenous population was removed (exterminated/ ‘dispersed’, deported) without their consent or with coerced agreement. Therefore, Australia was ’invaded’, that is, ‘settled’(the preferred British euphemism for the violent occupation process) by armed military and paramilitary force. Britain was an occupying power until Indigenous resistance was overcome. Word Meanings (Synonyms, Antonyms) in the language of conquest 274 This word list defines the language of the British colonization of Australia, extracted from official Government correspondence as we saw earlier. They set out the vocabulary of dispossession. The words engage repeatable roles/ agencies within the colonization process and describe the British view of the racial frontier; antonyms describe the other side. Racism, a collectively held sense of British racial superiority, imbued this frontier with criminal resolve; but Britain Inc was above the law, because it was the Law. Synonyms for British view of frontier Antonyms for Aboriginal view of frontier cx Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Consent: Give permission for something. Also: acquiesce, approve, authorize, permit, allow. Oppose: Disagree with and try to prevent or resist. Also: Deny, disagree, disapprove, prohibit, protest. Britain never at any time sought the ‘consent’ of Aboriginal society to British sovereignty over their lands. Take possession: The state of owning something. Dispossession: Deprive someone of land or property. Also: expropriation, confiscation, seizure, declaration of sovereignty. Uninhabited: Without inhabitants. Inhabited: With inhabitants.(See Inhabitant) For British territorial purposes, Australia was regarded as uninhabited. Inhabitant: A person or animal that lives in or occupies a place. Discovery: The action of discovering something. (see Discover) Discover: Find someone or something unexpectedly or during a search. Become aware of a fact or situation. Be the first to find or observe a place, substance, or scientific phenomenon. The best antonym is ‘did not discover’. Also: conceal, pass by, ignore hide. Invade: (of an armed force) enter a country so as to conquer or occupy. Resist: Struggle or fight back when attacked. Withstand the action or effect of something. Try to prevent something by action or argument. Australia had been discovered some time before the arrival of the British, a fact that Cook was aware of when he encountered the Aboriginal inhabitants. Britain only recognized other European discoveries and did not regard Aboriginal society as ‘inhabitants’ within their Blackstone definition. Britain suppressed Aboriginal resistance with lethal force. Conquer: Overcome and take control of a territory or its people by military force. Surrender: Stop resisting an opponent and put oneself under their control. Also: capitulate, succumb, yield. The British tried to avoid the term ‘war’ in official correspondence because that would recognize the Aboriginals as enemy combatants, whereas Britain preferred to regard them as nominal British citizens who were disobeying British Law. Therefore, when Aboriginals in an area were defeated, Britain did not ask for their formal surrender and negotiate a treaty; instead, they were cxi Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide usually treated as criminals or unwanted ‘civilians’: some were shot, some were hanged, others incarcerated in detention facilities like Rottnest Island and Wybalenna on Flinders Island. Occupy: Enter and take control of a place, especially by military force. The opposite of ’occupy’ is either to resist the process of occupation or to relinquish control to the occupying force. On the Australian frontier, Aboriginals overwhelmingly refused to yield to the British occupation of their homelands and resisted until they were overcome, area by area. Annex: Seize territory and add it to one’s own. The opposite of ‘annex’ is either to cede the expropriation of territory or to resist the process. Aboriginal society never agreed or consented to the seizure of their homelands and chose the path of resistance. Settle: Make one’s home in a new place. In the context of the British occupation process, the opposite of ‘settle’ is that Britain should recognize Aboriginal land rights and leave or depart a contested space unless there was some shared use (usufructuary) agreement. Britain’s laws of property did not allow shared use; Aboriginals were generally regarded as trespassers on private land, able to be shot like feral pests or vermin. Settlement: A place where people establish a community. In the context of the British occupation process, the closest antonym for ‘settlement’ is being stateless, giving rise to an Aboriginal diaspora or the dispersion of people from their original homeland. Where food was plentiful year-round, Aboriginal society had many places of fixed settlement (NW Tasmania seals, SW Victoria eel traps, and so on).275 Colonize: Establish a colony in a place; take over for one’s own use. The corollary to ‘colonize’ is ‘displace’ the original inhabitants through a process of confiscating land and increasing immigration. The nearest antonym is ‘abandon’. In some rare circumstances, Britain did abandon a colony: Britain relocated its military personnel from King George Sound to the Swan River in 1830; Melville Island was vacated in 1829, after six years. A detachment of Royal marines was stationed at Port Essington from 1844 to 1849 when they were withdrawn. cxii Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Figure 19 The vocabulary of the British colonization process 276 cxiii Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The British process of Aboriginal dispossession: territorial events, official instructions, and outcomes Territorial Possession Event Summary Instruction(s) (Triggering condition) What was done (Event Outcome) 1770 East Coast of New Holland You are with the consent of the Natives to take Possession of Convenient Situations in the Country in the Name of the King of Great Britain: Or: if you find the Country uninhabited take Possession for His Majesty by setting up Proper Marks and Inscriptions, as first discoverers and possessors. Cook’s instruction was to find the south land which we now know as Antarctica and, with the ‘consent of the Natives’, take possession of it. He was unsuccessful in his search. Captain James Cook RN 277 Took possession of the east coast of New Holland in the name of King George the Third His more general instruction was : You will also observe the Situation of such Islands as you may discover in the Course of your Voyage that have not hitherto been discove’d by any Europeans and take Possession for His Majesty and make Surveys… In this supplementary instruction, Cook did not have to obtain ‘consent of the Natives’. Nor did he. Cook took possession of New Zealand, even though it was clearly inhabited, and then headed west to New Holland. Cook sailed up the east coast of New Holland and took possession of the coastline between two latitudes without the ‘consent of the Natives’: In New Holland: ..and on the Western side I can make new discovery the honour of which belongs to the Dutch Navigators [and as such they may lay claim to it as their property (deleted)]; but the Eastern Coast from the latitude of 38 degrees South down to this place I am confident was never seen or visited (sic) by any European before [and therefore by the same rule belongs to great Britton [deleted] us, and Nothwithstand[ing] I had in the Name of His Majesty taken posession [sic] of several places upon this coast, I now once more hoisted English Coulers [sic] and in cxiv Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide the Name of His Majesty King George the Third took posession [sic] of the whole Eastern Coast from the above Latitude down to this place by the name of New South Wales [the name is written over an erasure], together with all the Bays, Harbours, Rivers and Islands situate [sic] upon the said coast… Cook did not specify any longitude, restricting his ‘discovery’ to the eastern coast only. This may have been because he did not know the longitudinal extent of Holland’s territorial claim. His log has been redacted on key points. Britain later specified longitudes in its instructions to Arthur Phillip. The British Government was untroubled that Admiralty instructions had not been followed: that if an island or land mass was ‘discovered’ it could only be ‘possessed’ or ‘owned’ with the ‘consent of the Natives’ unless it was ‘uninhabited’. The wording began a tortured discussion in the British Government as to whether ’inhabited’ meant that the inhabitants had fixed dwellings according to concepts of being ‘civilized’. Joseph Banks argued that Australia was ‘sparsely inhabited’ and therefore effectively uninhabited; therefore, the ‘consent of the Natives’ was unnecessary. Summary and Conclusion: Cook was probably the first European to sail up the east coast of Australia, but he knew it was inhabited and there is no record he sought ‘consent of the Natives’ before taking possession (or ownership) of the coastline on behalf of Britain. Britain did not rescind its assumed sovereignty, although it was aware that its territorial claims were dubious because the land was already owned by its original inhabitants. cxv Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Britain’s obligations were to other European powers rather than the Indigenous inhabitants. Captain Arthur Phillip RN.278 First Governor of New South Wales Lord Sydney and Privy Council:279 appointing you to be Our Captain General and Governor in Chief of Our Territory called New South Wales extending [DOCUMENT FIRST PAGE ENDS HERE] extending from the Northern Cape or Extremity of the Coast called Cape York in the Latitude of Ten Degrees thirty seven Minutes south, to the Southern Extremity of the said Territory of New South Wales, or South Cape, in the Latitude of Forty three Degrees Thirty nine Minutes south, and of all the Country Inland to the Westward as far as the One hundred and Thirty fifth Degree of East Longitude, reckoning from the Meridian of Greenwich including all the Islands adjacent in the Pacific - Ocean within the Latitudes aforesaid of 10 º 37' South, and 43º 39' South, and of all Towns, Garrisons, Castles, Forts, and all other Fortifications, or other Military Works which may be hereafter erected upon the said Territory, or any of the said Islands, with directions to obey such Orders and Instructions as shall from time to time be given to you under Our Signet and Sign Manual[ …] you do immediately upon your landing after taking Measures for securing Yourself and the people who accompany you, as much as possible from any attacks or Interruptions of the Natives of that Country […] Phillip dutifully followed his instructions as Governor of Britain’s new ‘territory’, previously claimed by Cook. We don’t know what negotiations Britain may have had with other European powers to establish a longitude of 135 degrees East after Cook’s earlier claim of possession for the eastern coast of Australia. Phillip also took measures to protect his ‘settlement’ from Aboriginal attacks and began the process of granting land to members of the First Fleet. Britain did not recognize Aboriginal ownership of their homelands by right of prior possession. Phillip took some steps towards ‘conciliating the affections of the Natives’, but distrust grew on both sides and there was early confrontation, culminating with the 1790 reprisal killing of a gamekeeper (McEntire). Phillip reacted angrily by ordering Lieutenant Dawes and Captain Watkin Tench on a punitive raid to capture two Bidjigal men and kill ten. The dead were to be beheaded, and their heads bought back to Sydney for which purpose, hatchets and bags would be furnished.280 Dawes strongly objected to the expedition, but Tench negotiated a lower quota and then made sure that, through deliberate bungling, they were unsuccessful. Phillip vindictively made sure that Dawes’ promising career was over. As grants of land inexorably began to take over the waterways, Aboriginal resistance to the invasion grew.281 Summary and Conclusions Britain would not resile from its invasion or its reckless land grants. cxvi Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an Intercourse with the Savages Natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all Our Subjects to live in amity and kindness with them. nd if any of Our Subjects shall wantonly destroy them, or give them any unnecessary Interruption in the exercise of their [DOCUMENT FIFTEENTH PAGE ENDS HERE] their several occupations. It is our Will and Pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment according to the degree of the Offence. You will endeavour to Governor Phillip’s Instructions 25 April 1787 (UK) Page 7 of 10 procure an account of the Numbers inhabiting the Neighbourhood of the intended settlement and report your opinion to one of our Secretaries of State in what manner Our Intercourse with these people may be turned to the advantage of this country.[…] As Aboriginals were pushed away from their homelands, conflict could only accelerate. And it did. Britain’s response was military. That would come later, gathering momentum after Phillip’s departure. But Phillip initiated the dispossessory process, obediently following the instructions of his superiors. It is our Will and Pleasure that in every such case you do issue your Warrant to every such to the Surveyor of Lands person as you may think competent to the discharge of that trust to make surveys of, and mark out in Lots such Lands upon the said Territory as may be necessary for their use; and when that shall be done, that you do pass Grants thereof with all convenient speed to any of the said Convicts so emancipated, in such proportions, and under such conditions and acknowledgements, as shall hereafter be specified . Viz To every Male shall be granted, 30 Acres of land, and in case he shall be married, 20 Acres cxvii Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide more, and for every child who may be with them at the Settlement, at the time of making the said Grant, a further quantity of 10 Acres, free of all Fees, Taxes, Quit Rents, Western Australia 1828 South Australia 1834 Northern Territory 1863 Figure 20 Territorial possession events cxviii Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The military chain of command in the British process of Aboriginal dispossession Event Instruction issued by Instruction Issued to Military Personnel Supporting282 Outcome 1770 claim of possession over east coast of New Holland British Admiralty on behalf of British Government 283 Captain James Cook RN For the first voyage, Endeavour was converted to accommodate a crew of almost one hundred officers and men, marines and civilians. The ship was the crew’s main home for the three years of the voyage. Conditions were cramped, particularly for the ordinary seamen who lived communally on the main deck. Officers and civilians had small cabins in the ship’s stern. First to be entered on the muster-book, or crew list, is James Cook, First Lieutenant, commander of the ship, who received his commission on 25th May 1768. Two days later he went aboard the Endeavour.285 I now once more hoisted English Coulers [sic] and in the name of His Majesty King George the Third took posession [sic] of the whole Eastern Coast.287 On 16 February 1768 the Royal Society petitioned King George III to finance a scientific expedition to the Pacific to study and observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the sun to enable the measurement of the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Royal approval was granted for the expedition, and the Admiralty elected to combine the scientific voyage with a confidential mission to search the south Pacific for signs of the postulated continent Terra Australis Incognita (or "unknown southern land"). 284 (then Lieutenant) Marines: 12 Navy: 57 286 cxix Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 1788 Establishment of a ‘settlement’ at Sydney Cove in New South Wales Lord Sydney and Privy Council 288 Captain Arthur Phillip RN Commodore of First Fleet Appointed Governor of New South Wales The First Fleet comprised 11 ships that departed from Portsmouth, England, on 13 May 1787 to found the penal colony that became the first European settlement in Australia. The Fleet consisted of two Royal Navy vessels, three store ships and six convict transports, carrying between 1,000 and 1,500 convicts, marines, civil officers and free people (accounts differ on the numbers), and a large quantity of stores.289 The exact number of people directly associated with the First Fleet will likely never be established, as accounts of the event vary slightly. A total of 1,420 people have been identified as embarking on the First Fleet in 1787, and 1,373 are believed to have landed at Sydney Cove in January 1788. In her biographical dictionary of the First Fleet, Mollie Gillen gives the following statistics:290 Phillip completed land surveys and consolidated the beach head settlement. Relationships with Aboriginal groups deteriorated and would never recover. Phillip began the process of land grants slowly: Governor Phillip, in his Instructions dated 25 April 1787, was empowered to grant land to emancipists. The first land was granted in 1792. Phillip insisted however, that land must have a particular use. As a result only small grants (totalling approximately 4,000 acres) were made in almost five years. It was not until the late 1790's that larger grants were made, although these were frequently subject to exploitation and land speculation.291 Landed at Sydney Cove: Major Robert Ross in command of three companies of marines Marines 245 cxx Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Marines wives and children 54 Ship’s crews 269 Officials and passengers 14 Convicts 754 1788 Establishment of a ‘settlement’ at Sydney Cove in New South Wales Western Australia 1828 1834 Governor John Hindmarsh was escorted by 19 Royal Marines 1836 Royal South Australia Volunteer Militia created, consisting of an infantry company and two cavalry troops. 292 Northern Territory 1863 Figure 21 Territorial events and initiating instructions cxxi Words – their form and usage – are important. They help us structure reality and give it agency. In 2016, the University of New South Wales inadvertently entered the culture wars when it issued a ‘diversity tool kit’293 pointing out that Australia was ‘invaded’ not ‘settled’, immediately drawing opposition from some journalists and politicians.294 In defending the University, Professor Dixon wrote: I have no claim to be an expert in Australian history, so as a lawyer, I will turn to the account given by our profession’s leaders in the High Court of Australia. In the foundational case, Mabo No2, Chief Justice Brennan repeatedly used the word ‘dispossession’ to describe the process whereby Aboriginal land was taken: ‘during the last 200 years, the Australian Aboriginal peoples have been substantially dispossessed of their traditional lands. … (They) were dispossessed of their land parcel by parcel, to make way for expanding colonial settlement. Their dispossession underwrote the development of the nation’. Justices Deane and Gaudron went further, describing ‘the conflagration of oppression and conflict which was … to spread across the continent to dispossess, degrade and devastate the Aboriginal peoples and leave a national legacy of unutterable shame… (The) full facts of that dispossession are of critical importance to the assessment of the legitimacy of the propositions that the continent was unoccupied for legal purposes’. With this judgement, the High Court dispatched not just the legal fiction of ‘terra nullius’, but the historical fiction that the colonisation of Australia was anything but a long story of dispossession in which violence – whether it be the massacre of Aboriginal people or the theft of their children or the degradation of their communities – has been central. A mature Australia should be able to understand and deal with these shameful aspects of our history. Other advanced democracies have been able to do so in coming to terms with their own histories of colonisation and slavery, and rightly regard Australia’s refusal to acknowledge its own history as a rather contemptible expression of national immaturity. This does not mean wearing a black armband. It simply means growing up and taking responsibility for doing what we can to recognise and put right what was done in the making of Australia. 295 Based upon the instructions that Britain gave to its military invasive forces, we conclude that the British Government invaded rather than settled Australia at multiple points over 75 years from 1788 to 1863, using expansionary colonizing edicts to its military representatives such as ‘take possession’ or ‘annex’, which ignored the rights of Indigenous inhabitants. In this context of armed territorial occupation, the term ‘invaded’ falls within its accepted meaning: (of an armed force) enter a country so as to conquer or occupy it.296 As we saw, each invasive force comprised military and sometimes other personnel. Britain expected Indigenous resistance. In Phillip’s case Britain instructed him: 122 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide you do immediately upon your landing after taking Measures for securing Yourself and the people who accompany you, as much as possible from any attacks or Interruptions of the Natives of that Country. The question then is: Did Britain use disproportionate military (up to 1838) and paramilitary (1788 to 1928 and then beyond) force against Aboriginal society. Our answer is Yes. Acts of unilateral territorial possession and annexation triggered the conflict, which were enflamed by bloody pastoral occupation. Sometimes, in an unequal contest, a war, even an unrecognized race war, can become exterminatory. And when it depopulates area after area of its Indigenous people, it becomes genocidal. This happened in Australia. By 1911, over 90% of the different Indigenous peoples across Australia ‘disappeared’. Our Governments – State and Federal - were unperturbed. We further conclude that, whenever Britain encountered Aboriginal resistance to their dispossession, they intended to destroy each Aboriginal group, in each area, in whole or part, which is the summary legal meaning of Lemkinian genocide, the only agreed definition of genocide that the world has. Women and children were included in the slaughter. Almost no one was convicted in 140 years, apart from a few pastoral workers at Myall Creek in 1838. Britain’s objective was territorial hegemony; it required them to completely suppress any Aboriginal insurgency against the occupation of their homelands, a duty that Britain transferred to its vassal states when they were granted a degree of autonomy prior to Federation and then until at least 1928, the date of the last well-known large-scale massacre carried out by police in the Northern Territory. Today, targeted racial oppression does not require extermination; we are too civilized for that. Today, other forms of Aboriginal oppression are paramount: excessive incarceration, enduring poverty, and systemic poor health. Aboriginal people/s still do not have a treaty or recognition in the Constitution. We stand ashamed. History and repeatable processes Australian history shows a ‘fractal-like’ (self-similar) nature at different scales; the pattern tends to repeat because the processes repeat, for example, the iterative shape of violent colonisation, area by area, as the pastoral frontier advanced. Historical processes are stochastically messier than physics computations because variable human agency is involved, but they still follow a broadly prescriptive pattern similar to an algorithm. A repeatable type occupation process solves the problem of iteratively forcing territorial hegemony over Indigenous society. Take Britain’s invasive occupation of Australia, for which Tasmania is a fractal-like example. It involved a declaration of sovereignty over an area, or a unilateral act of possession equivalent to annexation, followed by an armed invasion and rapid displacement of the indigenous population through febrile land settlement and accelerated immigration. If Aboriginals resisted, they were subjugated by armed force, their insurrection put down with brutal resolve. 123 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Within the Lemkinian meaning, physical genocide (racial or group destruction and killing) frequently accompanied territorial ethnic cleansing (racially targeted forced removal from an area coveted by the usurper for territorial occupation); cultural and psychological genocide followed. Type process Type trigger Type outcome Instantiation of type process Nested sub-process decomposition Figure 22 Type process and instantiation297 The occupation process was driven through Government constraint rules or policies, a ‘rulesbased order’, primarily, alienation of ‘Crown’ land for the benefit of settlers, hordes unending, eager for landed wealth. Nevertheless, there was a hidden cost. The intended consequence (effect or outcome) of armed territorial occupation (policy-defined cause or trigger) was the usually forcible removal of Aboriginals from their homelands. The procedural consequence of genocidal occupation cannot be separated from the policy; Lemkinian genocide was an expected (or intended) consequence of the British Government’s policy of forced territorial occupation. Each instantiation of the type occupation process for a new area of Australian invasion followed the same general prescriptive steps; taken together, the sum of all such instances defined Australia-wide genocide like a Fourier transformation of logistic Aboriginal depopulation from multiple agencies, nearly all of which were embedded in Lemkinian intent, the targeted categorial destruction of a group. Repeating a certain process for which each instantiation has a similar expected outcome will compound the intended consequence. That is why genocide resulted, and not just for Tasmania. The British occupation process was a reliable and repeatable mechanism for committing genocide on a mass-produced scale, area by area, territory by territory, colony by colony, state by state. Processes cannot go back in time, so each process instantiation is unique, but all instantiations are procedurally similar, repeating the same patterned behaviour and with a similar outcome to other instantiations, cumulatively producing an intended result. Genocide is not strictly an event, but a process of related events bound by a common cause and purpose. All putative exterminatory and destructive events – subject to verifiability - are different; but a certain prescriptive type class of mass destruction events shows a conformable symmetry, where each contextually dependent class instance shares common characteristics that are variably weighted by intersecting categorial agency. Each instantiation of this type class carries the burden of its context, the motive and mechanics of intentional, state-sponsored, targeted repression and mass homicides against some group for some area for 124 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide some advantage. We know this class as Lemkinian, as prescribed by the United Nations Convention on genocide If we accept for the moment that Lemkinian genocide did occur in Australia, if we accept that the motive was to confiscate Aboriginal land using any level of necessary violence for financial advantage, then we hypothesize that the expanding pastoral frontier, abetted by the State, intentionally caused a dispossessory pattern of extermination, self-similar at different scales, a ‘fractal-like’ pattern that carried a uniquely Australian character. The motive? Money (financial reward) and power (self-interest) for a defined group at the expense of another group. Self-defence was secondary, an excuse rather than a reason. Conclusions: genocidal processes and outcomes This paper considers the Lemkinian invasion of Tasmania by Britain as a contextual referent or template or analytical framework or fractal-like instance for what happened across Australia in an intentional armed occupation process that displaced the Indigenous inhabitants, area by area, in a blitzkrieg of sustained racist violence. Processes occur in time, so there is a time delay between invasion (the triggering condition for the occupation process) and the successful Aboriginal removal from ‘Crown’ land or land granted to settlers in any contested area (the intended territorial occupation process outcome). The time delay between the purposeful British invasion of an area and its triumphal occupation varies according to the amount of Aboriginal resistance and the amount of land but was roughly 30 to 40 years from the time of each initial beach head settlement within a circumscribed area, say Moreton Bay or the Kimberly or Port Phillip or the Tasmanian midlands and east coast. Tasmania was conquered through forced occupation. The process was completed by 1833 after nearly ten years of duplicitous striving by Arthur; the genocidal process began in 1803 with an invasion progressively cemented in place by Arthur’s predecessors, including the Governors of New South Wales, people such as Macquarie, Brisbane and King and their British masters, a conga line of Secretaries of State to which the Colonial Office reported. Was Britain shamed by the extermination of the Palawa? History says no. Britain’s priorities were economic and political; human rights and the environment were secondary. We continue to pay the price today for those learned destructive behaviours from our colonial past. Aboriginal society still suffers the heavy foot of repression; the environment now suffers from our collective behavioural psychopathy, to exploit a ‘free’ resource beyond sustainability before anyone else does. There can only be one outcome – unless we change. 125 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Palawa precontact society redux Palawa Prehistory Australia is old. It has some of the oldest geological formations on Earth, with rocks dating back more than 3 billion years and zircons from 4.4 billion years, soon after the planet was formed.298 The vast sedimentary iron ore deposits (iron oxide as hematite) of the Pilbara in northwest Australia were laid down in a prehistoric seabed between 1.9 and 2.4 bya299 through the mediation of oxygen produced by primitive blue-green algae called cyanobacteria. With the decline of anaerobic life forms, the atmosphere was slowly transformed; the earth and its creatures would never be the same. When the supercontinent of Gondwana broke up about 180 mya and Australia began its slow drift northward, it carried its ancient cool climate Antarctic vegetation into an uncertain future. There are still Gondwanan remnants today, the Tarkine300 wilderness of northwest Tasmania having the largest forests in our continent from that ancient time: beech, leatherwood, Huon301 and celery-top pine. They remain vulnerable to encroachment, just as the Palawa were. The difference is that the Palawa barely survived the British invasion and then only as a hybrid, the consequence of often predatory miscegenation where British colonists had a gender imbalance and black velvet was easy prey. Australian Aboriginals share one of the longest continuous human cultures in existence. The San people of Namibia are probably the oldest, originating from around 200,000 years ago. A recent world-first genome study published in Nature shows that modern humans migrated from Africa about 72,000 years ago, 302 putting to rest other divergent theories. The genetic information from the three-report study establishes that there was a single mass migration event from Africa, not multiple dispersals. 303 The study further reveals that there was a single originating wave of migration into the north and then around the supercontinent of Sahul (Australia, Papua New Guinea and Tasmania) about 50 kya,304 with the population influx carrying some Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA, the result of intermixing along the way. By 31 kya, the study’s biomarkers show that Aboriginal communities around Australia became more genetically distinct from each other. How old is Palawa society? When did they first migrate to Tasmania? Recent archaeological evidence provides several clues, dating Aboriginal occupation possibly as old as 40 kya, following several waves of migration. Discovery Age of occupation 1981 From ca. 19 kya Location Discoverer/ significance Findings Kutikini (Fraser) Cave in southwest305 Discovered by Rhys Jones and Kevin Kieman Occupied during Last Glacial Maximum (15 to 20 kya) 126 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 1990 From ca. 35 kya Warreen Cave, Maxwell Valley in southwest306 2008 From ca. 40 kya to 28 kya Jordan River, north of Hobart307 Most southern human population in Pleistocene Government stated that construction of Jordan River Valley bridge would go ahead, in spite of archaeological value. Possibly up to 6,000 years older than Warreen Cave. Figure 35 Archaeological dating of human occupation in Tasmania The land bridge between Tasmania and the rest of the Australian continent was inundated some 10 kya, further isolating the Palawa, who continued the land management practices that created a parkland for their sustenance. It was a form of Eden. Game and fish were plentiful. Fruit could be picked from trees. They recorded their culture in paintings and preserved their traditions around a campfire at night. It was soon to change. Australia remained geographically and genetically cut off until an invasive wave of disruptive occupation by the British in the 19th century quickly destroyed Aboriginal society within a generation or more from each militarized point of initial contact across the metastasizing pastoral frontier. In Tasmania, it was no different, the displacive extermination mostly complete by 1833, a Lemkinian process with an implacable trajectory. There would be no prescription for enduring the ending of the world.308 127 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Proper names, quotes, and notation The name Palawa 309 refers to the Tasmanian Aboriginals as a distinct and unique group, possibly a race. It is a term recently confected by mixed ethnic descendants but will suffice for our discussion as it connotes ‘oneness’ and acknowledges their long struggle as a group for cultural and economic recognition. We will use the name Tasmania in reference to Van Diemen’s Land. The facing image is that of Truganini310 (or Trucanini, Trugernanner and other variant spellings, although she insisted that the correct pronunciation was Trucanini, where – she told the historian Bonwick - Truganini derived from George Robinson), born at Recherche Bay, an embayment, becoming the last of the ‘South East’ tribe, ‘Lalla Rookh’ as James Bischoff and others gently called her,311 from an impossibly beautiful location on Tasmania’s southern coast, part of the Nuenonne language group that included Bruny Island (or Lunawanna Allonah).312 Trucanini (ca. 1812 – 1876) was a diminutive woman, less than 5 feet under the old measure, but then Queen Victoria was also of similar stature. In a sense, the two women were linked in time, one a victim of the other. Trucanini’s name was bestowed by her tribe as a description of the Atriplex cinerea (grey saltbush). Many of the Aboriginal place names are now lost, buried beneath the toponymy of an invasive culture.313 Trucanini tried to adapt to the invaders, but in the end her family was destroyed, and her people, and then her body was desecrated in a final act of official bastardry. 128 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The image – deliberately softened by the author - shows a strong woman who looks at us directly, almost accusingly. I wanted to give her life some small justice, hence this companion book: Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. I showed her image to an acquaintance, who made a disparaging comment. There was little compassion. It seems, as a society, we still have some way to go. To preserve context, where appropriate we will quote sections in full from a primary source rather than excise selected phrases or paragraphs that can potentially be used to present almost any historical construction or interpretation, another form of introduced bias, of reflexivity on the part of the interlocutor. Throughout this document, the reader will often find presumptive reference to genocide before the enveloping Lemkinian categorial agency is confirmed as a hypothesis. For this, I ask the reader’s indulgence in allowing some measure of prosecutorial license. As to indigenous terminology, many derogatory or culturally divisive terms have inserted themselves into discussion about Australia’s First People: Aborigines, Blacks, Natives, primitive, prehistoric, tribe (horde, band, clan, moiety), half-caste, full-blood, dreamtime, prehistory, settlement, nomadic, chiefs (kings). They all carry a British imputation that ignores how Indigenous Australian society see themselves: multiple diverse cultures, each of whom was invaded by Britain, then violently dispossessed through an intentional process of occupation and colonization. While we will sometimes use the term Aboriginal for Indigenous peoples, tribe (which is a British anthropological construction) for mob or community, Dreamtime for The Dreaming, and so on, it is not intended to be disrespectful or insensitive. 129 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Palawa geographic distribution (pre-invasion) We examine the Palawa geographic distribution before 1803 but will address population dynamics pre- and post-contact in the chapter Lemkinian Dispossession. We will use the geographic distribution to determine, in Part 3, weighted categorial agencies on depopulation. Figure 23 Palawa family group (stylized)314 Group Tribe315 Band Eastern and northern Oyster Bay316 1 Leetermairremener St Patrick’s Head 2 Linetemairrener Nth Moulting Lagoon 3 Loontitetermairrelehoinner Nth Oyster Bay 4 Toorernomairremener Schouten Passage 5 Poredareme Little Swanport 6 Laremairremener Grindstone Bay 7 Tyreddeme Maria Island 8 Portmairremener Prosser River 9 Pydairrerme Tasman Peninsula 10 Moomairremener Pittwater, Risdon 11 Peerberrangner Uncertain 12 Leenerrerter 13 Pinterrairer North East Territory of Band 130 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide North Midland Big River North Midlands Ben Lomond Maritime North West South West South East 14 Trawlwoolway 15 Pyemmairrenerpairrener 16 Leenethmairrener 17 Panpekanner 18 Punnilerpanner Port Sorell 19 Pallittorre Quamby Bluff 20 Noeteeler Hampshire Hills 21 Plairhekehillerplue Emu Bay 22 Leenowwenne New Norfolk 23 Pangerninghe Clyde Derwent junction 24 Braylwunyer Ouse and Dee rivers 25 Larmairremener West of Dee 26 Luggermairrernerpairrer Great Lake 27 Leterremairrener Port Dalrymple 28 Panninher Norfolk Plains 29 Tyerrenotepannee Campbell Rown 30 Plangermairreenner Uncertain 31 Plindermairhemener 32 Tonenerweenerlarmenne 33 Tommeginer Table Cape 34 Parperloihener Robbins Island 35 Pennemukeer Cape Grim 36 Pendowte Studland Bay 37 Peerapper West Point 38 Manegin Arthur River mouth 39 Tarkinener Sandy Cape 40 Peternidic Pieman River mouth 41 Mimegin Macquarie Harbour 42 Lowreenne Low Rocky Point 43 Ninene Port Davey 44 Needwonnee Cox Bight 45 Mouheneenner Hobart 131 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 46 Nuenonne Bruny Island 47 Mellukerdee Huon River 48 Lyluequonny Recherche Bay Figure 24 Palawa population distribution (pre-invasion) 317 Figure 25 Distribution of Tasmanian Aboriginal groups (pre-invasion)318 132 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Figure 26 Tasmanian Aboriginal Groups (names and geographical disposition pre-invasion)319 133 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Palawa demographics before invasion in 1803 Were the pre-contact Palawa healthy, as a society, as people? Was their population growing? Was there a balanced ratio of adults to children, of older people to those who were raising families? Or were their numbers being driven down by intertribal warfare 320 and mysterious diseases,321 which are variously the significant speculative claims by Blainey and Reynolds. Blainey opines: It is possible that many tribes suffered more deaths through warfare in the 18th century than they suffered through warfare with the British colonists in the 19th century. In the whole continent the 18th century could well have been as war-like as the 19th century. The highest estimate, so far offered, of Aboriginal deaths caused by warfare with white races during the 19th century is a grand total of 20,000 – an alarming number. To reach an equally long death toll in the 18th century, one in every 600 Aboriginals would have had to die during warfare in a typical year. Evidence I have gathered – of Aboriginal fighting in traditional times – suggests tentatively that such a death rate was not impossible. Even a death rate twice as heavy was possible.322 We will show there is no verifiable evidence that the Palawa were dying off before the arrival of the British, either through disease pandemics or warfare, and accordingly there is no reliable evidence that the population size had suffered a series of systemic and ongoing collapses prior to the arrival on the British in 1803. The evidence against such depopulation events is in the firsthand observations of some of the earliest expeditions to Tasmania, particularly the French, who were interested in understanding other societies and customs, along with the natural history of those found environments. Sealers 200 from 1798 in bass strait and down to macqaurie island.base at Maria Island Baudin 1802 sealers going to Maria Is how did he know? How many abs on maria is? Known pop in 1820? Puthikwilayti people – aboriginal people, and members of the Oyster Bay tribe. Baudin ppomley Can we find historical evidence that widespread or even localized respiratory disease was introduced by pre-1803 explorers? The records are scant. Is there any independent confirmation of some earlier Aboriginal pandemic that took hold on Aboriginal people in the southwest? If so, what may have been the cause? And when? Analysis 134 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Before 1803, most early seafaring explorers to Tasmania did not venture far inland. Almost all of them confined their attention to finding a safe harbour where they could gather fresh water and other supplies. Some took the trouble to engage with Aboriginal people. • • • • • Frederick Henry Bay (Tasman, 1642, several days). Marion Bay (du Fresne, 1772, several days). Adventure Bay on Bruny Island was a favoured mooring location (Furneaux, 1773, several days; Cook, 1777, several days; Bligh, 1788 and 1792, several weeks). Maria Island (Cox, 1789, several days; Baudin, 1802, several weeks). Others chose Recherche Bay (1792, D’Entrecasteaux, five weeks) Could any of these places have been the locus for a pre-1803 disease outbreak? We know from Robinson that a common cause of Aboriginal mortality were Acute Respiratory Disorders, including ‘colds’, ‘catarrh’, influenza, and pneumonia. We know that colds and influenza have an incubation time of one to four days, with the onset of symptoms in an average of two days. Therefore, if an explorer remained in an area for over five days, it is likely they would have noticed widespread illness among the local Aboriginal people with whom they were engaged. There were no such observations made in the available journal records, not from Baudin, not from D’Entrecasteaux. Could a respiratory infection have been acquired from an early brief contact and been carried inland, affecting an enlarging group? When Aboriginals became ill, they typically isolated themselves at a campsite and waited for the sickness either to pass or to cause their passing. Expedition Abel Janszen Tasman 323 Date Vessels Points of exploration 24 November – 4 December 1642 Heemskerck, Zeehaen West coast, south coast, Frederick Henry Bay324 Briefly landed at Blackman Bay for ‘greens’. No recorded contact with Aboriginals. Named Maria Island. On 3 December, at Frederick Henry Bay, took possession of Van Diemen’s Land for the Dutch. Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne325 3 – 10 March 1772 Mascarin, Marquis de Castrias Point Hibbs (west), Marion Bay (south). Marion Bay is about 24 kms to the south of Maria Island. His ships spent several days in Tasmania, where Marion Bay in the southeast is named after him. He was the first European to explore the island and, due to his interaction with Aboriginal people, 135 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide was the first person to show that Tasmania was inhabited. He had a violent encounter with Aboriginal people; several were wounded, and one was killed. On 5 March, near Frederick Henry Bay, he claimed Van Diemen’s Land for France. Tobias Furneaux326 10 – 15 March 1773 Adventure Named Adventure Bay on the east coast of what was later named Bruny Island by Bruny D’Entrecasteaux in 1792. Furneaux set foot at the bay for several days. Sailed up the eastern coast. Made no contact with Aboriginal people. James Cook327 24 – 30 January 1777 Resolution, Discovery Part of James Cook’s second voyage. Landfall at Adventure Bay on 26th, where they remained. Frequent contact with Aboriginal people. Bligh named Mt Wellington. Cook: The inhabitants whom we met here, had little of that fierce or wild appearance common to people in their situation; but, on the contrary, seemed mild and cheerful, without reserve or jealousy of strangers. This, however, may arise from their having little to lose or care for. William Bligh328 19 August – 4 September 1788 Bounty Set foot at Adventure Bay 21 August. No recorded contact with Aboriginal people. William Bligh329 8 - 24 February 1792 Providence, Assistant Set foot at Adventure Bay. No recorded contact with Aboriginal people. 136 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide John Henry Cox330 3 – 11 July 1789 Mercury Reached landfall at Cox Bight and sailed around the coast to Oyster Bay (Maria Island), which he so named. Charted Great Oyster Bay, Maria Island, and Marion Bay. Limited contact with Aboriginal people. Upon the whole they seemed ‘to us to be a timorous, harmless race of people, and afford a fine picture of human nature in its most rude and uncultivated state’. Cox named the strait between Maria Island and the mainland Mercury Passage. Bruni D’Entrecasteaux 22 January – 28 February 1793 Recherche, Espérance Spent 5 weeks at Recherche Bay, called leillateah by the Nuenonne people. Contact with Aboriginal people unknown. Named the river at the north of the D’Entrecasteaux channel Rivière du Nord. Named Bruni (now Bruny) Island after himself; the Nuenonne name is Lunawanna Alonnah. John Hayes 26 April – 9 June 1793 Duke of Clarence, Duchess Names the Derwent River, unaware of D’Entrecasteaux visit. Nicolas Baudin331 13 January – 24 March 1802 Géographe, Naturaliste Scientific expedition. Investigated the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, which he left on 17 February and later anchored in the strait between the mainland and Maria Island; charted the coast. Discovered an Aboriginal tomb at Riédlé Bay on Maria Island. Baudin named Riédlé Bay after 137 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Anselme Riédlé, the expedition’s gardener. Spent several days in the company of Aboriginal people at Maria Island; left on 27th. On 10th March when bearing towards the straits a small ship was sighted which was on the way to Maria Island to catch seals.332 Figure 27 Expeditions to Tasmania333 Tasman was probably the first European explorer to arrive on Tasmania’s shores when he charted the south coast of what he named Van Diemen’s Land in November 1642. Figure 28 Tasman's map of New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land, 1642-3334 During 1772, Marion Dufresne briefly visited Frederick Henry Bay where the Dutch had landed one hundred and thirty years earlier, but his landing parties were not made welcome, spears were thrown, and there were a number of shots fired. Several Palawa men were wounded and one was killed.335 In March 1773, Tobias Furneaux, Captain of the H. M. S. Adventure in Cook’s second expedition, found himself separated from the main fleet and stopped at what became known as Bruny Island (named after D’Entrecasteaux), but was unable to make contact with the Palawa although he found several huts, indicating some form of fixed settlements. 336 138 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Cook followed, in January 1777, where he anchored at Adventure Bay, on Bruny Island. James Bonwick writes of the armed encounter: Anxious to fall in with the Natives, he went with a party of marines some miles into the bush. A rustling as of a wild beast disturbing them, they looked, and saw a girl, naked and alone. They soothed their terrified prisoner by binding a handkerchief round her neck, and placing a cap upon her head. They then allowed her to depart. Soon after, eight men and a boy approached without fear; one only had a weapon, which is supposed to have been a waddy.337 Bligh arrived next, in 1788, when he located the tree marked by Furneaux’s party in 1773. There was little or no contact with the Palawa. He returned to Adventure Bay in 1792. Figure 29 Naval lieut George Tobin's sketch of an aboriginal hut at Adventure Bay, drawn in 1792 338 In 1793 came Bruni D’Entrecasteaux’s expedition to search for the ships of La Pérouse, which were presumed lost in Oceania some unknown period after departing Sydney in 1788. He stayed about five weeks, anchoring at Recherche Bay where Trucanini was born, charting the area and making contact with the Bruny Island people. The detailed maps by his cartographer and hydrographer, Beautemps-Beaupré, were subsequently used by the British. Baudin followed in January 1802, when he charted the entire length of Tasmania’s east coast and recorded a number of peaceful interactions with the Palawa, as we will see. 139 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Figure 30 Map of Adventure Bay and Frederick Henry Bay in southern Tasmania339 These later French encounters with the Palawa were generally friendly; each was curious to understand the other. Was there any early evidence that the Palawa were a dying race, as the British would come to claim? Not at all. Labillardière,340 who was D’Entrecasteax’s botanist, wrote of a healthy balance between adults and children. We can induce that such extended family groups were abundant and normal across the island. Labillardière records: 9th February. This party of savages consisted of two and forty, seven of whom were men, eight women – the rest appeared to be their children;341 and among these we observed several marriageable girls,342 still less clothed than most of the mothers. We invited them all to come and sit near our fire; and when they arrived there, one of the savages informed us by unequivocal signs, that he had come to reconnoitre us during the night. That we might understand he had seen us asleep, he inclined his, head on one side, laying it on the palm of his right hand, and closing his eyes; and with the other he pointed out the spot, where we had passed the night. He then acquainted us, by signs equally expressive, that he was at the time on the other side of the brook, whence he observed us. In fact, one of us had been awakened about the middle of the night by a rustling among the branches, and had even fancied, that he heard some broken off: but, being greatly fatigued, he had soon fallen asleep again, persuaded it was a kangarou, that had come to visit us. Our fire had been a guide to this native, whom the party had sent to reconnoitre us; while we had slept with the utmost tranquillity, notwithstanding we had been at the mercy of these savages the whole night. One of the men that accompanied us, then said, that in the evening, at sun-set, he perceived some smoke on the other side of the lake, whence he presumed, that some of the natives were assembled there; but he forgot to mention it to us, when we joined them.343 140 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 12th February. The next day a great number of us, from both ships, landed near Port Dentrecasteaux, to endeavour to see the savages again. It was not long before some of them came to meet us, giving us tokens of the greatest confidence. They first examined with great care and attention the insides of our boats, and they then took us by the arm, and invited us to follow them along the shore. We had scarcely gone a mile before we found ourselves in the midst of eight-and-forty of the natives, ten men, fourteen women, and twenty-four children, among whom we observed as many girls as boys. Seven fires were burning, and round each was assembled a little family.344 Was the Palawa lifestyle deficient in some way that might have pointed to chronic ill-health and imminent population collapse? Was there evidence of some recent pandemic? Were there signs of tribal warfare decimating those who could fight? Labillardière saw no such indications. Apart from noticing some skin conditions probably caused by the emollients used to help ward off the cold, the Palawa appeared to be untroubled by chronic illness or injury. From his observations on what they ate, their diet was probably healthier than that of the average European. Their extended family groups showed a normal demographic spread with many children and old people. That is, there was no evidence of mutated and skewed family structures, the result of systemic morbidity. This was soon to change with the arrival of the British. Labillardière continues: At noon we saw them prepare their repast. Hitherto we had but a faint idea of the pains the women take to procure the food requisite for the subsistence of their families. They each took a basket, and were followed by their daughters, who did the same. Getting on the rocks that projected into the sea, they plunged from them to the bottom in search of shell-fish. When they had been down some time, we became very uneasy on their account; for where they had dived were sea-weeds of great length, among which we observed the Fucu pyriferous, and we feared they might be entangled in these, so as to be unable to regain the surface. At length, however, they appeared, and convinced us that they were capable of remaining under water twice as long as out ablest divers. An instant was sufficient for them to take breath, and then they dived again. This they did repeatedly, till their baskets were nearly full. Most of them were provided with a little bit of wood, cut in the shape of a spatula, of which I spake before; and with these they separated from beneath the rocks, at great depths, very large sea-ears. Perhaps they chose the biggest, for all they brought were of great size. On seeing the large lobsters, we were afraid that they must have wounded these poor women terribly with their large claws; but we soon found that they had taken the precaution to kill them as soon as they caught them. They quitted the water only to bring their husbands the fruits of their labour, and frequently returned almost immediately to their diving, till they had procured a sufficient meal for their families. 141 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide At other times they stayed a little time to warm themselves, with their faces towards the fire on which the fish were roasting, and other little fires burning behind them that they might be warmed on all sides at once (!) It seemed as if they were unwilling to lose a moment’s time; for while they were warming themselves they were employed in roasting fish, some of which they laid on the coals with the utmost caution, though they took little care of the lobsters, which they threw anywhere into the fire, and when they were ready they divided the claws among the men and children, reserving the body for themselves, which they sometimes ate before they returned into the water. 345 D’Entrecasteaux’s scientific expedition would achieve more in a month than a procession of mostly British navigators would achieve in the twenty years prior or a horde of colonists thirty years thereafter. Baudin continued the French tradition. The difference between the French and British was that the French were generally interested in understanding other cultures and species. The British could only see the opportunity for self-enrichment. And the Palawa were in the way. Perhaps the D’Entrecasteaux expedition was unique in its curiosity to understand the Palawa culture? Perhaps other French expeditions would be more violently racist? No. We have the further example of Baudin’s scientific expedition in 1802, for which we turn to Plomley’s beautiful translation of Peron’s journal: Péron, D’Enrecasteaux Channel, 13 January – 17 February 1802. As soon as they perceived us they uttered loud cries of joy and quickened their pace to catch us up. Their number had now increased by the addition of a young girl between 16 and 17 years old, 2 little boys between 4 and 5 years, and a little girl between 3 and 4 years. So this family comprised 9 persons, of whom we understood the 2 eldest were the father and mother: the young man and young woman seemed to be spouses and at the same time consanguineous; the young girl was apparently their sister; and the 4 children must have been the offspring of the young man and young woman. This family had evidently returned from fishing, and they certainly must have been successful because nearly every one of them carried a quantity of shellfish of the large kind of sea-ear peculiar to these shores.346 Do we know the British view of the Palawa family groupings after they invaded in 1803? The Rev. Knopwood came out with David Collins. He was the first chaplain of Van Diemen’s Land and published his diary for 1803 to 1838. Surely someone in the invasion party was interested in Palawa society, as were the French? No, there was nothing, not even the newspapers, nothing on tribal society or culture or demography except a brief mention in 1804 when a number of Aboriginals hunting for kangaroo were killed by a military detachment under a drunken Lieutenant Moore. The killing went on for more than three hours, hardly a skirmish, more a bloodthirsty and sustained onslaught. Windschuttle disputes the count of the dead at the Risdon Cove massacre. Knopwood was unclear. Collins was slow to investigate. No one is charged. But the Palawa never forgot or forgave. Natural justice became an orphan. Perhaps the Aboriginals in the hunting party numbered 100 or 500. They certainly included women and children, as we would expect in tribal food gathering. Perhaps the Aboriginal dead were two 142 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide or fifty. It would have been easy for Collins to do a simple count of the bodies, of the casualties. He did not. Moore was asked to produce a belated report justifying his homicidal actions; he equivocated and tried to deflect the blame. He was never charged.347 What did become all too slowly evident: the British were uninterested in establishing the murderous details or punishing the offenders. Such excesses were to form a pattern associated with armed territorial occupation. There would be no prosecutions for killing Aboriginals in the next one hundred and twenty years, except for the perpetrators of the Myall Creek massacre. The public backlash to the Myall Creek hangings was so severe that chastened colonial governments would turn a blind eye to massacres thereafter. Many such massacres would be carried out by police and pastoralists, the last probably occurring in 1928 (the Coniston massacre in the Northern Territory). Today, we continue to ignore deaths in custody, with negligible prosecutions. We ignore the disproportionate rate of Aboriginal incarceration, tut-tut that Aboriginal society must be wicked if they are goaled so often, and continue along our racist path while protesting that we are a humane nation. For the first years of ‘settlement’ the British were not interested in understanding Palawa culture and society. It was not until 1810 that the local newspaper, the Derwent Star, carried an article on Aboriginal mistreatment. Britain took no action against the perpetrators. So the Palawa punished the offenders, something that Britain would not tolerate. What we do know is that the native demography – the age and gender distribution – was to change within a few years of the British arrival. The family groupings described by the French were to disappear. It was no mysterious process. It was the result of STDs, female kidnapping, sexual predation, destruction and confiscation of food sources, homicide, mental and physical harassment, and introduced disease. The natives who have been rendered desperate by the cruelties they have experienced from our people, have now begun to distress us by attacking our cattle. Two were lately wounded by them at Collins-vale; and three, it is reported, belonging to George Guest, have been killed at Blackman’s Bay. As this tribe of natives have hitherto been considered friendly, the change in their conduct must be occasioned, by some outrage on our part. No account having been received up to this time of William Russell and George Getley, there can be no doubt of the miserable death they have been put to. This unfortunate man, Russell, is a striking instance of divine agency, which has overtaken him at last, and much from him; he being well known to have exercised his barbarous disposition in murdering or torturing any who unfortunately came within his reach.348 The difference between the French and the British is stark. Genocide became the inevitable result of determined British Government policy, where the Palawa were expected to cede territorial rights without protest and become loyal British 143 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide subjects and acquiescent servants to Empire, replacing sovereignty over their homelands with subjugation to British rule. It was never going to happen. Not without a fight. The fight was unequal. A horde of British colonists meant that the immigrants rapidly outnumbered the Palawa from 1817. Aboriginal depopulation was equally rapid in proportion. No white miscreant was ever prosecuted. An Aboriginal life had little value in the British system of justice. We are fortunate, if that is the right adjective, for George Robinson. Without him, we would not have such an extensive description of late stage Palawa genocide. Because of him, we can infer what happened to the Palawa before Arthur’s ethnic cleansing operation mopped up the survivors and removed them to island detention. 349 Through him we begin to see the elongated oppressive pattern, both dispossessory (intent) and behavioural (greed). In Robinson’s journal, we see graphic and sustained British evil – intentionally causing harm for pecuniary advantage - wearing the guise of Christian concern. The armed British invasion of Tasmania in 1803 carried a visible consequence of direct homicide as the genocidal war for the land took its predictable and doleful course. But there was also an invisible invader, as Judy Campbell points out.350 This invader was small and deadly comprising introduced disease, the effect of viruses and bacteria on a subjugated people who were exposed to conditions of detention that resulted in acute respiratory disorders and diseases of the gut. For many, their death would be tortured and painful. Introduced disease such as influenza was lethal enough, but there were other acute afflictions that were induced by the conditions of their captivity from the early 1830s, for which the primary killer was pneumonia. Therefore, we will include diseases of confinement and detention as an introduced disease. In Tasmania, the Lemkinian categorial agency of disease cannot be separated from the process of ethnic cleansing. They are co-morbidities. Ethnic cleansing required forced incarceration in unhealthy conditions conducive to preventable diseases. For the variety of Tasmanian colonial histories there is surprisingly little discussion on the effect of introduced or imposed disease. Yet it was by far the major cause of mainland Aboriginal deaths, primarily from introduced smallpox or influenza, and we might conclude similarly for Tasmania. However, there is no evidence that smallpox made its way to this southernmost island. For the Palawa, we will show that acute respiratory diseases were the primary killers. But there were also secondary vectors in Palawa depopulation. Sexually transmitted disease was the sly destroyer; it could render Aboriginals infertile causing the next generation to disappear before they were born.351 144 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Tasmanian Invasive Timeline: 1768 - 1858 Australian invasion by Britain 352 1768 Secret Instructions to Captain Cook, 30th June 1768353 1770 Cook’s 1770 Log, Regarding his Claim to the East Coast of New Holland, in the Name of King George the Third 354 1783 James Maria Matra’s Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South Wales, 23rd August 1783355 1787 Draught Instructions For Governor Phillip, 25 April 1787356 to ‘conciliate the affections of the Natives’. Britain authorises Phillip to grant land. The British process of Aboriginal dispossession begins. 1793 The French explorer D’Entrecasteaux leads a scientific expedition to Tasmania 1802 Governors Hunter and King refuse to convict five white Argyle Reach settlers responsible for the brutal murder, in August 1799, of two young Aboriginal men on the Hawkesbury River, which had become the food bowl for the Sydney settlement. One of the Aboriginals was ‘cut into pieces with a tomahawk and a death spear run through his yard and came thro’ the back part of his neck’.357 Lord Hobart pardons the white murderers.358 King’s subsequent ethnic cleansing policy for the Hawkesbury area was efficient and total. 1803 After leading a French scientific expedition to Tasmania, Baudin writes to Governor King: I have never been able to conceive that there was any justice or equity on the part of the Europeans, in seizing, in the name of their governments, a land for the first time, when it is inhabited by men who have not always deserved the title of savages.359 King’s response was to invade Tasmania. 360 Tasmanian invasion (1803 – 1807) 361 1803 King sends Lieutenant Bowen to establish a military outpost on the Derwent River to forestall any French claims. Collins was appointed to be Lieutenant Governor of a Settlement or Settlements to be formed on the Southern Coast of New South Wales to the northward of Basses Streights and on King’s Island, or any other Island within the said Streights.362 Collins first settled at Port Phillip but found it unsuitable and, with King’s agreement, relocated to Port Dalrymple in northern Tasmania. The wording of Collins orders is important: he was instructed to form a settlement, not 145 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide to invade and conquer. An invasive force meant that any Aboriginal resistance would be treated as though effected by an enemy combatant for which the rules of war applied, including treaties; a settlement meant that Aboriginal resistance was treated as criminal conduct by a civilian, punishable by British Law with no possibility of treaties. 1804 February. Collins appointed first Lieutenant-Governor 1804 May 3. British Military under Lieut. Moore massacre a large number of peaceful Aboriginals on a hunting expedition at Risdon Cove. There is no prosecution. The Palawa never forgave the atrocity.363 1805 In July, the New South Wales Judge-Advocate Atkins, in advice to Governor King, deems it is lawful to kill Aboriginals in ‘reprisal’ operations, and that their witness testimony is inadmissible if they are killed. Britain does not amend or rescind this ruling. It leads to widespread extermination without fear of prosecution for the entire colonization period.364 1806 – 1807 Period of drought. Conflicts between settlers and Aboriginals over competition for game.365 Tasmanian colonization accelerates (1807 – 1824) 366 1807 – 1813 Around 600 colonists arrive from Norfolk Island, taking up farming land in the best portions of the Island, and beginning sealing operations. The new arrivals begin a process of slaughtering, child abduction and sexual predation. Violence intensifies. Competition for food resources.367 1807 – 1823 Britain exponentially increases immigration and land expropriation. The Palawa are pushed aside from their ancestral lands. If they resist, they are killed.368 1817 - 1824 12,600 land grants 146 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Palawa Repression (1816 – 1831) 369 1816 Governor Macquarie’s proclamation of Martial Law in New South Wales.370 1816 - 1818 Kidnapping of Palawa children becomes widespread. Government fails to prosecute those responsible.371 1820 By 1820, British colonists occupy around 15% of the midlands between Hobart and Launceston.372 1823 Commissioner John Bigge’s recommendation to the British Government on the sale, instead of a grant, of alienated Crown land.373 It was a revenue generation measure. From this point, Aboriginal access to their land was lost to a juridical process that transformed land into white property. 1823 In May 1823, Britain appoints Arthur as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land. He takes office in May 1824. 1824 In June, Arthur issues a Proclamation that anyone killing an Aboriginal will be charged. The Proclamation is widely ignored. During Arthur’s term, no one is ever charged for homicide against Aboriginals. Aboriginal resistance to invasive occupation continues, although their situation is becoming hopeless.374 1824 Brisbane’s proclamation of Martial Law in New South Wales375 1825 - 1831 Colonial administration crisis in Tasmania. Aboriginal resistance intensifies. Arthur refuses to prosecute any white for murdering an Aboriginal. 1825 Governor Darling's Commission 1825 (UK).376 Arthur reports to Darling as the senior Governor. 1825 Tasmania (Van Diemen’s Land) separates from New South Wales, forming its own judiciary and legislative body. 1825 British Secretary of State (Lord Bathurst) instructs Darling (the New South Wales Governor) and Arthur to ‘oppose force by force’. 377 Military and paramilitary force against Aboriginals becomes normalised. Armed settlers can ‘protect’ their property without legal consequence, although the consequences of extrajudicial killing pre-1825 were effectively non-existent, given Atkins 1805 ruling. 1825 Van Diemen’s Land Company received a royal charter for a group of London merchants to operate as a single legal entity. Britain granted the company 250,000 acres in North West Tasmania at Circular Head, under the 147 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide management of Edward Curr.378 Arthur appoints Curr as magistrate for the area. Curr oversaw extrajudicial killings. No one was ever charged.379 1825 Arthur hangs two Aboriginal resistance leaders as an example.380 Palawa resistance increases. Ethnic Cleansing accelerates (November 1826 – October 1828) 1826 On November 26, Arthur issues a Government Notice that ‘If it should be apparent that there is a determination on the part of one or more of the native tribes to attack, rob, or murder the white inhabitants generally, any person may arm, and, joining themselves to the military, drive them by force to a safe distance, treating them as open enemies… When a felony has been committed, any person who witnesses it may immediately raise his neighbours and pursue the felons, and the pursuers may justify the use of all such means as a constable might use, If they overtake the parties, they should bid or signify to them to surrender; if they resist, or attempt to resist, the persons pursuing may use such force as is necessary; and if the pursued fly, and cannot otherwise be taken, the pursuers may then use similar means.’381 This probably marked the beginning of Arthur’s Black War.382 1826 – 1828 Arthur allows Aboriginals to be lawfully killed in or driven from the ‘settled districts’, citing Bathurst’s 1825 edict.383 1826 – 1832 Arthur is responsible for the ‘Black war’ period, when targeted destruction of Aboriginals accelerates under his land and immigration policies. 384 1827 In November, Arthur despatches more troops into the interior, as a result of eleven ‘incidents’ between January and April. It has little effect. Aboriginal resistance escalates. 1828 5th April. Arthur issues a Proclamation to effect a separation of the ‘settled districts’: a line of military posts will be forthwith stationed and established along the confines of the settled districts, within which the Aborigines shall and may not, until further order made, penetrate, or in any manner, or for any purpose, save as hereinafter specially permitted; and I do hereby strictly command and order all Aborigines immediately to retire and depart from, and for no reason, or on no pretence, save as hereinafter provided, to re-enter such settled districts, or any portions of the land cultivated and occupied by any person whomsoever, under the authority of His Majesty’s Government, on pain of forcible expulsion therefrom, and such consequences as may be necessarily attendant on it. 385 1828 In May, Huskisson approves Arthur’s plans to ‘afford greater security to the distant Settlers’ and notes ‘the ill-success which appears to have already attended your exertions to conciliate and civilize these unfortunate beings’.386 148 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 1828 In November, Arthur declares Martial Law.387 1828 In January, four VDLC shepherds along with the captain of the Caroline and four of his crew murder twelve Aboriginals at Cape Grim.388 No one is charged. 1828 In February, four employees of the Van Diemen’s Land Company are involved in a massacre of around thirty local Aboriginals at Cape Grim.389 No one is charged. 1828 In April, Arthur makes a ‘demarcation’ proclamation, which requires Aboriginals to have a passport under his seal to travel around the island.390 In attempting to enforce his proclamation, Arthur establishes a line of military posts around the ‘settled’ districts, where entry is prohibited without Government permission and all Aboriginal trespassers are to be forcibly driven out. The plan fails. Violence increases.391 149 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Martial Law (November 1828 – January 1832) 1828 In November, Arthur’s Proclamation of Martial Law in Van Diemen’s Land392 allows Aboriginals to be legally shot. 1828 - 1832 Arthur maintains martial law; ‘roving parties’ and ‘pursuing parties’ are authorised to kill with impunity (and immunity from prosecution).393 1829 Case: In August, employees of the Van Diemen’s Land Company committed a cold-blooded murder at Emu Bay, which was noted by George Robinson.394 The murder was investigated by Edward Curr, the local magistrate and manager of the Company, but he took no action. Curr was ordered to conduct a formal enquiry, but concluded that the murder was justified, under Arthur’s declaration of martial law, a view that was supported by the Solicitor General Sir Alfred Stephen, with the caveat that ‘prisoners’ cannot be killed. Both Stephen and Arthur ignored the evidence that the woman had been axed to death while in custody because it might expose the illegality of widespread violence under Martial Law. The murders then continued around the state with legal immunity.395 150 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Subjugation (1829 – 1858)396 1829 – 1834 Arthur appoints George Robinson397 to ‘induce’ Aboriginal survivors to move to Island detention, where they will be away from all the settled areas. It was a politically motivated ethnic cleansing exercise.398 1829 Arthur establishes the Aborigines Committee to superintend all matters concerning the Palawa, including Martial Law, the ‘friendly mission’ and the deployment of ‘roving parties’. Arthur uses the Committee to bolster support for his actions within the Colonial Office.399 1830 In February, Arthur offers a bounty for any captured Aboriginal. 400 The offer is misconstrued by colonists that they are authorized to kill without consequence. Arthur is forced to clarify his Notice. 1830 In April, Arthur proposes to Murray that convicts be armed as a paramilitary force against the Aboriginals. Murray agrees. 1830 Britain approves Arthur’s request to arm convicts401 and the offer of a bounty for capturing any Aboriginal. 1830 Arthur appoints Aborigines’ Committee to help justify his genocidal policy. It reports in March. Arthur uses the report to request more armed force from Murray, including extra convicts.402 1830 In October, Arthur proclaims martial law again, following the release of the Aborigines’ Committee report and Britain’s endorsement of his harsh policies. 1830 In October and again in November, Arthur orders a ‘black line’ (levée en masse) to attempt a final solution across the entire state. 403 It is organized like a wild game hunt, with ‘beaters’ attempting to drive the ‘game’ into entrapment on the south-east Tasman Peninsula, where they can be isolated and neutralized (captured). It is unsuccessful. The ‘black line’ is too porous, and the few remaining Palawa evade it easily. 1831 In February 1831, the New South Wales Government orders that Crown Lands could only be disposed of through public auction. Arthur introduces land sales in 1832. 1832 In January, Arthur revokes Martial Law. He terminates the bounty in May. By this time, few Aboriginals have survived. 1832 Boatman or Jackass and Bulleye, Feb 10, 1832 404 tested the jurisdiction of British law for Aboriginal society. Two Aboriginals had been arrested for allegedly stealing a sheep. Mr. Therry, who undertook Boatman’s defence, objected to the jurisdiction of the Court, on the ground that the aboriginal natives of the colony were not subject to the British laws. Judge Dowling found the prisoner guilty. 151 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Bulli was then brought up on a similar charge. Threlkeld, the interpreter, said I have some knowledge of the customs and language of the natives; I know frequent instances of their gins being taken from them by whites; in two instances I had to interfere, and to appear at the Police Office; I have had repeated complaints from the blacks of their women being taken away from them for improper purposes; I do not think they supposed they had a right to retaliate on that account; they have a notion respecting the rights of property; they do not take what belongs to each other, nor do they make use, to any great extent, of the opportunities they possess of taking the property of the whites; I think this arises from fear; they have no knowledge of the laws of England; they would readily be induced to steal a sheep for a trifling reward; I think one fig of tobacco would induce one of them to do it; their ignorance of the consequences of the offence would induce them to commit it. Dowling summed up: if they believed that the unhappy man at the bar had really taken those sheep under an impression that they were of no value, they ought to give him the benefit of that view of the case and acquit him. The jury found a verdict of not guilty. This judgment came too late for the Palawa, but it did little to prevent an escalation of massacres across the spreading pastoral frontier. There were no juries in the bush. 1835 Governor Bourke’s 1835 Proclamation: 405 that all land belonged to the Crown unless contractually ceded to a colonist. The proclamation is commonly regarded as an affirmation of the misnamed Terra Nullius,406 but the named concept did not exist at the time. Aboriginals were not allowed to own any land, apart from one or two exceptions in New South Wales where the Government made discretionary grants. 1835 Arthur completes the relocation of the Aboriginal survivors to detention at Wybalenna on Flinder’s Island. 407 It is a form of politically driven ethnic cleansing and leads to further physical and cultural destruction, within the meaning of the Genocide Convention. 1836 Arthur leaves Tasmania a wealthy man for a new British post and a promotion from a grateful British Government. 1836 Governor Bourke’s Squatting Act (Crown Lands Unauthorized Occupation Act), often wrongly called the ‘terra nullius’ act that legitimizes British ‘ownership’ of all ‘Crown land’ and abrogates the right of any treaty arrangements made outside British Government authorization. 1837 Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes, (British Settlements), 1837408 set out the genocidal consequences of British colonization, but Britain took no actions to ameliorate or curtail the Government-led racist and destructive process. 1838 Governor Gipps refuses to prosecute Major Nunn for the Liverpool Plains massacre.409 No whites were prosecuted before 1838. After the Myall Creek perpetrators were convicted, thereafter, no whites were prosecuted for any 152 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Aboriginal murder, not until well into the 20th century. The pastoral frontier became a killing ground. 1838 Britain shifted responsibility for colonial security from its military forces to the Australian colonies. Mounted police became a Government instrument for Aboriginal ‘dispersal’, a euphemism for extermination and ethnic cleansing. 1842 Wastelands Act 1842410 1847 Wybalenna survivors are relocated to a disused penal establishment at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart, where they continue to die from pulmonary disorders induced by their living conditions.411 1850 Australian Constitutions Act 1850 (UK)412 formalizes Aboriginal dispossession. 1855 Australian Waste Lands Act 1855413 ensures there will be no treaty arrangement involving Aboriginal land rights. 1858 Torrens Title Land Act (SA)414 cements all private land as property, able to be bought and sold free of encumbrances with guaranteed title arrangements. Aboriginal land rights are further pushed to the margins of commercial arbitrage. Figure 31 Tasmanian genocide timeline: 1768 - 1858 Conclusion The terms ‘terra nullius’ and ‘genocide’ did not exist when Britain carried out enforced Aboriginal dispossession, but the absence of terminology did not confer an absence of culpability, as some historians argue. Something can exist before it is given a name. Sometimes the object of consideration can have another name. For example, can we plead that Australia did not exist before it was called Australia? Before ‘genocide’ there was extermination and cultural destruction, something of which Britain was painfully aware and actively practised in its colonial policies. Before the 1990s term ‘terra nullius’ there was ‘uninhabited land’ according to Britain’s legal precepts and system of property laws. Britain’s concept of ‘uninhabited land’ (deriving from the Latium res nullius, ‘nobody’s thing’ or ‘owned by no one') drove ‘genocide’ (displacive extermination in all its varied forms within the dispossessory process of occupation). The dispossessory process is given a moving depiction by DJ Mulvaney415 who reminds us that white derogation of Indigenous society as ‘transients in a wilderness’ and who ‘made no effort to wrest a living from the land through their own productive exertions’ 416 where ‘Australia was sparsely populated by a nomadic people whose parasitic economy depended absolutely upon what nature provided unaided’ 417 as sufficient reason for their violent removal, like unwanted feral pests.418 153 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Frontier conflict datasets for Tasmania Plomley clash dataset Normalization strategy for Plomley dataset Clash Date: For many incidents, Plomley did not know the actual date, only the year. Therefore, we have normalized dates in data bundles by location by known year. References to the attributes day and month have been removed. Excel requires a particular date format, so year yyyy is further normalized as 1/1/yyyy. Finally, Excel does not allow the value of yyyy any earlier than the twentieth century. Therefore, we have added a century to Plomley’s yyyy. 180x becomes 190x. We apologize for the distraction that this may cause some viewers of the dynamic rendering. District/ location: We have normalized Plomley’s location data in the form of a GPS coordinate with a decimalised format that is accepted by Excel. Any required decimal conversions were carried out through: https://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/calc/dms_decimal.cfm To reveal the overarching pattern of ‘clashes’ over time, the GPS location does not have to be precisely accurate. In our case, the Plomley location accuracy may be within ten or twenty kilometres or so. Some historical locations are difficult to identify. In such cases, we will show a reference to primary online sources, to assist other researchers. Also see http://www.hobart.tasfhs.org/changed_places.php https://eprints.utas.edu.au/22682/2/dennison-A-K-opt.pdf https://eprints.utas.edu.au/22682/3/dennison-L-Z-opt.pdf http://www.tasmanianpioneers.com/nomenclature.html Clash numbers We have normalized our data bundles by location within year. This means that we can aggregate the number of clashes by location if they fall within the same year. We note that the number of reported ‘clashes’ in Plomley’s dataset reached a peak in 1828, at which time the total Aboriginal population had been severely reduced to much less than a thousand, with scattered bands being constantly harassed and terrorised by armed paramilitary groups.419 We conclude that the ‘clashes’ increased out of desperation, as the Palawa realized that Britain would show them no mercy. 154 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Their highly effective guerrilla tactics caused Arthur to declare martial law, where armed convicts were brought into the war with Murray’s agreement. This made the Palawa more amenable to Robinson’s ‘peaceful mission’ of ethnic cleansing, sponsored by Arthur, when around two hundred survivors were forcibly relocated to Wybalenna as Arthur’s final solution to the Aboriginal problem. 155 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Normalized ‘clash’ data set after Plomley We normalise Plomley’s clash data by date, decimal GPS coordinates, and xx Exclusions A few of Plomley’s ‘clash’ instances are not included in the type reference dataset, usually because they cannot be geospatially located, or they do not conform to the attributes of a clash, for example, a location of ‘interior’, or a proclamation, or there is insufficient GPS information, or the location name cannot be identified in the historical record. Date Reference Mapping Outcome 10 February 1808 Governor Collins proclamation. Threatens criminal prosecution of anyone molesting Aboriginals. Not a clash location No one is ever charged. Violence continues unchecked. 29 January 2010 Governor Collins proclamation. Orders that violence is not to be offered to the natives. Not a clash location No one is ever charged. Violence continues unchecked. 25 June 1813 Governor Davey’s proclamation. Orders that violence to the natives is forbidden and their children not to be taken from them. .Not a clash location No one is ever charged. Violence and child abduction continue unchecked 13 March 1819 Sorell orders that natives are hostile and turns a blind eye to the settler practice of wantonly shooting the men to make the women abandon their children. Not a clash location No one is ever charged. ‘Settler’ violence is officially sanctioned. Conciliation is a policy in name only. HTG 13/3/19 30 November 1822 Natives reported troublesome in the interior. Location is given as ‘interior’ so cannot be properly located. HTG 30/11/22 12 August 1824 Musquito, an Aboriginal resistance fighter, is captured. Not a clash location Musquito held in gaol, pending sentencing. 156 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide HTG 13/8/24 25 February 1825 Black Jack, an Aboriginal fighter, is sentenced. Not a clash location Arthur hangs Musquito and Black as an example that he will not tolerate Aboriginal resistance. The hanging has the opposite effect: Aboriginal people are outraged at the injustice of British law, which protects the settlers from criminal prosecution and treats Aboriginal resistance fighters as criminals, subject to British justice. HTG 25/2/25 June 1825 Sideling Hill (Winterton Parish) c. September 1825 Not mapped. Location unclear. Location is given as ‘interior’ so cannot be properly located. CT 29/9/26 13 September 1826 Arthur hangs Black and Dick, two Not a clash location Aboriginal resistance fighters. CT 15/19/16 27 July 1827 No location Not mapped. January 1828 Shepherds Beats Not mapped 14 – 19 January 1828 “the interior” No location End April 1828 “interior” No location 1 December 1828 Maloney’s SL. Unable to locate. Not mapped nd 1829 Unable to locate Not mapped. Inclusions Lyndall Ryan et al dataset We use this dataset to check some of our ‘clash’ metadata.420 Jane Morrison dataset We use this dataset to check some of our ‘clash’ metadata, excluding geospatial coordinates. https://australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/ 157 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Nicholas Clements frontier conflict dataset Black Casualties pre-‘war’ (pre mid 1820s) Clements (Frontier Conflict in Van Diemen’s Land421) writes: The Pre-Contact Population The size of the pre-contact (pre-1772) population in Van Diemen’s Land is widely debated.422 Early settlers made a range of guesses from 7,000 to 20,000,423 but these are highly unreliable, both because of the estimators’ limited perspectives, and because of the possible impact of disease in the years before or around the initial settlement. We must instead rely predominantly on more recent analyses. Scholars over the last forty years have looked closely at the ethnographic sources, but have also considered the archaeological, genetic, linguistic and carrying capacity evidence. These include the linguist John Taylor, who estimated 2,500-5,000,424 and the bioanthropologist and archaeologist Colin Pardoe, who estimated 6,000 from his study of crania and genetic drift.425 The most respectable and thoroughly researched estimates, however, are still those undertaken by N. J. B. Plomley and Rhys Jones during the latter part of the twentieth century. For his part, Jones estimated 3,000-4,000,426 while Plomley suggested 4,000-5,500.427 Most historians defer to these men and accept an estimate within their ranges,428 and I see no significant reason to depart from this consensus. This thesis, therefore, accepts Jones’ more conservative estimate of 3,0004,000 (3,500 for short). Fertility & Early Violence Chapters 3 and 4 canvass the nature and extent of early violence, concluding, along with almost every other study, that compared to the War period there was relatively little frontier violence during the first two decades of settlement. This is not just because few incidents were recorded – most incidents probably went unrecorded, especially in this period – but because there were simply not many colonists in the interior. What is more, the few colonists who did venture into this hinterland were not as formidable as the more numerous and established colonists who followed in the 1820s, thus ambushes were more difficult and risky to conduct in the early period. So, whilst a number of people were killed in pre-War frontier conflict, it probably did not have an enormous effect on the eastern population. The other form of conflict that must have had some effect on the population was internecine. As noted in Chapter 10, it is possible that the pressure of the colonial invasion triggered a higher rate of internecine violence in the 1820s, but in the early period it probably occurred at much the same rate it always had. Introduced venereal disease, on the other hand, was almost certainly a significant factor in the Aborigines’ depopulation. Many women, whether voluntarily or 158 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide involuntarily, engaged in sexual intercourse with white men.429 Consequently, many of them contracted venereal diseases, the most common of which appears to have been gonorrhoea.430In addition to a host of other unpleasant symptoms, this disease can lead to infertility in both men and women,431 which may help account for the apparently low birth-rate among some bands.432 There does not, however, appear to have been a disproportionately small number of young men and women in the late 1820s, so infertility was not a major factor during the first decade of settlement.433 On the whole though, we must consider that lowered fertility was an important cause of depopulation, responsible for a decline of perhaps several hundred. Introduced Disease Possibly the most significant, but also least understood variable is the impact of introduced diseases on the Aboriginal population. Judging from the accounts of early explorers, Plomley concluded that the Aboriginal population was originally free of serious endemic diseases.434 The French scientific expeditions under d’Entrecasteaux (1792-93) and Baudin (1802) both made reference to ‘a species of leprosy’ – perhaps yaws – but there is no record of sickness in any of the explorers’ accounts. 435 No one reported observing disease among the bands in the early decades, and two sources positively attested to their good health.436 The first colonial reference to Aboriginal ill health appeared in 1819, again to skin infection.437 In 1821, a similar condition was noted in the Oyster Bay area, and by 1826 it had been observed in several southern districts.438 By this stage though, there had still been no mention of sickness. In 1824, the settler William Parramore informed his family in England that ‘bad colds are very uncommon’ and that ‘everywhere in Van Diemen’s Land is remarkably healthy.’439 The newspapers and other sources also suggest the colony was generally free of such conditions.440 The first significant outbreak was in 1827, which is also when we see the first observation of sickness among Aborigines.441 The Hobart Town Gazette remarked that ‘the catarrh which was lately so general throughout the Island, affected the Aboriginal Natives exactly in the same way as the Europeans’. However, the newspaper was only aware of two cases, ‘Black Kit’ and another woman, both apparently loitering about the settlement at Coal River.442 There is no further mention of sickness until April 1829, when Robinson began recording the devastating effects of an influenza epidemic that tore through the Bruny Islanders, who lost more than half their number in just six months.443 The full horror of disease was not realised until the bands were crammed together on Flinders Island, and by the time Robinson left for Port Phillip in 1839, spates of pneumonia, influenza and tuberculosis, had killed well over half of the Aborigines he had ‘conciliated’.444 European accounts, therefore, indicate that disease did not begin to take a serious toll on any of the bands until the late 1820s. But this may not be the full story. There was certainly sufficient contact for disease to have been transmitted – both before and 159 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide after settlement – and when we look at what the Aborigines themselves said, this possibility appears more likely. Firstly, in 1829, the Bruny Island people gave Robinson ‘sufficient cause to believe that death hath visited with dire havoc a great portion of the aboriginal population’.445 Six months later, having gained much more familiarity with his Aboriginal friends, Robinson recorded in his journal that they informed me that plenty of natives had been attacked with RAEGERWROPPER or evil spirit, and had died. Thus the mortality with which the Brune natives had been attacked, appears to have been general among the tribes of aborigines.446 Presumably though, the Bruny Islanders did not know what was occurring among foreign bands in distant parts of the island, and it appears from a later report that the reference was to ‘the numerous tribes of aborigines once inhabiting that extensive country to the westward of D’Entrecasteaux Channel and of the Huon River’. 447 This was confirmed several years later by Luckerrermicticwocken, who told the missionary James Backhouse that she: was the sole relick [sic] of a band that inhabited the western side of the Huon River, on the south coast. I enquired of her what became of the people of her country. She answered, They all died. I then asked what killed them. An aged man of the Bruny Island band, who is one of their doctors, and was sitting by, replied, The Devil. I desired to know how he managed. The woman began to cough violently, to show me how they were affected, and she said, that when the rest were all dead, she made a ‘catamaran,’ a sort of raft, and crossed D’Entrecasteaux Channel to Bruny Island, and joined a band there. 448 Neither Backhouse nor Robinson made clear reference to when this supposed epidemic occurred, but writing to James Bonwick in the 1840s, Wybalenna catechist Robert claimed to: have gleaned from some of the Aborigines, now in their graves, that they were more numerous than the White people are aware of, but their numbers were very much thinned by a sudden attack of disease which was general among the entire population previous to the arrival of the English, entire tribes of the Natives having been swept off in the course of one or two days’ illness.449 This outbreak, he went on to add, occurred ‘before the English ships arrived in Sullivan’s Cove’.450 There is some doubt about this timing, however, because early survey teams and settlers made no reference to sickness among the Aborigines they encountered in the vicinity of the Huon, or anywhere else. Nevertheless, these people were gone from the record by the time the War began, and the evidence clearly suggests that disease was the primary cause of their demise. Robinson, Backhouse and Clark all appear to have been referring to the same outbreak of disease south of the Derwent, but this does not rule out epidemics elsewhere. It seems there was little contact between the bands on either side of the Derwent, 451 so 160 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide it is entirely plausible that the infection did not spread north, at least not during the abovementioned epidemic. There is, however, circumstantial evidence that suggests an outbreak may have occurred on Maria Island, where the Baudin expedition encountered a band in 1802. Although there does not seem to have been disease among Baudin’s men at the time, the Maria Islanders disappeared from the record thereafter. Traditionally, these people did not spend the entire year on the island, so it may just be that sealers and settlers spooked them into declining this risky pilgrimage,452 but the more likely explanation is that they were wiped out by an epidemic in the wake of Baudin’s visit. If so, infection probably did not get a chance to reach the mainland, though if this or some other disease had infected mainland eastern bands we could expect high casualties. This expectation is based on the catastrophic toll that introduced diseases have taken on indigenous populations the world over. For example, tens of thousands of Aborigines in the Sydney area were killed by a smallpox epidemic in 1789.453 Nevertheless, we must not simply assume Van Diemen’s Land was the site of similar devastation. Other than the suspicious absence of the Maria Island people, there is no evidence of sickness among eastern bands north of the Derwent, and it is these people we are most interested in. All we can say is that at least one southern band was decimated by an epidemic before the War, and possibly others. We can now ask the important question: how many Aborigines were there in eastern Van Diemen’s Land on the eve of the War? Due to the number of unknown variables, it is impossible to make accurate deductions from an original population, but we must examine the figures all the same. Robinson recorded at least twenty-nine bands in this region,454 but others were very likely unknown or unrecorded. Using Jones’ methodology, we can assume the area was probably once home to at least forty bands, each comprising on average about fifty individuals.455 That is, not less that 2,000 Aborigines were living in eastern Van Diemen’s Land at the turn of the century. Even if we make the drastic assumption that for the reasons discussed above, this population had halved by 1824, there would still have been around 1,000 Aborigines in the east. This accords with Reynold’s estimate that the total pre-war Aboriginal population was ‘perhaps 1500’. 456 But to see if such a figure is near the mark, we must check it against the reported sightings of Aborigines, their smoke plumes and their huts, and indeed we find there were abundant reports of large bands traversing the interior throughout the mid 1820s.457 Taken as a whole, the source material from this period supports an estimate of approximately 1,000 Aborigines in the east in 1824. We must therefore conclude that disease, violence and low fertility had not totally decimated the population before the War.458 Demographic decline summary (1803 – 1827), based on Clements Observations 161 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Just as a Bill of Rights becomes like a transfigurative muse to Wolff’s civitas maxima (greatest society) or Bonhoeffer’s cantus firmus 459 (fixed melody of polyphony), holding our existence and values together, as to a rock, with ontological rights enacted or legislated by the group, so do the undated homicides became a noise baseline or ground state for the profusion of Tasmanian massacres, whether reported or more likely unreported, between 1804 and 1834. The Wartime Decline (mid 1820s – 1832) Clements writes: Assuming, then, that the pre-War eastern population was in the vicinity of 1,000, and knowing as we do that only around 100 survived the conflict, then there are some 900 deaths to account for.460 We must of course consider the impact of other causes of death before we can proffer an estimate of how many were shot. A small number would have died of natural causes, and several are recorded as having been killed in internecine conflict.50 There were doubtlessly unrecorded deaths from these feuds, but, as Chapter 10 points out, they were generally very contained, typically resulting in one or two casualties. When it is also considered that the portion of Aborigines who remained alive during the War were amply preoccupied with resisting colonists, it seems probable that relatively few were killed in internecine conflict. Other causes of death were wartime expedients such as abandonment, but the combination of these and the other factors just mentioned are unlikely to account for very many deaths.51 Potentially the only serious rival to frontier conflict as a wartime killer of Aborigines was disease. We have relatively good records for the 1820s, however, and, besides the reference noted above to two (possibly detribalised) women with catarrh in 1827, there is no evidence of sickness among the hostile bands. Robinson did not witness signs of disease, nor did any of his numerous Aboriginal informants suggest that the eastern bands had ever been afflicted. Likewise, given the entangled proximity of colonists and Aborigines throughout this period, and the many surprise attacks made by the former on the latter’s campsites, it seems improbable that widespread disease could have gone unnoticed.461 Indeed, Gilbert Robertson provided positive evidence against the disease hypothesis, when he recorded in his journal for 25 February 1829: Taking a circuit from the [Jericho] Lagoon towards Prossers Plains we returned in the evening and slept by the Lagoon. ... in this latter District, there were ranges of old Huts within almost every mile for thirty miles. The huts at the oldest encampments that we saw appeared sufficient to contain Two Hundred 162 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide natives, but their encampments appeared to decrease in size every year, and those of last winter could not contain Thirty people. We remarked the same decrease in the extent of encampments on the Forest which we this day explored.4623 Such a gradual decline is consistent with a war of attrition, but not with epidemic disease. Of course, none of this rules out disease as a factor, but it strongly suggests its impact during the War was negligible. Taking all this into consideration, it is unlikely that disease, natural deaths, internecine conflict or wartime expedients can account for a substantial portion of wartime deaths in the east. Based on discussions of each of these factors in the preceding pages, it seems reasonable to assume that no more than one third of the 900 probable wartime deaths can be attributed to them. According to this admittedly crude calculus, frontier violence must have been the primary wartime killer, responsible for around 600 deaths; and this is certainly more consistent with the circumstantial evidence than is the recorded figure of around 260 deaths.463 The foundations of this figure are necessarily uncertain and unsatisfying – the true figure might be as low as 400 or as high as 1,000 – but it represents a reasoned attempt to establish a working estimate. It does not indicate that the unrecorded killings were ‘cover-ups’ by magistrates or government officials; it merely assumes that some frontiersmen were not eager to report their killings, or that those reports never made it into the archives. Such an assumption is not, as Windschuttle calls it, ‘empirically and logically absurd’, it is empirically weak and logically obvious.464 We can safely assume that the written record does not tell the whole story of violence against Aborigines, and that a working estimate of 600 wartime killings in eastern Van Diemen’s Land is both conservative and realistic. 465 Analysis: Demographic decline summary (mid 1820s – 1832), based on Clements Clements assumes a pre-war Palawa eastern population of around 1,000 and a post-war population of around 100. He then conjectures how 900 people were killed during the period of martial law. He argues that frontier violence killed about 600, with reasonably firm statistics – including primary sources - available for around 260. He further argues that many deaths went unreported, so an error range of 100% is reasonable. He assumes that disease, natural deaths, internecine conflict or wartime expedients can account for a substantial portion of wartime deaths in the east, or about 300 people (one third of the total). Calculation: 163 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Plomley proposes a total pre-war population in mid 1820s of around 1,200. Clements suggests 1,000 for the eastern population that includes the midlands. Arthur embargoed most of this area to Aboriginal people as the ‘settled districts’. We have to account for around 900 deaths during the ‘war’. That is: 900 = ∑ Reported deaths (a) + Unreported deaths (b) + Deaths from wounding (c) + Natural deaths (d) + Internecine deaths (e) + Deaths from disease (f) + Reduced births (g) = 260 + 260 + 50 + 120 + 50 + 100 + 100 ~ 900 a) From Clements, we have a tally of at least 260 deaths. b) We know that wartime deaths were underreported. We will add another 260 deaths. c) We assume that the number of Palawa wounded exceeded the number of deaths. According to the Clements dataset, there is ‘plausible evidence of 348 Aborigines killed in total between 1804 and 1834, but because of the vagueness of some of the sources, only an approximate number – about 260 – can be attributed to the area and timeframe.’ In explaining this relatively low number, Clements reasonably concludes ‘considering the quality and quantity of the sources, the remoteness of the scenes, the low literacy among the perpetrators, and the government’s ambiguous threat to hang thse who killed non-hostile blacks, it is extraordinary that so many cases have made it into the archives’. We know that a large number of Palawa were wounded between 1803 and 1832, perhaps four times as many as were reported killed, say 1,200. These wounds, if non-lethal, may have caused prolonged injury, affecting the ability to raise a family. If the wounds were lethal, the only evidence would be depopulation through a ‘mysterious process’. d) We assume that natural deaths were around 0.3% pa of a normal population.466But Palawa demographics were far from normal, with a decreasing number of women, rising STD related infertility, reducing births, fewer children, and a consequent ageing population where per capita ‘natural’ deaths would inexorably rise to 100%. e) We assume that internecine deaths and deaths due to misadventure as a proportion of the population may have increased slightly due to surviving tribal groups being forced to share a diminishing amount of land as colonists pushed them aside from their traditional territory; however, according to available reports, such deaths were relatively few. f) We assume that deaths from disease were increasing from the mid-1820s, based upon George Robinson’s journal for the ‘friendly mission’ from 1828 to 164 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 1832, and that many Aboriginal people were dying from diseases of forced confinement like Acute Respiratory Disorders. g) We also know that procreation rates were rapidly falling over a few decades due to female abduction, child kidnapping, gonorrhea, indiscriminate killings, and the collapse of family groups caused by the constant harassment of roving/ pursuing parties during the ‘Black War’. Normalized Clements dataset We normalize the Clements’ frontier conflict dataset467 around those dimensions or facets that are broadly consistent with our 4D rendering of Plomley’s clash data, allowing us to compare more easily the two geospatial patterns of events according to their date, location, and cardinality. You may ask: why don’t we show the number of white colonists who were killed? The answer is: Aboriginal people were protecting their land from invasion. Britain was the primary aggressor. This was not a dispute over a contested space where both parties are deemed at fault, like mediating a schoolyard bullying incident where all are offered counselling and the bully can feel vindicated. A balanced discussion does not mean giving equal time to the perpetrator. No, the Tasmanian guerrilla war would not have happened if Britain had left the Palawa in peace to enjoy their land unmolested, perhaps under a treaty arrangement that allowed shared use of the island’s resources. For Britain, it was all or nothing, the language and posture of the exploiter, of unsustainable exploitation and short-term rapacity, of febrile economic determinism. Conciliation was far from Britain’s mind when it expropriated Aboriginal land and brutally punished them if they resisted. Unless we believe that ‘conciliation’ was a tool to help the Palawa believe they should be grateful for bowing before a self-styled superior race and being inculcated with the humanitarian principles of Christianity. Britain may have believed it was not hypocritical, but its rule of law was grotesquely selfserving, the imposed law of the oppressor. Christianity was used like a weapon as surely as the gun and flag were wielded against heathens who must violently be taught God’s love. Belligerent genocide was the result, the phenotypical expression of white supremacist ideology. Britain has never been held accountable for its crimes against humanity. Nor were any of the British murderers in Tasmania ever punished. Many became wealthy on stolen Aboriginal land. Some of them received bounty payments. Arthur profited from his corrupt land dealings and received a promotion from a grateful British Government for freeing Tasmania and its landed class from an uncomfortable, challenging, accusatory Palawa presence. 165 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Location (Approx) nd nl 1 Ambush described by Tongerlongerter nd nl 2 Eyewitness describes killings nd nl 1 Stockman ties up woman leaving her to perish nd nl 1 Carrots claims to have cut off an Aborigine’s head nd nl 1 Russian Roulette with ignorant Aborigine nd Macquarie Harbour 1 Soldiers kill Aborigine. Known to be cruel. nd Macquarie Harbour 1 Woman named Cagee shot by soldier nd Northwest 4 nd West Coast 1 nd Cape Portland nd South Esk 1 Man confesses killing to Glover. nd North? 1 Stockmen shoot women in tree. nd Blue Hill, Clyde River 1 Pateteyaner shot at Captain Clark’s nd Miles Opening 8 Stockmen killed seventeen Aborigines (7 then 10) nd Tamar River 1 Stockman killing Aborigines. Hand as trophy. nd Northeast Coast? 5 Sealers ‘killed several’ and took several women. nd Bagdad 1 Espie’s overseer shoots Aborigine nd nr. Town? 2 2 Soldiers kill men, women and children. nd nr. Campbell Town 2 1 Ambush described by Umarrah. nd Huon River 3 1 Woorrady escribes several attacks. nd Recherche Bay 1 Soldiers kill Aborigine in conflict over kangaroo. nd Oyster Bay 1 Aborigine shot in kidnapping raid. nd Northwest 1 nd Northwest 1 Lacklay describes wounding. nd Northwest 1 Lacklay describes wounding. nd Northwest 1 Lacklay describes killing. nd Northwest 1 Lacklay describes killing. nd Northwest 1 Lacklay describes killing. nd Northwest 3 nd Pittwater? nd Pittwater? nd Northeast Coast 1 Ambush, woman killed then decapitated. Sealers? nd St Marys 1 Ambush, woman killed then decapitated. nd Mayfield Bay 3 Thomas Buxton’s reprisal ambush. Aboriginals killed Aboriginals wounded Date Summary Details Penderoin tells of multiple attacks on coast. 1 Aborigines tell of shooting. 1 Mannalargenna tells of being shot by Kelly. Lacklay describes killing. Lacklay describes killings. 5 Big River tribe ambushed. Many wounded. 2 Reprisal for Aboriginal plundering raid. 166 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide nd Den Hill 5 nd Western Marshes 4 nd Hunter Island 1 nd, various dates Campbell Town 8 nd, various dates Blue Hills district 10 Early settlement nr. Hobart 1 Party shoots several. Probable CFA. Sealer. Robert Gambell shoots woman. 1 83 Sawyer Brady claims 16 shot over the years. Hbbens kills half ‘eastern mob’ over the years. 2 nd Ambush described by Tongerlongerter. White men shoot two blacks dead. 17 nd 1820s Bruny Island? nd 1820s East Tamar nd. 1820s Western Marshes 1 Man throws woman on fire and burned her to death. nd. 1820s Bruny Island 2 Trugernanna tells of 2 Aborigines killed in boat. nd 1820-30 Kent Group of islands 1 Sealer Gambell shoots the woman Murrernghe. nd 1820-31 Waterhouse Point 1 One of Robinson’s party finds skeleton near lagoon. nd 1820-31 Tomahawk River 2 Two male aborigines found dead. nd 1820-31 Cape Barren Island 1 Crying ‘half-caste’ baby buried alive by sealer. nd 1820-31 Pittwater 1 Wade’s men shoot Aborigine. mid 1820s D’Entrecasteaux Channel 2 2 men killed by splitters in boat. Truganini raped. nd 1822-28 South Esk nd 1823-30 Hunter Island 1 Gambell shoots woman on Hunter Island. nd 1823-30 Kent Group of islands 1 Gambell shoots ‘Kit’ at Kent Group. nd 1826-30 Northwest 1 Stockmen kill woman. nd 1826-30 Circular Head? 1 nd after 1826 Circular Head nd 1823-30 Kent Group of islands nd 1827-30 Western Marshes nd 1827-30 Ritchie’s Sugarloaf 18 nd 1827-30 Western Marshes 4 3 May 1804 12-15 Nov 1804 1 Lyne tells of Aboriginal man shot through the head. 3 11 Clark tells of Kneale’s men ambushing camp. Ambush party attacks at 3am Woman kept as sex slave before being shot. 1 1 Woman tortured with firebrand Gambell shoots ‘Kit’ at Kent Group. 1 Thomas stabs Aborigine in gut. Party on horseback shoot whole band but 2. Three men shoot several Aborigines. nd 1820s-31 50 Risdon Cove 6 5 Port Dalrymple 1 1 1 Confused confrontation. Soldiers fire on large band. Soldiers fire after Aborigines throw man in water. 1804 7 New Norfolk 1 Robert Waring kills 1 in fatal attack on himself. c. 28 Feb 1807 Frederick Henry Bay 2 Hunters shoot 2 Aborigines in self-defence. Mid Apr 1807 nr. Hobart 1 1807 4 0 Various 5 4 c. Feb 1807 Early 1808 Hunters shoot Aborigine in self-defence. Brown, Lemon and others kill at least one Aborigine. 167 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 1808 4 Jan 1816 5 Robbins Island 31 Aug 1816 4 3 Some wounded by James Kelly’s boat crew. New Norfolk 3 1816 3 c. 1818 Bruny Island 1 Sealers attack camp and stab Truganini’s mother. c. 1818 Oyster Bay 1 Aborigine shot by stockmen. Children kidnapped. 1818 2 Macquarie River 1 1819 1 Early Apr 1819 nd c. 1820 Cape Grim (doughboys) nd. C. 1820 Bruny Island 1820 C Sep 1821 Stockmen retaliate when attacked by 20 Aborigines. 3 Stock-keepers shoot Aborigine in self-defence. 3 Tunnerminnerwait tells of ambush. 7 taken. 2 killed. 1 Trugernanna tells of mother killed by sawyers. 4 Boomer Creek 1 1821 1 Buxton ‘peppered’ Aborigines with shotgun. c. 15 Nov 1823 Grindstone Bay 1 19 Nov 1823 Oyster Bay 4 4 Radford’s revenge, deaths ‘considerable’. 14 Dec 1823 Oyster Bay 1 1 Amos and co. reprisal ambush. 6 5 1823 nd 1824 Interior Woman shot in back by Radford and co. 1 1824 1 Manning sees body of shot Aborigine. 0 Early Mar 1826 East of George Town 1 c. Jun 1826 Western Marshes 4 Early Sep 1826 North 2 3 Nov 1826 Shannon River 1 Aborigines attack men in hut who shoot one. 21 Nov 1826 Macquarie Plains 2 2 Aborigines killed in reprisal ambush. Late Nov 1826 4m from Bothwell 1826 Perry, Jefferies and Russell rape and murder woman Gibson’s man kills 4 or 5 in reprisal. 2 2 12 Many Aborigines ‘severely wounded if not slain’. 2 Aborigines felled by gunshot during attack. 2 nd 1827 Richmond 7 Richmond police kill 14 Aborigines. c. 1827 Eddystone Point 2 Jack and Murray killed by Tucker and Mansell. c. 21 Feb 1827 Macquarie Plains 2 Reprisal attack by Michael Steel and party. Mar 1827 Mayfield Bay 1 Thomas Buxton shoots one in self-defence. Mar 1827 Mayfield Bay 4 Thomas Buxton and party kill ‘several’ in reprisal. 22 Apr 1827 Jericho 4 Ambush by party of 4: ‘several of the blacks fell’. Jun 1827 Dairy Plains 7 Dalrymple and Cubit shoot 14 in siege. 17 Jun 1827 Western Marshes 4 Reprisal for attack on Baker. 19 Jun 1827 Western Marshes 1 Baker shoots 1 Aborigine in self-defence. 24 Jun 1827 Laycock Falls 1 1 Reprisal ambush for killing of Knight. 168 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 8 Nov 1827 Richmond district Early Dec 1827 Cape Grim 11 Dec 1827 Western Marshes 3 4 Stockmen try to get women ‘several’ men shot. 3 40 Field police ambush band. 3 Aborigines killed during attack on cattle drivers. 4 Early Feb 1828 Cape Grim 6 Crew of the Fanny attack band. 10 Feb 1828 Cape Grim 15 Apr 1828 Avoca 1 Besieged stockman wounds Aborigine with slug. 10 Apr 1828 Ben Lomond 1 Aborigine injured in pursuit by Batman’s party. May 1828 Elizabeth River 1 Aborigine killed whilst attacking Robertson’s hut. nd post-Aug 1828 Mersey 4 Goldie’s party kill ‘several’ in reprisal. c. Sep 1828 Mersey 1 23 Oct 1828 Green Ponds 2 25 Oct 1828 Sandspit 1 14 Nov 1828 Eastern Marshes c. 1 Dec 1828 Break O’Day Plains 9 Dec 1828 Tooms Lake 10 Dec 1828 Kitty’s Corner 1 13 Dec 1828 Sugar Loaf Hill 2 27 Dec 1828 Oyster Bay 4 stockmen pick off Aboriginals at base of cliff. Aboriginal woman shot by 2 VDLC stockmen. 2 Walpole and stockman shoot one in self-defence. 1 1 Military/ civilian roving party ambush. Military/ civilian roving party ambush. 2 1 45 Capture and wounding of Umarrah. Cowie makes Aborigine ‘suffer for his temerity’. 10 1828 Aborigines attacked by pursuit party. McOwen and Kenzie shoot 2 in self-defence. Meredith’s men shoot one in pursuit. 7 17 Jan 1829 Bothwell 1 Bruny Island or ‘Boomer’ Jack killed by soldier. c. 17 Jan 1829 St Paul’s River 9 Correspondent reports ambush. 19 or 26 Jan 1829 Little Swan Port 1 Rayner shoots Aborigine near Lyne’s farm. 15 Mar 1829 North Esk River 6 Pursuit party kills 4 men, a woman and child. 30 Mar 1829 Jones’ River 1 Woman mortally shot in leg and back by pursuer. 29 Apr 1829 Mayfield Bay 4 Ambush party ‘killed several of the Blacks’. C. 2 May 1829 White Marsh 1 10 Jun 1829 South Esk River 1 12 Jun 1829 Prossers Plains 5 Aug 1829 Ben Lomond 8 21 Aug 1829 Emu Bay 1 Goldie and men kill 1 woman and capture 2. 18 Sep 1829 Sorell 1 Splitters mortally wound 1 in reprisal attack. 20 Dec 1829 Sorell 1 Aborigines shot while attacking hut. nd c. 1830 Behind Swanport nd c. 1830 Woody Island 1 Everitt kills escaping Worethmaleyerpodeywer. nd c. 1830 Northeast? 1 Bulrub tells of brother is killed nd c. 1830 Northeast? 1 Bulrub tells of another brother is killed. 1829 1 Grant and Smith’s pursuit party: 1 shot, 1 wounded. McLeod’s shepherd shoots woman. 9 Party under O’Connor ‘severely wounded’ 8 or 10. 9 Batman’s party ambushes band, executing 2. 35 19 12 4 Convict describes role in vigilante group. 169 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 11 Jan 1830 Lake Echo 15 Feb 1830 Bark Hut Plains 1 9 Mar 1830 Blackmans River Apr 1830 Prosser’s Plains 1 18 Apr 1830 Whitefoord Hills 2 23 Apr 1830 Little Swanport River Mid May 1830 Pipers River 28 May 1830 Little Swanport River 4 Aug 1830 Blue Hill, Shannon 3 Ambush by Howell and 2 men, 1 prisoner, 3 killed. 27 Aug 1830 Bothwell 4 Captain Wood’s men kill ‘several’ and capture 1. c. Oct 1830 South of Launceston 3 Aborigines tell of soldiers killing 3 kinsfolk. 5 Oct 1830 Allenvale 18 Oct 1830 Pittwater 1 Mid Oct 1830 Pittwater 4 25 Oct 1830 Sandspit River 2 29 Oct 1830 Break O’Day Plains 2 2 killled by constables when attacking Talbot’s hut. c. 15 Nov 1830 Shannon/ Clyde district 2 Shone’s reprisal party kills woman and man. nd c. 1831 Big Lagoon 4 Bryant’s men shoot ‘several’ Aborigines. 2 Feb 1831 North Esk River 1 1 Aborigine killed in attack on shepherd. 13 Mar 1831 Supply River c. 13 Aug 1831 Bashan Plains 1 4 Sep 1831 Race Course 1 4 Oct 1831 Gatcombe Plains Nov 1831 St Marys Plains Late 1831 Northwest 18 Aug 1834 1 wounded whilst attacking Sherwin’s hut. 4 Peter Scott’s roving party ‘wounded several’. Following attack, Aborigine is killed in pursuit. 1 Shepherd George King attacked, shoots 2, stabs 1. 1 Aborigine loses hand in mantrap. 1 Maynes and men kill 1 woman, capture and abuse 3. 2 1 1830 Feb 1832 Tyrell’s party fires on 2, 1 killed instantly. 1 41 Captured Aborigine claims 4 shot. 1 James Searle kills Aborigine. 0 McKay and party kill man in ‘wilful slaying’. 2 2 Hamilton Reprisal for killing of Abrahams. 1 wounded. McKay and two VDLC servants ambush band. 1 1832 Ship’s ‘gun party,.. shot at and knocked over’ one. John Espie’s men kill 1 in self-defence. 3 Flinders Island Walpole’s party kills 2, captures 2 (1 stabbed) 15 1 11 Aborigine shot by Black Line party. Limped away. Gangel kills 1 with pitchfork in self-defence. 1 1831 2 soldiers and a constable wound 2 Aborigines. Mansell shoots two Aborigines trying to escape. 2 1 Aborigines killed whilst attacking shepherd. 1834 1 0 Totals 350 88 Figure 32 Normalized Palawa Casualties: 1804 – 1832 (after Clements) Analysis of Clements dataset From the Clements’ dataset, we immediately notice a statistical aberration: there almost four times the number of Palawa reported killed as reported wounded (350, 88), when we would 170 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide expect more wounded than killed, perhaps 2 or 3 to one, or at least, equivalence. ‘No date’ accounts for 83 killed and 17 wounded, around 20% of the reported totals. Some of the wounds would have been lethal, others crippling, reducing the viability of family and kin structures. We would also expect that reported statistics are far less than those unreported, perhaps by a factor of 50% to 150%. From these observations, we can immediately derive around 875 to 1225 killed and 1138 to 1838 wounded, some lethally, between 1803 and 1834 inclusive. These estimates are an upper limit. Killed 350 Reported – killed/ wounded (after Clements) Correction for reported wounded Unreported Possible total: killed/ wounded Wounded 88 700 - 1050 525 - 875 875 - 1225 1050 - 1750 1138 - 1838 Figure 33 Modified Clements statistics Number killed/ wounded: 1803 - 1834 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 no date 1804 1806 1808 1810 1812 1814 1816 1818 1820 1822 1824 1826 1828 1830 1832 1834 Killed Wounded Figure 34 Number of Palawa killed or wounded: 1803 – 1834 (after Clements) What is the density dependent pattern of Clements’ reported killing events between 1803 and 1834? We show the number of events against the distribution of numbers killed. For example, Clements records 74 instances where only one person was killed. If we accept Ryan’s definition of a massacre as 6 or more killed in one event, then 16 of the 137 Clements’ identified events was a Ryan ‘massacre’. 468 Problems with the term ‘massacre’ 171 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Massacre is not a legal term that carries any weight in law, nor does it have a precise definition. OED suggests: a brutal slaughter of a large number of people. Can we have a non-brutal slaughter? What is a ‘large number’? Is ‘slaughter’ different from murder? Why restrict the term to ‘people’; what of the killing of an ecosystem, or other sentient species? Newcastle University, under the leadership of Ryan, received funding to develop a database: Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788-1930 In this project, a colonial frontier massacre is defined as the deliberate and unlawful killing of six or more defenceless people in one operation. 469 This definition is problematical. It suggests that, under martial law, killings are lawful; or Queensland mounted police ‘dispersal’ operations are lawful; or Arthur’s roving/ pursuing parties – death squads - are lawful; or any military operation is lawful; or Government authorized ‘force against force’ is lawful; or deaths in custody – as happened frequently under Arthur’s ethnic cleansing programme - are lawful; or female abduction and child kidnapping – although rife in Tasmania – were not prosecuted as ‘unlawful’ although it caused intragenerational Palawa population collapse. Windschuttle opened this semantic gap further: if there were no criminal prosecutions then there was no unlawful killing, including mass killing. How then do we define ‘unlawful’? Perhaps the predations on Aboriginal people by bushrangers who had already been typed as criminals, so anything they did might have a criminal connotation. This pushes the concept of’ unlawful’ to individuals who were involved in ‘criminal’ activities or were people of bad character. It is then an easy matter to limit ‘unlawful’ behaviour to a subclass of criminals called bushrangers, or convicted criminals working as stockkeepers or kangaroo hunters, and that is what Arthur tried to do in an attempt to absolve his administration and capitalist society from any culpability. He would never have considered his own behaviour as unlawful, although he came close when he deliberately covered up abuses under ‘martial law’ that were redacted from the official British record, probably by Goderich.470 Britain had its standards; there were rules for conducting ‘martial law’ but none for violent invasion. The implications go further, that an unlawful operation is one that is prosecuted in a Court of Law by Government authorities; there were almost no prosecutions in 150 years, and certainly none in Tasmania. The Newcastle ‘massacre’ definition sidesteps the question: what is an operation? Is it a single event? Does it include multiple events that are associated with a reprisal operation taking place over several days? If a mother and her child are killed in an operation, why shouldn’t this be called a massacre? If Aboriginals are defending their family from armed attack by raising their spears, does this definition mean they are not defenceless, and can be lawfully killed? If one person is killed per day over many days in a connected set of events resulting in more than 5 deaths, why shouldn’t this be called a massacre? Ryan partly addresses this semantic difficulty in her 2008 paper ‘list of multiple killings’, where she does not use the term massacre. It is unclear why she didn’t carry this terminology into her Newcastle work, unless ‘massacre’ had greater popular impact. If so, populism does not make for good research. Lemkinian genocide does not refer to massacres but ‘destruction in whole or part’ that can include physical and cultural destruction. This seems more satisfactory. If we focus on genocide, we are looking at the overall depopulation, the impact of state sponsored cultural and psychological damage, forced deportation, imposed disease, and sexual predation as normalized instruments of oppression by some cohort, usually but not always a State instrument, which subverts the law by defining what is unlawful as anything that is opposed to the State and its objectives. Therefore, the Lemkinian template within the UN Convention on Genocide seems a better approach to defining, measuring and condemning mass violence. The data on Clements’ reported events therefore suggests that 88% of the events were not ‘massacres’ but violent clashes, each causing Palawa death in varying numbers. It leaves aside the troubling question of the number of unreported killing events. The British administration was disinterested in such homicidal statistics or finding legal culpability, unless it was an Aboriginal resistance fighter who was involved. 172 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide I think the Ryan definition is unhelpful. It leads us into a semantic swamp that was inadvertently exposed by Semelin. What matters is the proportionate number killed – the per capita depopulation over some period - through violent assaults by the British in a sustained pattern of territorial aggression driven by white supremacist thinking (racism) and expansionary pastoralism (acquisitive greed). We can ask the converse question: would the killing have occurred without the British invasion? The answer is no. Number of events 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Figure 35 Distribution of Tasmanian killing events: 1804 – 1834 (adapted from Clements) Date Location (Approx) Aboriginals killed Ryan arrives at a different set of statistics to Clements in her carefully researched ‘List of Multiple Killings of Aborigines in Tasmania (1804 – 1835)’.471 Ryan does not record the number wounded. We summarize Ryan’s findings. The primary source references are hers. Summary Details 1804 Risdon Cove, River Derwent Officers defended the massacre, asserting that ‘500 or 600 Aborigines engaged in a ‘premeditated attack; in fact they were hunting kangaroo for food. 1804 - 1806 Tamar River Officers’ report 2-3 Government official 40-50 Unknown number 1807 - 1808 Southern interior 5 Carried out by military forces. Ryan, 1996: 77 Carried out by bushrangers: Lemon and Brown Fels, 1982: 61 1809 Northern and southern interior 1810 Southern Tasmania ‘considerable’ Kangaroo hunters Oxley, 1809 ‘many’ Carried out by bushrangers, Getley and Russell Bonwick, 1870: 58 - 59 173 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 1813 Southern interior ‘practice of killing’1 Government Notice condemned the practice of killing Aborigines and kidnapping their children, but no one was prosecuted. Shaw, 1971: 36 nd Macquarie Harbour 1 Woman named Cagee shot by soldier nd Northwest 4 Penderoin tells of multiple attacks on coast. nd West Coast 1 Aborigines tell of shooting. nd Cape Portland nd South Esk 1 Man confesses killing to Glover. nd North? 1 Stockmen shoot women in tree. nd Blue Hill, Clyde River 1 Pateteyaner shot at Captain Clark’s nd Miles Opening 8 Stockmen killed seventeen Aborigines (7 then 10) nd Tamar River 1 Stockman killing Aborigines. Hand as trophy. nd Northeast Coast? 5 Sealers ‘killed several’ and took several women. nd Bagdad 1 Espie’s overseer shoots Aborigine nd nr. Town? 2 Soldiers kill men, women and children. nd nr. Campbell Town 2 Ambush described by Umarrah. nd Huon River 3 Woorrady escribes several attacks. nd Recherche Bay 1 Soldiers kill Aborigine in conflict over kangaroo. nd Oyster Bay 1 Aborigine shot in kidnapping raid. nd Northwest 1 Lacklay describes killing. nd Northwest nd Northwest nd Northwest 1 Lacklay describes killing. nd Northwest 1 Lacklay describes killing. nd Northwest 1 Lacklay describes killing. nd Northwest 3 Lacklay describes killings. nd Pittwater? nd Pittwater? nd Northeast Coast 1 Ambush, woman killed then decapitated. Sealers? nd St Marys 1 Ambush, woman killed then decapitated. nd Mayfield Bay 3 Thomas Buxton’s reprisal ambush. nd Den Hill 5 Ambush described by Tongerlongerter. nd Western Marshes 4 Party shoots several. Probable CFA. nd Hunter Island 1 Sealer. Robert Gambell shoots woman. nd, various dates Campbell Town 8 Sawyer Brady claims 16 shot over the years. nd, various dates Blue Hills district 10 Mannalargenna tells of being shot by Kelly. Lacklay describes wounding. Lacklay describes wounding. Big River tribe ambushed. Many wounded. Reprisal for Aboriginal plundering raid. Hbbens kills half ‘eastern mob’ over the years. 174 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Early settlement nr. Hobart 2 nd White men shoot two blacks dead. 83 nd 1820s Bruny Island? nd 1820s East Tamar 1 Lyne tells of Aboriginal man shot through the head. nd. 1820s Western Marshes 1 Man throws woman on fire and burned her to death. nd. 1820s Bruny Island 2 Trugernanna tells of 2 Aborigines killed in boat. nd 1820-30 Kent Group of islands 1 Sealer Gambell shoots the woman Murrernghe. nd 1820-31 Waterhouse Point 1 One of Robinson’s party finds skeleton near lagoon. nd 1820-31 Tomahawk River 2 Two male aborigines found dead. nd 1820-31 Cape Barren Island 1 Crying ‘half-caste’ baby buried alive by sealer. nd 1820-31 Pittwater 1 Wade’s men shoot Aborigine. mid 1820s D’Entrecasteaux Channel 2 2 men killed by splitters in boat. Truganini raped. nd 1822-28 South Esk nd 1823-30 Hunter Island 1 Gambell shoots woman on Hunter Island. nd 1823-30 Kent Group of islands 1 Gambell shoots ‘Kit’ at Kent Group. nd 1826-30 Northwest 1 Stockmen kill woman. nd 1826-30 Circular Head? 1 Woman kept as sex slave before being shot. nd after 1826 Circular Head nd 1823-30 Kent Group of islands nd 1827-30 Western Marshes nd 1827-30 Ritchie’s Sugarloaf 18 nd 1827-30 Western Marshes 4 Clark tells of Kneale’s men ambushing camp. 11 Ambush party attacks at 3am Woman tortured with firebrand 1 Gambell shoots ‘Kit’ at Kent Group. Thomas stabs Aborigine in gut. Party on horseback shoot whole band but 2. Three men shoot several Aborigines. nd 1820s-31 50 Risdon Cove 6 Confused confrontation. Soldiers fire on large band. Port Dalrymple 1 Soldiers fire after Aborigines throw man in water. 1804 7 New Norfolk 1 Robert Waring kills 1 in fatal attack on himself. c. 28 Feb 1807 Frederick Henry Bay 2 Hunters shoot 2 Aborigines in self-defence. Mid Apr 1807 nr. Hobart 1 Hunters shoot Aborigine in self-defence. 3 May 1804 12-15 Nov 1804 c. Feb 1807 Early 1808 4 Jan 1816 1807 4 Various 5 1808 5 Robbins Island Brown, Lemon and others kill at least one Aborigine. Some wounded by James Kelly’s boat crew. 175 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 31 Aug 1816 New Norfolk 3 1816 3 c. 1818 Bruny Island 1 Sealers attack camp and stab Truganini’s mother. c. 1818 Oyster Bay 1 Aborigine shot by stockmen. Children kidnapped. 1818 2 Macquarie River 1 1819 1 Early Apr 1819 nd c. 1820 Cape Grim (doughboys) nd. C. 1820 Bruny Island 1820 C Sep 1821 Stockmen retaliate when attacked by 20 Aborigines. Stock-keepers shoot Aborigine in self-defence. 3 Tunnerminnerwait tells of ambush. 7 taken. 2 killed. 1 Trugernanna tells of mother killed by sawyers. 4 Boomer Creek Buxton ‘peppered’ Aborigines with shotgun. 1821 c. 15 Nov 1823 Grindstone Bay 1 Woman shot in back by Radford and co. 19 Nov 1823 Oyster Bay 4 Radford’s revenge, deaths ‘considerable’. 14 Dec 1823 Oyster Bay 1 Amos and co. reprisal ambush. nd 1824 Interior Early Mar 1826 East of George Town 1 Perry, Jefferies and Russell rape and murder woman c. Jun 1826 Western Marshes 4 Gibson’s man kills 4 or 5 in reprisal. Early Sep 1826 North 2 Many Aborigines ‘severely wounded if not slain’. 3 Nov 1826 Shannon River 1 Aborigines attack men in hut who shoot one. 21 Nov 1826 Macquarie Plains 2 2 Aborigines killed in reprisal ambush. Late Nov 1826 4m from Bothwell 2 2 Aborigines felled by gunshot during attack. 1823 6 1 1824 1826 Manning sees body of shot Aborigine. 1 12 nd 1827 Richmond 7 Richmond police kill 14 Aborigines. c. 1827 Eddystone Point 2 Jack and Murray killed by Tucker and Mansell. c. 21 Feb 1827 Macquarie Plains 2 Reprisal attack by Michael Steel and party. Mar 1827 Mayfield Bay 1 Thomas Buxton shoots one in self-defence. Mar 1827 Mayfield Bay 4 Thomas Buxton and party kill ‘several’ in reprisal. 22 Apr 1827 Jericho 4 Ambush by party of 4: ‘several of the blacks fell’. Jun 1827 Dairy Plains 7 Dalrymple and Cubit shoot 14 in siege. 17 Jun 1827 Western Marshes 4 Reprisal for attack on Baker. 19 Jun 1827 Western Marshes 1 Baker shoots 1 Aborigine in self-defence. 24 Jun 1827 Laycock Falls 1 Reprisal ambush for killing of Knight. 8 Nov 1827 Richmond district Field police ambush band. 176 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Early Dec 1827 Cape Grim 4 Stockmen try to get women ‘several’ men shot. 11 Dec 1827 Western Marshes 3 3 Aborigines killed during attack on cattle drivers. Early Feb 1828 Cape Grim 6 10 Feb 1828 Cape Grim 15 Apr 1828 Avoca 10 Apr 1828 Ben Lomond May 1828 Elizabeth River 1 Aborigine killed whilst attacking Robertson’s hut. nd post-Aug 1828 Mersey 4 Goldie’s party kill ‘several’ in reprisal. c. Sep 1828 Mersey 1 Aboriginal woman shot by 2 VDLC stockmen. 23 Oct 1828 Green Ponds 2 Aborigines attacked by pursuit party. 25 Oct 1828 Sandspit 1 Walpole and stockman shoot one in self-defence. 14 Nov 1828 Eastern Marshes c. 1 Dec 1828 Break O’Day Plains 9 Dec 1828 Tooms Lake 10 Dec 1828 13 Dec 1828 40 Crew of the Fanny attack band. 4 stockmen pick off Aboriginals at base of cliff. Besieged stockman wounds Aborigine with slug. Aborigine injured in pursuit by Batman’s party. Capture and wounding of Umarrah. 1 Cowie makes Aborigine ‘suffer for his temerity’. 10 Military/ civilian roving party ambush. Kitty’s Corner 1 Military/ civilian roving party ambush. Sugar Loaf Hill 2 McOwen and Kenzie shoot 2 in self-defence. 27 Dec 1828 Oyster Bay 1 Meredith’s men shoot one in pursuit. 17 Jan 1829 Bothwell 1 Bruny Island or ‘Boomer’ Jack killed by soldier. c. 17 Jan 1829 St Paul’s River 9 Correspondent reports ambush. 19 or 26 Jan 1829 Little Swan Port 1 Rayner shoots Aborigine near Lyne’s farm. 15 Mar 1829 North Esk River 6 Pursuit party kills 4 men, a woman and child. 30 Mar 1829 Jones’ River 1 Woman mortally shot in leg and back by pursuer. 29 Apr 1829 Mayfield Bay 4 Ambush party ‘killed several of the Blacks’. C. 2 May 1829 White Marsh 1 Grant and Smith’s pursuit party: 1 shot, 1 wounded. 10 Jun 1829 South Esk River 1 McLeod’s shepherd shoots woman. 12 Jun 1829 Prossers Plains 5 Aug 1829 Ben Lomond 8 Batman’s party ambushes band, executing 2. 21 Aug 1829 Emu Bay 1 Goldie and men kill 1 woman and capture 2. 18 Sep 1829 Sorell 1 Splitters mortally wound 1 in reprisal attack. 20 Dec 1829 Sorell 1 Aborigines shot while attacking hut. 1828 1829 45 Party under O’Connor ‘severely wounded’ 8 or 10. 35 nd c. 1830 Behind Swanport nd c. 1830 Woody Island 12 1 Convict describes role in vigilante group. Everitt kills escaping Worethmaleyerpodeywer. nd c. 1830 Northeast? 1 Bulrub tells of brother is killed 177 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide nd c. 1830 Northeast? 1 Bulrub tells of another brother is killed. 11 Jan 1830 Lake Echo 1 Tyrell’s party fires on 2, 1 killed instantly. 15 Feb 1830 Bark Hut Plains 9 Mar 1830 Blackmans River Apr 1830 Prosser’s Plains 1 Following attack, Aborigine is killed in pursuit. 18 Apr 1830 Whitefoord Hills 2 Shepherd George King attacked, shoots 2, stabs 1. 23 Apr 1830 Little Swanport River Mid May 1830 Pipers River 28 May 1830 Little Swanport River 4 Aug 1830 Blue Hill, Shannon 3 Ambush by Howell and 2 men, 1 prisoner, 3 killed. 27 Aug 1830 Bothwell 4 Captain Wood’s men kill ‘several’ and capture 1. c. Oct 1830 South of Launceston 3 Aborigines tell of soldiers killing 3 kinsfolk. 5 Oct 1830 Allenvale 18 Oct 1830 Pittwater 1 Gangel kills 1 with pitchfork in self-defence. Mid Oct 1830 Pittwater 4 Captured Aborigine claims 4 shot. 25 Oct 1830 Sandspit River 2 Walpole’s party kills 2, captures 2 (1 stabbed) 29 Oct 1830 Break O’Day Plains 2 2 killled by constables when attacking Talbot’s hut. c. 15 Nov 1830 Shannon/ Clyde district 2 Shone’s reprisal party kills woman and man. nd c. 1831 Big Lagoon 4 Bryant’s men shoot ‘several’ Aborigines. 2 Feb 1831 North Esk River 1 1 Aborigine killed in attack on shepherd. 13 Mar 1831 Supply River c. 13 Aug 1831 Bashan Plains 1 John Espie’s men kill 1 in self-defence. 4 Sep 1831 Race Course 1 James Searle kills Aborigine. 4 Oct 1831 Gatcombe Plains Nov 1831 St Marys Plains 3 McKay and two VDLC servants ambush band. Late 1831 Northwest 1 McKay and party kill man in ‘wilful slaying’. Feb 1832 Flinders Island Peter Scott’s roving party ‘wounded several’. Aborigine loses hand in mantrap. 1 Maynes and men kill 1 woman, capture and abuse 3. 2 soldiers and a constable wound 2 Aborigines. Aborigine shot by Black Line party. Limped away. 1830 18 Aug 1834 1 wounded whilst attacking Sherwin’s hut. 41 Ship’s ‘gun party,.. shot at and knocked over’ one. Reprisal for killing of Abrahams. 1 wounded. 1831 11 1832 0 Mansell shoots two Aborigines trying to escape. Hamilton 1 1834 1 Totals 350 Aborigines killed whilst attacking shepherd. Hypothesis 178 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Most conflicts involving territorial invasion by a usurping power begin slowly, as colonist numbers increase. At first, the Palawa were angry and confused as to what they should do. After a number were killed by Lt Moore in 1804 in an unprovoked attack on a large group of Palawa engaged in a kangaroo hunting trip for food, they did not retaliate, perhaps thinking that, because their people had been murdered, the British might realize their mistake and make amends. After all, that is what civilized people do. But the apology did not come. Nor did the British behaviour change. Instead, colonist numbers increased, putting more pressure on the besieged Palawa, who were seeing their carefully maintained estates and women being stolen from them. The British gender imbalance meant that women were scarce and became a free commodity. The Palawa still weren’t sure what to do. Occasional guerrilla attacks were mounted, burning a hut here or killing a sheep there. These attacks seem more symbolic than violent, a matter of protest that didn’t necessarily involve homicide. Perhaps they were still hoping that Britain might sit down with them and come to some arrangement that allowed the Palawa free access to their own land. Britain, as the phrase goes, wasn’t for turning. It ignored the problem of its own making and increased military patrols. It encouraged colonists to take the law into their own hands. It turned a blind eye to rape, abduction, and wanton killing. It increased the rate of land alienation and encouraged more immigration. The one thing Britain did not consider were Palawa legitimate human rights, the right to peaceful habitation of their country, the right not to be ambushed and killed, the right for their womenfolk not to be molested. As evidence of their fundamentally peaceful nature, after two decades of constant harassment by the British, the Palawa did not ramp up their war of resistance until the mid1820s, after their numbers had been reduced by perhaps two thirds or more, a significant reduction. What this shows is that the Palawa could have mounted a resistance war from the beginning, perhaps in 1804, but chose not to; they chose the path of peaceful appeasement, thinking that Britain might share the same human values as their own. They were mistaken. Genocide was the result. What were the categorial agencies in Palawa depopulation: this will be the subject of a separate study in this paper. Observations 1. There are a large number of reported violent incidents involving Palawa casualties, either with no date (82 killed, 17 wounded) or with only a general date range (50 killed, 5 wounded). 2. These are the total reported Palawa casualties between 1804 and 1834: 350 deaths, 88 wounded. That is, there are around four times the number of deaths than 179 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. woundings, which is contrary to the pattern of casualties in a generalized conflict, where woundings usually exceed deaths. There are few reported incidents before 1825. Most of the incidents begin at around 1825. Between 1803 and 1825, there are relatively few Palawa who are reported as wounded (14) or killed (30). Between 1826 and 1831, and during the peak between 1827 and 1830, the number of Palawa reported killed (185) was more than three times those reported wounded (51). In the course of an ordinary war, the number of wounded usually exceeds the number killed by a factor. Between 1807 and 1813, 600 colonists from Norfolk Island relocated to Tasmania and took up prime grazing land around the Tamar River in the North and the Derwent River in the South. We know that they caused immediate conflict with the Palawa (), yet the Clements dataset shows few incidents. Jorgenson writes,’ ‘, but there are otherwise no reported incidents in the Clements dataset. Findings 1. The first two decades of the Tasmanian invasion were far from peaceful, with many unreported killings. A major part of Palawa depopulation – about two thirds - may have occurred within this period, something we will examine further. The military historian John Connor writes: For the first twenty years of the British colony, relations between the invaders and the Aborigines had been relatively peaceful. Some Aboriginal men enforced traditional law on settlers with ritual spearings; more often, shepherds and sealers abducted Aboriginal women and children to work as forced labour. Generally, though, the small size of the British enclaves around Hobart and Launceston meant the two sides were able to coexist. British-introduced disease afflicted Aboriginal communities, but the British also brought dogs, flour and tea, which revolutionized Aboriginal life. Tasmanian Aborigines eagerly adopted all three, because dogs made hunting kangaroos easier and became watch-dogs at night guarding against attack, and flour and tea were tastier and more convenient than traditional foods.472 But is this correct? Were the first twenty years ‘relatively peaceful’, as Connor asserts, because the Palawa chose not to fight the British? If the first twenty years were ‘relatively peaceful’, what caused an estimated two-thirds Palawa population collapse? There are only three demographic possibilities: a) There were far fewer pre-contact Palawa than previously estimated by researchers, perhaps 1,500 or so, reducing to around 1,200 by 1825. 180 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide b) If there were an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Palawa pre-contact, then some agency or agencies removed about 1,500 to 3,500 by 1825 (two decades). c) Some combination of a and b. 2. 1803 – 1825 If there were few clashes and Aboriginal casualties before 1826, then what caused the massive Palawa depopulation? Let us consider Lyndall Ryan’s research for this period. 473 She writes that there was an uncontrolled pattern of Aboriginal killings, female abduction and child kidnapping, along with competition by colonists for the Aboriginal carefully farmed estates, which provided their primary food source. We therefore conclude that Aboriginal casualties of British violence and predation are underreported for what some historians call a ‘peaceful’ period. No, it wasn’t peaceful, but the violence was roughly proportional to the increasing number of colonists. 1803 – 1821: British Colonisation of Tasmania 1803: Informal colonisation commenced when small groups of British men employed in the sealing industry on the Bass Strait islands, initiated seasonal contact with Aboriginal groups along Tasmania’s northern coastline. They traded seal carcasses and dogs in exchange for Aboriginal women for sexual and economic purposes. Sporadic conflict over women took place but few records exist of the details. By 1821 a permanent community of Aboriginal women, British men and their children had emerged on the Bass Strait Islands, forming the basis of the modern Aboriginal community today (Ryan 1996:6672). 1803-1804: Formal colonisation began when the governor of the British colony of New South Wales established military outposts at the River Derwent in southern Tasmania and on the Tamar River in the north, in a bid to prevent the French from laying claim to the island. These outposts, consisting of military personnel, convicts and free settlers, gradually evolved into small agricultural communities around Hobart in the south and Launceston in the north. They were characterised by a break down in law and order enabling some convicts to escape into the bush; a shortage of fresh meat; and an imbalance between the sexes with one white woman to four white men. 1804-1820: Conflict with the Aborigines over the exploitation of their food resources began at once and although rarely reported, continued sporadically until 1820 and included mass killings of Aborigines, and the kidnapping of Aboriginal women and children. 181 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Settlement map 1803-1816 1804, May 3: Risdon, River Derwent. A large group of Aborigines, men, women and children, suddenly appeared late morning on top of a hill behind the Risdon outpost, on a kangaroo drive. Misunderstanding their intentions, the officer in charge ordered two detachments of military to fire on the Aborigines in two separate engagements in which at least two Aborigines were killed. Then in a third engagement, another officer ordered of a small cannon loaded with grape and canister shot, to be fired at the Aborigines. They “dispersed” and, were chased “some distance up the valley” where “more were wounded.” In their reports of the affray, the officers said that between 500 and 600 Aborigines engaged in a “premeditated” attack on the outpost and that in a defensive response, at least two or three Aborigines were killed and others wounded and an Aboriginal boy aged about 3 years, was orphaned. Twenty six years later, a witness to the affray testified that about 300 Aborigines appeared over the hill and were surprised to see the area occupied by “strangers”/Europeans; they did not attack any colonist and carried waddies for hunting rather than spears for fighting; and that the entire affray lasted for three hours in which “a great many” Aborigines were killed. A government official who visited the site a week later, testified that “five or six” Aborigines were killed. Another government official testified that about “four or five hundred Natives attacked… suddenly and unprovokedly, who were then fired on; no previous violence had been offered to them; [and that ] 40 or 50 natives were killed.” *** (Watson, 1914:237-8; Nicholls, 1977:51; Shaw, 1971:51-54; Tardif, 2003:130-150; Ryan, 2004:111, 115-116) 182 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 1804-1806: Tamar River. Unknown number of Aborigines killed by military forces. *** (Ryan, 1996:77) 1807-1808: Southern interior. Two bushrangers, Lemon and Brown, were reported to have tortured and killed five Aborigines, two males and three females. *** (Fels, 1982:61). 1809: Northern and Southern interior. In a report to the governor of New South Wales, a government official noted the “considerable loss of life among the natives” from conflict with kangaroo hunters. *** (Oxley, 1809) 1810: Southern Tasmania. According to a Government Notice, bushrangers George Getley and William Russell, were said to have murdered and tortured many blacks and were themselves killed by them. **(Bonwick, 1870:58-59). 1813: Southern Interior. A Government Notice condemned the practice of killing Aborigines and kidnapping their children. *** (Shaw, 1971:36) 1815, November: Oyster Bay East Coast. After the destruction of 930 sheep by Aborigines, James Hobbs, a government official, testified in 1830, that a detachment of the 48th Regiment the next day shot 22 Aborigines. In 1852 the historian John West said 17 were killed. **(Nicholls, 1977: 26; Shaw, 1971:50; Shaw, 1971:265). 1816-1818: Kidnapping of Aboriginal children becomes widespread. Government Notices continue to outlaw the practice, to no avail. In retaliation Aborigines raid settlers’ huts and burn crops. Reports of both practices appear regularly in the government newspaper, Hobart Town Gazette. ** (Hobart Town Gazette 1816: August 31; 1817: March 29, October 25, and December 13; 1818: November 14; Watson, 1914:284) 1817, March: Hobart. When visiting missionary, Rowland Hassall, asked: “Why are there no natives seen in the town?” the answer given was - “We shoot them whenever we find them…” * (Rowland Hassall Papers, ML, 1819: March 17) 1819, March 18: Tea Tree Brush, Eastern tiers. Stockkeepers shoot Aborigines following conflict over cattle on kangaroo hunting grounds. * (Plomley 1991:93-94) 1820: Agricultural economy. The colonists occupied about 15% of the land between Hobart and Launceston, producing grain for export and running cattle for local meat consumption (Rimmer, 1969:327-351; Ryan, 1996:81). With the 183 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide major causes of conflict overcome, Aborigines and colonists appeared to have reached mutual coexistence. At least four tribes developed reciprocal relationships with settlers and stock-keepers about the seasonal exchange of women and the use of land in return for food (Ryan, 1996:73-82). 1821-1830: PASTORAL EXPANSION Settlement map 1817-1830 Van Diemen’s Land was opened up for pastoral settlement to free settlers with capital. The colonial population dramatically increased from 7,185 in 1821 to 24, 279 in 1830 (Rimmer, 1969:349; Hartwell, 1954:118). 6,000 free settlers took up land grants along rivers on the Eastern Midland Plain between Hobart and Launceston and along the Meander River west from Launceston. Supported by at least 5,000 convict stockkeepers and shepherds, they established sheep runs to produce fine wool for the textile mills in northern England. The entire area became known as the “Settled Districts” A further 60,000 hectares were granted to the Van Diemen’s Land Company in the northwest. The colony was transformed into a rapidly expanding wool export economy of nearly one million sheep, occupying about 30% of the island (Hartwell, 1954:118; Ryan, 1996:83-85). This area also contained five Aboriginal tribes and at least one other in the north-west, with a combined population in 1823 estimated at about 2,000. 1823-1826: In the summer of 1823-1824, stock-keepers broke reciprocal arrangements over the exchange of Aboriginal women and the use of food resources. Aboriginal men restored their lost prestige by killing stock-keepers 184 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide and shepherds and their sheep and cattle. In response the government placed the Aborigines within the jurisdiction of British law, so they could be arrested and charged with murder. Four Aborigines were hanged for these offences. The settlers and stock-keepers however took the law into their own hands and organised the multiple killing of Aborigines, confident that they would not be charged, let alone convicted or hanged for their actions. Few incidents were recorded (Ryan, 1996:88). Mass killings map 1823-1826 1823, November 15: Sally Peak, East Coast. A group of Aborigines near Grindstone Bay confronted four stockkeepers about their abduction of Aboriginal women. The Aborigines killed two stockkeepers and wounded another, the fourth man ran to his master’s house to raise the alarm. The incident created widespread panic and was reported in great detail in the local press. Two Aborigines were convicted of murder and hanged in February 1825. But the reprisal killings that followed the original incident were not made public for 30 years, when historian James Bonwick interviewed James Gumm, the stockman who raised the alarm. He told Bonwick that a party of thirty colonists – comprising constables, soldiers, and neighbours, the master of one of slain stockkeepers, and the informant – set off in bloody revenge. They heard that a large group of the Aborigines were camped for the night in the gully by Sally Peak, ten kilometres from Bushy Plains, on the border of Prosser’s Plains. The stockman told Bonwick: “They proceeded stealthily as they neared the spot; and, agreeing upon a signal, moved quietly in couples, until they had surrounded the sleepers. The whistle of the leader was sounded, and volley after volley of ball cartridge was poured in upon the dark groups around the little camp-fires. The number slain was considerable.” 185 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide (Hobart Town Gazette December 3, 1823; Ryan, 1996:86-88; Bonwick, 1870:99) 1825, December: Dairy Plains, Meander River. John Cupit, a servant of William Stocker, alleged that he had been speared by Aborigines from Quamby Bluff. He and a “half-caste” woman, Dolly Dalrymple said they ‘fought off’ the attackers. The incident was reported in the Colonial Times on January 6, 1826. Further details were told to the government agent, G.A. Robinson, by a stockkeeper in August 1830 and match the information in a report of incidents in the area completed by the police magistrate in August 1831. Jorgen Jorgenson also recorded this incident in a manuscript he completed in 1837 and published in 1991. He claimed that Dalrymple killed 14 Aborigines, using a double-barrelled shot gun and that the surveyor, J.H. Wedge, was said to have seen 16 bodies. While Wedge’s journal confirms that he was in the area in late December 1825 there are no recorded entries for this period. Historian Shayne Breen believes that this incident took place in 1827, at the height of conflict between Aborigines and stockkeepers in this area and that Cupit had shot Aborigines before. (Colonial Times 1826: January 6; Plomley, 1966:219; AOT CSO 1/316/7578/1 25 August 1831; Plomley, 1991:125; Crawford, Ellis and Stancombe 1962:24 and 35; Breen 1996:116) 3. 1826 – 1831 (the so-called Black War) Arthur had a racially targeted objective of suppressing Aboriginal resistance, although many historians persist in the fiction that he was a humanitarian. No, his constituents were the colonists who could make or break his career. The Palawa were politically voiceless. In Tasmania, Arthur introduced roving/ pursuing parties, for example, those of: Banfield, Batman, Bryant, Thomas Buxton, John Espie, Goldie, Grant, Headlam, Howell, Jorgenson, Meredith, O’Connor, Robertson, Smith, Peter Scott, Shone, Walpole, Wedge, and Captain Wood. But they reported few casualties,474 and negligible details of their sorties. We don’t know how many operational sorties were conducted; almost no records were kept. Connor writes: The frontier war began in earnest in Van Diemen’s Land in the mid-1820s, when the British attempted to occupy all the limited amount of arable land on the island (almost two-thirds of Van Diemen’s Land being rugged mountains). By 1823 land grants stretched in an unbroken line across the island from north to south. Montpeliatta , a man of the Lairmairrener or Big River people, wryly commented that if Aborigines ‘left any place to go hunting elsewhere … when they returned in the course of eight days, they found a hut erected’. The French doctor Jean-René Quoy, who visited Hobart in 1827, wrote: ‘A sort of war to the death … has broken out between the English and the natives’. 475 As 186 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Plomley’s study of Aboriginal-settler clashes in Van Diemen’s Land shows, the number of incidents rose steeply in 1827. The casualty estimates for the Vandemonian war made by Ryan in ‘The Aboriginal Tasmanian’s and Reynolds in ‘Fate of a Free People’ differ but they illustrate three main trends. The first is that between one-and-a-half and four times as many Aborigines were killed as settlers. Ryan estimates that the Big River people killed sixty settlers and settlers killed 240 Big River people between 1824 and 1831, and that a total of 700 Aborigines were killed over the entire frontier between 1804 to 1831. Reynolds suggested in 1987 that 800 Aborigines were killed on the frontier, but now both he and Windschuttle believe that Ryan’s total number is too high. Reynolds estimates that between 250 and 400 Tasmanian Aborigines and 170 British settlers were killed during the 1804 – 31 period, making the ratio of British to Aboriginal deaths between 1:1.47 and 1:2.35. Windschuttle estimates the ratio to be 1:1.6. The second casualty trend is that the number of settlers killed each year between 1828 and 1830 did not increase even though the number of Aboriginal raids increased, showing that the Aboriginal tactic was to take goods rather than kill people. As settle Roderic O’Connor commented at the time, the raiders ‘were more anxious to plunder than murder’. The third trend is that, by contrast, the number of Aborigines killed rose dramatically in the middle of the 1820ss, indicating that the settlers’ response to the increasing number of Aboriginal raids was deadly retaliation.476 We resume with Ryan: 1826 December: Paterson’s Plains near Launceston. In the late (Shaw, 1971b: 269 Summary of Ryan’s list of multiple killings of Aborigines from 1804 to 1835. Date 3 May 1804 Location Risdon, Derwent 1804 - 1806 Tamar River 1807 - 1808 1809 Southern interior bushrangers Northern and Kangaroo southern interior hunters 1810 Southern Tasmania Southern interior 1813 Perpetrator River Military Military bushrangers Government Notice condemns the Aboriginals killed 2 - 3, ‘great many’, 40 or 50 (assume 50) Unknown number (assume 5) 5 ‘considerable loss of life’ (assume 5) ‘many blacks’ (assume 5) Unknown (assume 5) 187 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide November 1815 March 1817 18 March 1819 1823 - 1824 Oyster Bay, East Coast Hobart Tea Tree Brush, Eastern Tiers Tasmania practice of killing and kidnapping 48th Regiment Colonists ‘we shoot them wherever we find them..’ stockkeepers Colonists and stockkeepers Constables, soldiers, and colonists Cupit, a stockkeeper colonists 15 November 1823 Sally Peak, East Coast December 1825 (1827?) 14 March 1826 (1827?) December 1826 Dairy Plains, Meander River Great Swanport, East Coast Paterson’s Plains near Launceston 9 December 1826 Bank Head Far, headwaters of Sorell Rivulet, Pittwater Elizabeth River, Eastern Midland Plain (Macquarie River?) Western Marshes/ Quamby’s Bluff (multiple incidents?) Western Marshes Meander River, Ritchie’s Hut Cape Grim, NW Tasmania Tamar River Soldiers and constable Macquarie River – Eastern Midland Plain Ross colonists 12 April 1827 Late June 1827 November 1827 December 1827 January 1828 19 March 1828 March 1828 colonists 17 – 22 (assume 22) Unknown (assume 5) Unknown (assume 5) Unknown (assume 5) ‘number slain was considerable’ (assume 5) ‘16 or more’ (assume 16) ‘several’ (assume 5) 200 Aboriginals ‘wantonly fired on’, killed unknown (assume 5) 14, ‘destroyed them’ Soldiers and colonists 30, two score (assume 40) military 30 – 60 (assume 60) Military and field police VDL Co Unknown (assume 5) ‘severely handled’ (assume 5) 12 (assume 12) 14 (assume 14) 5 Ship’s crew (Fanny) colonists 188 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide March 1828 April 1828 Jordan Lagoon Elizabeth River, Eastern Tiers 1 November 1828 – March 1829 ‘settled districts’ 6 December 1828 Great (Tooms) Lake St Paul’s River, East Coast East Coast January 1829 January – March 1829 March 1829 13 – 17 March 1829 June 1829 1 September 1829 October 1829 1829 10 March 1830 22 – 27 August 1830 stockkeepers Stockkeepers, soldiers, field police 23 parties of 8 to 10 soldiers were ordered to scour the area and capture or kill. A bounty was offered. 40th Regiment and constables unknown 17 17, 70 (assume 70) unknown 16 Richmond, Coal River North Esk River, near Launceston Pittwater unknown 5 unknown 6 military East of Ben Lomond Clyde and Ouse River Clyde River Clyde River John Batman 8, 1 ‘severely wounded’ (assume 8) 17 Clyde River Unknown (assume 5, but likely much more; no records were kept) 10 9 ‘expedition’ ‘terrible slaughter’ (assume 5) woodcutters 5 Roving party ‘plenty of blood some of them were wounded if not mortally’. (assume 5) stockkeepers ‘killed several Aborigines’. (assume 5) Estimated Total killed 472 Figure 36 List of multiple killings, 1804 - 1835 (after Ryan)477 Analysis It is extraordinarily challenging to compile violent mortality statistics in colonial Tasmania, given the fragility of primary sources, so it is unsurprising that there is inconsistency between researchers. For example, using Ryan’s ‘list of multiple killings’, where ‘multiple’ is 5 or more, the Aboriginal mortality is around 472, 478whereas using Ryan’s ‘Aborigines accounted for in the literature’, including killings less than 5 in an event, the figure is 362 (1800 – 1835).479 Clements calculates 349 Aboriginals 189 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide killed, in total (1804 – 1831).480 Reynolds opined that Ryan’s figure was too high, but provided no statistics of his own.481 The variability suggests that, with Lemkinian mass violence, the identification of ‘massacres’ or events involving multiple killings, irrespective of how we define ‘multiple’, is less useful than evaluating the total per capita depopulation from various categorial agencies (killing, wounding, female abduction, and so on) over a set of discrete time periods. After all, genocide is a game of numbers involving a targeted group; therefore, conflating it with individual homicides merely leads to an artificial debate on whether the killings were ‘lawful’, or if not ‘lawful’ whether they can be adequately substantiated within the jurisprudential rules of evidence for which a newspaper report is ‘hearsay’. These are Ryan’s mortality estimates for Aboriginal and British casualties in the literature for the period 1800 to 1835.482 Ryan suggests there were 43 Big River people shot, whereas Connor, probably misquoting Ryan, proffers 240.483 It is unclear where Connor’s source originates, as he does not provide a reference. But if Ryan is his source, then his figures are incorrect. Tribe Captured With Sealers Shot With Settlers Total South East 14 1 3 26 44 Oyster Bay 27 67 8 14 116 Big River 31 43 0 4 78 North Midlands 23 38 3 4 68 Ben Lomond 35 31 3 3 72 North East 12 43 28 2 85 North 28 80 8 5 181 North West 96 59 21 5 181 South West 47 0 0 0 47 313 362 74 58 807 Totals Figure 37 Aborigines Accounted for in the Literature484 Tribal Area Colonists Killed North Midlands 26 Big River 60 Oyster Bay 50 North 15 North East 7 190 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Ben Lomond 20 South East 2 North West 3 South West Totals 0 183 Figure 38 Number of Europeans Killed by Individual Tribes.485 Connor continues: Following the declaration of martial law, Arthur established two types of patrols to operate against Aboriginal raiding parties. There were combined patrols of soldiers and police known as ‘Pursuing Parties’, which operated throughout the area under martial law. In the Oatlands Police District, which bore the brunt of the fighting against the Big River people, the Pursuing Parties were joined by other patrols, which were civilian ‘Roving Parties’ organized by the police magistrate, Thomas Anstey.486 Pursuing Parties consisted of eight to ten men carrying fourteen to sixteen days’ rations, who patrolled the bush to prevent the Aboriginal raiding parties attacking farms. Pursuing Party tactics are shown by a patrol led by the settler Gilbert Robinson, which consisted of six soldiers of the 40th Regiment, three settlers and an Aboriginal guide. The party patrolled at night so it could find Aboriginal camps by looking for camp-fires. When the party saw a flickering light in bush near Little Swan Port. Robertson ordered three soldiers to each flank and advanced with the civilians in the centre. On reaching the fire, it was found to be a decoy, but from it a second fire could be seen about 100 metres away. Robertson stealthily circled around to the opposite side of this camp and then fired his musket to wake those sleeping around the fire and make them run away from the gunfire towards the rest of his party. Robertson’s tactic was successful and one Aborigine was shot and the rest were captured.487 In general, Arthur’s roving and pursuing parties were unsuccessful, mainly because they combined a hodgepodge of soldiers, ex-convicts and civilians who lacked discipline and were poorly equipped with boots, supplies, and clothing. A similar model to Arthur’s was later deployed in New South Wales in the 1840s and Queensland in the 1860s onwards with mounted roving detachments. This time, the party was comprised of armed police along with Natives, all reporting to the Police Commissioner; they were to prove lethal and operated in great secrecy with few reporting obligations. In Queensland, their only orders were to ‘disperse the Natives’, which meant ‘kill them, with no questions asked’. Most of the operational records that existed were destroyed by the Queensland police department at the end of the century, when the long-serving Police Commissioner, DT Seymour, left office. In Queensland, Evans and estimate that each mounted police patrol sortie resulted in about 10 deaths, with a total estimate that included settler shooting parties of 65,000 to 115,000 deaths. 488 In the hands of the Queensland Government, the secretive Native Police force was a lethal 191 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide instrument of genocide. Its role? To clear the land of Aboriginal people, to ‘disperse’. Between 1860 and the 1880s, they were largely successful. The brutal Queensland dispersal model was adopted by South Australia and Western Australia; its origin was with New South Wales in the 1840s, where its role was more towards keeping the piece on the frontier as settlers pushed into Aboriginal land. But we can trace the origin of the roving racial suppression model to Arthur in the 1820s. Along with Arthur’s model of Aboriginal deportation and detention in forced labour death camps. Clements writes: Increasingly, the surviving bands sought refuge in the remote and inhospitable recesses of the island, but often the dangers of cold and starvation outweighed those of the bayonets and bullets. Incessantly harried by dozens of armed parties, the wounded had no time to recuperate, and the strong were sometimes obliged to abandon them, along with their infants and elderly. These crushing expedients, together with the constant loss of kinsfolk in campfire ambushes caused a great cloud of sadness, anger and despair to descend on the survivors. From the perspective of the Vandemonians, the Black War was largely a story of desperation; of trying to run, fight and survive as their society collapsed around them. Not surprisingly, the Conciliator’s offer to relieve them of this hellish existence was readily accepted. 489 Conclusions 1. Many incidents were unreported. For example: Provied evide 2. The number of wounded is underreported, if we consider the outcome of most ‘wars’. For example, The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I, was around 40 million. There were 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 10 million civilians.490 3. Arthur’s roving/ pursuing parties were poorly organized, without a clear chain of command, and with poor supply logistics. They probably under-reported the number of Palawa casualties, both killed and wounded. Arthur did not require them to provide detailed operational reports until late during martial law, when he knew he would have to provide justification to his superiors for some of his inept decisions that led to the humanitarian disaster and huge Government expense, for example, the incompetent Black Line where he mistakenly assumed he could drive the Palawa into the southeast corner through a continuous line of what amounted to game beaters, where Aboriginal people were wild game. The Black Line was unsuccessful: there were too few survivors; and they easily evaded the line of their tormentors. 4. As it was, the flurry of self-serving reports Arthur generated weren’t enough; he also lied about war crimes, which his superiors later redacted in the interests of minimizing British Government reputational damage.491 5. The number of reported violent incidents against Aboriginals with ‘no date’ (82 killed, 17 wounded) or a vague date range (50 killed, 5 wounded) amounts to almost as many 192 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide as those reported incidents with a known date (215 killed, 65 wounded), based upon the primary sources. Most ‘vague’ dates are for the range between the 1820s and 1831 corresponding to the ‘war’ period, particularly between 1826 and 1831.492 6. Around two to three and a half thousand Palawa disappeared between 1804 and 1824/5. What happened to them? From the published primary sources, there were few reported clashes in this period. Was it disease or some other categorial agency, perhaps female abduction, reduced birth rates, the effect of STDs, infertility, sexual predation, the killing of half-caste infants, the constant harassment, the inability of families to raise their children, the loss of their carefully maintained estates, the reduced access to food sources, the increasing psychological desperation, and the resultant intragenerational population collapse for which there is clear evidence? The consequence of Lemkinian depopulation was cultural, family, and tribal destruction, all of which carry genocidal markers. 7. We conclude the British invasion of Tasmania was genocidal in intent and agency, driven by violent land dispossession. That is, economics overrode humanitarian concerns. Recommendations for further study We will now examine the pattern of British-initiated conflict by removing the incidents with no date or a vague date range, to highlight and amplify the shape of the reported incidents. We will examine the cumulative shape of the net Clements incidents, to determine if it is exponential and, if so, whether it correlates with the rate of land alienation and the surge in immigration over some defined period. Number of Palawa casualties 1804 - 1834 (excluding those incidents with no exact date) 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1804 1806 1808 1810 1812 1814 1816 1818 1820 1822 1824 1826 1828 1830 1832 1834 Killed Wounded Figure 39 Number of Palawa killed or wounded: 1804 – 1834, excluding those with no exact date.493 This graph clearly shows the precipitous rise in Aboriginal casualties from violent reported incidents from 1826 until 1831. Compare this with Plomley’s record of clashes between 1804 and 1831. 193 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide xxx Let us now plot the cumulative reported incidents that caused significant Aboriginal casualties as a proportion of their remaining population. In this model, we will include incidents with no date or nebulous date as a baseline indication of the underlying British violence that eventually drove Palawa resistance from the mid-1820s until the pitifully low number of survivors caused them to accept Arthur’s terms of surrender. This is not strictly correct, from a methodological perspective. We know that, between the mid-1820s and 1831 that there were a reported 50 killed and 5 wounded. If we add these casualties to those with a known date in this proximal period (185 killed, 51 wounded) we obtain 225 killed and 56 wounded. Cumulative Reported Palawa Casualties: 1804 - 1834 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 1804 1806 1808 1810 1812 1814 1816 1818 1820 1822 1824 1826 1828 1830 1832 1834 Killed 82 132 Wounded 17 22 Figure 40 Cumulative reported Palawa casualties: 1804 – 1834 (after Clements)494 Comparison of Plomley and Clements datasets Plomley sources were measured ‘clashes’ including robbery, burned huts, killing. Clements Sources were Measured killed and wounded for any single incident. We make the reasonable assumption that ‘clashes’ are correlated with casualties (wounded and killed), with clashes exceeding casualties for any period. This appears to be the case. 194 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Date 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 Plomley (no. of ‘clashes’) Clements, (Aboriginals killed + wounded) 2 2 3 4 1 0 1 0 0 0 3 1 4 3 2 6 Date 8 0 0 1 9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 1 2 1 Plomley (no. of ‘clashes’) 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833 1834 Clements, (Aboriginals killed + wounded) 1 0 2 1 13 14 18 56 127 100 195 58 0 0 0 4 1 0 11 1 0 14 44 52 54 56 13 2 0 11 Plomley/ Clements datasets compared 250 200 150 100 50 0 1804 1806 1808 1810 1812 1814 1816 1818 1820 1822 1824 1826 1828 1830 1832 1834 Plomley Clements Figure 41 Plomley/ Clements datasets compared (no. of clashes v no. of casualties) Conclusions The Palawa thought Arthur would offer a treaty as he had promised and be allowed to live quietly in some corner of Tasmania, perhaps the northeast, but the colonists demanded their complete exile offshore. With one eye on his career prospects, Arthur agreed to the colonists and resiled from his promises to the captured Palawa, if indeed he ever intended to keep them, his ruse de guerre 195 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide as he called it, to conciliate their surrender in a process of ethnic cleansing, what we may consider as the final phase of British genocide in Tasmania. If anything, Arthur was aware of French revolutionary history and sometimes sought to implement those lessons, if we consider his levée en masse or call to arms for the ‘British citizenry’ to ‘rise up’ within the rules of martial law and defeat the Palawa insurgency against British domination. 196 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Lemkinian Dispossession: land grants, immigration, depopulation Tasmanian land grants Land Grants: 1804 – 1823 This is the summary of Tasmanian land grants by year, 1804 to 1823, a more detailed analysis in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. 495 for which we provide During Macquarie’s eleven-year term, the total Tasmanian land granted was about 69,228 acres; under Brisbane, between 1821 and 1823, this figure increased to 489,051 acres, about a seven-fold increase on Macquarie. From 1824 to 1836, while Arthur was Governor of Tasmania, the total land grants amounted to 1,403,311.5 acres, 496 an almost three-fold increase on Brisbane and an almost thirty-fold increase over Macquarie. That is, from the time of the British invasion until Arthur’s end of term, the total acreage granted was around 1,961,591 acres, a figure that agrees closely with Hartwell and Melville. It was unsustainable, reckless, inhumane, Lemkinian, and left no place for Palawa society to exist. Invasion led to dispossession, extermination, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and deportation. The winners were British landowners and Britain Inc. Year Number of Grants Acreage Granted Cumulative Acreage Granted 1804 4 400 400 1805 13 1,190 1,590 1806 13 863 2,453 1807 0 0 2,453 1808 1 2,000 4,453 1809 14 2,690 7,143 10 1,430 8,573 1811 0 0 8,573 1812 0 0 8,573 1813 356 33,544.5 42,117.5 1814 2 960 43,077.5 1815 2 1,370 44,447.5 1816 9 4,790 49,237.5 1817 111 17,158 66,395.5 1818 29 4,485 70,880.5 1819 6 4,400 75,280.5 1820 63 10,090 85,370.5 116 47,180 132,550.5 1810 1821 NSW Governor Macquarie Brisbane 197 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 1822 0 0 132,550.5 1823 1027 441,871 571,442.5497 Figure 42 Register of Tasmanian Land Grants: 1804 - 1823 498 Land grants: 1825 Figure 43 GRANTS OF LAND, Surveyor General’s Office, Hobart Town, November 14 th, 1825499 198 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Tasmanian British population 1804 - 1836 Figure 44 Van Diemen's Land population from 1804 to 1836500 199 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 1824 – 1833 British Population in Tasmania 40000 35000 30000 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 0 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833 Figure 45 Growth in British Population in Tasmania 1824 - 1833 Between 1824 and 1833, the immigrant population more than tripled. 200 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Tasmanian Palawa population 1804 – 1833 (preliminary) Our demographic focus is on the period from 1803 to 1833 because that is the range of the Plomley and Clements datasets. To calculate the Palawa population decline between two dates, we must first know the originating population at some time and the reported population at other times; together they will allow us to derive the rate of decline. Knowing the pre-contact population size has been a subject of debate among researchers, but two works stand out as the most reliable. NJB Plomley estimates 4,000 to 5,000, 501while Rhys Jones estimates 3,000 to 4,000.502 In this paper, we will use the range 3,000 to 5,000; neither value changes the pattern of depopulation. To simplify the calculation, we may sometimes standardize on the upper limit of 5,000 and sometimes on the average of 4,000. We calculate the exponential decline of the Palawa population in Tasmania from 1803 to 1833 according to the demographic formula: P (t) = P 0 e r t First, we calculate the exponential decay rate r. Let us suppose the population in 1803 was around 4000 people and that the known population in 1833 was about 200 people. This gives us a value of r = - 0.095 or an annual decline of 9.5%.503 By 1824 the Palawa population was about 1200 to 1500 people, a catastrophic decline from 1803. In this period, the British population grew from around 400 to about 12,643. That is, between 1803 and 1824, the Palawa population dropped by about 87%. In this period, the number of reported clashes was relatively low. So, the question is: what caused the death or disappearance of around 3,500 Palawa in this twenty-year period? Introduced disease did not become more prevalent until the mid-1820s. We hypothesize that loss of Aboriginal women capable of bearing children was the major depopulation vectoral agency in the first two decades following the British invasion. The loss was caused by sexual predation, female kidnapping, the destruction of family groups, abduction of children, with unpunished killing of Aboriginals by kangaroo hunters, sealers, stockkeepers, and military also contributing to the decline. From 1824, with their numbers reduced to around 1200, the surviving Palawa thrust themselves into a desperate and highly effective guerrilla war against the invaders, a war which culminated in Arthur’s declaration of martial law in 1828, followed by an official ethnic cleansing programme from 1829. It was Lemkinian genocide, but at the time was simply called extermination, or extirpation, or with a pseudoscientific Darwinian twist, ‘survival of the fittest’. Britain was not ‘more fit’, merely more destructive, and the culturally derived behaviours have carried down the intervening centuries into a collapsing environment, ecocide, from which our society may not recover. 201 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Number of Clashes 200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 0 Figure 46 Number of Plomley identified clashes between Palawa and settler, by year: 1803 - 1831504 On the size of the Palawa population, Nicholas Clements writes: The population of eastern Van Diemen’s Land was entirely Aboriginal in 1803, but by 1832 it was entirely European. Appreciating the scale and pattern of this demographic inversion is crucial to understanding the attitudes and experiences of those it affected. As Appendix 3 argues, there were probably around 3,500 Aborigines on the island when the first forty-nine colonists arrived in 1803, a ratio of around 1:70. Colonists probably remained numerically inferior for more than a decade. As late as 1815, there were fewer than 2,000 of them on the island, and only a few hundred had broached the interior. Even if individual frontiersmen were as violent before the War, as they were during it, there were simply not enough of them to instigate large-scale hostility. By 1824, however, the white population had increased to 12,313 through emigration and convict transportation. More than half this number resided outside the greater Launceston and Hobart districts. I argue in Appendix 3 that there were around 1,000 Aborigines in the eastern half of the island at this point, in which case white men outnumbered them in the interior by 6:1. In less than a decade, human occupation of the interior had shifted from overwhelmingly black to overwhelmingly white, and this trend accelerated rapidly after 1824. By the height of the War the ratio of colonists to Aborigines had blown out to around 100:1. This dramatic shift in population can seem at odds with the War’s modest scale. Compared to the great wars of Europe, the Black War was tiny – probably less than two thousand casualties. Yet, as a proportion of their respective populations, both the Aboriginal and European death rates in Van Diemen’s Land surpassed those of most modern conflicts.505 These facts and figures indicate the intensity of the Black War in stark terms, but they fail to convey its real horrors. The War was an experience before it was a statistic, and only by examining the former can we illuminate the significance of the latter. 506 Number of people wounded and killed: 1803 – 1842 (after Clements)507 Clements provides the raw data for these statistics, but they appear inconsistent, particularly those for Aboriginal people. For example, in a separate table, Appendix 2, he lists 388 killed, not 348. Whatever the black casualty figure it is likely to be underreported as we know that, by 1833, only about 200 or so remained. 202 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide White casualties Killed Wounded Harassed Labourers 216 218 411 Settlers 31 26 65 Soldiers 3 6 6 250 482 Totals 250 Black casualties 219 (nd for 129) Figure 47 Tasmanian Casualties: 1803 - 1842 Phases of Palawa population collapse: 1803 - 1876 Tolstoy wrote, All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. So it was with the family of man in Tasmania between 1803 and 1833, the period of British imposed genocide on the Indigenous people, the ancient Palawa, who had lived and thrived in their homeland for perhaps 36,000 years or more. The rate of Palawa population collapse changed over time according to the different weight of mortality and morbidity drivers imposed by the British as they sought economic priorities over humanitarian concerns. The type drivers of depopulation were: a) b) c) d) e) f) g) Killing (reported) Killing (unreported) Deaths (from wounding) Deaths (from internecine conflict) Deaths (from disease) Abduction, Reduced births (from sexual predation, female abduction, STDs, damaged family structures, and inability to sustain life through constant violent harassment and loss of hunting grounds), causing an intragenerational population collapse Each driver d contributed to depopulation P at a different rate for each phase. Let us call this rate rdt, where rdt depends on the type of driver (mortality agency) and time (phase). That is, for phase n, dP/ dT = rdt P which results in exponential decline according to the driver and for the phase. To simplify our analysis, we will assume that rdt is constant for a phase. The expression gives rise to a family of curves that vary according to the value of rdt where rdt < 0. We can determine the value of rdt if we know the originating and final populations over some defined period and the size of the intermediate population at some time t (originating < t < final). For example, the depopulation effect of disease varied by phase, having little reported effect before the mid-1820s. There does appear to have been disease introduced to Maria Island by Baudin in 1802, causing the loss of the tribe, and a further loss noted in the 1830s by the 203 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide catechist Clark that may have affected tribes to the west of the Huon River at some unknown period and with an unknown origin, although there is no evidence these disease outbreaks were widespread as suggested by Reynolds. We know that ARDs caused significant reported and population dependent mortality from the mid-1820s until the 1840s. That is, we would expect the disease mortality logistic function to follow a negative S-curve between 1803 and 1876 according to the Krebs formulation. Once again, if we know the originating and final populations over some defined period, and the population at some intermediate time t, we can derive rdt . We will weight each cell with a low/ medium/ high weighting. Phase Depopulation drivers (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) 1803 1817 – Low/med (a) Low/med Low/med Low Med High High? 1818 1825 – Med Med Med Low Med High High? 1826 1832 – High High High Low Med/high Med/ High High 1833 1846 – Low Low Low Low High Low High 1847 1876 - Low Low Low Low High Low High Figure 48 Palawa depopulation drivers (categorial mortality agencies) by phase 1803 – 1817 The number of colonists grew from a to b. In 1807, there was an influx from Norfolk Island who began taking up prime land along the Derwent (in the south) and Tamar (in the north), displacing Aboriginal people from their carefully farmed estates. Killings began to increase, along with abductions. 1818 – 1825 The number of colonists grew from a to b, along with land alienation. Killings increased, and sexual predation. 1826 – 1832 The Palawa began to fight back. Clashes increased. It was the start of the so-called ‘Black War’, a war of resistance. Land alienation increased, along with the number of colonists. Killings increased. 204 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide In 1828, Arthur declared martial law. At this time, the number of Palawa had been reduced to about 1,200 but their guerrilla tactics were extremely effective against the much larger British force. By 1832, perhaps 200 Aboriginal people survived. Between 1829 and 1833, Arthur tried a ruse de guerre that became known as the ‘friendly mission’, where he paid George Robinson a bounty for every Palawa he was able to capture in an ethnic cleansing programme. Arthur promised the Palawa a treaty and their own land in the northeast. Once captured, Arthur broke his promise and deported the survivors to exiled imprisonment on Flinders Island where they became refugees from settler violence and British intolerance. 1833 – 1846 Preventable deaths from disease took a fearful toll on Palawa remaining numbers. They ‘pined and died’ as predicted by Pedder. Few children were born. They became old and weak. 1847 – 1876 Some measure of shame caught up with the British Government. X ordered the elderly Wybalenna survivors to be relocated to a rank, disused convict settlement at Oyster Cove, where their modest upkeep was begrudged by the Tasmanian authorities. Arguably the last fullblood Palawa, Trucanini, died in 1876. The British genocide in Tasmania was complete, although mixed race survivors now remain, still fighting for their rights, still trying to reinvent their culture from the almost indecipherable scribblings of Robinson. Insert graphs Conclusion 205 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The Semantics of Genocide Genocide is described in an active sense by these verbs or verb combinations, sometimes with an adjectival qualifier: abduct, abolish, ambush, annihilate, annul, brutalize, butcher, (ethnically) cleanse, depopulate, destroy, detain, disenfranchise, disperse, dispossess, eliminate, eradicate, expunge, exterminate, extinguish, extirpate, ill-treat, incarcerate, invade, kill, liquidate, massacre, murder, nullify, oppress, persecute, predate, purge, remove, slaughter, stigmatize, wipe out. Noun descriptors and combinations, sometimes with an adjectival qualifier, include: abduct, (legislative) bias, bloodbath, bloodletting, bloodshed, butchery, carnage, (ethnic) cleansing, (violent) death, defeasance, (mass) deportation, (mental/ physical) destruction, (forced) detention, ethnocide, eugenics, (bodily/mental) harm, holocaust, (mass) homicide, infanticide, kidnap, (mass) killing, (martial) law, massacre, (mass/ race) murder, multicide, (invasive/ predatory/ violent) occupation, pogrom, (roving/ pursuing) party, (mounted) police, (sexual) predation, (invasive) settlerism, (forcible) transference, (settler) triumphalism, slaughter, (death) squad. But it is more, when we move to adjectives: cruel, dispossessory, invasive, despotic, dispersive, inhumane, insensitive, intolerant, non-compassionate, duplicitous, egregious, harsh, hateful, heartless, indifferent, inhumane, malevolent, malignant, merciless, oppressive, pitiless, predatory, racist, tyrannous, uncaring, uncharitable, unkind, unresponsive, unsympathetic, violent. 508 If we embrace the Lemkinian meaning, we find further procedural phrases in UN Article 2 that set out categorial agencies: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. That is, there is the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group by various UN prescribed modalities. The UN Convention makes clear the roles of perpetrator and victim (generalized as a targeted group) and establishes principles of accountability, including retrospective, that the Australian Government has declined to enact into domestic legislation. Britain refuses to accept its role in Australian genocide and denies any criminal culpability. Logical Expression If we define [something] to have the meaning [x], then the legal precision of our definition, the categorial statement, depends on what is included or excluded in the meaning and may give rise to various test cases or examples or a multiplicity of instantiations, which give further flesh to the meaning. For some writers, [genocide] can only have one instance, with the meaning [mass killing of Jews and others by the Nazis]. They argue that if one begins to draw comparisons of other cases or protracted events to the excesses of the Nazi regime, one has lost the argument! 206 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide However, the whole point of the Lemkinian genocide convention, as ratified by the United Nations (but not fully Australia), is to allow us to identify and prosecute other instances of intentional and racially targeted mass killing that fall within the prescribed meaning. That is, [x] is instantiated with cases [x1, x2, . xi]. Restating: [genocide UN] = ⨍(x), which is the ordered set comprising the paired values: x, ⨍(x). The mapping is falsifiable, if a case instance [xi] does not conform to the Convention’s criteria, as primarily set out in Article 2. This means that the genocidal hypothesis for any particular case can be proven or disproven, depending on the mapping result. 509 If the case is disproven within the Convention’s definitional space, it does not mean that the case per se collapses, just that it may conform to some other legal criteria such as ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity or simple mass murder that may (or may not) be some part of domestic legislation. Many historians consider the same factual circumstances of what we will call Tasmanian genocide, based on the Convention’s legal criteria, but derive quite conflicting findings. Is this a failure of logic or the insufficiency of the facts? We will argue that it is a failure of logic, or possible inherent bias, that may lead to ambivalent or contrarian conclusions. It results from some historians’ predisposition to redefine genocide as what they think it ought to be, rather than what it is under the UN articles of the Convention that is the only internationally agreed sieve we have to assess the horrific circumstances of any mass killing or racial targeting. In the end, genocide is a legal question, not something that should be left to the often illogical and reflexive opinions of historians. But the onus still remains for historians to assess the facts in a balanced and objective manner, without resort to contrived arguments by excising supposedly evidential paragraphs from primary sources and then removing the context, to support a particular line of argument. For example, Reynolds’ assertion is rejected, that there is no evidence the British Government intentionally planned the destruction of the Palawa. His assertion ignores that genocide was the policy driven outcome of the British Government, as it went about the business of colonization. Reynolds ignores that the British Government used ‘force against force’510 (to protect settler encroachments on Aboriginal land); and ethnic cleansing (through Arthur’s ‘Friendly Mission’); and British Law (that made Aboriginal witness testimony inadmissible); and land policy (that expropriated Aboriginal land and denied them any land ownership or treaty); and immigration policy (that deliberately accelerated Aboriginal dispossession, leaving them nowhere to live); and armed might (that legally sanctioned Aboriginal murder); and sexual predation (because white women were scarce in settler society); and proclamations of martial law (that placed a bounty on captured Aboriginals 511 and authorized their extermination), to achieve the destruction and genocide of Palawa society. Instead, Reynolds relies on the tendentious writings contained in a limited number of Government despatches that the British Government’s objectives were humanitarian, putting aside the evidence of their genocidal actions as ‘unintended’. 207 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Once destroyed, the Palawa had no voice with which to protest. Tasmania then had ‘the great good fortune’ to be free of an Aboriginal presence, of Aboriginal resistance to British occupation, where Government and pastoralists could continue unhampered with selfenrichment. If we review the diversity of academic views, of which there is no shortage, this is not to suggest that the key evidence is unproven or unreliable. Like the case against the harmful effects of smoking, it merely says that the scientific and medical evidence is clear, but that does not mean we should give equal weight to the opinion of the tobacco lobby who continued for some time to argue that there is no link, based on faulty and self-serving longitudinal studies that excluded inconvenient data. For example, the contrarian views of Reynolds cannot be substantiated by the evidence. He is arguing a different case to that of Lemkinian genocide, a case that Arthur and the British Government were humanitarian, a case that relies on the flimsiest of originating material, a case that depends on a careful filtering of the primary sources. Consider Reynolds’ selective quoting of Murray’s ‘indelible stain’ pronouncement, where he fails to quote the remainder of Murray’s despatch, in which Murray approves Arthur’s request for the use of armed convicts to take part in the aggravated violence of martial law, a period that saw the final death blow to the Palawa. Conversely, some writers and legal scholars have analyzed the historical data and concluded that the case for Tasmanian genocide is overwhelming. Hughes writes of the Palawa extermination: But die they did – shot like kangaroos and poisoned like dogs, ravaged by European diseases and addictions, hunted by laymen and pestered by missionaries, “brought in” from their ancestral territories to languish in camps. It took less than seventy-five years of white settlement to wipe out most of the people who had occupied Tasmania for some thirty thousand years; it was the only true genocide in English colonial history. By the standards of Pol Pot, let alone Josef Stalin or Adolf Hitler, this was a small slaughter. But not to the Tasmanian Aborigines.512 Hughes, like many people, equates genocide with mass killing, whereas the Lemkinian meaning is broader and more prescriptive. Lawson, on the other hand, is highly critical of Reynolds’ argument that the British Government was humanitarian and did not intend the wholesale destruction of Aboriginals. Unlike Reynolds, Lawson identifies Tasmanian genocide as the inevitable (but unplanned) consequence of British colonizing policies: I will argue that genocide was the result of the British presence in Van Diemen’s Land. This does not mean that the British Government or its agents explicitly planned the physical destruction of indigenous Tasmanians. They did not. But genocide was the inevitable outcome of a set of British policies apparently benign they appeared to their authors. I will show that these policies – even those aimed at protection – ultimately envisaged no future whatsoever for the original peoples of the island. The specific 208 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide policies that led to genocide may well have been made in Tasmania by the colonial authorities and the settlers, but they were approved by His Majesty’s Government in London, reported in the British press and ultimately responded to the desires and demands of a British colonisation.513 I agree in part. However, Lawson also appears to be taking Reynolds’ position that Tasmanian genocide was somehow an unintended consequence of colonial policies; it was not something that was intentionally planned, although he recognizes it as an ‘inevitable outcome’.514 Consider the view of Steven pinker, a renowned psychologist, who argues in a recent book that, contrary to popular belief, humankind has become less violent over millennia and decades. To reach this conclusion his measure of violence does not include ecocide, the consequence of human-caused global warming, or the fruits of unconstrained exploitation where the air is used as a ‘free’ sewer for our waste and entire ecologies are swept aside for profit. Such violence is on a massive scale and has significantly increased over the last century. On the question of genocide, he is ambiguous, warning us against ‘categorization’, that all persecutors are bad, and all targeted people were victims. This wordplay misunderstands the meaning of genocide, which is not about categorization (or category theory or the theory of types) so much as intent to destroy in whole or part with some measurable outcome. The intent does not have to be widespread, but it is often state sponsored through racist policies (destroy the black brutes, take their land, they don’t deserve it) or lack of humane policies for which we still see evidence today in disproportional rates of incarceration, early deaths, and economic marginalization. He writes: Some genocides begin as matters of convenience. Natives are occupying a desirable territory or are monopolizing a source of water, food, or minerals, and invaders would rather have it for themselves. Eliminating the people is like clearing brush or exterminating pests, and is enabled by nothing fancier in our psychology than the fact that human sympathy can be turned on or off depending on how another person is categorized. Many genocides of indigenous peoples are little more than expedient grabs of land or slaves, with the victims typed as less than human. Such genocides include the numerous expulsions and massacres of Native Americans by settlers or governments in the Americas, the brutalization of African tribes by King Leopold of Belgium in the Congo Free State, the extermination of the Herero by German colonists in SouthWest Africa, and the attacks on Darfuris by government-encouraged Janjaweed militias in the 2000s.515 To which we can add, the Lemkinian extermination of the Tasmanian Palawa by the British, a behavioural disease that spread across the Australian continent between 1788 and 1928 until the war for land was won. Firstly, we must recall the specific meaning of Lemkinian genocide and its prescribed characteristics that include, but are not limited to, killing a targeted group in whole or part. Secondly, a policy of ‘force against force’, a policy of dispossession, a complete failure to uphold the law for all parties, and the declaration of martial law, all these official decisions made indiscriminate extermination and lethal force in ‘defence of property’ legal; the outcome was therefore planned and intended. Under Arthur’s draconian genocidal policies, fully supported by the British Government, Aboriginals became unlawful trespassers in their own land and, finally, unwanted refugees in their own country, forced into detention, their numbers catastrophically reduced by sexual predation, imposed disease, kidnapping, indiscriminate killing, Martial Law, the war of extermination, incarceration, and repression until they became a mere handful, and eventually none. This is Arthur’s legacy, and that of the British Government. Neither has 209 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide formally been found accountable. If justice is ever to be served, it calls for a retrospective criminal investigation. By the second half of the 20th century, Australia’s continuing racial discrimination, that is systemic racism, was becoming an international embarrassment. In October 1960, Khrushchev516 in a speech to the 15th session of the UN General Assembly accused Australia of exterminating her Aboriginal population: ‘Everyone knows in what way the aboriginal population of Australia was exterminated’, something which Menzies (the longserving conservative Australian Prime Minister)517 vehemently denied as ‘fantastic accusations by a person and a State clearly on the defensive’. 518 But to a degree and notwithstanding his undoubted agenda, Khrushchev was correct. Whitewashing our history serves the genocidal debate poorly. We do not reach historical authenticity through revisionist myths, however comforting they may be to our collective selfimage. The genocidal counter arguments analysed The legal term ‘genocide’ is relatively recent. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer, conceived the word and worked tirelessly through the United Nations to obtain international agreement on its juridical meaning, after he sought to categorize what he saw with Nazi death camps, and after he strove to prevent or forestall or criminalize the horror of certain human conduct in the future. For this reason, some historians wrongly equate ‘genocide’ solely with the Jewish holocaust. In Tasmania’s case, we may see the arguments against what we now call Lemkinian genocide.519 The arguments can follow a pattern: that Aboriginal extermination was not intended by the state (Reynolds,520 Clements,521 and Boyce522); that the Government colonial administrative process was not racist and accorded with the ‘standards of the time’ (Clendinnen523); that the majority part of Palawa depopulation was due to factors other than killing, and included internecine warfare (Blainey), Acts of God (Reynolds), or that Palawa society was ‘unfit’ to survive; and that the Palawa were only targeted by the British Government because they resisted their lawful occupation (Windschuttle524). Others claim it was not genocide because millions would have to die (Clendinnen525), or because some mixed blood Aboriginals survived (Reynolds,526 Ryan527). Less frequently, we may hear the argument: it was a war (Connor,528 Reynolds529), so of course there were casualties (forgetting the vicious programme of Government led ethnic cleansing). More pernicious, we may hear that British land and immigration policy, following invasive occupation, had the unintended consequence of dispossession and genocide (Reynolds530). Henry Reynolds Henry Reynolds is ambivalent on the question of Tasmanian genocide and often contrarian, but his reasoning and evidence are all too often unsound. Other historians have uncritically adopted his position, notably Ryan and Clements. 210 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Reynolds agrees that, between 1826 and 1833, settlers ‘publicly discussed the matter of genocide’, using words like ‘extirpate’ or ‘exterminate’, a call that was reinforced by the British Secretary of State (Lord Bathurst) in 1825, when he instructed Darling (the New South Wales Governor) and Arthur to ‘oppose force by force’. 531 Arthur used this edict to justify extreme measures against the Aboriginal people. Reynolds then ignores his own argument by asserting that Britain did not plan or intend the destruction of the Palawa, where he quotes Murray’s November 1830 letter to Arthur as evidence: ‘...the adoption of any line of conduct having for its avowed or for its secret object, the extinction of the native race, could not fail to leave an indelible stain upon the character of the British Government’.532 But in Reynolds’ excised quote, he fails to include the rest of Murray’s orders, which approves Arthur’s request for Britain to supply around two thousand more convicts, whom Arthur can arm as a paramilitary force to support the Government and settlers during Martial Law, where Aboriginals could be exterminated without fear of prosecution. This extraordinary decision was decisive in the final assault against the Indigenous people. Murray also approves the use of a bounty, 533 but with the condition that it is paid for by the settlers, a condition that Arthur ignores. That is, the British Government is advocating a war of extermination against the Palawa, fully knowing the consequences of what they called ‘an indelible stain’. [..] You have proposed as a means of mitigating the evil complained of, that an increased number of Convicts should be sent out to Van Diemen’s land & that the Detachment of the 63rd Regiment, at present at Swan River, should be withdrawn from thence, & be ordered to join the main body of that Corps at Van Diemen’s land. On the first of these points, your wishes will, if possible, be complied with. But with regard to the second, I must remind you, that to seek a remedy in the augmentation of the number of His Majesty’s Troops in the Colony of Van Diemen’s Land, would be to trust to a resource which must unavoidably be both limited & uncertain. I approve of your increasing to a reasonable extent, the field police, & the awarding a moderate bounty to the Military who may be employed upon this particular duty; but I am of opinion that this Bounty should be supplied by the Settler, at whose desire the Soldier may be employed, not only with the view of relieving the public from this additional expense, but to prevent unnecessary applications from the Settlers for Military protection, as no augmentation which could be made to the Military force under your command would be adequate to meet every application of this nature from Settlers whenever any danger might be apprehended [...]534 Reynolds concludes that Arthur did not intend the destruction of the Palawa, citing a proclamation that ‘bloodshed be checked as much as possible, that any tribes which may surrender themselves up shall be treated with every degree of humanity.., 535 but was determined to overcome their resistance and take their land. 211 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide How Arthur could achieve this ‘humane’ objective by declaring Martial Law is a contradiction, until we realize that what Arthur said and what he did were often different. What he said (or wrote) was often to secure the support of the Foreign office and his place in history as a ‘humanitarian’ and efficient administrator; but ultimately, he must be measured by what he did. With genocide, intent is fundamental. Is there evidence of Arthur’s exterminatory intentions, contradicting Reynolds’ assertion? Yes. In researching Tasmania’s history between 1803 and 1831, Nick Brodie discovered a previously unknown set of correspondence that revealed the ‘detailed plans and operations directed by the government during the Vandemonian War, including one from Arthur to the Police Magistrate at Campbell Town, dated 5 September 1828: With regard to the hostile appearance which you represent those people to be assuming, the Lieutenant Governor has no hesitation in stating that He thinks you should expressly intimate to the Military Force which is placed at your disposal, that they should adopt decided measures, in driving the Natives from the settled Districts.536 Reynolds further contends that Tasmanian genocide did not occur because there were some mixed-race survivors, to whom he wanted to give dignity, or [genocide Reynolds] = ⨍(xi), where xi requires complete and total extermination with no mixed-race survivors. That is, Reynolds is redefining the meaning of Lemkinian genocide to suit his own argument: there are mixed race survivors; genocide requires destruction in whole (not just in part); therefore, genocide did not occur. Finally, Reynolds argues that if Palawa genocide occurred, it was ‘unintended’, in that genocide could not be foreseen because of the process of land alienation.537 Reynolds cites despatches from Murray538 and Arthur539 and to support his view that they were concerned for the fate of the Palawa but did not believe they could stop the process. This contention requires a more careful refutation. Reynolds’ questionable and contrarian argument against the overwhelming historical evidence for Tasmanian genocide is picked up by Clements, a Tasmanian historian and colleague of Reynolds, who simply repeats that ‘Henry Reynolds has demonstrated convincingly that the government did not intend to destroy the native population’ 540 Not quite. Arthur attempted to blame anyone but the settlers for the conflict. His hand wringing concern for Aboriginal welfare is negated by his actions. He hanged Aboriginal resistance leaders but failed to prosecute any settler (who was ‘protecting his property’) or soldier (who was ‘doing his duty’). In April 1828, he ordered that the Palawa be driven out of the ‘settled districts’, which covered the most productive part of the Island. Later in 1828, he declared Martial Law, which allowed the Palawa to be shot with impunity. Then in November 1830, he ordered that a Black Line be organized (like a wild game hunt) to drive Aboriginals into capture (or death). Finally, he ordered that the surviving Aboriginals be removed to Island detention. For many social historians, ascribing blame for racial oppression is less important than reconciliation, their general ambiguous conclusion: all parties were victims (including the oppressors); therefore, no one was responsible. 212 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide This is to play down the extreme, normative, directed, dysfunctional behaviour that is Lemkinian genocide. It is this behaviour, and the official duplicity around it, that we see on display in British Government despatches. I would argue that, without proper accountability, or even to resist the uncontrived gesture of saying ‘Sorry’, reconciliation is fraught. Finally, to misquote Tolstoy: ‘Each genocide is unique in its own way, but all have a similar unhappy pattern’. A constructed process is definable, predictable, and repeatable. It shapes human behaviour in a cooperative effort to achieve some expected outcome through a set of intentional actions. Different type processes can overlap, like occupation and genocide. Reynolds ignores or fails to understand that Lemkinian genocide is a process, which includes the article II (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, a criterion that clearly includes intentional dispossession. For the British Government, the foremost priority was to continue the process of allocating land, to protect the settlers, and to continue emigration. Aboriginal resistance would not be tolerated. For Reynolds, actions (such as military campaigns) that result from some originating trigger (such as land expropriation) are ‘unintended consequences’.541 In support of Reynolds' contention, we may hear the further parochial argument ‘Well, Britain did take Aboriginal land, but they expected Aboriginals to become absorbed into British society, perhaps as labourers or servants. Aboriginals did not want servitude. Aboriginals wanted to use the land according to their ancient customs. They were prevented from doing this by Britain and treated as trespassers. Whatever Britain may have said in principle, that the land should be shared and that the settler process should be conciliatory, in practice, Britain did not allow usufructuary land use and the settler process was far from conciliatory. Settlers did not share the land. Nor did the Government. Not with Aboriginals. Land was property, managed according to British customs and regulations. There was no place for Aboriginals on land that had once been theirs. Conflict followed.’ But this popular argument, which Reynolds repeats, in itself admits that the consequences of land dispossession were clearly understood by the British, who tried to manage the consequences on their own favourable terms, terms unacceptable to the Palawa. And if we reject the relevance and applicability of a 20th century UN Convention to 19th century British imperialism, we can simply replace the word ‘genocide’ with ‘extermination’ or ‘extirpation’, which were concepts very well understood by those actors who were embraced by the ‘standards of the time’, as they sought settler sovereignty at any human cost to the indigenous population. Reflecting Reynolds’ views, Ann Curthoys tends to absolve British Government intentionality in favour of settler agency when she writes: Importantly, the terminology has changed over this long period of discourse about the destruction of the indigenous Tasmanians and indigenous peoples generally. In the nineteenth century discussion of such disappearances, the common terms were 213 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide extirpation, extermination, and extinction. These three words could be used interchangeably, but they did have slightly distinct meanings: “extirpation” usually denoted a process emphasising settler agency; “extinction” described an outcome in which no members of a particular human group remained; while “extermination” tended to mean the connection between the two, a process conducted by settlers with extinction as its outcome.542 These overlapping conceptual terms defined by Curthoys for targeted mass killing can be summarized procedurally as: Genocide Extermination Extirpation Extinction Figure 49 Extermination, Extirpation, Extinction, genocide 543 The evidence from colonial despatches confirms that Britain knew what it was doing to the Palawa was wrong, by their own standards, but persisted in the charade that the settlers (and by implication the British Government) were blameless for the conflict, which was wholly avoidable with a different British policy that recognized and allowed Aboriginal land ownership. In essence, Reynolds’ argument for ‘unintended consequences’544 is: if case [xi] has a number of discrete actionable components [a1, a2, ..ai, aj] that originate through a bounded chain of ordered triggering conditions, then if aj follows on ai, it does not mean that aj depends on ai. Therefore, we cannot be held to account for aj . It follows that [genocide UN] ∌ xi. In fact, all the actionable components depend upon each other in some defined way, within some prescribed process boundary, for which the process instance or case has an intended outcome. That is the meaning of ‘process’. It is repeatable because it is prescriptible. Reynolds is arguing that we cannot be responsible for what he describes as ‘unintended’ consequences, ignoring that any triggered process has expected outcomes within an intentionality envelope, with predictable actionable components. Within any particular process, it is highly unlikely there can be unintended consequences, as the actionable components are procedural in nature, and intended as part of the process. They follow a pattern. 214 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide We seem to live in a causal universe. A process ‘manages’ causality and gives some certainty to human endeavour through intentionality, where we undertake event a then event b and so on, in a deterministic relationship, in order to achieve some outcome. Reynolds is really questioning the nature of this type of procedural causality, where events can be related through a chain of triggered and intended circumstances, 545 all executed according to some plan involving (say) the occupation process,546 and its attendant system of laws and edicts, brought by the occupying power to press its ‘sovereign’ rights in a contested space. In Tasmania, this process involved violent occupation and ‘ethnic cleansing’ as we know it now, but then was called targeted removal through martial law, repressive killings that were ignored by the Government, Aboriginal hangings to set an example for the cost of resistance, ‘roving parties’ or death squads, forced relocation, detention, female abduction, child kidnapping, and other repressive means that were part of the imposed process. A cogent example of this genocidal occupation process is the resumption of Aboriginal land in the name of the Crown, for which the intended consequence was Aboriginal dispossession, creating the further predictable and intended circumstance that Aboriginals could legally be treated as trespassers, able to be removed or shot without legal redress or repercussion. There is a multiplicity of instantiations for this occupation process, which carries the sharp edge of genocide. Each instance can be as little as a particular settler being granted land at some specific location on some exact date. Together, these cumulative instances plot the path and timing of Aboriginal land dispossession within the type actionable component of ‘grant land’. They all follow the same calibrated process pattern, at different levels of abstraction along some intentionality gradient, from invasion through occupation to extermination to subjugation. Intentionality is embedded in the process. Culpability follows. Therefore, Reynolds’ contention is refuted, that genocide was the ‘unintended’ consequence of Aboriginal dispossession. Inga Clendinnen Other writers attempt to redefine [x] to have a different meaning to the genocide Convention, which they then use to rule out a particular instance. For example, Inga Clendinnen547 argues that Lemkinian genocide must be limited to instances where millions are killed intentionally by the state,548 or ⨍(x) = domaini over [x], thereby excluding Australian genocide. Clendinnen’s argument is also refuted, based upon Article 2 of the Convention. Keith Windschuttle Windschuttle adopts a legalistic approach that genocide cannot occur if those that were killed were breaking ‘the law’,549 that is: 215 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide [genocide] ≠ ⨍(xi), if xi is interdicted by some system of constraints imposed by a nation state as an internal matter. For Windschuttle, the UN Convention [genocideUN] is irrelevant, as he redefines it in his own terms as [genocideWindschuttle], which he then dismisses as non-existent for Tasmania. It logically follows from his argument that the holocaust could not be genocide, nor could any intentional mass killing by a state be genocide because state sponsored killing is an internal matter, making his argument contrary to the explicit provisions of the UN Convention. If we are not persuaded by his logic that genocidal mistreatment of Tasmanian Aboriginals was a ‘law and order’ problem, not a crime against humanity, Windschuttle then goes further, in his attempt to address some of the fierce criticism he received for his book, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: The full-blood Tasmanian Aborigines did die out in the nineteenth century it is true: the 10,000 years of isolation that had left them vulnerable to introduced diseases, especially influenza, pneumonia and tuberculosis; and the fact that they traded and prostituted their women to convict stockmen and sealers to such an extent that they lost the ability to reproduce themselves.550 This is a colourful and speculative argument that is untroubled by the factual evidence. It entirely ignores the genocidal consequences of invasive occupation. Windschuttle is arguing: ¬[genocideUN] ⇔ [xi] where xi theory.551 is the Windschuttle dying race Therefore, Windschuttle’s argument is refuted. Nicholas Clements More recently, there is Clements’ argument,552 which wholly adopts Reynolds’ logic that no Tasmanian genocide occurred because some mixed-race survivors remain. For those who died, they maintain, it was an unintended consequence553 of Government policies and racial conflict. And if they died from conflict, they were not defenseless victims. As we have shown, these arguments misconstrue the legal and explicit meaning of the UN Convention. But Clements goes further by concluding: The near extermination of the Tasmanians cannot help but evoke emotions such as guilt, sadness and contempt in any feeling person. Yet it is misleading to think of the Black War as a battle between good and evil. The traditional dichotomies of strong and weak, cowardly and courageous, victim and victimiser simply do not stand up to scrutiny. Practically everyone saw themselves as victims. White and Black alike, most were just trying to survive the nightmare in which they found themselves.[..]..Judgment contributes nothing to our understanding. 554 In this neat parsing of frontier reality, what Clements ignores is that Britain was the invader and occupier. They stole the land and allowed the murders. They turned a blind eye to sexual predation and the kidnap of children. They declared Martial Law. They encouraged a horde of immigrants. They allowed the extermination of the Palawa and did almost nothing to punish 216 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide the offenders. They allowed the starvation and disease, when traditional food sources were over-exploited by the invaders. They used the military and field police to torment the Indigenous population. They moved the few survivors to a detention facility on Flinders’ Island, where many began to die from the conditions. They used their own system of laws to facilitate the destruction of Palawa society within a generation. While Clements absolves Government from specific intent (or dolus specialis which tends to distinguish genocide from war crimes, although the distinction can be contrived) he then asks the question: Were the colonists guilty of genocide? He absolves the colonists because the Tasmanian natives ‘were not killed because of their politics, race, or religion’. After this extraordinary conclusion, Clements then argues that genocide is ‘the centrally coordinated slaughters of helpless non-combatants,’ ignoring the definitional articles of the UN Convention, which makes no such statement. This was no mutually disagreeable dance of discomfort, as Clements proposes, where aggressor and aggressee were somehow co-dependent for their situation. No. There was invasion, and there was resistance. There was mass murder and there was eventual terrified surrender, as families and tribes became broken, the survivors unable to find peace beside a campfire for fear of being ambushed by heavily armed parties of marauding British, who were watching out for the smoke. The Clements’ argument would allow, for example, the Bosnian Serbs to blame their Muslim victims for being massacred, because they resisted. Contrary to Clements’ historical revisionism, without accountability, without judgment, there can be no understanding. For Clements to impute ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’, as a moral argument, is to deflect our attention from British culpability. If we accept Clements’ conclusion, we will have learned little from the generally one-sided tragedy, which many apologists such as Windschuttle now hurry to deny. Clements redefines: [genocide UN] ⇔ [genocide Clements] = ⨍(x), where ⨍(x) ∌ xTasmania.555 Clements’ argument is therefore refuted, on the basis that he, like Reynolds, is attempting to redefine Lemkinian genocide on his own terms. That is, they contend: Tasmanian genocide did not occur because it was a war of extermination, not a process of ‘holocaust-like’ genocide, where defenseless Aboriginals would have been rounded up, interned, and killed. Lyndall Ryan Finally, there are contemporary historians who simply do not mention or confront the question of Tasmanian genocide at all, except in terms of ethnic cleansing, or in other restricted terms that overlap, but do not replace, the formal concept of genocide. For them, Tasmanian genocide does not exist or does not bear discussion. Among them is Lyndall Ryan, who takes Henry Reynolds’ position that many mixed race Palawa survivors remain, for whom land rights and reconciliation are the more compelling priorities, and because there are such survivors, there was no genocide. 217 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide This position ignores the actual articles of the UN Convention that refer to destruction of a targeted group ‘in whole or part’. Ryan gives the example: Would the South West and North West nations have survived had Robinson not captured and removed them? She then argues that Arthur and Robinson: ‘.. faced a ‘great moral dilemma. They had every reason to expect that the western nation would be exterminated, thus ensuring that the reputation of the British Empire would become even more ‘indelibly stained’. Arthur may have authorised the policy of ethnic cleansing and Robinson may have carried it out, but paradoxically they did so as the humanitarian agents of British imperialism. They truly believed that by removing the western nations they were preventing rather than enhancing their extermination. They also believed that it was better the Aborigines should die in the arms of God than from the settlers’ guns. The only other solution would have been to remove the settlers from Van Diemen’s Land. But, at the time, such a suggestion was unthinkable. The forced removal of the South West and North West nations remains one of the most shameful episodes in Australian history. It stands today as a stark reminder of the brutal consequences of British settler colonialism and the settlers’ belief that Van Diemen’s Land should become ‘native free’. The great tragedy is that it was completely unnecessary. 556 In pointing to the questionable ‘humanitarian’ motivations of Arthur and Robinson, she (like Clements) is shifting the blame to the settlers, whom she then absolves. She offers a solution that Britain should have completely removed settlers from Tasmania, which is absurdist overreach and easily dismissed as impractical. In doing so, she rejects any intermediate and more rational possibility. The more compelling argument is that Arthur should have offered a treaty, which he opined after the event was something he should have done, perhaps more for the judgement of history than any real conviction. He should also have limited the process of occupation and the alienation of Aboriginal land. He should have offered the Palawa their own territory, perhaps in the west or north-east, where there was little settlement. He should have prosecuted any settler, sealer or whaler who injured, molested or killed any Aboriginal. He did none of this. But why should he, when land alienation and accelerated immigration was British Government policy and land dealings were making him and the colony rich. Where was the disincentive? Britain made no constraints on self-enrichment. Land was property, and British law allowed the ‘defence of property’. More importantly, Arthur should have upheld the rule of British law in relation to murder and assault, but he refused to prosecute any settlers, for fear it might cause a public backlash and damage his career. Economics was more important than human life. That is, Ryan’s argument is: 218 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide [genocide UN] ⇔ [genocide Ryan ] = ⨍(x), where ⨍(x) ∌ x Tasmania.557 Ryan’s argument is consequently refuted. Anomalies and inconsistencies in the counter arguments – summarised We see that these various attempts to redefine the Lemkinian convention give rise to unconscionable anomalies and logical inconsistencies. For example, if we apply the Reynolds codicil, the Jewish holocaust is disallowed (because some Jews survived), whereas if we assert the Clendinnen definition, then the set of genocides may only have a small handful of members, which excludes the instance of Tasmanian genocide among other instances involving some Australian states. The Windschuttle juridical argument means that if genocide is regarded as a matter internal to a particular state, including ‘civilians’ who ‘disobey the law’ or who are ‘proscribed’, then it cannot be genocide but merely the upholding of national interests, which also rules out the holocaust or for that matter any state sponsored genocide. Genocide revisionists have in common an opinion on what the definition should be, not what it actually states under the Convention. What the UN Convention attempted to do was give legal clarity to a certain kind of collective dysfunction. That is not to say that something equivalent to the formal definition of genocide was unknown to previous generations and sovereign states. Before WWII, racial oppression had many guises but one face: primarily the practice of extermination of targeted groups carried out by many colonial powers intent on asserting their unilaterally declared sovereign right of exclusive territorial possession and supremacy, or the right of a colonizing state to impose its authority on subordinate cultures and groups. Who could protect the Tasmanian Palawa from the British state, when the state was above the law through its embodiment in the law? Characteristics of genocide – restated in the context of Tasmania For something to qualify as genocide, the Lemkinian Convention does not set out a requirement for any absolute number of people to be destroyed, although we can reasonably conceive a sliding scale of genocidal horror, a type of moral calculus for measuring collective depravity. With genocide, extent is less important than intent. That is, even if a race comprises only a few hundred, or a few thousand, if they are intentionally destroyed as a selected group, in whole or part, as a part of some purposeful act or process, it is genocide. War morphs into genocide when particular races or groups are targeted for intentional destruction. Consequences flow from planned actions. Arthur558 intended to destroy the Palawa, completely if he could, because – through their resistance - they were an obstruction to British economic hegemony and settler sovereignty. 219 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide He succeeded, with the support of his superiors. He then attempted to shift the blame for his crime. When he left Tasmania in 1836, the British Government rewarded him with a title and a new prestigious post, in the service of Empire.559 He became extremely wealthy through his Tasmanian land dealings, what we may now call corrupt behaviour, trading in confiscated Aboriginal land. He was not alone. Dialectic Yet you may still be unconvinced. You may say ‘Genocide has strong emotive connotations. For me, it equates to the holocaust. Surely it cannot be genocide if only a few thousand were destroyed by various means?’ I then reply ‘Perhaps you would be more comfortable with another description. How would you respond if I said ‘Although there were relatively few Palawa, they were probably a unique race. They were completely exterminated because of invasive British occupation. Many were killed. Others died from introduced disease, particularly evident when Britain forcibly detained them on Flinder’s Island. But it does not really matter how they died. They died. If Britain had not invaded, they would have lived. Only mixed-race survivors remain ,descendants of sealers in Bass Strait.’ I then hear you say, ‘If Britain had not invaded, someone else, some other European power would.’ To which I reply ‘This is speculation. It carries no evidentiary argument. The incontrovertible historical evidence is that the British removed an entire race, often with extreme violence, with some mixed blood survivors surviving. Most were made to disappear by the British occupation in a few tens of years, between 1803 and 1833.’ You may then respond, not entirely conceding the argument ‘Well, it may have happened, but it was almost 200 years ago. Isn’t it time to move on?’ I then say ‘As a nation, we can only move on if we acknowledge accountability for the past. Otherwise, we can perpetuate the same mistakes, the same misguided behaviours. We will have learned little. Aboriginal society is still disadvantaged. They are amongst the most disadvantaged ethnic group on Earth. As a group, their lives are shorter. They are more likely to live in poverty. They are overly represented in our gaols.560 They suffer in greater proportional numbers from preventable diseases such as trachoma, diabetes, depression, even suicide. Some tried to establish settlements on their remote homelands, but our Government is even intent of dispossessing them of this right. Prime Minister Abbott asserted ‘It’s a lifestyle choice’, 561 playing to popular prejudices when he said that he could not support such choices. No, we have learned little from history. Our behaviours tend to remain destructive. Once it was ‘Us against Aboriginal society’. Then ‘Us against the environment’, what is called ecocide. We have one of the highest rates of species loss in the world. We have the highest per capita carbon emissions. The Barrier Reef is at risk. Eventually, it is ‘us against us’, if we refuse to learn and adapt, to modify the worst aspects of our collective behaviour, our predilection to exploit without end (at one extreme) or exploit until our economic circumstances become degraded (at the other constraining limit). History can teach us if we are willing to learn. Perhaps we can begin by removing racist clauses in our Constitution. And by recognizing the crime of genocide in our domestic legislation. Then, we should admit that 220 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide any remote community, white, black, or mixed, has a right to basic services. Finally, we should introduce a Bill of Rights. That would be a start. It is saying ‘sorry’ with substance.’ Conclusion That is, the behaviours that drove genocide in Australia are still with us today. Their motivation and expression are similar to what they were. We now target the accelerated destruction of the environment for economic gain. We are the largest coal exporter in the world. The policies and practices of exploitation, subjugation and extermination are still with us. An ever-rising GDP as a measure of national progress means that, within a century, we will need many Earths to sustain us. The behaviour is selfdestructive. We know it, but our argument against behavioural change is ‘Soon, but not yet’. It is the gambler’s logic, that our luck will turn, that perhaps technology will save us. 562 221 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Modelling Lemkinian genocide in Tasmania We will address an enduring puzzle. What caused the intragenerational collapse of the Palawa population between 1803 and 1832, with a drawn-out phase extending to 1876 for the few survivors of the British genocide in Tasmania? Many theories have been presented. The historical focus seems to be on massacres and killing but is this focus misplaced, particularly if it leads us down the slippery semantic slope of what is a massacre.? More specifically, were there phases of depopulation that were the consequence of weighted combinations of Lemkinian agencies, say killing, disease, abduction, and so on that variously took effect, like waves, at different periods corresponding to the state of the occupation process? When does a punitive reprisal or kidnapping become genocidal? Can genocidal agency include the intentional destruction of family relationships and the ability to procreate? Many researchers have argued for a type formulation of genocide, for which the accepted example is that of Rafael Lemkin with its ratified expression in the United Nations Convention (1948).563 This paper will standardize on the Convention as an internationally agreed analytical framework for Genocide. Joan Frigolé, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona, writes about state-sponsored exterminatory violence in these terms: Genocide kills procreators and the procreated, the latter being included for being the children of the former, and because they represent a guarantee of future reproduction of their procreators. Genocide seeks to make a definitive break in the genealogical chain and thus suppress the reproduction of a group. Genocide lasts a relatively short period of time, though its objective is to have a lasting impact. Sémelin defines it as “the total eradication of a collective defined according to the criteria of the persecutor”. Yet perhaps the idea of totality as applied to genocide refers to the fact of eliminating the procreative structure, rather than the totality understood in numerical terms, always dependent on a classification system and inherent ambiguities.564 Frigolé’s limiting of genocide to the violent removal of procreators is well-taken but it does not carry across to the Lemkinian meaning: to destroy in whole or part through various means not just restricted to killing. Nor does Frigolé’s inclusion of the Sémelin definitional reference help, equating genocide to ‘the total eradication’. 565 The semantic arguments seems misplaced or ill-conceived: eradication does not have to be total; and the removal by a state-sponsored persecutorial agency of a defined group of people within a targeted population is not arbitrarily limited to the killing of those able to procreate – parents and their children - but can also include, but is not limited to, their forced removal from the procreative population through abduction or predatorily imposed STDs or inflicted disease arising from the conditions of their detention. Lemkinian repression can also embrace cultural destruction and imposing the conditions of life – the destruction of family groups – that lead to social collapse. 222 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The problem is that some researchers redefine genocide in their own terms, when we should be referring to the United Nations Convention as an agreed template, for all is shortcomings about absolving members of the Security Council from culpability. We want to propose a multi-faceted Lemkinian-based hypothesis for Tasmania that can be verified by the available data. This means we must analyze the different destructive categorial agencies by phase, beginning with an overall assessment or first order approximation of the available depopulation data. Can we model the often time delayed Lemkinian effects of a set of type categorial agencies on pernicious multifaceted Palawa depopulation, including female removal and disease? This paper argues, yes. Many researchers focus on mortality figures only, ascribing ‘killing’ as the key genocidal measure, ignoring the Lemkinian terminology to destroy in whole or part through various prescriptive means. With this apprehended bias, killing is further sub-typed as massacre or warfare, leading to a semantic debate on what to include or exclude in a type category, and how many have to be killed in some ‘event’, however that is defined (temporally or geospatially) for it to be called a massacre, and whether there was a pastoral ‘frontier’. For example, John Connor argues that, because Aboriginal people resisted the British invasion through guerrilla warfare, any killing could not be a massacre but was an act of armed combat, that white violence was generally defensive, and therefore we cannot conflate conflict to ‘massacre’ and thence to ‘genocide’. 566 But as we have begun to show, if reproduction in the targeted population is inhibited by various means (kidnapping, killing, psychological stress, miscegenation, dispersal, introduced disease, physical trauma, sexual predation), depopulation can be rapid, followed by demographic collapse potentially within a generation. A melancholy example is Tasmania, as our models will show. If that is insufficient to convince us of why and how Aboriginals rapidly disappeared, then some researchers offer counter-causes that absolve Britain’s genocidal role. Introduced disease, ‘Acts of God’, always conferred plausible deniability or lack of direct genocidal involvement by the oppressors. And if that is also insufficient, certain historians invoke – without testable evidence internecine warfare or (using Darwinian speculation) mysterious societal self-destruction because they are ‘unfit to survive’. Whenever there is a time delay between Lemkinian depopulation agency (say female kidnapping) and demographic consequence in the targeted group (decreasing births), there is ample room for some to postulate non-testable and non-culpable co-factors such as ‘Acts of God’ or ‘Darwinian unfitness’ or ‘intertribal warfare’ in the contrarian fog of genocidal causative noise. And with sufficient noise, the genocidal hypothesis can be arbitrarily dismissed or clothed in doubt. 223 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide We will refer to genocide in its Lemkinian meaning as defined by the United Nations Convention. We will introduce a discrete set of models for Lemkinian depopulation in Tasmania. These hypothetical models lend themselves to best-fit analysis, using empirical data. They will help us determine which model best explains the puzzle of post-invasion Palawa population collapse, especially for the pre-Black War period from 1803 to 1825 when most of the Palawa people ‘disappeared’. We will analyse these candidate hypothetical models: a) b) c) d) e) Plomley linear depopulation model: 1803 - 1831 Reynolds ‘mysterious disease’ model ‘before the coming of the white man’ Annualised exponential depopulation model: 1803 – 1876 Continuous exponential depopulation model: 1803 – 1876 Phased continuous exponential depopulation model: 1803 – 1825, 1826 – 1832, 1833 – 1846, 1847 - 1876. f) Logistic model: 1803 – 1876, 1803 – 1832 We will develop a strategy for determining the ‘best fit’ depopulation model from the proposed candidates, set out a methodology to refine any depopulation model, make preliminary calculations for the various models, determine whether there are phases of depopulation that correspond to weighted Lemkinian drivers, and form verifiable conclusions on the depopulation puzzle. Strategy for determining best fit models for Palawa Lemkinian depopulation We will assess type depopulation curves for 1803 to 1876, according to different hypotheses from: a) b) c) d) e) f) Plomley (linear depopulation model, 1803 - 1831), Reynolds (‘mysterious cause’ of pre 1825 depopulation referred to by Clark), Exponential depopulation using annualised data bundles for 1803 to 1876 Continuous exponential depopulation model: 1803 – 1876 Phased continuous exponential depopulation model: 803 – 1825, 1826 – 1832, 1833 Logistic (sigmoid curve) depopulation model Model (a): Plomley linear depopulation model One of the earliest researchers to attempt a detailed analysis of Palawa depopulation was Brian Plomley through an empirical study of ‘clashes’ culled from primary sources, mostly newspapers. We can quibble with his data granularity (whether it was canonical and consistent), the statistical methods and his typology, but he set a benchmark for us to follow. Plomley proposes a lineal model for Palawa depopulation between 1803 and 1831.567 A lineal coplanar model is at best an approximation of how demographics rise or fall over some specified period. It is unclear if Plomley fitted the data to a linear model or allowed the model to determine the datapoints. 224 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide From an originating estimated population in 1803 of 5000, Plomley estimates a population P in 1824 of 1500 (P1824 = 1500), and in 1831 of 350 (P1831 = 350). It is possible that he retrofitted the intermediate datapoints by eye to match his hand-drafted lineal model. We can also challenge his 1803 originating population size. Nevertheless, the advantage of any hypothesis is that it can be verified or refuted; it is a place for us to start before we refine our model of reality, based on a careful assessment of the data. The Plomley model is of the form dP/ dt = r (r<0) from which we calculate the population at time t, P(t) = rt + 5000 Cases within the Plomley model for P1803 = 5000: Case 1: P1803 = 5000, P1824 = 1500 a) P1803 = 5000, t = 0 b) P1824 = 1500, t = 21 c) 1500 = r 21 + 5000, r = -3500/ 21 = -166.67 Case 2: P1803 = 5000, P1831 = 350 a) P1803 = 5000, t = 0 b) P1831 = 350, t = 28 c) 350 = r 28 + 5000, r = -166.07 Comparing Case 1 and Case 2, the differences in the value of slope r seem due to drafting precision errors. That is, Plomley may have derived his value for P1824 from the graph model rather than calculating the values from an algorithmic model. Case 3: Calculate the value range of P1824 for an originating 1803 population within some range, say 3000 to 5000: a) b) c) set an originating population range between 3000 and 5000 ( 3000 ≤ P1803 ≤ 5000) with an average of 4000 (P1803 avg = 4000), and set the population in 1831 at 350 (P1831 = 350), then the value of P1824 varies between 1013 and 1513 (1013 ≤ P1824 ≤ 1513). Supporting calculations: Calculate P1824 where P1803 = 5000 P1803 = 5000, P1831 = 350, t=28 We derive 350 = r28 + 5000, r = -166.07 (r<0) then P1824 = r21 + 5000 = -166.07 (21) +5000 = -1512.5 from which we generate the algorithm P(t) = -166.07 (Δt) + 5000 where Δ t = number of years from t1803, or Δt = 1, 2, 3,,, and P(t) is reducing by 166 pa, and P(t) = 0 when Δt = 30.1 years or in 1833, which exposes the logical error in the linear model, as the population was in continuous decline until 1876 when 225 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide arguably the last racially non-mixed Tasmanian Aboriginal died. Plomley avoids this graphing fallacy by only plotting values of P(t) for 5000 ≥ P(t) ≥ 350. Calculate P1824 where P1803 = 3000 P1803 = 3000, t=0 P1831 = 350, t=28 We derive 350 = r28 + 3000, r= (350 - 3000)/ 28 = -94.6, r<0 then P1824 = r21 + 3000 = -94.6 (21) + 3000 = 1013.4 from which we generate the algorithm P(t) = -94.6 (Δt) + 3000 where Δt = number of years from t1803, or Δt = 1, 2, 3,,, and P(t) is reducing by 95 pa, and P(t) = 0 when t = 31.7, or in 1835, which exposes the logical error in the linear model. P(t) 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1803 1805 1807 1809 1811 1813 1815 1817 1819 1821 1823 1825 1827 1829 1831 P(t), P1803=3000 P(t), P1803=5000 Figure 50 Graph of lineal population decline: 1803 – 1831 (after Plomley) Plomley uses an 1803 originating Palawa population of 5000. We include the lineal model with P1803 = 3000 to show the possible depopulation uncertainty band deriving from the P1803 population range: 3000 ≤ P(t) ≤ 5000. For example, in 1825, the year before a dramatic escalation in Plomley ‘clashes’ and the start of the so-called ‘black war’, the estimated surviving population from the lineal depopulation model is between 918 and 1346. Conclusions Plomley proposed a linearly decreasing population model between 1803 and 1831.568 226 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide He assumed a population of 5000 in 1803, 1500 in 1824, and 350 in 1831. That is, the form of the model is dP/ dt = r (r<0), where P (t) = -rt + 5000 from which we derive P1803 = 5000 when t = 0, and P1824 = r21+ 5000 = 1500, r= -166.7, that is, the population reduces by 166 each year from 1803, and P1831 = r28 + 5000 = 350, r = -166 which is inconsistent with the plotted P1824 value of r. The small difference in r appears to be caused by Plomley graphing the curve with a margin of drafting error. We conclude that Plomley’s model is a first order lineal approximation of Palawa depopulation between 1803 and 1831 where the identified datapoints for P1803, P1824, and P1831 do not agree with empirical sources. For example, P1803 seems to be in a range: 3000 and 5000 (Jones); 7000 (Ryan). P1824 appears to be in a range from 1000 to 1200 (Clements). If we modify the Plomley lineal plot where we allow 3000 < P1803 < 5000 and P1831 = 350, we determine that 1000 < P1824 < 1250. We will later compare the Plomley model with the exponential model in their ability to verify our hypothesis that depopulation followed some pattern we have yet to determine but suspect it may be phase dependent. Model (b): Reynolds model Henry Reynolds speculates that there was a collapse in the Palawa population before Britain invaded in 1803, which neatly sidesteps the question of culpable genocide and transfers the cause of the collapse to an ‘act of God’, or in modern parlance, a force majeure resulting from a possible idiopathic pandemic. It seems very likely that the mortality rate on Flinder’s Island was merely a continuation of a catastrophic pattern of death which had begun even before the first permanent settlements in 1803 and 1804. Robert Clark, teacher and catechist at Wybalenna for almost ten years, told the historian Bonwick that the Aborigines had told him that they were originally ‘more numerous than the White people were aware of’, but that: Their numbers were very much thinned by a sudden attack of disease which was general among the entire population previous to the arrival of the English, entire tribes having been swept off. 569 Reynolds does not include the rest of Bonwick’s quote, which adds ‘in the course of one- or two-days’ illness’. It is unclear what disease would carry off its victims so quickly, unless through rapid pulmonary failure and hypoxia. An idiopathic Acute Respiratory Disorder may be implicated, but if it happened, there appears to have been no recurrence, contrary to what we might expect from our understanding of disease aetiology. Nor can we assume a ‘continuation of a catastrophic pattern of death’. Yes, depopulation did persist from 1803, but the ‘pattern’ did not have a single cause, say disease, as Reynolds 227 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide implies. Multiple categorial agencies were responsible for sustained depopulation, and these various agencies assumed different weightings depending on the phase of depopulation. For example, during the ‘black war’, killing took its toll; in earlier phases, a combination of killing, and sexual predation caused intragenerational collapse as we will show; after 1832, diseases and comorbidities of confinement reduced the births to a negligible amount and wreaked carnage on those who survived; after 1846, mainly the old remained, traumatized and despairing. This is what Bonwick wrote: Mr Robert Clark, in a letter to me, said: “I have gleaned from some of the Aborigines, now in their graves, that they were more numerous than the White people are aware of, but their numbers were very much thinned by a sudden attack of disease which was general among the entire population previous to the arrival of the English, entire tribes of the Natives having been swept off in the course of one or two days’ illness.”570 The third hand account is not corroborated from any other source and must be considered speculative without any evidentiary support. XBaudin??XX clements Let us suppose that there was a mysterious disease ‘before the coming of the white man’ or even in the two decades after 1803. Putting aside the question of how many died, can we create a strawman demographic model? Assumptions: • • • • • • • • It is likely that the Palawa population was stable or growing pre-contact, which we will define as from 1788 to 1803 for indicative purposes. Prior to this period, that is pre-1788, there was no other probable agency for introduced disease, if we discount the impact of the earliest explorers. Inter-tribal clashes no doubt happened, but these were usually stylised conflicts involving payback and, we can reasonably assume, with few deaths. There were no resource constraints on population growth. There was no emigration or immigration. Births per capita were normal or above what is normal for a British population, apart from uncorroborated speculation on a period of heightened female death due to a ‘mysterious disease’ that may have slightly reduced the per capita rate of procreation. There were no STDs or prior ARDs or smallpox. Any ‘mysterious disease’ potentially causing death, if viral, would run its normal course and then become relatively dormant in the population, perhaps reinfecting periodically. As a thought experiment, we will consider three scenarios: a) There was a population drop due to a mysterious introduced disease in the period from 1790 to 1800 that affected parts, but not all, of the population. Baudin clements b) There was a population drop due to a mysterious disease in the period from 1800 to 1820 that affected parts, but not all, of the population and overlaid other factors such as kidnapping of women, child abduction, and indiscriminate killing. 228 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide c) Without invasion the population would continue to grow. Scenario a: When the British arrived in 1803, there was no evidence of accumulated bone deposits that might be expected from a pandemic where there were few left to bury or dispose of the dead; the Palawa were widespread across Tasmania, operating in territorial groups, and appeared healthy according to reports from Knopwood (circa 1805 to 1810) and pre 1800 explorers (Cook, Baudin and others) who made landfall in the south. P(t) 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 Figure 51 Mysterious sickness causing mortality pre-contact In this scenario, we postulate a rising population until around 1780, followed by depopulation from 1782 to 1790, a reasonably flat population from 1794 to 1806, then steep depopulation from 1804 that can be verified from the historical record. Prior to 1803, none of this can be substantiated, apart from a careful reading of early explorer accounts. The data is not available. Scenario b: We have these estimated hinge points: P1804 (estim.) = 4000; P1832 (estim.) = 200, P1846 (act.) = 47. All other datapoints are interpolated through calculation. There appears to be a marginal effect on the rate of depopulation because of a brief ‘mysterious disease’ that was localised to a relatively small geographic group. 229 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide P(t) 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 1802 1804 1806 1808 1810 1812 1814 1816 1818 1820 1822 1824 1826 1828 1830 1832 1834 1836 1838 1840 1842 1844 1846 1848 1850 1852 0 Figure 52 There is a slight increase in the rate of depopulation between 1808 and 1814 Scenario c (without invasion): P1803 = 4000 (estim.), t = 220 years, r = .01 (1% growth pa → P2020 = 36,100 P1803 = 4000 (estim.), t = 220, r = 0.015 (1.5% pa) → P2020 = 108,450 This scenario points to the Lemkinian intragenerational consequence of Britain’s invasion, thousands of people who would never be born. Conclusion There is little evidence for the speculation of a mysterious disease reported second-hand by Clark to Bonwick, but if there was a depopulation effect, it was not likely a Tasmania-wide pandemic, but rather, may have resulted in a localized infection introduced by Baudin in 1798 or some other early explorer. Sealers operated from around 1798, initially in limited numbers, to the northeast. They began abducting Palawa females and children, a predatory behaviour – uncontrolled by Britain - that led to a stolen generation in a Lemkinian process of targeted destruction. If an idiopathic disease outbreak happened, Clements points to the populations of Maria Island and SSW Tasmania to the west of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel possibly being affected, perhaps a few hundred at most, and this is consistent with our model. Model (c): exponential depopulation model with annualized data bundles Suppose we want to determine the Palawa population size at year t after an annual percentage negative growth (or per capita decline) rate r, where Pt is the population at year t, P0 is the originating population size for the period of interest, and r is the per capita annual population increase expressed as a percentage, where r is assumed to be constant. In this model: 230 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide P0 = P0 [year 1] P1 = P0 + rP0 = P0 (1 + r) [year 2] P2 = P1 (1 + r) = P0 (1 + r)(1 + r) = P0 (1 + r) 2 and so on. Therefore, the Palawa population statistical growth (decline) model after t periods is given by: P(t ) = P (0) (1 + r ) t where P is the population size for the defined group, r is the annualized compound growth rate (or decline) expressed as a percentage, and t is the number of years. In our population model, the annualized change in population is given by P births - P deaths from all causes + P new arrivals + P departures, where P births ~ 0, and P new arrivals ~ 0 because the Palawa were isolated on an island with no nett population inflow or outflow assumed. We can generalize this: r = (births + immigration) – (deaths + emigration) per capita expressed as a percentage, where emigration includes removal of Palawa from the population through abduction; reduced fertility will be a key factor in reduced births. Therefore, towards the end-stage of population collapse, r ~ P (deaths from all causes + removals) , where births become minimal, ‘deaths from all causes’ are primarily due to primarily homicide and disease, and ‘removals’ are due to female abduction and miscegenation, both forced and unforced. That is, if a Palawa woman is voluntarily offered to sealers as a form of appeasement, or if a woman is abducted by a sealer or colonist whereby she is unable to continue her role in a traditional family group, or a child is kidnapped such that the group loses that child’s future procreative ability for the group, then the population will exponentially reduce in proportion to the number of woman and children removed from their procreative role within the group. In a population P(t), if there are rapidly declining births, then the population will collapse within a generational lifetime, according to the per capita value of (births – deaths) < 0. Conclusion The annualized exponential depopulation algorithm approximates the actual amount of exponential depopulation over continuous time. The depopulation amount grows more accurate as t increases and is a useful heuristic. However, this paper will focus on continuous depopulation. However, we have yet to determine if the exponential model for the period from 1803 to 1876 is verified by the empirical data. 231 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Model (d): continuous exponential depopulation model In exponential decline, a population’s per capita decline rate remains constant regardless of the population size. In reality, bounded populations may exponentially decline for some period, but the rate of decline will be limited by other constraints. We will develop a first order approximation of the population at time t, based upon our knowledge of other variables. Assume an exponentially decreasing population curve of the form dP = rP (r<0) Then P(t) = P0 e rt (r<0) and limit t→ ∞ P(t) = 0 That is, the variables in the exponential model are: P(t), P0, Δt, r. It is convenient for us to use an exponential population calculator that allows us to plug in any three of the variables and let the tool calculate the value of the fourth variable.571 We will calculate the value of P(t), Δt = 1, 2, 3,,,31 for a range of r: -0.5 ≤ r ≤ -0.20. We set P1803 midway in the range 3000 to 5000: 3000 ≤ P1803 ≤ 5000. Empirically, we know that for a healthy population such as Australia’s in 2018 the crude annual death rate – or deaths from all causes including old age - was 6.3%, or r = -0.063572 If we know or can estimate the initial population at time t (say P1803), we can derive P(t) if we calculate Δt across a range of values for r, from which we can determine the population at some later time (P(t), t= number of time periods = 1.2,3,,73. That is: P0, Δt, r → P(t), where t is in years and r is expressed as a percentage such that, for example, r = -0.05 is a per capita decline rate of 5% pa. P1803 Δt (years) r (decline rate) P(t) 4000 1 - 73 -0.05 Derive through calculation 4000 1 - 73 -0.10 Derive through calculation 4000 1 - 73 -0.15 Derive through calculation 4000 1 - 73 -0.20 Derive through calculation Figure 53 Value table for a range of exponential depopulation curves Using the value table, we can calculate a family of exponentially decreasing population curves corresponding to the value of r. 232 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide For convenience, we show the overlaid curve for Plomley linear depopulation. We immediately see there is little agreement., either between the modelling approaches, or with the empirical data. P(t) 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 P(t), r = -0.05 P(t), r=-0.10 P(t), r=-0.15 Plomley Figure 54 Graph of P(t), where P0=4000, -0.05 ≤ r ≤ -0.15, compared with Plomley Analysis P1803 P1824 P1831 – 900 – 1200 nd (1100) P1834 P1846 P1876 ~200 47 1 Empirical type reference 3000 5000 (4000) Plomley 5000 1500 350 Calc 0 Calc 0 Calc 0 P(t), r=-0.05 4000 1332 986 849 466 99 P(t), r=-0.10 4000 490 243 180 54 3 P(t), r=-0.15 4000 171 60 44 7 0 Figure 55 Population data at hinge points using various analytical models against empirical data. 233 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide To determine if the depopulation is in fact exponentially decreasing, we now plot the depopulation based upon empirical data for the hinge points, where each hinge point is linearly connected. The overlaid derived continuous exponential model fails for P≤1803 ≤ P(t) ≤ P1810 P(t) Empirical 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 y = 49584e-1.974x R² = 0.9456 1000 0 1803 1824 1834 1846 1876 Figure 56 Empirical exponential depopulation curve for hinge points P(t) 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 y = 11960e-0.249x 0 1803 1806 1810 1814 1818 1822 1826 1830 1834 1838 1842 1846 1850 1854 1858 Figure 57 Hand drawn curve using empirical data for hinge points and interpolated datapoints Empirically, the best-fit curve is exponential but with an originating population (P1803) of 7000. This exponential graph suggests there was a population decline of 6000 between 1803 and 1824. The available evidentiary dataset does not seem to support such a high pre-contact population unless there was some catastrophic depopulation event after 1803 and before 1824. Conclusion 234 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide We are looking for a best fit with the approximate empirical data. P1803 is variously estimated by different researchers as between 3000 and 5000. P1824 estimates range from 900 to 1500. P1834 estimates are between 200 and 300. P1876 we know is 1, the year Trucanini died. None of the models (Plomley or exponential) produce a reasonable fit with the available empirical data. They all rely on a constant value of r. We conclude that the per capita rate of depopulation changes by some ‘phase’ that we have yet to define. We can calculate r for an exponential ‘phase’ by defining a phase (start date, end date, duration) and estimating the population loss over the phase period (elapsed time in years). From this, we can derive a graph of P(t) for each phase and compare the set of graphs with the type reference empirical model. We will also examine if the concept of logistic phase depends upon the relative weight of some categorial depopulation agency, say direct killing, or disease, or female predation, and so on, each of which we might hypothesize has a different depopulation effect. We might hypothesize a set of connected sigmoid curves – each based upon a phase – over the period from 1803 to 1876. The shape of a phase – that is the value of r and k which we will shortly come to – may depend on the weighted categorial agency that dominates a particular period. If necessary, we can refine the fit using logistic modelling with sigmoid curves for each phase, using various constraints. This is what we will do later in this chapter. But first, we will examine the logistic model for any preliminary insights into the depopulation puzzle. Model (e): Phased continuous exponential depopulation model We want to determine if there are phases of depopulation, each of which responds to a weighted set of Lemkinian agencies. Therefore, we must decide ‘what is a phase’. We will address this question later in this paper, under Depopulation phases: 1803 – 1876, as it requires more detailed analysis. Model (f): logistic depopulation model In a logistic decline, a population’s per capita decline rate r decreases as the population size approaches some limit imposed by the environment, say k. dP / dt = r ((k – P)/ k) P = r (1 – (P/k))P, r<0 When P is small compared with some limit k then (k - P)/ k is approximately k/k, so we have exponential decrease. This exponential decrease levels off at a faster rate as it approaches k. That is limit P → 0 (r(k – P)/ k)P = rP. Assume a series of logistic (sigmoid) depopulation curves with a lag or time delay in the effect of genocidal agencies. When a time lag is involved between demographic cause and effect, then the densitydependent rate of change in a defined population is: 235 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide dP/ dt = r P ((k- Pt – L)/ k) where L = lag time Our Palawa logistic demographic model must allow for the delayed effect from birth before a woman becomes fertile along with other lag constraints such as the dramatic reduction of Aboriginal access to their usual food resources as settlers and Government authorities closed off Palawa access to their traditional lands and the removal of women from the population by specific means including abduction. In general, we can represent the depopulation sigmoid curves that arrive from various discrete genocidal agencies as a family of s-curves that can be summed through Fourier analysis. The cumulative logistic curve (1∑n S = S1 + S2 + S3 + ..Sn) arises from multiple contributing Lemkinian type agencies (kidnapping, killing and so on), each with multiple instances. We show a roughly drawn example of the concept. 100% Sum (s1 + s2 + s3) Depopulation Family of Logistic curves s3 s2 0 s1 1 Time (years) n 0 Figure 58 Cumulative Logistic (S) curve for Palawa Depopulation Arising from Multiple Genocidal Agencies Alternatively, we can assume some value k such that k will vary the effect of r. For this model, the rate of change of P at time t is proportional to both P(t) and k - P(t), from which we derive: dP/ dt = r P (1 – (P / k)), where P(t) = k / (1 + P0 e -rt) [Verhulst logistic model (1838)] When P > k, the population decreases. However, if we are plotting a family of depopulation curves, depopulation increases when r → -n. With any depopulation s-curve, depopulation proceeds slowly at first, then accelerates, and finally levels off. That is, r is not constant but varies with time. Therefore, the greater proportion of numerical depopulation occurs in perhaps the second and third quartiles. We know that, by 1825, the Palawa population had already been drastically reduced, with straggling survivors fighting a desperate guerrilla war against Arthur’s armed forces and paramilitary groups, pastoralists, stockkeepers, sealers, convicts, and the like. It would be a similar unfolding story across each contested space within Australia as the pastoral frontier pushed inexorably into Aboriginal land, the dispossessory pattern repeating area by area with the genocidal consequences that consistently resulted in more than 90% depopulation across all parts of Australia. 573 236 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Until now, this dramatic population loss has been partly explained by killing, but it is not the whole story. If procreative ability is curtailed, there will be an intragenerational population collapse, typically three decades from the time of invasion, for any area. Tasmania provides an example of this pattern. The Lemkinian mechanics of Palawa depopulation from the loss of procreative capability. If we divide the Palawa depopulation s-curve for 1803 to 1833 into thirds, each third is called a tertile. We are particularly interested in the shape of the s-curve: how the value of r varies over time; and the value of r in the second tertile when r had its maximum value. If the overall value of r between 1803 and 1833 was around 12% pa (from model (a)), then we can hypothesize an approximate tertile distribution for r, say: 9%, 18%, 9%. We will examine this falsifiable hypothesis in this paper. These tertiles correspond to the time periods: 1803 – 1813; 1814 – 1823; 1824 – 1833. Preliminary calculation: Suppose this is the total Palawa population loss by tertile: 1000; 4000; 600 for which the tertile depopulation distribution is 17%, 70%, 10%. For the moment, ignore the population effects of the first tertile. Assume zero births within the second tertile, that is, a female born at the beginning of the second tertile will not reach reproductive age until halfway into the third tertile. Assume half the population in the second tertile were women and of these, a quarter were able to reproduce. Assume linear depopulation per second tertile. Therefore a 10% annual reduction in such potentially child-bearing women is a mere 50 per year over the tenyear tertile, or a modest one per week across the State. The reduction can be caused by removing the women from the reproductive pool by various means: killing, trauma, kidnapping, disease, sexual predation and so on. We will examine the s-curve Palawa depopulation dynamics in a later section. Summary of depopulation models All these models are first order approximations of Palawa depopulation for a designated period. Model (a), Plomley linear (1803 – 1831): The Plomley linear model can only be tested at three datapoints, P1803, P1824, and P1831. The heuristic model assumes that P1803 is 5000 but there is still doubt over the originating precontact population, which some place as high as 15,000, others as low as 3000. As for P1824, some researchers argue for a figure of around 900, at least for the eastern area. The model does not agree with the empirical data and cannot make verifiable predictions. Model (b), Reynolds mysterious depopulation before 1803: The hypothesis for a pre-1803 event does not agree with the empirical data. 237 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide If we hypothesize that this event happened sometime after 1803 and before 1820, as Clements proposes, there may be a case that a few hundred Palawa perished but it was localized, that is, not a pandemic. And if it happened, like such viral outbreak events, there is no evidence that it persisted in the Palawa community thereafter. We will regard the hypothesis as conjectural, with insufficient evidentiary support. Model (c) annualized exponential depopulation: 1803 - 1876 This model shows depopulation in annualized data bundles, which introduce a small averaging error over continuous time. The model does not agree with the empirical data. Model (d): continuous exponential depopulation: 1803 - 1876 This model assumes continuous exponential depopulation between 1803 and 1876, for which the period of key interest is 1803 to 1833, the period of intragenerational population collapse. This continuous model does not consistently fit the known data, for example, the population estimate in 1803, 1825 and 1833, even if we vary r, but it does show that the greatest population decrease was between 1803 and 1825, unlike the Plomley model that simply shows a constant population loss of 166 people per year up to 1831. The model does not agree with empirical data. Model (e): Phased continuous exponential depopulation We must first define ‘phase’, that is, what period does a phase include, and what are the key Lemkinian drivers of depopulation for any such delineated phase. We will therefore complete the analysis later in this chapter. Model (f): cumulative logistic model over a summed set of sigmoid curves: Each logistic curve can represent a phase, with unique constraints. We have not yet modelled this hypothesis but will first test a phased exponential depopulation model. Conclusions 1. Model efficacy. When we consider the available data, none of the preliminary models is satisfactory. • The linear model cannot make verifiable predictions. • The Reynolds model cannot be substantiated. • The first-order exponential models do not allow for the different rates of depopulation for each phase of dispossession. 238 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide • The logistic model shows the most promise but as a research exercise has the most difficulty because there is a lack of empirical data to test our assumptions about precision. 2. Per capita depopulation. The per capita rate of depopulation (r) changes by ‘phase’, where a ‘phase’ is defined by the weighted impact of certain agencies we have yet to determine. Therefore, we will progress our demographic analysis with the continuous exponential model, which allows us some verifiable fine-tuning by allocating different testable phases of depopulation, each of which, we hypothesize, was driven by different weightings of categorial agencies, from internecine conflict (displacement conjecture) to Lemkinian repression (genocidal conjecture). 3. Colonising imperative. The genocidal tragedy of Tasmania (or the colonizing victory of exterminatory depopulation depending on our perspective) was written the minute Britain invaded the island in 1803. Britain saw the well cared for estates as free for the taking, along with the game and other natural resources. The Palawa were at first bemused, but when the killing of their people started, and the rate of land confiscation increased beyond a tipping point, so did Aboriginal resistance to the armed occupation process collectively emerge as a property of the process, just as a ‘state’ type instance is the emergent property of water in response to a discrete temperature change. We will explore if any other ‘states’ could have arisen from a violent State-sponsored territorial invasion, say benign assimilation, or coequal sharing, or whether the Lemkinian characteristics arose naturally from the imposed conditions. We will define ‘state-sponsored’ as the actively promoted policies and agency of an organized political community under a Government actor. 4. Usufructuary land use. Land sharing was never considered as an option. Under Government policy, colonists regarded Aboriginal people as feral pests on ‘private’ property, to be shot at will if they wandered freely over their ancestral land. Resistance to the invasion was not tolerated; military and paramilitary force was used to secure Britain’s territorial occupation. Aboriginal children were considered as free labour. Aboriginal women, in a society with a profound gender imbalance, were ripe to be exploited as sex slaves. Abduction and kidnapping became the norm. Along with overexploitation of the natural environment, seals, whales, Huon pine, and son. If something could not be exploited, it was considered a feral pest: the thylacine, Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people could not own land, and half-caste people were ineligible for land grants. When two races collide genocidally, we often see miscegenation, from voluntary to forced, and commodification, a consequence of exploitation that uses of asymmetric power. When a group collides with Nature, ecocide, we may equate miscegenation to animal and plant husbandry for profit, and commodification to exploiting Nature for 239 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide commercial purposes where exploitation invariably demands environmental degradation. 5. The failure of British law. British law turned a blind eye to white violence. There were no prosecutions, although colonists’ criminality was clearly understood and condoned. The economy was more important. And a civil society that supported public authorities. Britain wanted to grow the economy and if Aboriginal people could not be exploited, they were in the way. The solution to the Palawa problem was extermination and deportation. The alternative was that Britain upheld Aboriginal rights – sharing the land and its resources through a conciliation process - at the expense of antagonizing colonists, something it would not entertain if it wanted to avoid civilian insurrection as happened in North America. 6. State-sponsored compulsive dispossession. In 1803 antipodean Australia, the administrative machinery for the occupation process was already in place as a dispossessory template with a well-practised modality, the Imperial hubris in exaggerated evidence, the presumed superiority of class and entitlement, the imposed chain of duty and command, the God-given spread of Empire, the Sovereign right of territorial possession, the one-sided British laws of property, the bureaucratic mechanics of enslavement, the ‘lawful’ persecution of targeted groups, of ethnic cleansing in the pursuit of utilitarian triumphalism, the extermination of vermin and feral pests, and the survival of the ‘fittest’, the most ‘civilized’ asserting their superiority over those it considered inferior. All that remained was for the Actors to play their part in a dreary drama of racial and cultural displacement, of economic and geo-political exploitation, of greed-driven resolve in pursuit of landed wealth, of Palawa eradication, of racism, of extermination for the greater good, the good of Empire, of settlers, but not of the Indigenous population who were briefly in the demographic majority one or so decades after post-invasion but were not regarded as a people with rights, certainly not the right to object to their dispossession. In that peculiar hypocrisy of Britain, any Aboriginal insurgency was an ‘outrage’. 7. Might is right. We are left with Pax Britannica, an authoritarian, hierarchical rulebased order where land alienation and immigration, protected by armed force and one-sided British laws, were the defining policy-driven instruments of Tasmanian – and Australian – genocide. 8. A Lemkinian template for Australia. The methods used to suppress Aboriginal people in Tasmania were quickly adopted in other Australian beach-head settlements; first the militarized invasion; then the use of armed force to overcome resistance; pastoral expansionism and land confiscation; killing and sexual predation followed; flying detachments of mounted death squads were sent to trouble spots to ‘disperse’ Aboriginal people from ‘private property’; then ethnic cleansing where Aboriginal survivors were forcibly rounded up and deported to detention centres, little more than forced labour camps with a high death rate; segregation and apartheid became normalized, collective racism entrenched; stolen wages, stolen children; sexual 240 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide predation, STDs; and now we have reached today with our earnest promises to ‘close the gap’ on Aboriginal disadvantage while we use the law as a blunt instrument of oppression. When we value [something], we value it for its properties, its provenance. A museum artefact is valued for what it tells us about history. A work of art is valued for who painted it and when, otherwise it becomes mere daubs on a primed surface. Conversely, when an Occupier values what is occupied, it is in their interest to debase the culture of the Indigenous possessors and assign their country as having zero acquisition cost, which we can liken to exploitation of Natural resources. Therefore, we often see a Lemkiniantype process destroy – in whole or part – the culture of the targeted group, along with destruction of members of the group. And we tell ourselves, if we deny the circumstances of genocide, it didn’t happen; therefore, we can absolve ourselves of any attributable blame. We can only change our mode of thinking if we seek to understand prior normalised psychopathy and learn from our mistakes, something we tendentiously struggle to do. Methodology to refine exponential and logistic depopulation models: (d), (e), (f) We will briefly introduce three methods, all simplified, to model Palawa depopulation over time. Each method develops a rate of per capita depopulation (r) and enables the designated models (d), (e), (f). The depopulation modalities will go some way to explaining the apparent mystery of catastrophic Palawa population collapse within a generation, as culpable (or often legalized) homicide and imperfectly tabulated massacres do not satisfactorily account for rapid depopulation, nor does introduced disease or inter-tribal conflict. (a) A non-differential exponential model where P(t) = P(0) (1 + r) t This model is consistent with (b), assuming that that er t ~ (1 + r)t. This assumed equivalence is best seen as a convergence around some value of r as t increases. (b) An exponential depopulation model where the rate of change of the decline in population (P) is proportional to the size of the population and r is the proportionality constant defined by the difference between the birth and death rate. The model assumes density-independent continuous population growth where resources are unlimited. This model takes the form of a differential equation dP/ dt = rP, where the solution is P(t) = P(0) e r t . The model is only indicative, as it assumes the population rises (or declines) completely exponentially, which we know is not the case. However, it gives us an overall value of the ln constant r. (c) A logistic model that sets limits to population growth (or decline), where populations converge to some value, say zero or some other figure. The logistic equation generally forces a population to converge to the carrying capacity or growth constraint, that is, usually some upper limit, and has a sigmoidal or Sshaped curve. In colonial Tasmania, the amount of available land set the carrying limit, which we allow to be unconstrained until the late 1820s, where Arthur was alienating Aboriginal land without regard to the effect on the Palawa, the ability 241 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide to feed themselves, or their right to protection from targeted killings. The continuous growth (or decline) is density dependent. Conversely, Aboriginal depopulation was dependent on the type Lemkinian agency used to cause destruction, say female abduction, or indiscriminate killing. This differential equation with no time lag has the form dP/ dt = rP (1 – (P/k)). K is commonly denoted as the carrying capacity or limit to the population growth or decline. As environmental conditions vary, the population size will oscillate around k as individuals die through lack or resources and other reasons, allowing resources (and the population) to once more increase. For depopulation, the time lag refers to the delayed effect on birth rates if a person capable of procreation in the present (female abduction or killing) or the future (child kidnapping) is removed from the group. Destroying family structures also had a delayed effect on procreation, eventually affecting the survivability of the group within a generation (a few decades). The population constraint limit is typically determined by finite resources, but we want to model the Palawa population decline. The speed at which the population converges to k is proportional to the growth (or decline) rate r. Here we find something interesting: if k = 0 then the model fails; however, if k → ∞ the model converges to the result of methods (a) and (c). Method [a] annualized exponential model This model is a simplification of method {b]. Therefore, we will no longer use method [a], unless to perform a quick first order approximation of some problem domain. Method (b) continuous exponential model The exponential population model assumes that the rate of change of the population P at time t is proportional to the population, or dP / dt = rP, where P(t) = P0 ert . If r<0, this population model becomes exponentially decreasing, or a depopulation model, where r is a constant of proportionality. That is, negative r assumes that the rate of depopulation assumes a constant rate of mortality and associated morbidity, say the rate of targeted killing plus the rate of introduced disease plus the rate of sexual predation and child abduction and so on. In fact, these contributing agencies can vary with time along with the value of r. We can allow for a changing value of r by breaking a period into phases for which some phase has a relatively constant impact of categorial mortality agencies. This will be our approach here. We select the period from 1803 to 1876. Phase Description Variables P0 P (t) Δt r 242 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 1803 - ‘pre-war’ 1825 P1803 = 4000 P1825 = 1200 22 calculated as -0.05472 1826 - Black War 1833 P1826 = 1200 P1833 = 200 7 calculated as -0.25597 1834 - Wybalenna 1846 detention P1834 = 200 P1846 = 47 14 calculated as -0.10344 P1876 = 1 30 Calculated as -0.12834 1847 - Oyster Cove P1847 = 47 1876 detention Figure 59 Phases of Palawa depopulation: 1803 - 1876 Method (c) logistic model This preliminary model-based analytical deconstruction focuses on the Palawa demographic consequences of targeted homicide (whether lawful or not), female kidnapping, introduced disease, sexual predation, and the resulting low and decreasing birth rate. It allows us to formulate and build a genocidal data base. 574 If we plot continuous density-dependent constrained depopulation (0 – 100%) over time, say 1 to 30 years, then the overall per capita depopulation follows a sigmoid curve, allowing for Lemkinian agency lags and so on.575 The shape of the s-curve varies with the type of genocidal agency. If we assume that the amount of killing with no time-delayed effect on demography is constant over time, then we must plot multiple sigmoid curves, massacre by massacre, that can be summed by year across some defined period (say 30 years) for their cumulative effect using a Fourier transformation. It is a similar computational strategy if there is a time delay between Lemkinian agency (say female kidnapping) and depopulation: suppose that maximum Palawa female reproductive fitness is between 15 and 35 years; therefore we will see a variable depopulation time delay of up to 35 years, depending on the age at which the child is taken; if we further suppose – for example - the Aboriginal woman is generally aged 20 years old and potentially has three or four children before she reaches 35 then for each such woman who is kidnapped over time there will a cumulative depopulation effect over a period of up to 15 years with incremental depopulation spread by year over (say) 30 years; to develop more precise demographic plots requires access to an evidentiary dataset but we can analyze Lemkinian exponential depopulation over some time frame using a more general approach that we will extend as a sigmoid function in a companion document, Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. Consider a density dependent Palawa population model with continuous breeding. As a first order approximation, we will initially simplify the model and assume an exponential rather than sigmoid rate of change in the population: The exponential rate of change (growth or decline) in population size P is given by dP / dt = (b - d) P, where b = instantaneous birth rate per female and d = instantaneous death rate per capita. 243 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide By deaths we will primarily mean killing but – logically - female ‘mortality’ can be extended to include any agency that removes the woman from the Palawa population, for example, kidnapping, sexual predation, miscegenation, psychological trauma, physical trauma, and disease. The model can be further fine-tuned by recognizing that the overall female death rate should be limited to female deaths within a child-bearing age range, say 15 to 35 for the Palawa. The extent to which deaths exceed births determines the shape of population collapse. Suppose (b – d) = r, then dP/ dt = rP, where r is the instantaneous change in growth/ decline rate of per capita depopulation. For females able to procreate, if r < 0, the population shrinks to near extinction, say within 30 years in the case where r ~ -10% pa. as we will show. It is a surprisingly small annual female attrition rate (where attrition is the removal of the woman from the breeding population through killing, kidnapping and so on) accompanied by very few births in the last quartile from 1824 and begins to explain the modality of catastrophic Lemkinian intra-generational Palawa depopulation.576 From the exponential growth/ decline model, P(t) = P0 ert , where r<0 Let P0 = 4000, P(t) = 1, t = 30, then r = -0.2765 or 27.7%. However, if we only remove females capable of procreation from the P 0 population, the value of r ~ 10%, or one female per month. Preliminary Lemkinian calculations for Tasmania using different models As a simplified analysis, we now re-introduce the six preliminary models for Palawa depopulation over time and calculate the results for models (a) and (c), with indicative conclusions for (b): a) Linear depopulation: P(t) = rt + c b) Reynolds punctuated depopulation caused by a non-recurrent disease event c) Annualised exponential depopulation model: P(t) = P(0) (1 + r ) t d) Continuous exponential depopulation model: P(t) = P(0) e r t e) Phased continuous exponential depopulation model. f) Logistic differential equation of the general basic form dP/ dt = rP (k – (P/ k)) where k is a constraint, usually defined as the carrying capacity and there is no time lag Model (a): linear model after Plomley We will not investigate the Plomley linear model further as it cannot be verified from empirical data. 244 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Model (b): Reynolds punctuating event model We will not investigate this model further as it does not support the empirical data. Reynolds speculates that a large number of Palawa died through an idiopathic disease outbreak, but there is no evidence for such an event. If a few hundred possibly died after 1803 and before 1820, as suggested by Clements, the deaths probably only impacted some groups in the south and did not affect the exponential depopulation trajectory significantly. Model (c): annualised exponential depopulation model In this analysis, we do not examine the effect of British-caused physical (or mental) injury on the survivability of the Palawa, but survivability was likely to have been extremely exposed over time, with long-term population sustainability falling in proportion to the precipitously reducing birth rate, the chronic unpunished abduction, and the constant white assaults on their well-being, all impacting on their ability to feed and clothe themselves, maintain family structures, and limiting their ability to carry on cohesive cultural activities free from continual harassment and persecution. An injured person was less able to travel with the group or help provide food or care for other family members. If the person or persons could not recover from an injury, then the cumulative effect becomes pernicious for the group, impairing its viability, its ability to function. Robinson noted innumerable instances of sexual enslavement, of attempted British lethal force where Palawa detainees were still carrying visible evidence of injury by a bullet, of mental deterioration while he held them captive. He ignored such evidence. His purpose was ethnic cleansing and his promised Government reward. He knew that Arthur was uninterested in prosecuting white malfeasance. Many Aboriginals died while Robinson held them captive, prior to their deportation.577 We therefore make the point that deliberately inflicted injury of any kind on a group, even if it does not immediately cause death, can be genocidal in its effect. The Lemkinian consequence of such non-lethal injury on the various Palawa family groups is asserted by Articles 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d), and 2 (e). Palawa depopulation analysis: As a first order approximation, we recall that P(t) = P0 (1 + r)t where r = the per capita decline rate in the population, expressed as a percentage, or r = ((births + immigration) – (deaths + emigration)) / P0 and we assume r is a constant. We know that ‘immigration’ that is, an inflow of Aboriginal people, was insignificant. Births were plummeting through British repression; a few black 245 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide trackers were brought from the mainland to guide pursuing parties in locating Palawa groups. We also know that ‘emigration’ was significant, if we include the women and children who were abducted and removed from the procreation pool. In 1839, Robinson took a handful of Palawa survivors to Victoria - Kulin country - but it proved disastrous.578 Therefore, we can assert: births were falling below the death rate; ‘immigration’ was negligible; ‘emigration’ or removal of members of the Palawa population was systemic, including child kidnapping, transfer of children orphaned by the killing of their parents to child labour camps euphemistically called orphan schools, and female abduction; deaths were increasingly caused by killing, fatal wounding, and introduced disease rather than natural causes. That is the per capita rate of depopulation between 1803 and 1833 specifically was high, between 10% and 20% pa, making the outcome inevitable. 1. In Palawa population demographics, we consider the variables: a) Population: b) i. Population year n or ii. Population projected Deaths: c) i. Deaths year n or ii.Deaths years a to b or Deaths by subtype including: d) i. deaths natural causes ii. deaths disease iii. deaths homicide iv. deaths starvation v. deaths infanticide Births: e) i. Births year n or ii. Births years a to b Kidnapping: f) i. Kidnapping year n or ii. kidnapping year a to b or Kidnapping by subtype including: i. kidnapping women ii. kidnapping children 2. Assume that the Palawa population in 1803 (P1803) was 7,000 and in 1833 had reduced to about 200 (P1833). 3. Let P1833 = P1803 (1 + r) t or 246 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide 200 = 7000 (1 + r) 30 1 + r = (200 / 7000) 1/30 r = 0.02857 0.0333 - 1 r = 0.8883 – 1 r = - 0.1117 4. That is, the Palawa population is falling by 11.2% per annum over 30 years. We note that the model’s proportional decline is constant over time, that is, lineal over a semi-log plot, which is sufficient for our initial cumulative (de)population demographic model. The actual rate of depopulation varies as different Lemkinian agencies take effect. The calculated result from model (c) is consistent with that for model (b), allowing for the annualised granularity of the data bundles. The P1803 originating population figure does not fundamentally affect our depopulation model. More important is that, by 1833, only a few survivors remained, and within a relatively short period the pure blood Palawa had become extinct. Would they have survived without the invasive British territorial occupation? The answer is probably yes, even if they had been exposed to some diseases against which they had little immunity. We can look to New Guinea, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Tahiti and other places as examples. We know the population figures in c. 1833. We can therefore place the Palawa annualized percentage depopulation figures within a confidence band defined by upper and lower estimates of the originating population in 1803: When P 1803 = 7000 and P 1833 = 200, then x = -11.2% pa; when P 1803 = 5000 and P 1833 = 200, then x = - 10.16% pa. Model (d): continuous exponential depopulation How do we calculate the value of r? We can project the future population size by integrating the continuous exponential growth/ decline model to derive: P (t) = P (0) e r t [1] 579 where P (0) is the present population size, P (t) is the population size after t years, and t is the annualized time period, say 30 years. In this way, we can calculate the value of r. Taking the log of [1] we note that loge Pt = loge P0 + loge er t = loge P0 + r t . That is, loge P changes linearly in time; a semi-log plot of loge P against t gives a straight line with a slope of r and a y-intercept of loge P0 Suppose P (0) = 7,000, P (t) = 200, t = 30, then e r 30 = (200 / 7000) = 0.0286 Therefore, ln e r 30 = 30 r = ln 0.00286 247 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide so r = -3.554/ 30 = - 11.85% pa, an exponential annualized population decline of nearly 12% pa. over 30 years, catastrophic for the Palawa, but is it accurate? We can crossverify this depopulation figure from model (d). There are various online tools available for calculating the characteristics of exponential demographic growth/ decline. We will use the miniwebtool580 which allows any three of the four variables P(0), P(t), Δt, or r to be entered in order to determine the value of the fourth. Model (e): phased continuous exponential depopulation We will investigate this hypothesis when we have determined the Lemkinian nature of a phase later in this chapter. Model (f): logistic model We may consider the logistic demographic function as a more nuanced expression of the exponential function. To simplify our discussion, we will choose to use model [a] in our calculations. The generalized solution to the logistic function can be written as P(t) = k/ (1 + a e –r t) where a is a constant. We will evaluate this solution in a companion document, Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. The log-linear form of the solution is ln ((k – Pt) / Pt) = - rt + ln ((k – P0) / P0) As Krebs points out, if we want to introduce a ‘dampening’ effect k into the equation we derive: dP/ dt = rP ((k – P) / k) where k is the upper limit of population growth and ((k – P) / k) is the measure of unused remaining carrying capacity. If P = k, the carrying capacity is completely used. To project a time trajectory of population growth (or decline) we derive a sigmoid curve where growth/ decline is nearly exponential when P is near zero and slows to equilibrium when P = k; the logistic population growth/ decay logistic curve is given by integrating dP/ dt such that: P(t) = k / (1 + (k – P(0)) / P(0)) e –r t). In our case, we are interested in depopulation tending to 100% over time, so k does not apply. If a time lag is involved, then we derive: dP/ dt = r Pt ( (k – P t – l ) / k), where l = lag or delay time. Lags can destabilize the model. Models [b], [c] and [d] compared Models (a), (b), and (c) are an exponential (depopulation) curves; each gives a different result that converge as r, t increase. • Model (b) is annualized with one-year data bundles. • Model (c) has continuous population data bundles that increment by year. • Model (d) is sigmoid and can be closely modelled on the evidentiary dataset, using lags and other constraints; therefore model (c) is a fine-tuned version of (a) and (b). 248 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Model (b) is slightly more accurate than model (a) as a first order approximation because it assumes depopulation is continuous over time whereas model (a) depopulation is in annualized increments. Hence, model (a) results for r will be slightly higher than for (b), but the gap reduces over time. The models (a) and (b) assume that (1 + r) t ~ e r t as r and t monotonically increase. In the limiting case where r = 1 and t = 1, then we find 2 = e = 2.72 which is clearly not the case. Suppose r = 0.2 and t = 10; then (1 + 0.2)10 = 6.19 and e2 = 7.39. From [a] we note: when t = 0, P(0) = P(0). Summary of the Tasmanian depopulation models We compare the per capita rate of depopulation (r) across the models. Models (d), (e), and (f) are the most nuanced; they allow us to ‘ply the steel’ with more precision; accuracy depends on the quality of the evidentiary dataset feeding the algorithm. Model referent Model hypothesis Derived value of r Model (a) dP / dt = r r = dP / dt or P(t) = rt + c Pt = P0 (1 + r)t Model (c) Model (d) phased, (e) phased non- dP / dt = rP or P(t) = P0 e = (P(t) – c )/ t r = annualised per capita change in population P0 expressed as a percentage, where r is a constant r = (loge Pt – log e P0)/ t rt where r varies with P(t) [c] and [d] values for P(t) diverge as t increases Model (f) logistic dP / dt = r (1 – (P/k))P r = (ln ((k – P0)/ P0) – ln ((k – Pt) / Pt)/ t or where r varies with P(t) and some constraint k. P(t) = k / (1 + (k - P0 )/ P0)) e- rt [c] and [d] values for P(t) converge when P << k With lag, we derive dP/ dt = rP ((k- Pt–L)/ k) where L = lag time Figure 60 Depopulation models compared. We will put side models (a), (b), and (c) because they lack the required precision except for first-order approximations. Model (d) also lack predictive capability, if we consider the period from 1803 to 1876 as one continuous phase whose behaviour is driven by a single Lemkinian driver, say killing. 249 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Therefore, we need to understand the nature of a phase and its associated Lemkinian type agencies, which may then lead us to consider the role of multiple genocidal phases in the destruction of the Palawa people. Model (f) will be our diagnostic tool and semantic precision our lingua franca. That is, our conceptual schema must be robust. Concepts such as ‘phase’ or ‘genocide’ or ‘massacre’ or ‘clash’ must have definitional rigour. We need a repeatable methodology. Decoding reality: methodology Behaviourally motivated values are the rule basis for conditional constraints on human agency. They give rise to structured systems, which are the way we impose order on what we see. Structured systems We understand a system – a bounded set of ‘agencies’ (actors and their acts) - through patterns or invariances, those that result from imposed human or Natural agency, either social or mathematical (endogenous), or those that exist as a part of what we call Nature (exogenous). All patterns depend on capturing empirical data, the pre-eminence of facts or verifiable assertions about the system under study. For this reason, we will use fact-based analysis in this document, for example, the verifiable analysis of observed ‘events’ and their triggering conditions, from which we will build or sometimes deconstruct a consistent supporting structure of ideas and social patterns. We will summarize the methodological schema for the development of science, mathematics, social science, and legislature (system of laws that underpin a social contract), noting any similarities and differences. Science: observable facts → hypotheses (models and predictions) → theories → laws • • • • • In this schema, it is not a necessary progression; for example, a theory (model) may or may not become a law, a hypothesis (model) may not necessarily become a theory; however, all schematic elements derive from repeatable observations (verifiable facts) that can be tested against a model. A scientific law is a descriptive principle of Nature that holds true in all circumstanced covered by the range and reach of the law; there are no loopholes that would require the law to be discarded for some exceptional event. For example, the law of mass conservation, or energy conservation, or rotational symmetry and the conservation of angular momentum are untroubled by exceptions – there are none. Clearly, scientific law is fundamentally at odds with common and statute law, for which loopholes are systemic, requiring an entire industry to resolve the tensions. These legislative conflicts result in part from their inconsistent expression. Unlike scientific law, there is no compelling overarching framework. Australia’s Constitution is incomplete. A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. A (causal) hypothesis may not universally be true; that is, it may be falsifiable; it may also be tested with verifiable predictions. A scientific fact is a simple observation that persists or holds true under similar conditions. Mathematics: Definition → conjecture (axiom) → theorem (proposition) → lemma (claim) → corollary → identity. • • • • • • • • Definition: a precise and unambiguous description of the meaning of a mathematical term. ‘Mathematics’ has no accepted meaning except as the study of number, quantity (the amount of something), space (the shape and reach of something) and change. Conjecture: a statement that is unproved but believed to be true. Axiom/ postulate: a statement that is assumed to be true without proof. Theorem: a statement that is proved using rigorous mathematical reasoning. Proposition: A proved result, one that is less interesting than a theorem. Lemma: A minor result that can help prove a theorem. Corollary: A result with a short proof that depends on some theorem. Identity: a mathematical expression giving the equality of two quantities or variables. 250 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Social science: feelings/ senses → emotions → wants/ needs → values → behaviours → rules/ decisions → social contract. 581 Law (jurisprudence): rules → laws (the ‘rule of law’) → principles582 • • Historically, rules derive from ‘rulers’ (that is, authoritarian figures) or legislatures and make up inherited common law, augmented by statute law. Principles are juridical balancing tests against existing laws. This paper will use the scientific (Cartesian) method: observable or verifiable facts → hypotheses (models and predictions) Observable and verifiable facts: Identify events (facts, evidence) that take place at some time (who, what, when, where); events that we can verify from as many primary sources as possible using fact-based (evidence based) analysis. In some cases, we will deconstruct an observed ‘system’ to determine (hypothesize) its functioning rules and behavioural elements, how they interact, and whether the model of the ‘system’ and its outcome can be verified – as a working hypothesis - and potentially optimized. Hypothesis: Determine if there is a pattern around the facts, say a process model, from which we can derive roles (actors) and categorial agency (repeatable actions). Test the pattern against other candidate events to establish if there are exceptions (falsifiability), in which case, refine the pattern. Make predictions, based on the model, and test these predictions against events and/or use cases. Depopulation phases, 1803 – 1876 We have determined that a single exponential model or logistic model does not fit the Tasmanian empirical data for the period from 1803 to 1876. Did Lemkinian depopulation have unique characteristics for some defined period we will call a ‘phase’? If so, how many genocidal ‘phases’ were there in Tasmania? We will investigate if conceptual ‘phases’ can be delineated for the period of interest, where a ‘phase’ is shaped by weighted Lemkinian agencies. If we can identify phases, this allows us to refine the depopulation models for (d), (e), and (f). If the per capita rate of depopulation (r) in the Palawa varies by phase, what characterises a phase? We will say a phase is determined by a weighted set of Lemkinian categorial agencies, say the preponderance of killing over some defined period, or disease, or female predation and abduction. With Lemkinian genocide, the headline number that people are often mistakenly drawn to is the death count: how many died, when, and why? Whether the deaths were caused by genocidal intent on the part of some involved party, usually a State actor, or a State sponsored actor, then motives become the basis of claim and counter claim where, in the modern era, the arbiter is the International Criminal Court and its mutual cooperation with the United Nations who absolve certain Nation States – those in the Security Council - from criminality as a condition for acceding to the Lemkinian Convention. 251 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide We may encounter the argument: did the killing conform to Lemkinian genocide where various antagonists may propone that depopulation was primarily the result of internecine warfare (Blainey) or some mysterious disease pre-contact (Reynolds) or the unintended consequence of land alienation and settlement (Reynolds) or ‘Acts of God’ (disease) or expropriation of their land and food sources (survival of the fittest). Of course, genocide is more than the number of people killed, although the statistic is important; it also involves the intentional targeting of a group of people, usually ethnic, for destruction - in whole or part – of their culture or family structure through sexual predation, imposed disease, and imposed conditions of life that destroy family groups. We begin our analysis with what we believe we know, the approximate cumulative Palawa death toll, based on the estimated number of people killed by observer phase.583 What is a ‘phase’? Lyndall Ryan is inconsistent in her use of this term. In her valuable book Tasmanian Aborigines she assigns these overlapping periods as being significant, leaving us confused about the nature of a phase except as a contextual referent, say, the nominal stages of a war of attrition against the Palawa as land was expropriated for pastoralism. These are the stages or phases or periods that Ryan uses at various times in her book: a) Invasion 1803 – 1826; War 1826 – 1831; Surrender 1829 – 1834; Incarceration 1835 – 1905; Survival 1840 – 1973; Resurgence 1973 – 2010584 b) Creole society 1808 – 1820; pastoral invasion 1817 – 1826; Arthur’s war 1826 – 1828; martial law 1828 – 1830; the black line 1830 – 1832; the reckoning, where she identifies phases for the black war in the Settled Districts 1823 – 1834; mission to the western nations 1830; surrender in the Settled Districts 1830 – 1831; Western nations forced removal 1832 – 1834; Wybalenna 1835 – 1839; Wybalenna 1839 – 1847; Oyster Cove 1847 – 1905; the islanders 1840 – 1902; resisting protection and assimilation 1908 – 1973; reclaiming rights and identity 1973 – 1991; breakthrough 1992 – 1995; unfinished business 1996 – 2010.585 c) Black war phases: Nov 1823 – Nov 1826; Dec 1826 – oct 1828; Nov 1828 – Jan 1832 (martial law); Feb 1832 – Aug 1834586 Ryan argues that the ‘Black War’ should be called the Tasmanian War. I don’t agree. The term Tasmanian War dilutes British Government responsibility; it suggests that, as for schoolyard bullying, both parties are responsible, the victim and the bully, when it is usually the case that ‘bullying’ is a behaviour that needs to be excised in one of the parties, the primary aggressor. So, Black War is more apt, with its connotations of racism and Lemkinian repression. Consider: if my home is invaded and I’m physically injured, my wife raped, my children kidnapped, my land stolen, is it a disingenuous conflict over a ‘contested space’ or simple criminality, albeit state-sponsored? 252 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Nicholas Clements endorses Ryan’s four discrete phases of late stage killing, from 1823 when clashes began to mount, until 1834 when there were so few Aboriginal survivors that they were unable to continue their guerrilla war and were deported to the purpose-built Wybalenna detention facility on Flinders Island after a radical ethnic cleansing programme from 1829 that was dubbed ‘the friendly mission’ by Arthur and his cohort. Clements does not associate these phases with a Lemkinian process, but the process of ‘settlement’ that involved violent displacement of Indigenous people who were clearly targeted as a group for extermination through lethal force, where extrajudicial killing was normalized. Pybus, in writing Tasmanian history from the perspective of Truganini,587 identifies a different set of phases to Ryan and Clements for the period from 1829 to 1876 but ignores the three decades of violent depopulation from 1803 to 1828, surely a period that had most effect on Truganini’s life. These are her phases: a) b) c) d) Friendly mission 1829 – 1831 Extirpation and exile 1831 – 1838 In Kulin country 1839 – 1841 The way the world ends 1842 – 1876 As is common in Pybus writing, there are no citations or notes that would allow us to check primary sources. We may therefore loosely ascribe the Clements/ Ryan Black War ‘phases’ as those that delineate the Palawa war of resistance, measured by the number of reported clashes or violent incidents over some period. Phase Identifying characteristic Nov 1823 – Nov 1826 Start of ‘black war’ determined by a sharp increase in ‘clashes’ (see Plomley)588 Dec 1826 – Oct 1828 ‘Black War’ Nov 1828 – Jan 1832 Martial law imposed. Continuation of ‘Black War’. Feb 1832 – Aug 1834 Ethnic cleansing through Arthur’s ‘friendly mission’ and his ‘ruse de guérre’ of a treaty that never eventuated. The ‘friendly mission’ began in 1829. Many of the Palawa died while being held captive by Robinson and before their eventual deportation to Flinders Island. Desperate Palawa survivors of the thirty-year long territorial conflict - a genocidal war of occupation - were forced to accept Arthur’s terms of surrender, although they had hoped for more British compassion, a treaty as he had originally promised, which protected their rights, and a place to live without fear of persecution in the northeast of Tasmania. Arthur had won his war and was unmoved by their plight as prisoners of war. He thought Christian education might make them more accepting of their fate but offered little else. Figure 61 Clements/ Ryan phases in the Black War589 253 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The Clements/ Ryan phases of a race war are artificial if we are to consider that random killings and abductions of Palawa began in 1804, shortly after the time of the British invasion, were continued by kangaroo hunters over the next seven years or so as the colony struggled to feed itself, and then correlated with the spread of ‘settlement’, with landowners and stockkeepers encouraged to protect ‘property' through armed force and the ‘levée en masse’ (citizen call to arms) as the ‘great conciliator’ and student of the French revolution, Arthur, called it. By 1823 (see table), the greater part of the Aboriginal population was already destroyed through abduction and killing (see calculation), even as the number of guerrilla style clashes began to escalate from 1826, with Aboriginal people attacking outposts at day, while Britain attacked the Palawa mainly at night when they were sleeping around a campfire; but Clements or Ryan do not include this determinative period that set the scene for the ‘Black War’ that corresponded with the Palawa fight for survival. The term ‘Black War’ was first introduced by Henry Melville in 1835 to describe the Black Line of 1830: Henry Melville (1835), The History of Van Diemen’s Land From the Year 1824 to 1835: 89 – 90. It has since been adopted by other researchers within a broader context, the period from 1826 to 1832. 590 We identify a broader set of depopulation ‘phases’, if that is the right word, and their weighted categorial agencies that correlate more closely with the process of implacable British colonisation: • • • • • • • • • • • • a militarised invasion; Britain’s presumed (de facto) sovereignty over Tasmania in 1803; the lack of ‘conciliation’ with indigenous owners; the evolution of de jure sovereignty as Britain introduced proclamations, edicts, and laws that tightened its control over Palawa land; accelerated and unconstrained spread of land alienation leaving the Palawa with nowhere to go; the sharp rise in British immigration; the repressive use of British law against a targeted group; Britain’s failure to prosecute colonist’ criminality because they did not want to antagonise ‘settler society’; the use of ethnic cleansing to remove the unwanted Indigenous group; Britain’s insistence that the Palawa were either British subjects engaged in unlawful acts, or enemy combatants who could be shot on sight under martial law; the use of asymmetric force and the power of an occupying authority against Palawa resistance; Britain’s use of military and paramilitary death squads (roving/ pursuing parties); and the progressively intensive and more desperate clashes over contested spaces – spaces that Aboriginal people had developed into farmed estates through firestick ecological management for millennia - until Palawa numbers had been catastrophically reduced; Britain’s use of deportation for the Palawa survivors; Britain’s failure to provide non-lethal conditions in its detention centres. 254 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Period Imposed agency) vectoral morbidity (categorial Lemkinian evidence depopulation 1803 - 1810 Military campaigns, killings by kangaroo hunters 1807 - 1813 600 colonists arrive from Norfolk Island and Few data, mostly anecdotal establish farms around Hobart and Launceston, along the river estuaries. Killings, sexual predation, child kidnapping, and female abduction become common. Births reduce. 1811 - 1817 Predations by sealers, stockkeepers. Killings, Few data female abduction, child kidnapping continue. Births reduce. 1818 - 1823 ‘Settlerism’ increases, along with land alienation. Few data Killings, female abduction, child kidnapping continue. Aboriginals begin guerrilla resistance. Births reduce. Breakdown of family structures. 1824 - 1825 Arthur’s genocidal agency. Hangs Aboriginal Incomplete data. resistance fighters. Allows killings, female underreported. abduction, child kidnapping to continue. Births reduce. Allows breakdown of family structures. Ignores psychological stress. Allows cultural collapse. Guerrilla war begins to escalate. Killings 1826 - 1827 Guerrilla war intensifies. The number of reported Incomplete data. ‘clashes’ rapidly increases. Births collapse. Cultural underreported. traditions are eroded. Abductions continue without prosecution. Land alienation continues. Aboriginal people are now fighting for survival. Killings 1828 - 1832 Arthur’s genocidal agency, martial law. Killings Incomplete data. escalate. Births reduce. Breakdown of family underreported. structures. Psychological stress. Cultural collapse. Killings 1829 - 1833 Arthur’s genocidal agency, ethnic cleansing. Roving death squads. Killings continue. Births reduce. Breakdown of family structures. Psychological distress. Cultural collapse. 1834 - 1836 Arthur’s genocidal agency. Wybalenna detention. Exact data. See GA Robinson Disease mortality escalates. Aging demography. journals.591 Births reduce. Breakdown of family structures. Psychological despair. Cultural collapse. Terminal decline. 1837 - 1846 Wybalenna detention. Disease mortality escalates. Exact data. See Plomley.592 Births plummet. Cultural collapse. Psychological despair. Ageing demography. Terminal decline. 1847 - 1876 Oyster Cove incarceration. Cultural collapse. Exact data. See Plomley.593 Psychological despair. Ageing demography. Terminal decline leading to fullblood extinction. Few data, mostly anecdotal Incomplete data. Killings underreported. George Augustus Robinson is the best empirical source, along with Jorgen Jorgenson. 255 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Figure 62 Identifiable periods in the war for territorial possession Ryan proposes a Palawa population figure of around 1,200 in 1826, based upon a newspaper report that cannot be independently substantiated. 594 Sexual predation did not usually involve killing but did cause accelerated depopulation, with sealers and stockkeepers primarily involved. Infectious diseases increased their toll from the 1820s, particularly when Aboriginal people were incarcerated or confined in unhealthy conditions. STDs became a scourge. When Arthur declared martial law in 1828, the remnant Palawa population consisted of scattered bands who persisted in a desperate war of resistance, using sophisticated guerrilla ‘hit and run’ tactics to compensate for their lack of numbers and weapons. By 1834, they had been reduced to about two hundred survivors, with few children. Phase Cumulative Aboriginal Aboriginal People Killed People Killed by ‘Phase’ by ‘Phase’ (est.) (est.) Nov 1823 - Nov 1826 80 80 Dec 1826 - Oct 1828 408 488 Nov 1828 - Jan 1832 350 838 (martial law) Feb 1832 - Aug 1834 40 878 Figure 63 Statistics of the Black War in the Settled Districts: 1823 - 1834595 Palawa death toll by 'Black War' phase : 1823 - 1834 1000 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 Aboriginal People Killed by Phase (est) Cumulative Aboriginal People Killed by Phase (est) Figure 64 Palawa death toll by ‘phase’: 1823 - 1834 (est.)596 These are Ryan’s mortality statistics for both sides of the frontier, but they ignore comorbidities such as the significant impact of female predation and kidnapping by British invaders, and the societal destruction caused by introduced disease, starvation and imposed living conditions when Aboriginals were held in captivity, all these Lemkinian agencies being implicated in Lemkinian genocide. 256 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Phase Estimate of Colonists killed Aborigines killed Total Aboriginal: colonial death ratio Nov 1823 – Nov 1826 80 40 120 2:1 Dec 1826 – Oct 1828 408 61 469 6:1.5 Nov 1828 – Jan 1832 350 90 440 3.9:1 Feb 1832 – Aug 1834 40 10 50 4:1 Total 878 201 1079 4:1 Figure 65 Statistics of the Black War in the Settled Districts: 1824 - 1834597 Cultural genocide is another matter entirely, for which there is overwhelming evidence, if only demonstrated by the attempt of existing Palawa to try and reconstruct their language and identity from works by GA Robinson and others, a sad reflection on how destructive and total the British invasion of Tasmania became. From these preliminary statistics (contextual referent) we derive a set of contingent phases for Lemkinian depopulation in Tasmania: Phase Defining genocidal characteristics Depopulation events/ processes 1803 – 1817 Number of colonists begins to rise sharply from 1807, causing rapidly increasing land alienation within prime Aboriginal territory, along their waterways and within their carefully maintained estates. There is indiscriminate killing, kidnapping, and abduction but no prosecutions. Immigration and land alienation accelerate, with Aboriginal people being pushed from ‘private property’ in the midlands and along the east coast. In April 1828, Arthur designated this large area – almost a third of the island - as the ‘settled districts’ and tried to ring fence the region as an Aboriginal exclusion zone through a ‘demarcation proclamation’. Killings, female predation and child kidnapping continue without prosecution. Reported number of clashes rises steeply from 1826, beginning what is called the ‘Black War’. We break the period from 1803 to 1825 into two phases to delineate and examine why there was catastrophic population loss, perhaps 75% of the Palawa population during this twodecade period, if there were relatively few reports of killings. 1818 – 1825 1826 – 1832 From 1803 to 1825, Aboriginal people suffered a calamitous fall in population, we will argue caused by falling births (procreation collapse through endemic female and child abduction) with an increasing rate of indiscriminate killing. To simplify our initial modelling, we may combine the periods from 1803 to 1817, and 1818 to 1825, into one phase. In November 1826, Arthur ordered the capture of Palawa resistance leaders as ‘open enemies’. 257 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Arthur declares martial law in November 1828 and again in October 1830.598 By this time, an estimated 1200 to 1500 survivors remain; they are reduced to finding refuge in mountainous areas unsuitable for colonist’ grazing and agriculture. Killing, abduction, and sexual predation continue. 1833 – 1846 1847 - 1876 With the beginning of martial law, Britain began a policy of ethnic cleansing and extermination, where killing was legalized. By this time, perhaps a quarter or less of the precontact population remained. In October 1830, acceding to colonists’ demands for complete Palawa removal, he orders the infamous, expensive, and unsuccessful ‘black line’, to try and drive surviving Palawa into the southeast corner where they could be captured. In 1831, he authorized GA Robinson to begin an ethnic cleansing programme that was dressed up as ‘conciliation’ through a ‘friendly mission’ and initially set aside Gun Carriage Island as a detention facility. Marks the end of the so-called ‘black Wybalenna detention under a war’ and the beginning of Wybalenna succession of Commandants. forced detention for the Palawa survivors where there is a fearful mortality from disease and other factors, all due to the lethal conditions where they ‘pined and died’ in the prescient words of Chief Justice Pedder. Births plummet, culture is intentionally eroded by Government policy. Marks the period of Oyster Cove Oyster Cove detention under a detention. Disease and old age cause superintendent. accelerated deaths. Mental health suffers. Culture collapses. Figure 66 Derived genocidal phases: 1803 - 1876 Weighted Tasmanian Lemkinian categorial agencies by phase We will assign subjective weightings to the type categorial Lemkinian agencies by Tasmanian depopulation phase. We hypothesise that these variably weighted agencies will occur across Australia as a characteristic of antipodean Lemkinian genocide. The type agencies or drivers are: a) b) c) d) e) f) Killing (reported) Killing (unreported) Deaths (from wounding) Deaths (from internecine conflict) Deaths (from disease). Depopulation due to forced removal of individuals from the Palawa population (for example, female abduction, child kidnapping/ transfer), equivalent in its depopulation impact to a death, and we will call it ‘emigration’ in the demographic model. 258 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide g) Reduced births (from sexual predation, female abduction, kidnapping, STDs, damaged family structures, and inability to sustain life through constant violent harassment and loss of hunting grounds), all causing an intragenerational population collapse. The weightings give us a subjective visual indication of the depopulation effect by type and phase. Phase 1803 1817 1818 1825 1826 1832 1833 1846 1847 1876 - (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) 4.5 4.5 3.5 1.5 5.5 10 8 5.5 5.5 5.5 1.5 5.5 9.8 8 9.5 9.5 9.5 1.5 8.5 7.5 9.5 1 1 1 1 9 4.5 9.5 1 1 1 1 10 3 10 Figure 67 Subjectively weighted Lemkinian categorial agencies by phase Legend: 1 – 2 low 3 – 4 low/ medium 5 – 6 medium 7 – 8 medium/ high 9 – 10 high Tasmanian Lemkinian weightings by phase (g) (f) (e) (d) (c) (b) (a) 0 2 1847 - 1876 4 1833 - 1846 6 1826 - 1832 8 1818 - 1825 10 12 1803 - 1817 Figure 68 Subjective Lemkinian type category weightings by phase: 1803 – 1876 259 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Depopulation model hypotheses revisited (1803 – 1834) We will revisit three depopulation models and introduce phases into the analysis: [c] Annualised exponential depopulation model [d] Continuous exponential depopulation model [e] Phased continuous exponential depopulation [f] Logistic depopulation model Model (c): Annualised exponential depopulation 1803 - 1825 We will model: dP / dt = rP (r<0), and derive P(t) = P0 ert (r<0), where r=-0.05 (1803 to 1825). Observations: • • The primary depopulation categorial agency between 1803 and 1825 was female and child abduction, along with killing. In this period, disease seems to have had little effect, although we note catechist Clark’s reference to a ‘mysterious disease’ before the coming of the white man that we analyze elsewhere, using the work of Clements and others. Calculation: Let us assume, for example, that up to 5% pa of Aboriginal females were abducted each year between 1807 and 1825, then we can calculate why there was a precipitous decline in the Aboriginal population in the so-called peaceful period: • • • • • • • • Assume a pre-contact population of say 4,000, with four children per family and 30% no longer fertile or capable of procreating, Assume a family group was around 6, or 600 families, of which 600 were females between 17 and 35. If 5% of these females were abducted per year, assuming a falling birthrate, then the precontact population would reduce by 30 per year (one every two weeks or so) or 600 over 20 years. If children were also being kidnapped, then they were unlikely to have children because they had lost contact with their own people. Let us set the originating population P 1803 = 4,000, the final 1825 population P 1825 = 1200 from which we derive that the rate of decline r = -0.0533 or 5.3% pa. 599 But this decline is also due to mortality (killing, disease, old age). Therefore, the rate of female abduction can be much less than 5% pa for the same demographic result. Therefore, we would expect an exponential decline in the population that reduced more rapidly from 1826 because of the war but within a diminishing number of survivors. In this thesis, our primary interest is in the period generally addressed by the Plomley and Clements datasets, that is: 1803 to 1833. How should we model depopulation with at least two rates of decline, one between 1803 and 1825 (pre-war), the other 260 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide between 1826 and 1833 (war)? This leads us to ask the question: is there a further population logistic model for 1833 onwards, specifically for the Wybalenna incarceration period between 1833 and 1846? The answer is, yes, but it is outside the scope of this paper. This proposed demographic model uses a series of negative logistic sigmoid curves with hinge points at 1803, 1826, 1833, and 1847.600 P(t) 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 1826 1825 1824 1823 1822 1821 1820 1819 1818 1817 1816 1815 1814 1813 1812 1811 1810 1809 1808 1807 1806 1805 1804 0 Figure 69 Calculated Population decline: 1803 – 1826 (r= -0.0533)601 Model (c): Annualised exponential depopulation 1826 - 1833 Hypothesis: Palawa depopulation between 1826 and 1833 was driven by the so-called ‘Black War’ when killings increased. That is, the depopulation categorial agency in the Black War changed from female and child abduction and rampant unpunished killing pre-war to state-sponsored murder, more female abduction, and avoidable introduced disease during the ‘war’, where Britain had an asymmetric power advantage throughout but particularly after 1823 as the number of colonists implacably increased. Calculation: Let us suppose that P1826 = 1200 and P1833 = 200, then the rate of decline becomes 20% pa, consistent with an increase in killings, continuing abductions, and the effects of disease, although by this time female kidnapping had decreased because there were fewer Palawa woman available and they were becoming older. 1826 to 1832 was the period of Arthur’s proclaimed war against the Palawa, culminating in his declaration of martial law between 1828 and 1832, and his determined ethnic cleansing operation from 1829 to 1834 when disease began to ravage the survivors, the consequence of being forcibly confined in unhealthy conditions conducive to Acute Respiratory Disorders. 261 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Model (d) Continuous exponential depopulation model In this extended model, we are interested in the period from 1826 to 1833 as an extension to the period from 1803 to 1825; we want to determine if the mortality vectors are consistent across the periods. By 1826, perhaps 1200 Palawa remained, a reduction of around 75% on pre-contact population levels of 3,000 to 5,000 or so, but this began a period when the number of clashes rose sharply in a Palawa guerrilla war that nearly drove the British to offer a treaty as they did in New Zealand. We will model: dP / dt = rP (r<0), and derive P(t) = P0 ert (r<0), where r=-0.05 (1803 – 1825) and r=-0.20 (1826 – 1834) P(t) 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1804 1806 1808 1810 1812 1814 1816 1818 1820 1822 1824 1826 1828 1830 1832 1834 Figure 70 Calculated population decline: 1803 – 1834 (r = -0.0533 for 1803 – 1826; r=-0.20 for 1827 – 1834)602 From 1830, the constant harassment of roving/ pursuing paramilitary parties reduced the remaining Palawa to a point where they either faced complete extermination, or they could accept the terms of their surrender to Arthur – the great ‘conciliator’ - who offered them exile on a remote island in an open prison with military guards. Originally, his terms of surrender were a treaty arrangement and an area to themselves in the northeast, his ruse de guérre before he gained the upper hand with his ‘friendly mission’ that resulted in their rounding up and capture. Britain won the Tasmanian (Vandemonian) war but lost its honour, no less Arthur, the ‘great conciliator’ and ‘humanitarian’, in practice a mendacious, corrupt middle ranking British official who put his self-interest first, his crooked financial dealings in Aboriginal land, his 262 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide cronyism, where his career depended on obsequiousness to his superiors and keeping the colonists happy, where nepotism ensured loyalty to his autocratic administrative style. Arthur should be remembered as the principal agent of Tasmanian genocide, an incompetent administrator acting on behalf of Imperial British dispossessory policy in its Lemkinian-type colonizing ambitions. Ultimately, what happened on this small antipodean island was a conflict determined by relative numbers, a conflict of attrition and asymmetric force, and in 1832 possibly two hundred Palawa remained against a British population of over thirty thousand; the remnant Palawa acceded to ethnic cleansing, and their removal as a group to detention on Flinders Island, where they succumbed to disease and nutritional deficiency in the poor conditions of their incarceration, exposed to cold and wind with inadequate clothing and shelter. The primary cause of Wybalenna mortality was Acute Respiratory Disorder: pneumonia, influenza, and ‘catarrh’.603 Therefore, to focus on the period after 1823 is to lose our Lemkinian perspective: the progressive destruction of a group in whole or part for an extended period of judicial and extrajudicial killing, sexual predation, abduction, starvation, ethnic cleansing, psychological suffering, cultural destruction, and imposed disease with their comorbidities. Model (c) Depopulation due to loss of Aboriginal women: 1803 – 1833 In this cruel play, the Palawa played various roles from free possessors of their country to resistance fighters to scattered survivors to refugees in their own land to deportees, many of them never to see their homeland again. Mannalargenna, born in 1770, leader of the northeast Pairrebeenne clan, was promised that if he helped Robinson, he would not be sent to Flinders Island, but this promise was broken, and he died in captivity at Wybalenna in 1835. When he arrived at Big Green Island in 1835, Mannalargenna symbolically cut off his ochred hair and beard, knowing that this foreign place was where he would die.604 Assumptions • • • • • Assume a pre-contact Palawa population of 4,000 to 5,000.605 We know that, in 1834, about 200 Palawa remained (upper limit 350). Most Palawa deaths due to introduced disease began from the 1820s as contact with colonists increased and more Palawa were confined, often against their will. An estimated three quarters of the Palawa depopulation happened before 1826. Palawa child kidnapping and female abduction was rife between 1807 and 1820 but there were no laws to prevent it We estimate that between early 1824 and end 1834, during Arthur’s administration: • about 900 Palawa were killed. (Clements) 263 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide • • • deaths from other causes (including introduced disease) is unknown. female abduction remained rife along with STDs and imposed infertility few children were being born, and more were dying or disappearing, causing an intragenerational population collapse. Calculation: • • In early 1824 - 26, about (1,100 + x) Palawa remained (900 + 200 + x), assuming negligible births. Therefore, between 1803 and 1824, from (2,900 – x) and (3,900-x) Palawa ‘disappeared’. Refinement: Let us suppose x = 1,000. Then between 1803 and 1824, 1,900 to 2,900 Palawa ‘disappeared’. During this period, the settler population was y, so the number of clashes were relatively fewer. We know that by 1806, many Aboriginal groups had been forcibly removed from their territory, for example, the north midlands. Show settler population growth. This leaves intragenerational depopulation through the loss of women capable of bearing children - sexual predation and female abduction - as the likely key vectoral agency in Lemkinian genocide, along with Government-sponsored homicide. Conclusion We can conclude that there was an overarching pattern to the British genocide in Tasmania, a repressive pattern that weighted economic considerations above humanitarian concerns. The genocidal process was driven by: • • • • • the complete failure of Britain to prosecute any citizen who killed or kidnapped an Aboriginal (failure of British law, or conversely, the use of British law as an instrument of genocidal policy), its determination to expropriate Aboriginal land irrespective of the human consequences (the fiction that Tasmania was ‘uninhabited’ or inhabited in such a way that did not conform with Britain’s concept of settled agriculture), the use of armed force to secure its colonizing objectives (state-sponsored racially targeted repression), and the unrestrained predation upon Aboriginal women and abduction of Aboriginal children that had a catastrophic effect on Palawa depopulation beginning with sealers in 1798, continuing soon after Tasmania was invaded in 1803, and peaking well before the clashes began to mount in the mid-1820s causing a misplaced historical focus, the Black War and its ethnic cleansing after effect (racist system of laws), for the period from 1803 to 1834, we can identify at least two waves of depopulation, one between 1803 and 1825 (r=-0.05), the other from 1826 to 1834 (r=0.2), 264 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide • • • the depopulation effect of the first wave was greater because it began from a higher population base, it is possible to extend the two-part exponentially decreasing model into a series of logistic sigmoid curves extending out to include Wybalenna (1833 – 1846) and Oyster Bay 1847 to 1876), where r varies by period, but the work is outside the scope of this paper, Lemkinian depopulation was the consequence of British policy, of official Government intent, where colonizing economics and the pursuit of territorial sovereignty outweighed humanitarian concerns for violently displaced Indigenous people causing the Tasmanian dispossessory pattern to be replicated across all Australian colonies. Summarizing, British colonizing policy had the inevitable outcome of genocide in all its Lemkinian aspects, including physical, mental, and cultural destruction. It was a policy that was to repeat across Australia. Britain has never been called to account. Have we learned? No, those exploitative behaviours that drove colonial genocide are now placing the Earth in peril, along with the future of our children. Genocide has become ecocide. Type Lemkinian agencies by phase: 1803 - 1834 Palawa depopulation due to killing and abduction: 1803 – 1834 Palawa Population statistics: The size of the Palawa population at various times between 1803 and 1833 is unclear. The pre-contact population may have been between 3000 and 6000 (upper limit 7000); the population in 1833 was around 200 (upper limit 350), those who were removed to Wybalenna imprisonment, although Reynolds disputes that they were incarcerated because they had some freedom of movement across Flinders Island. Yet they died in disproportionately large numbers from their conditions of captivity. Even Reynolds admits the Wybalenna death rate was abnormally high although he hesitates to describe it as Lemkinian. The question is: would they have died at the same rate if they were free to roam their traditional territory unmolested? I think the answer is clear. Can we adumbrate the pattern of events that cumulatively drove Tasmanian genocide? Probably never completely. Each event becomes another dot in an emerging picture of Lemkinian despoliation, none of which has ever been prosecuted. Clements asserts that: i. Although sealers had begun commercial operations on Van Diemen’s Land in late 1798, the first significant European presence on the island came five year later, with the establishment in September of a small military outpost at Risdon on the Derwent River near present-day Hobart. Several bloody encounters with local Aboriginal clans took place over the next five months.606 265 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix. x. xi. xii. On 3 May 1804, alarmed soldiers from Risdon, acting under Lt Moore, reportedly fired grapeshot from a carronade on a group of about 100 Aboriginal people. Possibly 50 men, women, and children were killed, and the bodies burned or buried. Lt Moore was not charged. A precedent was set. A wave of violence erupted during a drought in 1806-7 as tribes in both the north and south of the island killed or wounded several Europeans in conflicts sparked by the competition for game.607 The arrival of 600 colonists from Norfolk Island between 1807 and 1813 increased tensions as they established farms around Hobart and Launceston, along the river estuaries.608 The Norfolk Islanders used violence to stake their claim on the land, attacking Aboriginal camps at night, slaughtering parents, and abducting the orphaned children as their servants. The attacks prompted retaliatory raids on settlers’ cattle herds in the southeast. In 1809 New South Wales surveyor-general John Oxley reported that kangaroo hunting by whites had led to a “considerable loss of life among the natives” throughout the colony. One settler, the convict adventurer Jorgen Jorgenson, also claimed that “Aboriginal numbers were “much reduced during the first six or seven years of the colony” as whites “harassed them with impunity”. 609 By 1814, 12,700 ha of land was under cultivation, with 5000 cattle and 38,000 sheep.610 Between 1817 and 1824 the colonial population rose from 2000 to 12,600 and in 1823 alone more than 1000 land grants totaling 175,704 ha were made to new settlers; by that year Van Diemen’s Land’s sheep population had reached 200,000 and the socalled Settled Districts accounted for 30 per cent of the island’s total land area. The rapid colonization transformed traditional kangaroo hunting grounds into farms with grazing livestock as well as fences, hedges and stone walls, while police and military patrols were increased to control the convict farm labourers.611 By 1819, the Aboriginal and British population reached parity with about 5000 of each.612 Between 1817 and 1824 the colonial population rose from 2000 to 12,600 and in 1823 alone more than 1000 land grants totaling 175,704 ha were made to new settlers.613 About 500 Aboriginal people from the five 614 clan groups were still operating in the Settled Districts when martial law was declared615 The population of North West clans fell from 700 to 300 through the 1820s while in the North plummeted from 400 in 1826 to fewer than 60 by mid-1830616 The Black War was prompted by the rapid spread of British settlers and agricultural livestock throughout Tasmania that had been traditional Aboriginal hunting grounds. 617 xiii. Clements has suggested the “voracious appetite” for native women was the most important trigger for the Black War. 618 “Sex continued to be a central motivation for attacking natives until around 1828, by which time killing the enemy had taken priority over raping them.” 619 Van Diemen’s Land had an enormous gender imbalance, with male colonists outnumbering females six to one in 1822 and the ratio as high as 16 to one among the convict population. 266 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide xiv. xv. xvi. xvii. xviii. xix. xx. xxi. xxii. xxiii. xxiv. xxv. xxvi. Aboriginal attacks were motivated by revenge for European atrocities and the widespread kidnapping, rape, and murder of Aboriginal women and girls by convicts, settlers, and soldiers, but particularly from the late 1820s the Aboriginal people were also driven by hunger to plunder settler’s homes for food as their hunting grounds shrank, native game disappeared and the dangers of hunting on open ground grew.620 Violence in the island’s north-west, where the colonists were servants of the Van Diemen’s Land Company, erupted in 1825, fueled by disputes over Aboriginal women, who were often violated or abducted, and the destruction of kangaroo stocks. 621 The conflict led to the Cape Grim massacre of 10 February 1828 in which shepherds armed with muskets ambushed up to 30 Aboriginal people as they collected shellfish at the foot of a cliff.622 From 1825 to 1828, the number of native attacks more than doubled each year.623 In April 1827 two shepherds were killed at Hugh Murray’s farm at Mount Augustus near Campbell Town, south of Launceston, and a party of settlers with a detachment of the 40th Regiment launched a reprisal attack at dawn on an undefended Aboriginal camp, killing as many as 70 Aboriginal men, women, and children.624 In May 1827 a group of Oyster Bay Aboriginal people killed a stockkeeper at Great Swanport near Swansea and a party of soldiers, field police, settlers and stockkeepers launched a night raid on the culprits’ camp. A report noted: “Volley after volley of ball cartridge was poured in upon the dark groups surrounding the little campfires. The number slain was considerable.”625 Over 18 days in June 1827 at least 100 members of the Pallittorre clan from the North nation were killed in reprisals for the killing of three stockmen and Ryan calculates that in the eight months from 1 December 1826 to 31 July 1827 more than 200 Aboriginal people were killed in the Settled Districts in reprisal for their killing of 15 colonists.626 By March 1828 the death toll in the Settled Districts for the 16 months since Arthur’s November 1826 official notice had risen to 43 colonists and probably 350 Aboriginal people.627 An entire clan of 150 Oyster Bay people may have been killed in one pursuit through the Sorell Valley in November 1827.628 By March 1829, 23 military parties, a total of about 200 armed soldiers, were scouring the Settled Districts, mainly intent on killing, rather than capturing, their quarry. 629 By winter 1829 the southern part of the Settled Districts had become a war zone and Aboriginal people later identified campsites where their relatives had been killed and mutilated. Several more incidents were reported in which Aboriginal people were raiding huts for food and blankets or digging up potatoes, but they too were killed.630 From 1829 efforts were made with the aid of humanitarian George Augustus Robinson to launch a “friendly mission” to persuade Aboriginal people to surrender and be removed to an island sanctuary.631 From 1830 Arthur offered rewards for the capture of Aboriginal people, but bounties were also paid when Aboriginal people were killed.632 Historians have differed in their estimates of the total number of fatalities in the Black War and acknowledge that most killings of Aboriginal people went unreported. The 267 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide xxvii. xxviii. Colonial Advocate newspaper reported in 1828 that “up country, instances occur where the Natives are ‘shot like so many crows’, which never come before the public633 Ryan accepts a figure of 1200 Aboriginal people dwelling in the Settled Districts in 1826 at the start of the Black War,634 while Clements believes the number in the eastern part of Tasmania was about 1000. Plomley believes there were 1500 in 1824 and 350 in 1831.635 About 100 Tasmanian Aboriginal people survived the conflict and Clements – who calculates that the Black War began with an indigenous population of about 1000 – has therefore concluded 900 died in that time. He surmises that about one-third may have died through internecine conflict, disease, and natural deaths, leaving a “conservative and realistic’ estimate of 600 who died in frontier violence, though he admits: “the true figure might be as low as 400 or as high as 1000.’ 636 Palawa depopulation due to disease and age-related morbidities: 1833 - 1876 We can split this end-stage Lemkinian process into two stages: Wybalenna (1833 – 1846); and Oyster Cove (1847 – 1876). We are interested in whether exponential depopulation followed the now familiar earlier stages from 1803 to 1825, and 1826 to 1833. Wybalenna: 1834 – 1846) Observations: We will assert that the primary depopulation categorial agencies between 1834 and 1846 were: • • • • • • the high incidence of preventable diseases related to the unhealthy conditions of detention at Wybalenna the erosion of family groups and a breakdown in family structures the exceptionally low birth rate because there were few women of childbearing age the increasing death rate from age related morbidities the poor level of nutrition the possible lowered immune system from psychological stress due to captivity and not being allowed to return to their homeland Calculation Let us assume an 1834 population of 221 and an 1846 population of 47, with negligible births. Then we derive r = -0.129 or a decline of 12.9% pa. Oyster Cove: 1847 – 1876 Observations: 268 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide We will assert that the primary depopulation categorial agencies between 1847 and 1876 were: • the high incidence of preventable diseases related to the unhealthy conditions of detention at Oyster Cove the increasing death rate from age related morbidities psychological stress poor nutrition • • • Calculation Let us assume an 1847 population of 47 and an 1876 population of one, with no births. Then we derive r = -0.15 or around 15% pa. Conclusion We have begun our depopulation analysis by phase, and we can now begin to integrate our preliminary findings. This graph shows that r varies by phase, from 1833 to 1846, and 1847 to 1876. P(t) 200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 1875 1873 1871 1869 1867 1865 1863 1861 1859 1857 1855 1853 1851 1849 1847 1845 1843 1841 1839 1837 1835 1833 0 Figure 71 Calculated Palawa depopulation: 1833 – 1846 (r = -0.129), 1847 – 1876 (r = -0.15) We will extend this graph to show the experimental value of r for 1803 to 1825, 1826 to 1832, 1833 to 1846, and 1847 to 1876. Exponential depopulation model hypothesis (1803 – 1876) We now want to determine the exponential depopulation rate per capita (r) by Lemkinian phase. That is, if we know the values of P(t), P0, Δt then we can calculate r, such that: P(t), P0, Δt → r. 269 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Knowing the value of r for a phase, we can then interpolate the datapoints for the phase. That is: P0, t, r → P(t), t = 1, 2, 3, As we defined earlier, the phases are: 1803 to 1825, 1826 to 1832, 1833 to 1846, and 1847 to 1876. We will model: dP / dt = rP (r<0), and derive P(t) = P0 ert (r<0), where r=-0.05472 (1803 – 1825), r=-0.25597 (1826 – 1833), r = -0.10344 (1834 – 1846), r = -0.12834 (1847 – 1876). Phase Parameters Derived value of r637 1803 – 1825 (invasion) P1803 = 4000 P1825 = 1200 Δt = 22 P1826 = 1200 P1832 = 200 Δt = 7 P1833 = 200 P1846 = 47 Δt = 14 P1847 = 47 P1876 = 1 Δt = 30 r = -0.05472 or -5.5% pa 1826 – 1832 (Black War’) 1833 – 1846 (Wybalenna detention) 1847 – 1876 (Oyster Cove detention) r = -0.25597 or -25.6% pa r = -0.10344 or -10.3% pa r = -0.12834 or -12.8% pa Figure 72 Derived values of the rate of depopulation by phase Conclusion Researchers have focused on the period from the ‘black war’ until Trucanini died near Oyster Cove, alone and despondent, beseeching her friends to protect her body from medical charlatans eager to prove that Aboriginal people were a lower order of humanity within Darwin’s universe. It is clear from the pattern of depopulation that the period where our attention should be drawn is pre-’black war’. That is when much of Palawa society disappeared. So, once again, we must reconsider our hypothesis that there were phases of depopulation for each of which a specific set of Lemkinian agencies were in play, driven by British policy and processes. You may argue, But surely we can’t know the value of the hinge points and whether the phases of depopulation are real or simply an imagined artefact of the interpolated data? My response is, there is general agreement on the period of the ‘black war, and we certainly know from the archival record and the various proclamations when, for example martial law was declared and for how long. We also know what happened at Wybalenna and Oyster Cove. So, we can establish a pattern of oppression that we will call a genocidal pattern. 270 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide This leads us to ask, if the pattern of phases can be verified, what were the weighted categorial agencies that drove depopulation across each phase. Were they the same, or different weightings come to the fore as the process of dispossession played out? The answer - in turn - leads us to understand that we do not need to know the exact population numbers for each phase, we only need to understand the pattern. The population numbers may be in some range, say 900 to 1200 in 1825, or 3000 to 5000 or more for precontact, but the pattern remain constant, so we do not have to invoke ‘mysterious causes’ such as internecine conflict or idiopathic disease of unknown origin. We can regard the exponential pattern by phase as a limit condition on a sigmoid logistic curve by phase that would require a more comprehensive dataset to verify any finetuned hypothesis. Reiterating, these are the proposed phases in reverse order, the periods of accelerated depopulation for which the model best fits the available empirical data. Oyster Cove. We know that the inmates of Oyster Cove were old and dejected, mournfully waiting to die, their culture destroyed, prey to sickness from the lethal conditions. Was their treatment genocidal? Yes, they were being repressed, their demise inevitable without urgent Government intervention that perhaps allowed them to be absorbed into the part-Aboriginal community in Bass Strait. At least it may have given them some hope, some protection from a settler society that wanted them gone forever. With positive support from Britain, their culture may even have been preserved, to be passed down the generations. The Oyster Cove phase saw disease and despair bring down the survivors. Wybalenna. We know that Oyster Cove was a continuation of their treatment at Wybalenna, where births were few, sickness was rife, and pity was short. And yes, their treatment at Wybalenna was also genocidal, where the depopulation rate was catastrophic. We even know why. Diseases of their detention, the breakdown of family structures, psychological despair, and few births. If a persecuted people die in a concentration camp, we will quickly call it a crime against humanity, genocide, if gas chambers were involved. Our moral judgment is secure in matters such as these; we seem to innately know right from wrong. And if a targeted people were sent on a forced march to die in large numbers, as happened with the Armenians at the hands of the Turks, we would also call it genocide. And if there was indiscriminate murder as happened to the Tutsis, we would also call it genocide. And if a targeted group were deported to a detention centre and allowed to die, where the deaths were avoidable if they had been allowed to pursue a normal family life, that – we argue – is also genocide. For the Wybalenna phase, the weighted Lemkinian categorial agency was disease and psychological stress, where the victims were allowed to die in captivity, out of sight and mind of genteel British society. 271 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide ‘Black war’. We know that when a group is targeted for repression, there is usually a statesponsored process involved. Such was the case during the ‘black war’, where killing of Aboriginal people was indiscriminate, justified because the Palawa resisted the occupation of their country. No colonist or soldier was ever charged. This was no war; there were too many British and their armaments were more lethal than a spear. But the Palawa were desperate, and guerrilla resistance was their only option. If Britain had been more humanitarian, they would have acceded to Aboriginal rights in Tasmania. Instead, Britain declared martial law where killing was legalized and death squads were allowed to roam the island looking for Aboriginal campfires at night, their strategy to surround any group they found and open fire. Some researchers argue that these actions were not genocidal, but merely evidence of an unequal war, where asymmetric power was involved. But this was no ordinary war. It was a war of occupation, a war of attrition, where colonists wanted the complete destruction or removal of the original inhabitants. There would be little mercy. During this period of the ‘black war’, colonists continued their chipping away at Palawa society, predating upon their women, kidnapping their children. During the ‘black war’, killing was the primary Lemkinian categorial agency, along with sexual predation and some disease. Stolen generation. And now we arrive at the beginning of the genocidal process, where most of the Palawa depopulation occurred. The question is, why? What caused it? Targeted killing was happening, and no doubt underreported. Britain did not punish the offenders because it did not want to raise the ire of the colonists. But disease seems not to have been prevalent, the sicknesses of forced detention. I think we can discount the theory of a ‘mysterious illness’, or the racist theory that the Palawa disappeared because, in Darwinian thinking, they were ‘unfit to survive’. We argue that the primary Lemkinian categorial agency before the ‘black war’ was female abduction, child kidnapping, rising STDs, and destruction of viable family groups, all of which reduce births. And if, in the limit, births become zero, there will be an intragenerational population collapse. This seems to be what happened. The corollary is: if Britain had not invaded, or if Britain had allowed rights to their land or at least allowed shared use of the land through a treaty, the genocidal outcome would have been avoided. Instead, we see a state sponsored process of targeted dispossession by force that saw the intentional destruction of a race. British Law was absent from the process. Indeed, one-sided British Law facilitated genocide. 272 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide P(t) 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 y = 9179.9e-0.121x 1803 1805 1807 1809 1811 1813 1815 1817 1819 1821 1823 1825 1827 1829 1831 1833 1835 1837 1839 1841 1843 1845 1847 1849 1851 1853 1855 1857 1859 1861 1863 1865 1867 1869 1871 1873 1875 0 Figure 73 Exponential depopulation by Lemkinian phase: 1803 – 1876 This graph shows the four exponential phases of Lemkinian genocide in Tasmania between 1803 and 1876. Each of these phases are represented as exponential, not sigmoid. When we overlay the phased graph with a single exponential model, we see that it does not fit the experimental data. This reinforces our hypothesis that a phased exponential model is more accurate. We can refine the phased model to show a sigmoid pattern of depopulation, and this is what we have done for the pre-war phase from 1803 to 1825, when most of the depopulation happened. In this more detailed analysis, it appears that the loss of procreative capability through a multiplicity of Lemkinian agencies cause the rapid population collapse. If we overlay the phases with a single exponential curve across seven decades, we see that the model does not fit the empirically derived phases from 1803 to 1833 and requires a much higher originating population, around 8000 people. This is the calculated supporting data by phase. Datapoints are interpolated between empirical hinge points marking the start and end of each phase. 273 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Date P(t) Date P(t) Date P(t) Date P(t) 1803 4000 1826 929 1833 180 1847 41 1804 3787 1827 719 1834 163 1848 36 1805 3585 1828 557 1835 147 1849 32 1806 3394 1829 431 1836 132 1850 28 1807 3214 1830 334 1837 119 1851 25 1808 3043 1831 258 1838 108 1852 22 1809 2881 1832 200 1839 97 1853 19 1810 2727 1840 87 1854 17 1811 2582 1841 79 1855 15 1812 2444 1842 71 1856 13 1813 2314 1843 64 1857 12 1814 2191 1844 58 1858 10 1815 2074 1845 52 1859 9 1816 1964 1846 47 1860 8 1817 1859 1861 7 1818 1760 1862 6 1819 1667 1863 5 1820 1578 1864 5 1821 1494 1865 4 1822 1414 1866 4 1823 1339 1867 3 1824 1268 1868 3 1825 1200 1869 3 1870 2 1871 2 1872 2 1873 2 1874 1 1875 1 1876 1 Figure 74 Interpolated depopulation values by phase: 1803 – 1876 274 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide P(t) 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 Figure 75 Summary: exponential depopulation by phase: 1803 – 1825, 1826 – 1832, 1833 – 1846, 1847 – 1876 The greatest per capita rate of depopulation is between 1826 and 1832 inclusive. The greatest Palawa population loss is between 1803 and 1825 inclusive. From 1803 to 1825, Lemkinian depopulation was driven by abduction, killing, and falling births. We saw how the violent removal of about one woman a week over a two-decade period through abduction and sexual predation will lead to intragenerational population collapse, a process accelerated by child kidnapping. It was more than a stolen generation; it was a stolen future for an entire society. From 1826 to 1832, Lemkinian depopulation was driven by killing, breakdown of family structures, and falling births. From 1833 to 1846, Lemkinian depopulation was driven by a process of disease (diseases of confinement) and falling births. From 1847 to 1876, ageing and disease along with psychological despair were the greatest Lemkinian agencies, a product of decades-long concerted British repression, evidenced by a destroyed culture, and a dismembered Palawa society. The survivors at Oyster Cove waited 275 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide to die while a self-satisfied State Government begrudged them nutritious food and adequate medical care. We envisage that these linked exponential curves can be refined with linked sigmoid curves. We have already begun this work by examining the critical period between 1803 and 1825. A later chapter, The Role of Sexual Predation, examines this important question in more detail. We now turn to the key Lemkinian agencies that drove Palawa depopulation. 276 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide History as a behavioural landscape Human history is not necessarily limited to a sequence of random events. It is an unfolding of normatively prescriptive behaviour, revealed through defining moments, which can affect the momentum of a social group through time. Systems theory is relevant in understanding and recognising any pattern of social behaviour, including ‘myths’ if they arise from factual circumstance. The past is not a stochastic aberration. It repeats too frequently, and when it repeats, it is invariably through patterned purpose. Systems theory: the configuration of parts joined together by a web of relationships. A system can be thought of (and modelled) as a nested hierarchy, where wholes – or complex systems - consist of parts, each of which comprise more wholes. 638 Systems as a whole can also be mapped at increasing levels of detail. We will use this modelling approach here. The term theory is used in the scientific meaning: a reasoned set of ideas intended to explain something, such as Gravitation or Boolean logic. A process such as Lemkinian Genocide is an example of a type system. Therefore, systems theory can be used to explain genocide. In systems theory, a rule is of the form: on [condition] do [something], where [condition] is an originating trigger that initiates a certain prescribed action and [something] is an actionable step arising from the trigger that invokes prescribed functions for some role. A type process is the specification of a set of rules bounded by an intentionality envelope within potentially multiple levels of abstraction down to the physical event level (who, when, where), say, clear Aboriginals from the land in some area at some time by some involved party. Such processes can be reinstantiated (repeated) for different roles and circumstances at different times. For example, within an instance of the Occupation process, there may be a step: after alienation, when land is thrown open for selection, a settler applies for a certain leasehold property within the legislative formalities of the relevant Acts. The Occupation process for an area is completed when there is no more land available for selection. Rules can therefore be considered as a form of behavioural constraints. A Bill of Rights, in this context, is a function supertype, with various Acts forming a function typology. A role-based function or a function embedded in a process conforms to type agency that can be instantiated with specific acts that prescribe an event. An instance of a process can be an event. Event: an occurrence, especially one that is particularly significant, interesting, exciting, or unusual. Process: a series of actions directed towards a specific aim. For civil society, social behaviour is usually intentional and predictable, generally determined by policy and legislation. We will examine the type determinants of normative dysfunctional behaviour using Lemkinian genocide as a contextual referent. Behaviour as process Intent (or intentionality) is planned action, often procedural in its nature. Intent follows from beliefs or desires (ideological or other motivational values such as: let us deny Aboriginals the vote because they may hold a balance of power in an elected Government until we can build up the rate of immigration) and leads to purposeful activity that is often shaped by social rules 277 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide – an expression of values - and/or normative motivation. These values become embedded in social and economic policies that form the structure of collective behavioural constraint rules. It raises the key questions: Is Nature deterministic or non-deterministic? Is Nature local or non-local? Does relativistic or quantum mechanics better describe the nature of reality. What are the boundaries of free will? These are questions we will now answer. For our modelling purposes, we will represent Nature as both deterministic and local, where we can employ the principles of causality (cause and effect) within a bounded social domain that can exhibit statistically normative as well as emergent properties. Our logic follows. Behaviour and reality There are two competing theories for the description of reality. In fact, they compete only at the margins. If we represent Nature in the context of quantum mechanics, there are two types of evolution: unitary (or free) and non-unitary (or measurement based): • Free (unitary) evolution is fully reversible and deterministic, where a given operator takes a certain wave function and maps it to another wave function. • Non-unitary evolution introduces the problem of measurement uncertainty at the quantum level. Bell’s theorem639 attempts to resolve this paradox. It says: any phenomenon that is both deterministic and local must satisfy the Bell’s inequality. Time evolution of quantum systems is always given by unitary transformations, that is, it is a bounded linear operator. If the state of a quantum system is |ψ>, then at a later time |ψ> → Uˆ|ψ>. Exactly what this operator Uˆ is will depend on the particular system and the interactions that it undergoes. It does not, however, depend on the state |ψ>. This means that time evolution of quantum systems is linear. Because of this linearity, the time evolution of the state is given by the same operator. Quantum mechanics has repeatedly been able to demonstrate, by experiments, that the Bell inequality has (with some loopholes) been broken. That is, either locality or determinism must be true, but not both. Without locality, we cannot talk about causality. So most physicists prefer to discount determinism. But is it a false choice for human-centric events? Determinism and free will Determinism argues that for every event there exist conditions that can cause no other event. It is often taken to mean causal determinism, or cause and effect, where any state of an object is completely determined by prior states. Determinism is not the same as free will, or self-determination, where motivations and desires (behaviours) are involved. Yet behavioural motivation also gives rise to normative states that are predicated on social constructs that flow from group-directed constraints or rules. 278 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Biological determinism argues that our behaviours and motivations are established by genetic inheritance. We are our parents, to a degree. Behaviourism, following Skinner’s nurturefocussed determinism, argues that all behaviour is either caused by the environment or is a patterned (deterministic) reflexive response to some stimulus. Contradicting Skinner, our legal system depends upon the presumption of free will. But if our family is threatened, do we have a choice not to protect them? No, there is a biological imperative towards protection. Or if Aboriginals are invading our ‘property’, do we remove them with lethal force? Yes, if it is in our commercial interest to do so, if the law supports our choice, if there is minimal downside risk. Or if we discover a new land, ripe for exploitation, should we expropriate what we see, knowing that it will cause harm to the Indigenous owners? Yes, if we are backed up by the might of Empire and with God on our side. So our ‘free’ will is not so free, nor are characteristic societal constraints unimportant. Locality and non-locality Non-locality means the instantaneous propagation of states between entangled systems, irrespective of the distance between them. The states are probabilistically determined, what is sometimes called ‘spooky-action-at-a-distance’. Non-locality does not mean faster than light travel, or violation of relativistic causality. The principle of quantum non-locality has been verified by experiments. How entanglement (non-locality) works is unknown. Conversely, locality asserts that, for an action (or event) at one point to have an influence (or effect) at another point, something in the space between the points, such as a field, must mediate the action. In view of the theory of relativity, the speed at which such an action, interaction, or influence can be transmitted between distant points in space cannot exceed the speed of light. This formulation is also known as Einstein locality or local relativistic causality. It is often stated as ‘nothing can propagate faster than light, be it energy or merely information’ or simply ‘no spooky action-at-a-distance’, as Einstein put it. For the past twenty years or so it has also been referred to as the no-signalling condition.640 But there exist entangled states that are uncorrelated just as there are non-entangled states that are correlated. That is, entanglement is necessary but not sufficient for the state to be non-local. So non-locality is related to quantum measurement uncertainty, within the Bell paradox. The dilemma – nonlocality v. determinism - gives rise to the apparent incompatibility between quantum mechanics (the very small) 641 and relativistic (including Newtonian) 642 mechanics. The dilemma is not significant in modelling the dynamics of social systems. A detailed discussion is outside the scope of this book but requires a brief conspective analysis for us to establish the parameters of our methodology. Intentionality and functionalism 643 Intentionalism is the carrying out of a planned and deliberate act or process, usually by Government, and usually ‘top-down’. Functionalism, within the genocide debate, is the origination of collective behaviour from the will and motivation of a crowd, generally seen as a ‘bottom up’ process that is perceptually bureaucratic. 279 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The argument is that each type of behaviour is mutually exclusive of the other, and specifically that the Nazi genocidal excesses derived either from Hitler or from the Nazi bureaucracy, with the debate favouring the Nazi bureaucracy. By implication, the argument proffers that Australian genocide was not intended by the Government, but was an unplanned functional consequence of other behaviours that involved land policy and the security of settlers. It is a false distinction, as we will show. The distinction between intentionalism and functionalism was first suggested by Timothy Mason in a 1981 essay: Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy about the Interpretation of National Socialism in Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class, edited by Jane Caplan.644 The distinction is an artefact of reframing or misdirection, where the parameters of the argument are shifted to a space that is seen as more winnable. The distinction between intentionality and functionalism dissolves when we consider, with process models, that ‘intentionality’ is embedded as a triggering condition, which causes certain sub-processes or ‘functionality’ to be activated, causing a statistically predictable dynamic behaviour in the system as a whole, in order to achieve some expected outcome. In this system, processes (‘intentionality’) and events (actionable components or ‘functions’ or ‘agencies’) are co-determinate and can be iterative within an intentionality envelope defined by triggering conditions (or type event causes). Such triggering conditions (or ‘causes’) can be procedurally nested, related by the purpose (or intent) of the process, one condition flowing from another depending on the determinable ‘state’ for any sub-process after it has been actioned, forming a ‘causal chain’ or process flow, or recursion, or repetition, where an ‘event flow’ connects the specific instantiations of the type process along a multi-layer abstraction gradient. 645 Behaviour as obedience xx646 yy647 zz648 Conclusion In summary: For our real-world modelling purposes, we will assert that determinism, locality and causality are constraints within a unitary, stochastically normative, bounded social system with predictable (procedural) and emergent (predominantly behavioural) properties defined (or generated) by certain local rules (such as Government policies and accreted legislation) across an abstraction gradient within a parametric envelope determined by the State. We are now in a position to begin modelling the behavioural landscape from various perspectives. Modelling settler behaviour as a rule-constrained, dynamic, complex, bounded system We will now model settler behaviour in Australia from different ontological perspectives as a precursor to deconstructive analysis in Part 2. The rule-constrained models include: flocking/ 280 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide crowd behaviour; obedience/ behaviourism; neural architecture/ evolutionary biology; process mapping to dynamical mechanistic models; biological predator/ prey models; dispersivity/ wave models; and constraint-based evolutionary algorithms for simulating system (settler society) behaviour. In general, these modelling approaches conform to agent-based modelling. An agent is a person or thing that takes an active role or produces a specified effect.649 The agent function is a mathematical function that maps a sequence of perceptions or triggers into action.650 Examples of agent functions (behaviours) are the defined set of Government rules and algorithms within a complex bounded dynamic system (settler society and its acquisitive territorial imperatives) that are associated with crowd flocking or collective (normative) settler supremacist behaviourism, or territorial dispersivity, or predator/prey models, as we will next show. Generalized examples of such constraint rules (policies) are: the British Government did not (as a rule) allow Aboriginals to own land; the British Government did not (as a rule) prosecute Whites who murdered Aboriginals; the British Government did not (as a rule) allow Aboriginal witnesses to testify against Whites for criminal acts; and so on. These racist and discriminatory rules allowed Lemkinian genocide to flourish within a found environment that was subject to British policy. We will model the effect of this ‘rule-based order’ in an evolutionary algorithm later in this section. The term ‘agent’ is commonly used in object modelling to specify a person or role or thing that provides a service or organized dealing between two or more parties. In this sense an agent is also a type of Involved Party in an n-party bounded system. An autonomous agent can, in theory, act independently of other parties according to certain rules (constraint or behavioural rules defined and circumscribed by Government policies) that give rise to emergent system properties including racism and Lemkinian genocide in its various phases, from Government endorsed extermination to subjugation and repression. An agent-based model is therefore a class of computational model for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous agents (both individual and collective) from which we can derive system effects. Simple normative behavioural rules (or policies) can produce complex behaviour at different scales, including possible semi-stable states of behavioural equilibrium in response to environmental and policy adaptation. Complex dynamic systems can be modelled as black-box (phenomenological, such as Skinner or Milgram behaviourism) or white-box (mechanistic where the underlying mechanisms are exposed, requiring a prescriptive ontology or set of axioms for the system under study).651 Within social groups constrained by rules and policies, the degree to which an agent is ‘autonomous’ can depend on the relative level of control that the agent believes it possesses; this can be a function of socio-economic status; therefore, we prefer the term ‘agent’ to ‘autonomous agent’. We extend the concept of agent to include role, for which a person is an instance. 281 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Processes and events: modelling and falsifiability In physical terms, an event (that is, [something] happened or, in the null case, did not happen) is embedded in the geometry of space-time as a granular ’moment’ of some particular duration involving some number of related facts (who, when, how and so on) that may be ncomplete. That is, there may be a variable accumulation of attributive facts that substantiate the event instance. These ‘moments’ do not cease to exist after their occurrence for an observer such as ourselves as we move through our spatial timeline. We can imagine the moments out there, somewhere, continuing, that somewhere in our Universe a distant observer is only just now witnessing the event that, for us, is now a memory. Such events are contextually dependent and causally related within an event chain. The event type can be abstracted at different levels and associated though type triggers or conditions into a type process map comprising a network (or repeatable process) of bounded event types that originate with a common trigger. At a detailed level, the event-type instantiations can occur stochastically within a normative behavioural envelope determined by supertype triggers such as Government policies.652 That is, group behaviour can be deterministic, particularly in a constraint-bounded procedural environment, although behaviour may appear random among individuals.653 From a complementary perspective, individual behaviour can be aggregated across the group, forming a Gaussian distribution where normative behaviour is subject to dominant social constraints and processes. 654 That is, we arrive at a similar group behavioural result, whether the collective behavioural dynamics are analysed either bottom-up or top-down. Put another way, Britain provided the land and emigration policies, the one-sided system of laws, and the armed muscle to protect the colonists’ incursions into Aboriginal homelands, whereas the settlers provided the predatory greed, the desire for forcible Aboriginal dispossession, the compulsive urge to exploit the land for their own advantage; the co-dependent partnership saw the Palawa (and all other Indigenous groups) pushed violently aside without legal redress in a sustained landrush that would repeat across Australia using patterned and unconstrained Lemkinian genocidal modalities. Expressed in a different form, there was an imposition of policy-driven Government constraints (and determinants) on colonists’ behaviour that supported the genocidal process. These constraints included the British declaration of sovereignty over Aboriginal land and Britain’s assumed right to grant (and later sell) Aboriginal land through a dubious legal process that denied Aboriginal land rights. Accelerated immigration completed the dispossessory process. Without land, Aboriginals were on a slippery slope to oblivion, and they were helped along by armed intervention from the British military, by the police, and by paramilitary settlers, their employees and assigned convicts. How can we show the complex, multi-dimensional link between historical events and patterned process? How can we verify that a ‘myth’, if it occurred, was not necessarily an 282 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide isolated event, but a consequential part of a planned set of activities, that is, part of an intentional process within a constrained social behavioural dynamic? We will support our process maps with a faceted classification schema (categorial agencies) and normative behavioural models. Let us introduce the method for testing our hypothesis of Lemkinian genocide in Australia. First, we must define the behavioural process pattern (or type, or dependent variable). Then we must determine if the type instances (or independent variables or specific events or categorial agencies) will confirm the pattern. Conversely, if we can identify instances that do not conform to the process pattern, then we can amend or refute our theoretical process model. In particular, we want to identify if the theoretical process pattern for the occupation process (and its genocidal overlay) is a consistent mapping of any particular colonial event instance, including putative massacres. Our models must (and will) go beyond what happened across Australia (and Tasmania in particular) 655 to providing some insight into why. We want to logically understand the intentionality that drove the British occupation process and the genocidal ethnic cleansing that followed as deliberate Government policy, with massacres the all too frequent enabler of occupation policy, being the most cost effective and timely method for removing or quickly subjugating the indigenous population in any area claimed by pastoralists. Modelling the process patterns of complex systems There are various identifiable type processes656 that embed the policies of subjugation and repression (or forcible control) as a functional component of the process to varying degrees, among them: occupation, ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass killing, massacre, and settler sovereignty. These type processes can form the basis for a semantic typology, using the ordered relationships between the ‘actionable components’.657 This is not to say that, as an example, the occupation process is synonymous with genocide or its variants. It is not. However, the common behavioural determinants across the processes are consistent with oppression (the effect of asymmetric power) and a propensity towards exploitation (an artefact of the power advantage). Intent shapes process and has different levels of abstraction, which can be modelled. Strictly speaking, an ‘actionable component’ within a process is not a ‘functional component’ but a sub-process, activity string or activity, each with their associated function. They are usually described by a verb/object construction (say ‘control wiper’) and can assume various ‘states’ (such as ‘wiper’ ‘on’) as a result of some action or stimulus. A function, sub-function or ‘functional component’ is usually described by a noun (‘wiper control’). Both functions and processes can be analysed as a nested decomposition; the difference is that a process exhibits dynamical behaviour, whereas a function has only static behaviour, often specified through a hierarchical (or sometimes exploded) function model, showing the functional relationship between the parts, but not the triggering framework. This brief discussion is akin to the 20-year debate among holocaust historians who distinguish ‘intentionalism’ from ‘functionalism’. One side argues there was a Nazi master plan for death camps that arose with Hitler (intentionalism), the other that there was not, but rather a bureaucratic understanding for extermination that organically grew as a self-organising model to embrace the Nazi objectives (functionalism). 283 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Genetic algorithms Genetic or evolutionary rules-based algorithms help us find structure in messy datasets. They resolve ‘fitness for purpose’ or ‘best fit’ through an iterative process. If we define British colonial ‘purpose’ in Australia as the invasive removal (depopulation) and destruction of Aboriginal society, the genetic algorithm shows how the displacive purpose was achieved through a violent, politically driven process that amplified the dysfunction of settler society, cataclysmically reduced Aboriginal numbers in 120 years by over 90%, and rapidly transformed the Australian continent into British property through land alienation, through white immigration, through Lemkinian genocide where Aboriginals were targeted as a group. This genocidal pattern corresponds to a determinable set of sub-processes (with associated states) within an intentionality envelope defined by Government policy. It presents as a nested decomposition along an abstraction gradient, from overarching political objectives to armed occupation. That is: human collective, normalized and directed intentionality defines a parametric envelope for dynamic process behaviour involving a set of specific instantiations for the type processes, say, Britain claims sovereignty over some area of land instantiated by [on date] [Cook claims sovereignty] [between two latitudes for the east coast of New Holland], which is followed by enforce territorial occupation instantiated by [on date] [someone] [removes] [certain Aboriginals] [from some particular area], and so on. There is a defined pattern that repeats through any number of instances until some stable outcome is reached, say, hegemonic territorial possession where: Aboriginals are removed from an area or Aboriginals are subjugated for an area. Behaviour is action. Collective behaviour is statistically normative within some range, given a particular set of directed originating conditions or triggers. Such type actionable behaviour can be prescribed within a behavioural envelope; that is, a certain trigger (say a Government policy) can initiate a set of determinable and prescriptive actions conforming to a process or sub-process that has some intended purpose (say, purge Aboriginals from an area with extreme prejudice). The ‘process’ can be iteratively instantiated and each instance of the process can have an associated system state, say Aboriginals purged from an area, or Aboriginals incompletely removed from an area. The change from one state to another is called a state transition. The set of all states across all processes exists in an abstract state space. A state is therefore the status of a system that 284 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide is waiting to execute a transition or set of actions to be executed when a condition is fulfilled or when an event is received, say if Aboriginals remain, exterminate more Aboriginals in an area. Genetic algorithms allow us to model how the behaviour of a dynamical system evolves or shows emergent behaviour, sometimes (but not always) through a pattern of meta-stable states as we often see in Lemkinian genocide. A dynamical system is a system that maps from some abstract space into itself, as for an iterative process flow nested decomposition that we saw earlier. Process flow nested decomposition Such processes form part of graph theory, which studies how things are interconnected, and are part of algebraic discipline. Algebra allows us to process knowledge in terms of numbers, symbols and equations. The abstract algebraic dynamical state space can be understood in terms of a Hilbertian vector space (pioneered by David Hilbert) that works in an infinite number of dimensions and allows functional analysis. In this sense, we may conceive of history as algebra. This is the key analytical approach that we will use in deconstructing genocide. 658 An abstract space is the set of potential system states. The mapping can repeat iteratively over discrete or continuous time. An attractor is the characteristic behaviour of a system, which may discretely map a series of stable states or patterns as it transforms from one pattern to the next, like phase transitions with H2O, or the set of phases in Lemkinian genocide. 659 Conclusion For Australian genocide, it is almost irrelevant what the initial conditions prescribe, as the dynamical rules (or Government policies) will ensure that the stages of Lemkinian genocide or characteristic behavioural states will follow. The Australian genocidal process - conforming to a collective behavioural pattern corresponds to a deterministic dynamical system (intentional) with some co-variant stochastic (or probabilistic density functional) characteristics.660 By externalising the governing dynamical rules in an evolutionary algorithm, we can determine the emergent behavioural properties of a complex system661 without the need to use real time workflow models and persistent data stores, which show intentionality as an abstraction gradient along a hierarchical nested process decomposition. It can be likened to taking an fMRI real-time scan compared with using a functional diagnostic decision tree; with fMRI, we can see the multi-phasic process played out before our eyes in a complex system dynamic. 285 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Previously, we have presented an instance of this dynamic process behaviour in the form of static contextual referents or case instances of a type process. Although these diagrams are valuable, they carry a lot of information and can be difficult to read. Genetic algorithms provide a collapsed time overview of the system behaviour and help us understand how Lemkinian genocide evolved through the political process. Later in this chapter, we will set out the algorithm logic diagram for Australian genocide, using constraint analysis. Flocking Behaviour in Settler Society We can model groups of individuals to behave as a collective organism or entity, according to simple rules expressed in a genetic algorithm. Flocking behaviour in birds has been extensively studied, and seems relevant without exception to all species, including humans. We have the equivalent shoaling behaviour of fish, or swarming by insects, or the herding instinct by land animals. The basic algorithmic rules for ‘flocking’ behaviour in its variant forms can be expressed by a deceptively simple rule set: Rule 1: Separation. Avoid crowding neighbours. Rule 2: Alignment. Steer towards average heading of neighbours. Rule 3: Cohesion. Steer towards average position of neighbours. Figure 76 Genetic rules for flocking behaviour in dynamical systems The algorithm gives rise to emergent structures, where individuals, acting according to certain rules within a given environment, form collective behaviours (or identifiable and patterned ways of acting) as a group. The model originates from the idea first proposed by Viczek et al that bird i adjusts its velocity towards the average of its neighbours’ velocities and the distance between birds remains bounded for both continuous and discrete time. The mathematical model shows continuous aggregate behaviour by the group. From Viczek, let IR2 be replaced by Euclidean space IE3 and let the heading θ be replaced by the velocity v. The genetic model that contains the ‘flocking’ rule set is: xi (t + 1) = xi (t) + vi (t) vi (t + 1) = (1/ ni (t)) Σ j∈Ni(t) vj (t) where xi, vi ∈ IE3 for i = 1,...,k and time t = 0, 1, 2 .... (1) Here Ni(t) = {j ≤ k | || xi(t) − xj (t) || ≤ r} and ni(t) = # Ni(t) for some r > 0. [Viczek, Cucker] If we now apply the same genetic algorithm (Rules 1, 2 and 3) to squatters, functionally spreading out along the pastoral frontier to select new land, we arrive at an exactly similar result, where squatters show convergent ‘flocking’ behaviour, acting as an organic group or system of autonomous agents operating within some set of behavioural constraints determined by Government policies. 286 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Conclusion These ‘flocking’ rules define the pastoralists’ invasion front and the corresponding rise of settler supremacy from de facto to de jure. The flocking behaviour for invasive occupation resulted in a violent competition for the land and an extended land war, ultimately won by the superior force of weaponry, overall numbers, and one-sided legislation. We will later model this flocking behaviour in an extended parametric space that is defined by genocidal constraint rules. Simplified diffusion model for settler expansionism In the case of a simple diffusion model of settler expansionism, we can use a random walk technique to derive the diffusion equation, based on the analytical techniques proposed by Murray and others. 662 Consider a one-dimensional settler motion, where a settler is represented by a point particle. Murray writes: U (x, t) = = lim ∆x→0, ∆t → 0 (1 / (4 π Dt))1/2 P ((x / ∆x), (t / ∆t)) / 2 ∆x (1) e(–x) x / (4Dt)) where x and t are the continuous space and time variables and D is the diffusivity of the particles, that is, how efficiently the particles (settlers) disperse from a high density (or concentration intensity of land occupation) to a low density.663 If we now extend this one-dimensional model to the classical approach, that is, Fickian diffusion, we define the diffusion flux J, the number of settlers, where J is proportional to the concentration of settlers, where (in one dimension): J is proportional to - ∂c/ ∂x, or J = - D (∂c / ∂x), (2) where c (x, t) is the concentration of settlers in an area and D is their diffusivity from the area. The minus sign indicates that diffusion ‘transports’ settlers from a high to a low population concentration in available land area.664 Continuing Murray’s analysis, we can now write in the context of invasive settlerism a general conservation equation, which says that the rate of change of the number of settlers in a region is equal to the rate of flow of settlers across some frontier boundary plus any settler population increase within a boundary. If the expanded region is x0 < x < x1 and no additional settler population is created: ∂/ ∂t = x0 ∫ x1 c (x, t) dx = J (x0, t) – J (x1, t) If we say x1 = x0 + t, where x → 0, then using (1) we get the classical diffusion equation in one dimension: 287 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide ∂c / ∂t = - ∂J / ∂x = ∂ (D (∂c/ ∂ x)) / ∂x, where if D is constant, becomes: ∂c / ∂t = D ∂2c /∂ x2 (3) If an additional q settlers are released per unit area at x = 0 at t = 0, then: c (x, t) = q ∂(x), where ∂(x) is the Dirac delta function and the solution for (3) is: c (x, t) = q / (2(π Dt)1/2 e- (x^2)/( 4 Dt) , t > 0 (4) which, with q = 1, is the same result as (1), obtained from a random walk approach when the step and time sizes are small compared with x and t.665 This diffusion model relies on ∆x and ∆t tending to zero in such a way that D exists; a better method might be to derive it using a probability density function (say, through Focker-Planck equations) with a Markov process. Murray then argues: Now consider diffusion in three space dimensions. Let S be an arbitrary surface enclosing a volume V. The general conservation equation says that the rate of change of the amount of material (number of settlers) in V is equal to the rate of flow of material (settlers) across S into V plus the number of settlers created in V. Thus: ∂/∂t v ∫ c (x, t) dv = - s ∫ J. ds + v ∫ ⨍ dv , where J is the flux of settlers and ⨍, which represents the source of settlers (immigration), may be a function of c, x, and t. Applying the divergence theorem to the surface integral and assuming c (x, t) is continuous, the last equation becomes: v∫ [ ∂c/ ∂t + ∇.J – ⨍ (c, x, t)] dv = 0. Since the volume V is arbitrary, the integral must be zero and so the conservation equation for c is; ∂c/ ∂t + ∇.J = ⨍ (c, x, t). (5) This equation holds for a general flux transport J, whether by diffusion or some other process. If classical diffusion is the process then the generalisation of (2) is: J = - D ∇c and (4) becomes: ∂c/ ∂t = ⨍ + ∇.(D ∇c), (6) where D may be a function of x and c and ⨍ a function of c, x, and t. 666 288 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The source term ⨍ in an ecological context could represent the birth-death process and c the population density n, with logistic population growth ⨍ = r n (1 – n/k), where r is the linear reproduction rate and k the carrying capacity of the environment. The resulting equation with D constant is: ∂n/ ∂t = r n (1 – n/k) + D∇2n (Fisher-Kolmogoroff equation)667 (6)668 If we further generalize (5) to the case in which there are two or more interacting populations such as settlers and Aboriginals, we then have a vector ui (x, t), t = 1, 2,,,, m of densities each diffusing with its own diffusion coefficient Di, and interacting according to the vector source term f. Then (5) becomes: ∂u/ ∂t = f + ∇.(D ∇u) (7) where D is a matrix of the diffusivities in which, if there is no cross diffusion among the populations, is simply a diagonal matrix. In (7) ∇u is a tensor so ∇.D∇u is a vector.669 We summarize and extend Murray’s analysis: Diffusivity into a contested space between multiple (two or more) species can involve a population logistics interaction that may be relatively benign (as for, say, vegetation and herbivores) or it may be competitive (when each species occupies a similar ecological niche, say two types of herbivores) or it may be both (as an accommodation between species is reached over time, following a period of competition). If competitive, the nature of the diffusive species interaction may be adaptive (where multiple species coexist), or disruptive (as for the spread of a feral weed or a contagion of cane toads or a plague infestation as for anthropogenic climate change and ecological destruction), or absorptive (as for the ecological integration between, say, flowering plants and pollinating bees), or infective (as for the spread of disease), or it may follow a predator/ prey model. With human societies, a predator/ prey interaction may reduce to an invasion/ resistance modality; or it may assume the character of perpetrator/ victim as for mass killing; or, in the extreme case, culpable and normalized genocide may be the preferred tool for the dominant party in order to achieve its ends, whether territorial, or economic, or ideological. For Tasmania, there was limited Palawa diffusivity back into the settler population for the period between 1803 and 1853, either through miscegenation or cultural adaptation/ absorption. The sealer cohort kept themselves removed from mainland society, existing in tight communities in Bass Strait. Within the geographical boundaries of a relatively small island, rapid and unconstrained British pastoral expansion during the 1820s caused fierce localised Palawa resistance in the form of desperate guerrilla warfare, but Britain deployed such numbers against them through military, police, or armed settlers - that Indigenous resistance was quickly overwhelmed. It was the largest internal war in Australia’s history since first colonisation, far exceeding the size and scope of all other discrete declarations of martial law if we discount the murderous 289 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide effect of concerted and sustained campaigns of ethnic cleansing by the military, police and settlers that saw Aboriginal depopulation exceed 95% in the period between 1788 and 1911. Apart from martial law, almost all other massacres of Aboriginals or violent territorial engagements against the local indigenous population were conducted by the military and settlers up to the 1840s; and thereafter, flying police detachments, and mounted paramilitary settlers in a campaign of ambush and dispersal that continued until at least 1928. But ethnic cleansing and genocide were hard work, as Arthur constantly pointed out to his superiors when he importuned them for more armed troops, or additional convicts, or when he exhorted the settlers for a levée en masse, an armed settler uprising in a common cause. The conflict quickly became a one-sided war of attrition, as it would across Australia. The Tasmanian pastoral expansion was fed by aggressive British immigration and unsustainable land alienation. From 1826, the progenerative initiating period of Arthur’s ‘black war’, the British army was increasingly brought into counterinsurgency operations to assist the civil powers, which included field police and roving foot patrols. With Tasmanian martial law declared between 1828 and 1832, we conclude that relatively slow settler diffusivity (through random walk modelling) was less important in Britain’s territorial occupation of Palawa country than accelerated expansionism, driven by incoming settler population pressure and the rapid alienation of Aboriginal land, all accompanied by determined invasive militaristic resolve by the occupying power. Conclusion It was to be a similar pattern across all Australian settlements as the frontier expanded through a metastatic process across multiple beachheads, replicating its behaviours within the Occupation process. Such expansion inevitably brought conflict with the local Indigenous population and the bloody conflict usually resolved itself into what we now call genocide across a multiplicity of contested spaces but at the time of their inception were characterised as justifiable extermination or ‘dispersal’ or other euphemisms of targeted slaughter and racial repression. British genocidal methods in Tasmania - extermination, subjugation, detention, marginalization - were adopted across the continent, like a phased chemotactic invasion along a reward gradient, absorbing, excreting, and would define the British occupation process for the next century as Aboriginal society was purged, their land confiscated, their culture obliterated. Simplified wave model for settler expansionism670 In Australia, the structure, and dynamics of a settler expansionary or displacive wave is determined by the originating population pressure and the kinetics of normative acquisitive behaviour, each of which are conformably shaped by Government policy constraints involving land availability and accelerated immigration. 290 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide For example, Raymond Evans estimates that in Queensland, by the early 1860s, the pastoral frontier was advancing at the rate of about 320kms per year.671 Compare this travelling wave velocity with that of a the typical range expansion of a species plague, which rarely exceed 10kms per year.672 It emphasizes the unnatural speed of the Australian genocidal invasive front, beyond that of most extreme biological expansionary studies including the cane toad (Bufo marinus), which now spreads through the tropical north at between 40 and 60kms per year.673 The invasive spatial spread of species is well studied. The classic diffusion equation is given by Fisher-Kolmogoroff: ∂u / ∂t = k u (1- u) + D (∂2 / ∂x2) , where k and D are positive parameters. Lubina and Levin674 were able to derive, using the above equation, that the velocity (v) of the expansionary travelling wave is 2 (r D) ½ , where r is the linear growth rate and D is the diffusion coefficient. Based upon Evans, v = 320 km/ yr along a radial direction for a particular time period and territory, where rD = 12.6. That is, the invasive spread is proportional to the increase in settler numbers, a result we also note empirically in this chapter, where diffusion/ dispersivity and invasive wave propagation is due to settler population pressure and the availability of land. The range expansion tends to increase linearly with time up to a territorial boundary, where the secondary effects of invader competition for resources become evident (for example, the buying and selling of invaded space rather than unconstrained granting of Aboriginal land or claiming possession of ‘virgin’ territory by simple squatting). We now consider the modalities of settler territorial occupation, including expansion and population diffusion, and weigh their relative contribution in Aboriginal dispossession. We will simplify our model to assume that Aboriginal resistance was ad-hoc, localized and relatively minimal in dampening or constraining the rate of invasive settler expansionism, which can be likened to a travelling wave of some particular disposition. As noted by Murray, such waves appear in many biological phenomena, for example, the choreographed embryonic developmental events following egg fertilisation, or the spread of an infective disease epidemic, or the chemotactically directed movement of a microorganism such as a slime mould into a food source, or the dispersal of a species (such as humans) into some ecological and economic space (such as Tasmania), which we will examine shortly. We will now introduce Murray’s analysis675 for travelling waveforms, where diffusion and dispersion play a crucial role. We will then use this analysis to investigate species invasion and range expansion, of the kind presented by British settlerism into Aboriginal territory. We will transpose Murray’s arguments into the context of settler diffusion and expansion. He writes: With a standard diffusion equation in one space dimension, typically of the form: 291 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide ∂u/ ∂t = D ∂2u / ∂x2 (8) for a settler concentration u, the time to convey information in the form of a changed settler concentration over a distance L is O (L2 / D). 676 If L~100kms, the diffusion coefficient D is excessively large. Therefore, simple diffusion is unlikely to be the main vehicle for transmitting information over significant distances. When acquisitive settler behavioural kinetics (driven by the ‘bush telegraph’ and Government maps of alienated land) are coupled with diffusion, travelling waves of settler concentration exist and can effect expansionism much faster than the straight diffusional processes governed by equations like (8), which in a simple one-dimensional scalar case can look like ∂u/ ∂t = f (u) + D ∂2u / ∂x2 (9) where u is the settler concentration, f (u) represents the behavioural kinetics and D is the diffusion coefficient, here taken to be constant. Murray continues: If we are to represent changing settler concentrations across an area, we come to the questions: What do we mean by a travelling wave? How should we model it? Customarily, a travelling wave is taken to be a wave that travels without change of shape. Therefore, if a solution u (x, t) represents a travelling wave, the shape of the solution will be the same for all time t and the speed c of propagation is constant. If we look at this wave in a travelling frame, it will appear stationary, and is given by: u (x, t) = u (x – ct) = u (z), where z = x – ct (10) If x – ct is constant, so is u, and the coordinate system moves with speed c. The dependent variable z is sometimes called the wave variable. When we look for travelling wave solutions of an equation or system of equations in x and t in the form (9), we have ∂u/ ∂t = - c du/ dz and ∂u/ ∂x = du / dz So partial differential equations in x and t become ordinary differential equations in z. To be physically realistic, u(z) has to be bounded for all z and non-negative with the quantities with which we are concerned, that is, settler populations of some size within a defined area. Murray then summarizes the possibility of wavelike solutions in diffusivity: It is part of the classical theory of linear parabolic equations, such as (8), that there are no physically realistic travelling wave solutions. Suppose we look for solutions in the form (10); then (8) becomes: D (d2u/ dz2) + c (du/ dz) = 0 giving u (z) = A + B (e –cz/D) where A and B are integration constants. Since u has to be bounded for all z, B must be zero since the exponential becomes unbounded as z → - ∞ . u(z) = A, a constant, is therefore not a wave solution. However, the parabolic reaction diffusion equation (9) can show travelling wave solutions. 292 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide The classic and simplest non-linear solution 677 of (9) is: ∂u/ ∂t = k u (1 – u) + D (∂2u/ ∂x2) (11) where k and D are positive parameters. Conclusion Based upon Murray’s analysis, we conclude there are no travelling (or propagating) wave solutions in these linear parabolic equations (9); but there are travelling wave solutions for non-linear parabolic equations. For these solutions, we turn to the classic Fisher-Kolmogoroff equation (11). However, gentle settler diffusivity appears to have made a relatively small contribution to the rapid spread of territorial occupation in Tasmania and elsewhere, for which unconstrained acquisitive behavioural kinetics processed through a destructive cornucopian supply/ demand model for land coupled with speculative immigration seems to have been the primary expansionist driver for invasive settlerism. We will show that the displacive settler behavioural dynamics had a socio-economic wavelike aspect that responded to British immigration policy and the rate of Government land alienation, each of which fuelled settler expansionism. In this frenzied occupation process, the imposed rights of the settler-group overrode Indigenous rights in a land rush only limited by supply and agricultural economic cycles. These externally imposed economic cycles between 1803 and 1833, driven by mercantile arrangements between Britain and its colonies, had an originating impact on rapid settler expansionism that shaped the genocidal occupation process and overwhelmed any intrinsic wavelike properties of settler diffusivity and the associated velocity of its propagation. 678 Modelling the displacive pressure of immigration and land grants We can model the displacive pressure of immigration (push factor) and land grants (pull factor) in Tasmania between 1803 and 1836 and how it drove Palawa dispossession. Vectorial settler expansionism in Tasmania occurs over time. The rate of expansion is a function of settler population pressure within some limits of occupation and the availability of suitable pastoral land at time t. Therefore, we can envisage a series of time lapsed maps of total land grants, each showing the spreading boundary of territorial occupation. Sharon Morgan has developed such a set of maps for 1804, 1808, 1813, 1816, 1819, 1821 and 1823.679 We summarize the time-lapsed alienation of land and the spread of settlement in Part 2, The role of settlement in Tasmania genocide. Each time-lapsed picture of total land alienation/ settlement represents a case instance of the occupation process, a process driven by formal British policies for immigration and land alienation. In Introduction, 680 we introduced the hypothesis: 293 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide If the vector force (or vectorial agency) of expansionary Imperialism is represented as a field D, then we can say that D is a source that gives rise to a positive displacive flux into (and out of) a (contested) space V at a geographic boundary S. This is conceptually equivalent to Maxwell’s first field equation, which is based on Gauss’s Law: where, in our two dimensional representation, the divergence of the invasive field D flowing from the ‘volume’ (in our limiting case, this is an area) V at some boundary point on S is proportional to the force inside the ‘volume’. So the strength of the originating expansionary (colonizing) force determines the disruptive effect at some geographic boundary (Vs). Conclusion That is, we hypothesize: the rate of displacive colonizing expansion (ρv) is a function of the rate of immigration (I). In the chapter, The co-determinate roles of immigration and land alienation in Tasmanian genocide, we develop a detailed regression model for the algorithmic relationship between immigration and land grants, where we show that there is: • • a strong correlation between the displacive pressure caused by the arrival of immigrants (the nett total free male population I in any year between 1824 and 1831 inclusive) and the demand for land to be alienated (measured by the cumulative acreage granted G, commencing from 1824 up to the year in question), when the British militarized war against the Palawa reached its peak between 1828 and 1832 under Arthur’s authoritarian, genocidal, self-serving, and often duplicitous regime. We note that Palawa society received the greatest number of British assaults in 1826, two years before Arthur formally proclaimed his war. Simplified dispersal model for settler expansionism681 Simplified species dispersal (for example, that of settlers ‘dispersing’ into ‘virgin’ territory) often involves wave phenomena in interacting populations where spatial effects are important. Diffusion models for animal dispersal usually apply to local dilute systems, that is, with low neighbouring population densities where the effects are short-range. 294 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide A characteristic feature of the Tasmanian settler population between 1803 and 1833 is the discrete time population growth settler (rate of immigration I), which we will show682 to have a major effect on their spatial dispersal when coupled with a significant pull factor such as land grants (G). Aboriginal resistance to the settler territorial spread created a temporary reduction in settler dispersive population pressure across some boundary of occupation, but the Palawa guerrilla war could not be maintained; their numbers were constantly being eroded; they were unable to sleep at night for fear of ‘settler’ ambush; ongoing harassment by roving/ pursuing parties created fearfulness for their safety; they realized there was no hope of a just outcome where their land rights were recognized; they began to despair.683 The rate of dispersal (measured by a dispersal flux J) depends on the population density n and a matrix of diffusivities D such that D increases with n: J = - D (n) ∇n dD / dn > 0 684 In our proposed predator prey model for Tasmania, we note there is significant competition between species (settlers and Aboriginals) for resources that defines the amount of predation (extermination). By ‘settler’, we will mean an invasive British population demography defined by the military and colonists. We also note that in the absence of predators (‘settlers’) the prey (Aboriginals) might satisfy a logistic growth limited by some maximum carrying capacity. 685 Murray summarizes a logistics model first proposed by Verhulst in 1838 for a self-limiting process when a population (say, Aboriginals) became too large for a territory’s carrying capacity: dN/ dt = r N (1 – (N/K), where r and K are positive constants , the per capita birth rate is r (1 – (N/K)) and N (t) is the population at time t. 686 However, the Tasmanian Palawa population seems to have been slowly growing or stable until the British invasion.687 This population does not appear to have exceeded Tasmania’s carrying capacity, nor is there evidence for a population collapse before the British invasion. Therefore, a realistic predator prey model is represented by: dN/ dt = N F (N, P) where F (N, P) = r (1 – (N/K)) – P R (N) and R (N) is a predator term or functional response of the predator to a change in prey density, following some saturation effect. That is, N R(N) reaches some limit. 295 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide We can observe that such a predator prey model barely applies for the ‘settler’/ Aboriginal contested space because the predation is unconstrained by the usual parameters. For example, when the prey numbers reduce, there is no exponential decay in predator numbers. Conversely, when British predation decreases, we know the prey population does not increase following a logistics curve because the natural Aboriginal birth rate is generationally suppressed by other factors such as depleted numbers of child-bearing females and the loss of adult males, each of which accelerates population decline, a decline that continues with opportunistic ‘settler’ predation. Conclusion In Tasmania’s extreme case, the predator prey model proposed by Murray and others breaks down because the predator kills without cause other than for sheer antipathy and greed; the killing is only limited by predator resources or the prey population becomes severely depleted and much harder to find. That is, genocide is an extreme predatory situation where there is no predator prey domain stability or limit cycle periodic stability across some equilibrium point. We can draw an example: In some geographically bounded ecosystem we can imagine two species in a dance of accommodation, where one preys on the other according to their need and population numbers adapt in some determinable way. But suppose one species/ race rounds up the other and holds them in captivity, to be led into a slaughterhouse. Or suppose that one species/ race marauds the territory of the other, killing at will, or carrying out ethnic cleansing. It is beyond predatory. That is the unequal nature of genocide. In Australia, the vectorial agencies of uncontrolled settler dispersion and corresponding Aboriginal ethnic cleansing were immigration and land alienation. 688 Land was the genocidal motivation for Britain, for settler society and for economic triumphalism. Violent Aboriginal displacement and destruction followed the British territorial invasion, an ineluctable tsunami, a wave of avarice, a blitzkrieg of violence that swept away the indigenous landowners, purging them from their home soil. A wavelike politico-socio-economic model for settler behaviour Individual behaviour is the sum of innate, learned and acquired characteristics, the patterned response to some stimulus or triggering condition. So is collective behaviour. To the extent that behaviours are learned or acquired, we can assign dynamic vectors (independent variables) of individual behaviour – political, social, economic – that can become more equally potentiated (that is, allowed to respond in a patterned way to an event or related set of events) across a critical mass or group of individuals, given appropriate political-social-economic conditions. 296 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide DV1 DV2 DV3 Figure 77. Emergent dynamical behaviour of colonial society expressed through the mechanics of wave like propagation resulting from process driven events initiated by Government policies. As Semelin notes, mass killing often has a political use, and can be politically encouraged for some perceived benefit, usually political but sometimes economic, occasionally social. All these key behavioural factors have a multivariate co-dependency. Through equivalent potentiation, the aggregated behavioural vectors resolve themselves to become increasingly synchronous across a defined population, and the emergent properties of the system develop a pattern like a normalising wave, a modality, with shape and forward momentum. Strictly speaking, the classical wave equation is a hyperbolic partial differential equation. It typically concerns a time variable t, one or more spatial variables x1, x2, …, xn, and a scalar function u = u (x1, x2, …, xn; t), whose values can model the displacement of a wave. The wave equation for u is: where ∇2 is the (spatial) Laplacian and where c is a fixed constant, in our case, the velocity of the propagated behavioural wave. In Cartesian coordinates, the Laplacian is represented by the rate of change of position for each dimensional element, as described by: We have simplified ∆⨍ to operate as a vector coordinate ƒ→ = (⨍x, ⨍y, ⨍z), where the quantities are numerical coefficients, rather than second order multi-dimensional partial differentials. 297 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide We can also write ⨍→ = ⨍xi + ⨍yj + ⨍zk. In our example, this means that the magnitude of |DV→ | is simplified as √ (DVx2 + DVy2 + DVz2).. Therefore, if the vectors are of equal value (equally potentiated), then: |DV→| = DVx√3 = 1.7 DVx. That is, there is an aggregate multiplier effect of 1.7. This is the limiting case, which defines the dynamical envelope or maximum amplitude of the behavioural wave front. Expressed in terms of the behavioural wave vectors, |DV→| = √(DV2political + DV2economic + DV2social); it is a first order approximation of the dynamical behavioural model. This multi-dimensional system model of a behavioural wave is a potential theoretical extension of the Gini index,689 which measures wealth inequality relative to different groups within some bounded population. The proposed multi-dimensional model would need to measure the dynamical behavioural wave dimensional properties as probabilistic density functions within the Laplacian, for which the statistical Gini coefficient partially represents one dimension, DVeconomic. The behavioural wave tends to structure the associated society with collective and unique attributes or a collective and normally distributed behavioural phenotype. It is the effect of the environment on acquired societal behaviour, as triggered by the aggregate effect of certain originating events, and in certain circumstances, the effect can be trans-generational or epigenetically heritable. Suppose Dynamic Vector 1 (DV1) is the aggregate economy, DV2 is the political process (involving a system of laws and regulations), and DV3 is collective individuation (or societal self-interest). The scale does not really matter in this thought experiment. If each vector is fully potentiated, the statistically significant group behaviour or wave dynamic or vector space can appear like a unique biometric that identifies the emergent characteristics of its present and future history. The behavioural vectors are co-variant, any one of which can affect the others. There are ready demotic examples, such as: there was a wave of popular support (or revulsion or sentiment or anger or some other quality) for (something); or the tide of public opinion turned on (something); or the blacks are a sub species and must be removed in the face of expanding civilisation, because they are an impediment to social and economic progress; and so on. Conclusion We respond to these aphorisms because they seem to reflect natural systems, what we know of the world. 298 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide So how would we physically describe a dynamic behavioural wave? Above all, to be persistent, it must have collectively shared (normative) and stable characteristics; therefore, it should be equivalently potentiated across each dynamic vector. It is difficult for politicians to achieve certain social or economic change without popular support. Social cohesion demanded it. Such was the case for settler society and its wave of invasive occupation. Wave dynamics of group behaviour - reprised Colonial society overwhelmingly shared a common purpose: the pursuit of landed wealth. Politicians and pastoralists generally all agreed on what was required, following a time-old procedure. The occupation process followed a repeatable pattern of actionable steps. Government enacted legislation to legalise the resolve, with armed force not far behind. The economy and prosperity depended on it. So did Britain. And subsidised immigration. Aboriginal welfare was barely a factor. The wave dynamics of group behaviour were determined from this mutually shared objective. The purpose of settler society was to push Aboriginals aside as part of the natural order, where the weak must give way to the strong. Or was this purpose more realistically expressed as economically driven ethnic cleansing, with settler society marching in ranks to the rousing tunes of racism and self-interest, led by baton waving Governments? Conversely, without racist land legislation hastily rushed into effect by squatter dominated Governments, and without a racist criminal code and armed Government enforcement, that is, if the determining behavioural vectors - DVpolitical , DVeconomic , and DVsocial - had opposing or counter cyclic values (particularly DVpolitical),690 it would have been more unlikely that the colonial land rush would have been so pronounced and prolonged; the economic motive would have been much less, as would the drive for speculative self-enrichment. Suppose we assign a scale for DVpolitical in a range of 1 to 10, where 1 is least racist (compassionate) and 10 is most racist (as ascribed by discriminatory legislation). Suppose we develop similar scales for the other potentiating behavioural vectors, say a scale from sustainable to exploitative for DVeconomic ; and altruistic (empathetic) to highly self-interested for DVsocial ; it is easy to how an overall behavioural dynamic can emerge for a defined group, within a normal distribution. However, none of these index measurements yet exist. We still have no objective method that allows us to pass a calibrated multi-dimensional scale across any society or social group. For as long as we cannot measure, we must passively succumb to ‘larger unknown forces’, like invoking the ‘evil spirits’ or ‘noxious smells’ (say, miasma as a cause of cholera) of yesterday to explain disease, both pathogenic and environmental. Perhaps it helps us understand, but not condone, why colonial society was normatively responsible for ethnic cleansing and actively participated in mass killing because of the economic benefits, all enabled by overwhelmingly dysfunctional but normative political resolve. 299 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide It may also help explain why contemporaneous Aboriginal society remains among the most disadvantaged on Earth, in terms of financial and physical health, which is not a statistic of which Australia should be proud. It suggests that there is scope for much better investigation and measurement of epigenetic effects that are moulded by environmental factors that are still very poorly understood. Indeed, the psychological suffering still evident in many Aboriginal communities has aspects of acquired collective trans-generational Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tony Broe, a geriatric medical specialist with a deep interest in Aboriginal welfare, observes that long term Indigenous neural plasticity seems to correlate with better early education, and conversely, the disproportionately high Aboriginal Alzheimer dementia statistics are probably related to poor cardiovascular health (for example, the pathogenesis of free radical oxidative stress caused by prolonged poor nutrition, where hypoxia may be a trigger) and under-developed early brain function (caused by inadequate paediatric educational stimulation), rather than the popular misconception of alcohol dependency,691 which is merely a risk factor in some future but as yet un-tasked longitudinal study that focuses on the relevant epidemiology and morbidity in any sub-population such as Aboriginal society. The question is: do we have the will or the interest to systematically enquire into the pernicious humanitarian problem, the ongoing human damage, and be accountable for its solution? If ‘closing the gap’ is any guide, our society is prepared merely to watch and do little, not indemnify or redress or offer a treaty or provide Constitutional recognition. So, end-stage Lemkinian genocide continues through indifference. The cycle of Aboriginal suffering goes on. Hierarchical Self-Similarity in Group and Crowd Behaviours We are yet to develop a comprehensive theory of complex non-linear dynamical systems. It has attracted little research to date. In an important contribution to modelling non-linear complexity, Ivancevic, Reid and others692 have mathematically investigated the Hamiltonian693 description of social, cognitive and physical fields at different levels (including macroscopic, classical, inter-personal crowd, microscopic, quantum and intra-personal) and the resultant path an individual agent will follow, based on these fields. Their work has been used by Australia’s Defence, Science and Technology Group to develop a computer simulation of crowd dynamics as the collective result of the paths of individual agents within a self-similar socio-cognito-physical control law,694 which they have determined to be unique and operates at different scales of agent functioning. Their control law is represented in an open Liouville 695 equation. That is, they have developed a formal proof of the existence of a unique behavioural control law for crowd self-similarity at different scales, making it important for understanding macroscopic inter-personal crowd behaviours such as British Imperial expansionism and settler territorial invasion. This is a brief summary of their findings for an open Liouville equation under different formalisms: 300 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Hamiltonian Formalism 696 Suppose that on the macroscopic crowd level we have a conservative Hamiltonian system acting in a 2N-dimensional symplectic phase space M = T * Q = {qi (t), pi (t)}, i = 1. . .N which is the cotangent bundle of the crowd–configuration manifold Q = {qi}, with a Hamiltonian function H = H (qi, pi, t) : T * Q× R → R. The conservative dynamics are defined by classical Hamiltonian canonical equations: q˙i = ∂pi H – contravariant velocity equation , p˙i = −∂qi H – covariant force equation, (1) (where overdot denotes the total time derivative). Within the framework of the conservative Hamiltonian system, we can apply the formalism of classical Poisson brackets: for any two functions A = A (qi, pi , t) and B = B (qi, pi , t) their Poisson bracket is (using the summation convention) defined as: [A,B] = (∂qi A ∂pi B − ∂pi A ∂qi B). Conservative Classical Dynamics 697 Any function A (qi, pi , t) is called a constant (or integral) of motion of the conservative system (1) if the following equation holds: ˙A ≡ ∂t A + [A, H] = 0, which implies ∂t A = − [A, H] For example, if A = ρ (qi, pi , t) is a density function of ensemble phase–points (or a probability density to see a state x(t) = (qi (t), pi (t)) of an ensemble at a moment t), then equation ∂t ρ = − [ρ, H] (2) represents the Liouville theorem, which is usually derived from the continuity equation: ∂t ρ + div (ρ ˙x) = 0 Conserved quantity here is the Hamiltonian function H = H (qi, pi , t), which is the sum of kinetic and potential energy. Open classical dynamics: Hamiltonian crowd model 698 We now move to the open (non-conservative) system: on the macroscopic crowd level the opening operation is equivalent to adding a covariant vector-field of external (dissipative 301 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide and/or motor) forces Fi = Fi (qi, pi , t) to (the right-hand side of) the covariant Hamiltonian force equation (1), so that crowd Hamiltonian equations obtain the open (dissipative and/or forced) form: q˙i = ∂pi H, p˙i = −∂qi H + Fi (3) In the framework of the open Hamiltonian system (3), dynamics of any function A (qi, pi , t) is defined by the open (dissipative and/or forced) evolution equation: ∂t A = −[A, H] + Fi [A, qi] , ( [A, qi] = −∂pi A) . In particular, if A = ρ (qi, pi, t) represents the density function of ensemble phase–points then its dynamics is given by the open Liouville equation (dissipative and/or forced): ∂t ρ = −[ρ, H] + Fi [ρ, qi] . (4) Equation (4) represents the open classical model of our microscopic crowd dynamics. Neural Crowd System 699 Using the analogy with neuronal biophysics, we will consider two different types of agents: (i) ‘male’ agents of graded-response type (GRA), and (ii) ‘female’ agents of coupled-oscillators type (COA). Behaviour of both types of agents can be presented in the form of a Langevin equation: σ˙i = fi + ηi (t), where σi = σi(t) are the continual personal variables of the ith agent (representing either action potentials in case of GRA, or oscillator phases in case of COA); Jij are individual synaptic weights; fi = fi (σi , Jij) are the deterministic forces (given, in GRA-case, by fi = jΣ Jij tanh [γ σj ] − σi + θi with γ > 0 and with the θi representing input functions, and in COA–case, by fi = jΣ Jij sin(σj − σi) + ωi, with ωi representing the natural frequencies of the individual oscillators); the noise variables are given as ηi (t) = Δ→0 lim ζi (t) (2T/Δ) ½ , where ζi (t) denote uncorrelated Gaussian distributed random forces and the parameter T controls the amount of noise in the system, ranging from T = 0 (deterministic dynamics) to T = ∞ (completely random dynamics). A more convenient, probabilistic description of the random process is provided by the FokkerPlanck equation, describing the time evolution of the probability density P(σi) 302 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide ∂t P(σi) = − iΣ ∂σi [fi P(σi)] + T iΣ (∂σ)2 P(σi). (5) In the case of deterministic dynamics T = 0, equation (5) can be easily put into the form of the conservative Liouville equation (2), by making the substitutions: P(σi) → ρ, fi = σ˙i , and [ρ, H] ≡ div(ρ σ˙i) where H = H(σi, Jij ). Further, we can formally identify the stochastic forces, i.e., the secondorder noise-term T iΣ ∂(σi)2 with Fi [ρ, σi] , to get the open Liouville equation (4). Therefore, crowd level deterministic dynamics correspond to the conservative system (equation 2). Inclusion of stochastic forces corresponds to the system opening equation (4), implying the macroscopic arrow of time, which is also embedded in the directed graph model of a self-similar crowd behavioural dynamic system such as 19th century Australian settlerism that we summarized earlier and is expanded upon in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. Open Quantum System700 By formal quantization of equation (4), we obtain the quantum open Liouville equation: ∂t ˆρ = I {ˆˆρ, ˆH } − i ˆ Fi { ˆρ, ˆqi} , (6) where ˆ Fi = ˆ Fi (ˆqi, ˆpi, t) represents the covariant quantum operator of external friction forces in the Hilbert state space. Equivalence of Hierarchical Models 701 Both the macroscopic crowd–equation (4) and the microscopic agent–equation (6) have the same open Liouville form, which implies the arrow of time. This demonstrates the existence of the formal macro–micro socio–cognito–physical crowd self-similarity. Summary and conclusion Reid et al have proposed a nonlinear, complex, Hamiltonian model of a general socio–cognio– physical dynamics at the macroscopic, classical, interpersonal crowd level and microscopic, quantum, intra-personal agent level, is presented in the unique form of the open Liouville equation. At the microscopic level, this can be considered as a nonlinear extension of the linear correlation and factor dynamics. The open Liouville equation implies the arrow of time in both socio–cognio–physical dynamic processes and shows the existence of the formal crowd-agent space-time self-similarity. This shows the existence of a unique behavioural control law, which acts on different hierarchical levels of agents functioning. Based upon the important work of Reid et al, we have explored a model for ‘crowd’ behaviour or behavioural group dynamics in terms of social, cognitive and physical ‘crowd’ self-similarity at different scalar levels. We have further represented the movement over time of these 303 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide proposed dimensioned ‘crowd’ behaviour data points or agents in terms of a wave analogy, with the further point dimensions: social, political and economic as the basis for an extended Gini model. Circumscribing these dimensional lattices, we now develop a state transition model that shows prescriptive phase transitions of the settler ‘system’ dynamics, proceeding from invasive to exterminatory to repressive. The evolutionary ‘system’ is the dynamic representational space of the British territorial occupation of Australia. That is, we will show a multi-phasic state space for British genocidal invasion, one in which discrete semi-stable possibilities can be anticipated as a result of violent dispossessory Aboriginal displacement. The question is: does the behavioural crowd field model proposed by Reid et al hold for different sizes of crowds within a macro scale? We know that the model is consistent across different levels, but what about within a level? That is, can the model support a fractal (selfsimilar) pattern of genocide, from small groups of perpetrators, to self-perpetuating groups cloning themselves within an expanding area of homicidal dysfunction? We can speculate that the answer is yes. It is the next area of study. Genocidal constraint rules for settler society and emergent behaviour We can reinforce this herding (or flocking) squatter behaviour if we add overriding conditional rules (policies) introduced by Government702 for dispossession, extermination and calibrated repression. It is possible to model these policy driven socio-political-economic rules in an executable evolutionary genetic programme. The genocidal Government policies resulted in significant Aboriginal depopulation through the administrative machinery of the dispossession process. We may consider the British policies as constraint rules, which manage pastoralists’ land rush behaviour in an orthogonal space managed by Government. Such policies were progressively hardened into specific legislation involving land, immigration, and the resolution of the troubling question: how to manage a residual Aboriginal population who had lost their country and - to a large extent - their human rights? The answer: forcible deportation, detention, and repression. That is: ethnic cleansing, or removal of Aboriginals from an area to be then held against their will where their lives were rigidly controlled by the Government. 304 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Areal expansion of settlerism as a function of constraint rules Constraint rules Distance from Invasion point t1 Showing sectoral expansionism at different times (t1,…tn) as a function of Government policies t2 tn Breadth of Invasion front Figure 78 Settler expansionism was driven by Government policies There was a multiplicity of British invasion points over time, as the Government metastasized its expansionary and displacive reach. For Tasmania, the invasion began in 1803 across two fronts: what became Hobart (the Derwent valley) and Launceston in the north (the Tamar valley). Metastatic dispossession (dispossessory growth from secondary sites) and primary dispossession (from expansionary growth at the originating invasion site) also correlate with a fractal (self-similar) pattern of Lemkinian genocide, both within an invasion front and across different invasive frontiers. All such fronts gradually coalesced and consolidated power with various forms of Government as settler sovereignty gained control on the back of Britain’s incremental claims of territorial sovereignty, first in New South Wales, then Tasmania, followed by other ‘states’ or areas in a similar dispossessory pattern as the entire continent became the property of the British Crown. The White Australia legislation followed soon after, in an affirmation of Government repressive racist policies. We can conclude, therefore, that racism was the fundamental progenerative behaviour of British Imperial policy, a behaviour quickly adopted by newly minted states. The constraint rules define the political and societal parameters set by Government for invasive occupation, like the House rules in a game of cards, within which the players are intent on maximising their stake and winnings in a competitive process.703 In effect, these Government ‘constraints’ specify the rules for genocide in a positive feedback process, where the dysfunctional collective behaviours are deliberately amplified and normalised by formal Government actions. The observed pastoral society behaviour followed these Government bestowed genocidal rules (intentionalism) and was further driven by untempered settler self-interest (functionalism). Individuals produce collective patterns through their combined behaviour. The central limit theorem is fundamental to probability theory and states that if each of a large number of independent individuals contributes a small randomly distributed quantity to some total output, then that total output is distributed according to a Normal distribution. Moreover, the standard deviation of total output increases in proportion to the square root of the number of individuals. 305 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide For settler society, we can ascribe output to the aggregate number of acres selected by each settler or land speculator, as the pastoral frontier continued its rapid advance across the continent. Some speculators consolidated their land holdings to areas over a million acres. The central limit theorem is a probabilistic density function measure of some subject of interest by a given large population.704 The question then is: if the Government had modified its ‘constraint’ rules, and been more disposed to humanitarian concerns for Aboriginal welfare, would the resulting collective behaviour have been different? For example, if the Government had limited and managed the availability of Aboriginal land for white pastoralism, and if Britain had consistently punished white settlers for abuses towards Aboriginals, would genocide have been less likely? I think the answer is an unqualified ‘yes’. However, Britain did neither. Their intention was clear: to dispossesses Aboriginals, by violence if necessary. These genocidal constraint rules (or Government type policies) apply across the invasion frontier, including Tasmania. In each British administrative area, we can primarily distinguish the instantiation of these type constraint rules from those in other areas by their timing (actioning) and extent (scope). The effect (outcome) is similar across all parts of the continent, forming a fractal or self-similar pattern. We can overlay each type (and sub-type) constraint rule onto the Lemkinian sub-processes at different levels of weighting and detail, depending on variations in the way a localised government executed a particular policy-based constraint rule in its own regional area. We will type the key genocidal constraint rules as Indigenous dispossession, depopulation and repression, where each type rule (or Government policy) can be sub-typed. This constraint rule typology is the formulaic basis for our genetic algorithm. The type rules can intersect at the level of sub-type categorial agency. For example: ‘kidnapping of women and children’ was both repressive and also implicated in Aboriginal depopulation, nowhere more decisively than in Tasmania; deportation to detention centres like Wybalenna and Cherbourg (further ethnic cleansing) – a depopulation constraint sub-rule - was the common Government stratagem for late-stage genocidal victims; incarceration is becoming more popular with Governments today – a repression sub-rule - for the crime of being Aboriginal. We will consider the implications of these summary constraint rules on demographic population logistics in a later section. This is the summary racially targeted constraint rule typology705 for Lemkinian genocide within Australia: Dispossession Land expropriation Land allocation Immigration Disenfranchisement Depopulation 306 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Extermination Repression Sexual dispossession Drugs and disease Kidnapping of women and children Government dispossession policy: constraint rules Rule A: Dispossession (land expropriation). Government policy does not allow Aboriginals to own land. Government land policy over an extended period of around 150 years was the direct cause of massive Aboriginal depopulation (> 90%). Corollary: Genocide was the intent and outcome of Government land policy. Game was driven off and over-exploited, leaving Aboriginals short of food. In some cases, they were starving and forced to kill stock as a form of unrecognised rent, or depend on flimsy and health-damaging handouts of flour, sugar, and tobacco as fringe dwellers. Indicators: a) There were almost no legally recognized Aboriginal landowners until late in the 20th century. b) Having been dispossessed of their land, Aboriginals became trespassers, able to be removed or shot by police and pastoralists without fear of prosecution. c) Bathurst commissioned the Bigge report (1823) to make the colony financially more self-sufficient, through the sale of land. Bigge gave no consideration to the effect of this significant policy on Aboriginal rights. Nor did the British Government. d) Land legislation and grants, including Royal Charters (for example, the Van Diemen’s Land Company grant by the British Government). Accountability: Negative feedback constraints on Aboriginal human rights abuses were almost non-existent. Prosecutions were rare and convictions rarer still. Rule B: Dispossession (land allocation). Government alienates ‘Crown’ land for allocation to squatters and settlers. Indicators: Government land grants followed later by sales (after 1823). Land legislation excluded Aboriginals from ownership entitlements. Accountability: 307 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Negative feedback constraints on human rights abuses were almost non-existent. Rule C: Immigration. Government accelerates immigration through subsidisation arrangements, which increases the demand for more land. Indicators: Immigration policy dispossession. and legislation encouraged Aboriginal Accountability: Negative feedback constraints on human rights abuses were almost non-existent. Rule D: Disenfranchisement. Aboriginals were not allowed to testify in court as witnesses, nor were they allowed to vote until a referendum in 1967, when they were finally granted citizenship. Their basic human rights were denied over the peak killing and depopulation period, until the mid 20th century. Indicators: a) Rules of evidence were racist and discriminatory. b) Judge-Advocate Atkins’ Opinion on the Treatment of Natives, 20 July 1805.706 c) Australian Constitution Act 1901 (Cth) discriminated against Aboriginals. d) State-based legislation allowed Government to control the lives of Aboriginals in detention centres. e) Aboriginals were not allowed to vote until the 1967 referendum. Accountability: Negative feedback constraints on human rights abuses were almost non-existent. Government depopulation policy: constraint rule Rule E: Extermination. If Aboriginals trespass on their land, or kill stock, or resist their dispossession, squatters or the police are permitted to exterminate them without punishment. ‘Nigger hunts’ are common, as is poisoning. Do not charge the offenders. Indicators: a) Compared with pre-contact population, severe full-blood population loss by 1911 (>90% overall),707 with associated largescale destruction of Aboriginal society and culture. 308 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide b) In 120 years, there are very few prosecutions of white perpetrators, and almost no convictions, apart from those involved in the 1838 Myall Creek massacre. c) Aboriginal malnutrition and starvation become increasingly evident through the 19th and early 20th centuries, although Governments deny their policies are the cause, and many deny the evidence altogether. d) Alcoholism and family violence increase, symptoms of despair and generalised post-traumatic stress. Corollaries: Declarations of martial law. 1825 Government edict to ‘oppose force by force’. Formation of roving paramilitary police (after 1838) with Britain’s encouragement. Aboriginal witness testimony disallowed. Ethnic cleansing became Government policy, with survivors being removed to detention centres. Government rejection of the key findings of the 1837 British Parliamentary Select Committee report into the policies and practices of Aboriginal extermination. Accountability: Negative feedback constraints on human rights abuses were almost non-existent. Prosecution of whites was extremely rare. Considered together, these constraint rules (A to E) also specify Government ethnic cleansing policy in the first (primary) wave of depopulation (it was followed by a secondary wave of subjugation, whose effects we still observe today). The collective effect of these Government constraint rules operating on an acquisitive, racist and land-obsessed society was a strongly emergent but normatively dysfunctional social system behaviour that equates to - and embodies - politically driven Lemkinian genocide. To summarise the dysfunctional rule-set for the primary socio-political-economic behavioural wave: Beyond dispossession and extermination, repressive Government policies caused additional ‘full blood’ depopulation through restrictions on marriage, the breaking up of families, eugenics, indentured labour, stolen wages, stolen children, kidnapping women, sexual predation, poor nutrition, forced detention, cultural destruction, mental destruction, marginalization, alienation, systemic disadvantage, high rates of malnutrition and preventable disease, and excessive levels of incarceration. For as long as we cannot measure, we must passively succumb to ‘larger unknown forces’, like invoking the ‘evil spirits’ or ‘noxious smells’ or ‘divine will’ or ‘mysterious process’ of yesterday to explain disease. Perhaps it helps us understand, but not condone, why colonial society was normatively responsible for ethnic cleansing and actively participated in mass killing because of the 309 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide economic benefits, all enabled by overwhelmingly dysfunctional but normative political resolve. It may also help explain why contemporaneous Aboriginal society remains among the most disadvantaged on Earth, in terms of financial and physical health, which is not a statistic of which Australia should be proud. It strongly suggests that there is scope for much better investigation and measurement of epigenetic effects that are moulded by environmental factors that are still very poorly understood. Indeed, the psychological suffering still evident in many Aboriginal communities has aspects of acquired collective trans-generational Post Traumatic Stress Disorder creating an overwhelming sense of alienation, apathy and despair for which the symptoms are frighteningly observable, family breakdown, addiction, alcohol dependency, poor life expectancy and petty crime, in turn causing targeted policing and punitive incarceration. Police are not social workers and welfare problems are not addressed by a regime of harsh punishment. Government repression policy: constraint rules Rule F: Encourage sexual dispossession. Because white women are scarce, allow and encourage sexual predation and miscegenation. Attempt to breed out the Aboriginal trait through eugenics. Do not punish the sexual offenders. Indicators: a) A large half-breed population. Sexual predation was rampant but often denied [Gribble]. b) Misuse of Aboriginal women was not illegal, so there were no prosecutions to discourage the practice, which was rife at the frontier in particular. c) Severe full-blood population loss by 1911 (>90% overall), with associated large-scale destruction of Aboriginal society and culture. d) Sexual predation was accompanied by sexually transmitted diseases, which further reduced the reproductive viability of the Aboriginal population. Accountability: Negative feedback constraints on human rights abuses were almost non-existent. Rule G: Introduce disease. Do nothing to protect the Aboriginal population from diseases against which Aboriginals had no natural immunity: syphilis, gonorrhoea, measles, influenza, smallpox, and diphtheria among others. Indicators: 310 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide a) No Aboriginal was ever inoculated against smallpox. Deliberately introduced venereal disease had a severe transgenerational depopulation effect. b) Severe full-blood population loss by 1911 (> 90% overall) with the associated large-scale destruction of Aboriginal society and culture. c) Infected white males were not officially discouraged from sexual predation, confirming that Government and pastoral society regarded the welfare and wellbeing of an Aboriginal woman as of little concern. Accountability: Negative feedback constraints on human rights abuses were almost non-existent. Rule H: Allow kidnapping of women and children. Indicators: a) No white person in Tasmania was ever punished for the crime of ‘kidnapping’. b) Severe Palawa full-blood population loss by 1847 (>99% overall) with associated large-scale destruction of Aboriginal society and culture. Accountability: Negative feedback constraints on human rights abuses were almost non-existent. The collective settler/ pastoralist herd behaviour, further emphasised by the Government constraint rules (A to H), is characterised as racist and intentionally genocidal, within the Lemkin definition. We can simulate the rule-based evolutionary behaviour of this complex dynamical behavioural system through a genetic algorithm, where meta-stable Lemkinian phases arise as an emergent property of the system. The algorithm simulates the process of Aboriginal depopulation - the progressive destruction of Aboriginal society and culture - through the initial phase of violent dispossession, and the subsequent destructive phases of Government repression and subjugation, a late stage Lemkinian process that is still evident today through excessive rates of Aboriginal incarceration and systemic disadvantage. 311 Tasmanian genocide revisited: reflections on mass violence in a time of ecocide Figure 79 Genetic algorithm structure Conclusion The basic operators in an evolutionary genetic algorithm are: selection, crossover, and mutation. We generate an initial set of individuals (the initial population), which is then evaluated and ranked. The mutation operator is applied against any individual in the population, according to the constraint rules. Over a number of operations, the population is allowed to ‘evolve’. 708 The genetic algorithm schematic for Australian Lemkinian genocide is shown as the consequence of an intentional Government-led process: 312 Genetic algorithm for politically driven and intentional Australian genocide Figure 80 Simplified flowchart of genetic algorithm for Australian genocide (Lemkinian) The flowchart forms the basis for an executable evolutionary genetic algorithm that simulates the politically driven Australian genocidal process across meta-stable states. See Gibbons (2017) Genetic Algorithm for Australian Genocide. The algorithm can be fine-tuned by allowing more parallel processing in the selection criteria, although this is yet to be evaluated. 313 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The role of psychological obedience to authority in top-down violence The role of human brain architecture in patterned behaviour http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~./epxing/Class/10715/reading/McCulloch.and.Pitts.pdf Typology Behaviour emotion Modelling an infinite dynamical system generated by time lags Elsewhere709 we have concluded that we are all past-dependent, from family groups to societies and cultures. Our inherited genome demands no less. It helps explain collective behavioural morphology, what the anthropologist Levi-Strauss710 called structuralism, a set of learned behaviours and ideas that characterize a given society or culture at some point in time. He further argued that structuralism was a biologically dependent expression of the underlying structures of the human mind, which we examined earlier. It is a feature of any contemporary society that we seem to be suffering collective structural brain dysfunction, living in a constant present, where there are few future consequences of our actions, or few that would make us accountable. If we cannot remember the past, how can we not repeat past mistakes? And if we are not accountable for the future, why would we not leave a toxic legacy for our children? Our concern with a constant present – exploitation, me-too, self-interest, narcissism - carries the cost of deepening inequality, of selfishness, of territorial borders against otherness, of protectionism, of us-and-them. Perhaps it was always so if we have inherited a certain brain architecture. That does not mean we cannot put time-dependent ‘states’ of an observed population (say, a system comprising a particular culture) under analysis, where the future ‘state’ of a system depends on the current state and the history of past states, whether we are objectively aware of them or not. Hermann Weyl once wrote: We cannot change the past, but we can change the future. For physical deterministic systems, this is true. But for complex emergent social systems there are many contextually dependent narratives for the past, any of which can introduce the possibility for reflexive bias in that any narrative may lead to distortions or accusations of a black armband view or the argument for economic determinism that reject neutrality in favour of a narrative that gives weight to a certain historical emphasis such as heroic settler sovereignty in taming the land, a view or ideological thread that would not be shared by Indigenous society. There can be no single true history of a cohort other than one whose evidentiary facts can be verified, possibly within a meta-pattern. We do change the past, and often. Revisionist history is the consequence. Similarly, we can argue that although our society may be open to future change, there are constraints on how we may change that are past-dependent, constraints such as persistent collective dysfunctional behaviors and exploitative rule-based orders whose outcome is targeted oppression of otherness (genocide and ecocide). We say, yes, we can change, but the mechanism is unclear if political and economic priorities consistently tend to outweigh – in the absence of a Rights Charter - humanitarian, and environmental concerns. That is, we may be unable or unwilling to change our future and may therefore be unfit to survive. How should we model such a system? In Newton’s clockwork world, the system’s state variable (say position) changes predictably over time and can be described by an ordinary differential equation (ODE). If we know the current system status (initial position), we can predict the future of the system and reconstruct its history. In Newtonian mechanics, future behaviour is independent of the past in the sense that the past is predetermined by the present state. An ODE is an equation containing a function of one variable and its derivative for the same input. 314 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited But dynamic social systems tend to change in a way that depends on the current state and its history (whether we remember it or not). In some cases, the expected future state also helps determine the current state. We can model such past dependent systems with functional differential equations (FDE), where past events influence present and future results. An FDE is an equation that contains the function of one variable and some of its derivatives for different input values. 711 For example, in this paper we will examine Palawa population models that allow population decline with a time lag, say the introduced and delayed demographic effect of the kidnapping of Palawa women, STDs, and loss of males. It will begin to explain how the Palawa population collapsed so rapidly. It was nothing to do with ‘some mysterious agency’ as hypothesized by Darwin and everything to do with intentional British depredations.712 A simplified logistic equation for such time lagged population change is given by: dP / dt = ρ P(t) (1 – (P(t) / k)) [1] where: ρ is the reproduction rate, k is the carrying capacity, P(t) is the population size at time t, ρ (1 – (P(t) / k)) is the density-dependent reproduction rate. If we model [1] for an earlier time (t – α) we iteratively derive earlier states as: dP / dt = ρ P(t) (1 – (P(t - α) / k)) [2] Such time-delayed (or retarded) functional differential equations (DDE) can be generalized as: dP/ dt = ⨍ ((P(t), x (t - α )), [3] where: P(t) is the system’s state at time t, ⨍: Rn x Rn → Rn is a given mapping and the time lag α > 0 is a constant. The analytical formalisms for DDE are now well understood. For example, see Gao and Wu.713 From Wu:714 if x(t) denotes the population density of the mature/ reproductive population and if the maturation period is assumed to be constant, then we have: ⨍ (P(t), P(t – α)) = - dm (t) e –di α b (P(t – α)), [4] where dm and di are the death rates of the mature and immature populations, respectively, and b: R → R is the birth rate. Death is instantaneous, so the term –dm P(t) is without delay. However, the rate into the mature population is the maturation rate (not the birth rate), that is, the birth rate at time t, multiplied by the survival probability e –di t during the maturation process. 315 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Clearly, to specify a function P(t) of t ≥ 0 that satisfies [3] (called a solution of [3]), we must prescribe the history of x on [-α]. On the other hand, once initial value data ϴ: [-α] → Rn [5] is given as a continuous function and if ⨍: x ⊇ (x, y) → ⨍ (x, y) ⊆ Rn is continuous 715 and locally Lipschitz with respect to the first state variable x ⊆ Rn , Rn Rn then [3] on [o, α] becomes an ordinary differential equation for which the initial value problem to obtain a solution on [α, 2α] dP / dt = ⨍ (P(t), ϴ (t – α), t ⊆ [0, α], x(0) = ϴ(0), [6] is solvable. Conclusion If such a solution exists on [0, α], we can repeat the argument to the initial value problem to obtain a solution on [α, 2α]: dP / dt = ⨍ ((P(t), P (t – α)), t ⊆ [α, 2α] [7] where P(α) is given in the previous step. We can recursively continue this algorithmic process to yield a solution to [3] subject to: P [-α, 0] = ϴ given in [5]. This is the broad basis for our approach to modelling Palawa population dynamics generated by type-specific time lags. The Question of Colonial Genocide The impact of British power on Aboriginals was calibrated and ruthless, but we are now asked to question British ‘intent’, that there was no documented intention by Britain to commit genocide. This is a further example of ‘reframing’. Mass killing almost never has a written order. It is unlikely and highly self-incriminating, that a Government would issue instructions for carrying out deliberate murder. Nevertheless, ethnically targeted mass killing, or racial destruction is usually the expected result of some official policy or reactive social behaviour within a policy context. We are asked by some politicians and historians to absolve or reject Britain’s role in colonial genocide because there is no evidence of written orders from the British Government that authorises mass killing. Others argue, if mistakes were made, that the past should remain in the past. We are further asked by some (such as Windschuttle and other denialists) to dismiss any allegations of mass killing because there is no body of legal evidence (that is, case histories) to support such a charge. Instead, we are exhorted to consider violence against Aboriginals, if we accept it at all, as the aberrational excesses of a few settlers at the lawless frontier; or if we reluctantly accept that targeted racial violence and Aboriginal antipathy did occur, we are encouraged to play it down as ‘a black armband’ view of history that is unhelpful in the myths we prefer to create for ourselves. Or we are asked to consider violence against Aboriginals being caused by Aboriginals themselves when they behaved ‘unlawfully’ by resisting their dispossession. 316 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited That is, we are asked to deny or, worse still, whitewash the genocidal circumstances. And if the evidence is suppressed or unavailable, we are asked to conclude that there was no crime. The problem of denialism Denialism is a slippery slope. Consider the massive Aboriginal depopulation in only 120 years, since the initial British invasion, until 1911. The evidentiary fact of depopulation is difficult to ignore, far more difficult than denying or rejecting any number of individual skirmishes or ‘collisions’ or ‘dispersals’ or massacres that collectively make up the total genocidal effect, so we often see the nett percentage depopulation figure and causes challenged from different quarters through a range of questionable tactics and false logic. Let us examine the small, graduated steps that can lead us from black to white, from the selfcondemnatory ‘black armband’ view of history to self-congratulatory settler supremacy and heroic triumphalism. It is a differential geometry of evil, a gradient with many small increments, for which the only practical visualisation is to stand back and examine the moral topology from an objective distance. We can reflect on the contours, note the valleys and the peaks, and better appraise the path integral that gets us to a preferred point. The optimal pathway is seen by the observer as a kind of ‘sum over history’ that relies on procedural intentionality to reveal purposes and outcomes, rather than the individual assessment of relatively minuscule separate functional events, which converge over time with the dimly perceived and broader intentionality envelope generally defined by Government. This moral calculus defines the slippery slope of Australian genocidal denialism: 1. First, to diminish the size of the genocidal problem, some of us argue that the percentage amount of depopulation was not very great, and even less due to British violence (this is the thesis of Geoffrey Blainey), whereas we now know the pre-contact population catastrophically declined by over 95% from various avoidable causes associated with armed territorial occupation and displacive settlerism between 1788 and 1911; 2. Or if we accept a certain percentage reduction in the targeted population, some argue that the actual numbers involved were not great because there were relatively few Aboriginals at first contact by the British in 1788 (this is the argument of Geoffrey Blainey and others); Geoffrey Blainey, a vocal populist economic historian, persistently argues for a low originating Aboriginal population, made lower by gun violence and introduced disease in the 19 th Century. The lower he can make the indigenous population, the easier it is for him to dismiss historical genocide of Aboriginals as a targeted group. He continues to press this falsifiable argument, most recently in a newspaper article: Throughout the 20th century, the Aborigines, whether enfranchised or not, represented only a tiny proportion of Australia’s population.716 He was correct about the relative size of the Aboriginal population in the 20th century but encourages us to infer (wrongly) that it was also lower in the century prior. In maintaining this particular line of flawed (non-evidence-based) thinking, Blainey displays the similarly irrational dogmatism of climate change deniers. As we will show, from early post-contact, there was genocidal Aboriginal depopulation in the longest land war in our history, where the population had fallen by over 95% with the beginning of the 20 th century, a demographic statistic which Blainey generally ignores. Blainey’s rejection of what he termed ’black armband history’ instead espouses the faith - or belief system - of benign settler triumphalism, a faith that cannot generally be supported in logical terms.717 317 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 3. Or if we agree on an Aboriginal pre-contact population band, which has been significantly revised upwards from about 300,000 in 1930, to somewhere between 750,000 and 1.2 million today), we make the evidence for extermination inaccessible (it is exceptionally difficult to locate the primary sources that provide evidence for the pattern of past wrongdoing and the details of the individual events: in part because there were so few prosecutions, and even fewer convictions, making the legal case history sparse; in part because the information is buried deeply within non-digitised microfilm repositories; and in part because some of the primary evidence held by Governments has been carefully destroyed, for example, the Queensland police records of ‘dispersals’); 4. Or if we argue the absence of evidence (Windschuttle), we tend to misunderstand that this does not mean the evidence of absence; 5. Or if the evidence is located, we deny its relevance and say it depends on the context; 6. Or if we accept the context, we argue that if the British had not invaded, some other European power would have done so, presumably with a similar result (this is the Geoffrey Blainey argument); 7. Or if we accept that depopulation did occur, we convince ourselves it was mostly due to introduced disease, or Acts of God, or changing climate (this is also Blainey’s contention, that the Aboriginal population was hand-to-mouth and varied greatly depending on droughts, or rising sea levels, or mini ice ages); 8. Or if we accept that some Aboriginal depopulation was due to British violence, it was only because the Aboriginals resisted the occupation process and were guilty of criminality that caused their own deaths (this is Windschuttle’s flawed argument); 9. Or if we agree that some Aboriginal deaths were caused by British homicidal behaviour, we argue that these perpetrators were a minority and their behaviour an aberration and did not reflect upon the humane values of settler society as a whole; 10. Or if we reluctantly accept that the British did cause Aboriginal deaths, the standards of behaviour were different then (this is the ‘standards of the time’ argument, that we cannot judge the past by our present standards, preferred by Inga Clendinnen and others); 11. Or if we concede that the targeted group was exterminated in an area through British policy and practice, it was not genocide because mixed race descendants still remain (this is Henry Reynolds’ view with regard to Tasmania, but it misconstrues the formal meaning of genocide); 12. Or if we admit that perhaps colonial society did know that what they were doing was wrong (we have equivalent legal notions of mens rea today that still retains its original meaning), then we cannot be held to account for what our predecessors did (this is the John Howard argument, first introduced by Geoffrey Blainey, that we should reject the ‘black armband’ view of history); 13. Or if sexually transmitted diseases had a severe effect on viable Aboriginal procreation, it was not caused by sexual predation but by willing participation (when in fact STDs resulted from multiple causes, none of which would have arisen with a more compassionate Government policy that legally protected Aboriginal women from predation in all its forms, including sexual enslavement and female trafficking); 14. Or if there was catastrophic Aboriginal depopulation, we argue that much of it was due to Acts of God (meaning diseases such as smallpox, pneumonia, syphilis, influenza, measles and so on), when in fact those diseases were introduced by the occupation 318 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited process, and the destructive effects on indigenous groups – with the need for quarantining on land exclusively set aside for Indigenous use - were well understood by the British from their experience in other countries such as north America;718 15. Or if dispossessed Aboriginals, without a home, become malnourished and starving we teach them the love of God through missions (this is the humanitarian argument); 16. Or if Aboriginals were incarcerated in detention centres (the Reserve system set up by Government), this was for humane Aboriginal ‘protection’ where they could be allowed to become extinct (many of the centres were under the control of an appointed Aboriginal Protector) but most Aboriginals regarded the excessive control over all aspects of their lives with great fear because it caused the legal breaking up of families, the removal of paler skinned children, and the destruction of Aboriginal society and culture in a Lemkinian genocidal process; 17. Finally, we should deny, deny, deny and never say ‘sorry’ (the John Howard approach) because it may have implications for legal compensation, or because we now believe that Aboriginals have been fully assimilated and should be treated like any other citizen or culture or ethnic group in a plural society, while arguing that the past is no longer relevant to our future, a demonstrably absurd thesis. Utilitarianism: the flawed argument for the ‘greater good’ Intentionality usually drives functional circumstance. But circumstance can bite back. Perhaps we now begin to see how easy it is for us to bind ourselves to a utilitarian argument (embraced by Imperial Britain) for the ‘greater good’, where we may have to make difficult momentary choices, with winners and losers. In utilitarianism, ‘bad’ can become ‘good’ through moral gradualism and the politics of denialism. Influential moral philosophers such as Peter Singer and J.S. Mill, favour Utilitarianism. They propone that an action is judged morally right, but only if it produces at least as much good or ‘utility’ or ‘happiness’ as the individual can achieve. With this ‘greater utility’ approach, we can convince ourselves that any desired or expected outcome is the result of many random events over which we have limited control, that life is a lottery, and that we must all compete against each other for raw survival, while striving for general ‘happiness’ and ‘good’. What is left unsaid: Whose ‘greater good’? The nation’s? For Imperial Britain, the nation’s ‘greater good’ equated to the good of a privileged few. And they intended to keep it. This functional view of ‘utility’ tends to ignore collective intentionality, and its role in shaping expectations, that is, the role of the State in managing civil society. If utility is defined as the greatest general happiness, however that may be measured, it leads directly to conflict with individual and collective moral judgements. For example, the happiness of squatters was realised by selecting and securing land, subject to Government land alienation policy, which ignored the unhappiness it caused dispossessed Aboriginals, who in the early colonial period were most of the population. The ‘greater good’ of the British Empire was served through having a strategic outpost in the South Pacific, with the prospects of profitable bi-lateral mercantile trade using British ships. In this moral equation, the human rights of Aboriginal society were overlooked or rejected. 319 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Utilitarian philosophy was ultimately self-serving and one-sided, overtaken by an economic imperative. It led to racism and eventual Australian genocide. The principle of ‘utility’ also results in a common official stratagem around managing any evidence of genocidal wrongdoing for the ‘greater good’, functionally equivalent to the good of those in power, summarised as: a) Hide the evidence (in hard to access data stores and repositories); b) Destroy the evidence (as the Queensland Government did with its records of mounted police dispersal operations); c) Suppress the evidence (through reflexive arguments that deny their relevance); d) Or reject the evidence or its relevance, as shown by our slippery slope utilitarian gradient (supported by some historians and politicians). Alternatively, we can accept our culpability, on the evidence of the past human rights abuses and the clear lack of accountability, which has led us to post-Lemkinian genocide today (under Articles 2a and 2b), with many Aboriginals still suffering systemic physical, mental and cultural disadvantage. Intentionality and the problem of asymmetric power Expressed another way, any expected outcome such as racial oppression and cultural destruction arises from intention, and we can iterate around the planned actions until we come close to realising our expectation. Iterations occur within a different instance of the planned actions, which can be a process or sub-process. For example, the British intent to achieve maritime supremacy over other European powers and establish strategic colonial outposts is a planning process that iterates around actionable elements from strategy to tactics, policies, legislation, administrative procedures, and the use of organised force. It was an enforcement model that Britain had used many times in attempting to extend the reach of its sovereign power. Similarly, the intention to dispossess Aboriginals, using legislation and armed force, resulted in ethnically clearing large areas of land for the use of pastoralists, who were encouraged in greater numbers by Governments eager to increase the settled areas, for the increase in revenue and trade that it brought. Therefore, we can simplify the vertical models we saw earlier to: Intention Planned action(s) Expected outcome Figure 81 Lemkinian genocidal model Lemkinian genocidal model, triggered by intentionality The abstracted (or type) intention for the planned action(s) was to achieve Government and settler sovereignty for an area. It follows that the expected outcome at the different levels of intentionality was also to achieve settler sovereignty. If not, the process iterates around the planned action(s) for the hierarchy of contexts. 320 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited For each beachhead settlement, the instantiated model continues to apply; dispossession is achieved area by area in an iterative process that involves the same triggered network of actionable components. Repeat within an area. Metastasise to other areas. Intention to dispossess Aboriginals from each beachhead settlement Land alienation, Immigration, Dispersal, massacre Aboriginals removed from an area Figure 82 Primary Lemkinian genocidal model for Australia As dispossession and extermination for an area are more or less completed, and the land is in the hands of pastoralists and settlers, the Lemkinian genocidal process moves to the next phase, subjugation, involving eugenics, ‘stolen children’, incarceration in detention centres (euphemistically called ‘reserves’), living under ‘The Act’ and its state variations. Finally, we come to where we are today, where Aboriginals are amongst the most disadvantaged on Earth, particularly in remote communities, with endemic despair and marginalisation. Summary Lemkinian genocidal model, as it applies to Australia since first settlement. The model allows us to understand the pattern of British oppression and reduce the complexity to a form where we can verify the process. Repeat within an area. Metastasise to other areas. Intention to dispossess Aboriginals from each beachhead settlement Land alienation, Immigration, Dispersal, massacre Aboriginals removed from an area Subjugation and repression Limit compensation and welfare cost Figure 83 Summary Lemkinian genocidal model Conclusion: Intentionality and Lemkinian genocide We can now begin to perceive that Lemkinian genocide was the intended consequence of Britain’s land and immigration policies. Aboriginal genocide was intended, as an expected result of forcibly removing them from their homelands, as a result of ‘legal’ dispossession, and by using armed force against them if they resisted. Almost no settlers were ever prosecuted for Aboriginal homicide, and even fewer convicted. Aboriginal extermination was either justified ‘as a war of the races’ or ignored as being caused by ‘some mysterious agency’, invoking a mystical Darwinian process. The Australian genocidal process was not driven solely by formal Government edicts, proclamations, and orders (almost no genocide is), but in this case was the foreseeable and deliberate consequence of intentional British land and immigration policy, supported by Government armed force, exacerbated by overt racism, and accelerated by a settler society that believed it was ‘superior’ to the Aboriginal race and could use force, if necessary, to ‘remove’ them, with the help of Government where necessary. 321 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The policy of ‘dispersal’ was evident across all the Australian colonies. Each state was aware of the others’ actions in handling the Aboriginal ‘problem’. All states were culpable of officially condoned mass killing on a massive, rolling scale. Imposed starvation and introduced diseases also played their part, along with despair and incarceration. Tasmania and Queensland were symptomatic of a continent-wide urge to exploit those who were at a comparative disadvantage. The motivation? Self-interest. Of individuals. Of Governments. It was the face of racism expressed through bloody violence and rapacious exploitation.719 322 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Australia’s Dispossessory Contextual Landscape We draw out the patterns, logistics and mechanics, of genocide and ecocide within the values of a dispossessory culture. It concludes that the key to our sustainable resilience is in understanding the provenance of our behaviours. Most puzzles begin with a question. That was the origination of this chapter. The Question? How did Australia get to where it is now? The answer? Australia was created through the enforced dispossession of Aboriginal people, a process that involved Lemkinian repression. Therefore: Can we learn? Can we change? Learn what? Change how? Are our values flawed? We will argue that, at its most fundamental, our transplanted society, comprising predatory cultural beliefs and values, is little more than a slash and burn economy (behaviourally based) driven by self-interest, where environmental remediation and the Lemkinian impact of racial destruction are too often transferred as a social cost, and perpetrators - those who should be liable - rarely carry the burden of accountability or indemnification. ‘Slash and burn’ connotes exploitative behaviours: we dig up, or graze, or plant, or provide services. We do not, on balance, manufacture or innovate. We forage more than sustain. We displace more than cooperate. Economic and security issues tend to outweigh environmental and humanitarian concerns. This may change as the consequences of global warming inexorably bite into our social capital, and Aboriginal society begins to demand a reckoning; together the issues have the potential to sculpt our priorities and affect the political fortunes of Governments. On Values720 In the last decade or so, researchers have attempted to develop an empirical understanding of basic values by identifying and then connecting them with behavioural motivations and verifying the ‘value’ hypothesis or unique value proposition with cross-cultural questionnaires. Among them is Shalom Schwartz.721 Schwartz identifies ‘ten basic personal values that are recognized across cultures’, for which the value priorities can show wide variation between individuals and their behaviour in attitudes, beliefs, norms, and traits. He argues that: • • • • Attitudes are evaluations of objects as good or bad, desirable, or undesirable Beliefs are ideas about how true it is that things are related in particular ways Norms are standards or rules that tell members of a group how they should behave Traits are tendencies that show consistent patterns of thought, feelings, and actions across time and situations. Schwartz asks us to think of values as ‘what is important to us in life’. He conceptualizes that ‘values’ have six key features that he uses to weight the ten values. The Schwartz ‘value’ features are: 1. Values are beliefs linked to affect or emotions such as happiness or despair. 2. Values express desirable goals such as social justice that motivate action. 3. Values such as obedience and honesty transcend specific actions and situations, whereas norms and attitudes usually refer to specific actions or contexts. 4. Values serve as standards or criteria and help guide policies and actions, values such as what is good or bad, worth doing or not, based on possible consequences. 323 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 5. Values are ordered by importance, with different priorities characterizing an individual, say achievement or justice. 6. The relative importance of multiple values guides action, for example, religious belief might promote conservatism and conformity rather than free expression and individuation. Schwartz argues that these features or behavioural determinants link values to prescribed emotional responses and actions. The Schwartz ‘values’ are grounded in what he terms ‘universal requirements of human existence’, what Maslow – without empirical evidence called basic and psychological ‘needs’. That is, Schwartz separates out ‘basic needs’ like safety and survival from ‘basic values’, but does not attempt to draw out the relationship between ‘values’ and ‘needs’, where he summarizes type ‘needs’ as: • • • Needs of individuals as biological organisms; Requisites of coordinated social interaction; and The survival and welfare needs of groups. Nor does Schwartz distinguish between ‘values’ and ‘motivations’, which he hypothesizes are equivalent. But are they? Groups Values A. B. C. Openness to change Selfenhancement Conservation Selftranscendence 1. Stimulation X 2. Self-direction X 3. Hedonism X D. X 4. Achievement X 5. Power X 6. Security X 7. Conformity X 8. Tradition X 9. Universalism X 10. Transcendence X Figure 84 Schwartz value/ group matrix Schwartz proposes a set of ten ‘basic values’,722 many of which he argues can be conjoint or overlapping, and categorizes them into four groups,723 with a circular dependency (Schwartz) and a transformative relationship (Gibbons).If we are consistently ‘motivated’ to act in some way (patterned behaviour), we might say that the patterned ‘stimulus’ produces a type (stochastically normative) response. For example, the desire for self-enrichment (a motivation), driven by exploitative greed (a motivation) might predictably be embedded in a sense of racial superiority (a belief or value) that results in Lemkinian genocide (a normative behaviour, not a motivation or ‘value’, unless we regard L. genocide as a motivation to achieve self-enrichment or cultural supremacy). Therefore, Schwartz’s circular arrangement of ‘values’ becomes a circular argument. 324 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Iterative functional dependencies form discrete dynamical systems with complex dynamics. They can be expressed mathematically. Let ⨍ : Z → Z be a map from a set Z to itself. We can iterate ⨍ by applying ⨍ repeatedly to any Z0 ∊ X to generate the sequence Z0 , ⨍( Z0 ) , ⨍ ( ⨍( Z0 )), ⨍ (⨍ ( ⨍( Z0 ))), … from which we can induce that: ⨍0 ( Z0 ) = 0 and ⨍ n+1 ( Z0 ) = Z n+1 = ⨍ ( Zn ). Suppose n represents some number of discrete time intervals, then the sequence (Zn) specifies how an initial state X0 changes over time across a smooth manifold. Systems theory allows us to examine the behaviour of such dynamical systems. We can use it, for example, to analyse (de)population logistics, to determine the dynamics of intragenerational population collapse within Lemkinian genocide for prescribed limits. 724 For population logistics, in the absence of limiting factors, we assume that a population P will change at a rate that is proportional to its size at time t expressed in years, from which we derive the model: P1 = P0 (1 + x), P2 = P1 (1+x) = P0 (1+x)(1+x)…. Pt = P0 (1 + x)t , where Pt is the population at time t, and x is the annual population change. For continuous time with no population change inhibitors, we can say that the deterministic population model is given by dP / dt = xP from which we can derive: Pt = P0 ex t. Both models converge to the same value of Pt as t increases. We can extend these models to allow for varying birth and death rates and other constraints. Obviously, in the extreme case where there are no births, the population will collapse within a generation. Catastrophically reduced births can result from unsustainable depredations on Indigenous women who could bear children, including physical removal from their group. The model can be used to project a future population size over a defined period, and also, where the ‘future’ is the present, to reverse engineer the rate of population change from some specified time in the past. Complexity theory grew out of systems theory to allow for uncertainty and non-linearity caused by interactions and feedback loops that cause dynamic systems behaviour to adapt through order-generating behavioural rules. A complex system exists where the behaviour of the whole is not predicted by the behaviour of the component parts; rather there are stable levels of emergent self-organization within the system. 325 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Analysis of Schwartz matrix A. Openness to change 1. Stimulation: need for variety and stimulation in order to maintain an optimal rather than threatening – level of activation. Codeterminate with self-direction.725 Analysis: values are either learned or innate. The ‘need’ for stimulation probably enhances the learning process. Innate behaviours or ‘instincts’ are hardwired through ‘genetic memory’, but the process is not understood. Transitive dependency: stimulation → hedonism (a desire for affectively pleasant arousal) stimulation → self-direction (intrinsic interest in novelty and mastery) Transformative values: self-realization. These dependencies are quoted by Schwartz, but appear to be incomplete, as we will show. Schwartz calls these dependencies ‘shared motivational emphases of adjacent values’. In this deconstruction, we will term them ‘transitive dependencies’, which is the language of systems theory. Transitive dependency indicates overlapping type domains, suggesting that the Schwartz ‘value’ types require further normalization (or subtyping) to become disjoint. Schwartz argues that the ‘circular arrangement of the values represents a motivational continuum’. In set theory, a transitive dependency is one where members of the set can be subsets. Reliable data analytics requires us to remove such dependencies. The transitive dependency is an indication that the precept can be subtyped. For example, hedonism can possibly be subtyped by achievement and stimulation, and so on. A detailed classification schema for values is outside the scope of this paper, but we will develop a preliminary framework. Transformative value. I have added the facet of ‘transformative value’ to allow the type value to be represented within a vector space. That is, if a value does not lead anywhere, it may simply be considered an attribute of a passive participatory agency, concerned with its own survival interests, and having a negligible role in Nature’s force of destiny, apart from living and dying. Without enlightened adaptation – vectorial agency - humanity may be fated to slide backwards as another failed evolutionary experiment. If we can’t make the world a better home for all species, we have failed our obligations towards others. If we are attempting to kill the Earth through our selfish intragenerational endeavours, we destroy ourselves. There is little time left. It is not clear we have the capacity or foresight to change. 2. Self-direction: independent thought and action; need for control and mastery. Analysis: learning requires exploring. The rise of Australian settler sovereignty and pastoral supremacy required self-direction and a focus on mercantile success in an agrarian economy that depended on the availability of cheap stolen Aboriginal land. Schwartz does not consider this dependency on achievement, the desire to achieve wealth and influence through self-reliance and independent agency. Transitive dependency: self-direction → stimulation (intrinsic interest in novelty and mastery) self-direction → universalism (reliance upon one’s own judgment and comfort with the diversity of existence) 326 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Transformative values: Independence, freedom. 3. Hedonism: pleasure or sensuous gratification. Analysis: Learning (the pursuit of pleasure) is reinforced through reward (the achievement of pleasure). It is both a behavioural stimulus and a response. In Australia, male-dominated settler society - until decades into the 20th century there was a gender imbalance - rewarded itself with sexual predation on ‘black velvet’, labour racketeering, and ‘nigger hunts’ on the expanding frontier. Transitive dependency: hedonism → achievement (self-centred satisfaction) hedonism → stimulation (a desire for affectively pleasant arousal) Transformative values: fulfilment, pleasure. B. Self-enhancement 3. Hedonism: pleasure or sensuous gratification. 4. Achievement: personal success through demonstrating competence according to social standards. Analysis: A measure of influence, ambition, and social recognition. It can be a goal or a means to a goal and is aligned with ‘power’. Transitive dependency: achievement → power (social superiority and esteem); achievement → hedonism (self-centred satisfaction) Transformative value: success. 5. Power: social status and prestige; control or dominance over people and resources. Analysis: Schwartz argues that dominant/ submissive behaviour emerges in empirical analyses of interpersonal relations in most cultures; therefore, if power motivates group members it must be a ‘value’, because it emphasizes ‘social esteem’ (a goal), and the reinforcement of dominant behaviour to preserve social status (a means). The pursuit of power as a behaviour is reinforced through the reward of social esteem, authority and wealth. But ‘power’ is not so much a ‘value’ as a means to achieving the value of ‘social status’, which is measured by wealth and influence. For Imperial Britain, mercantile power was a means to wealth and influence, although privileged entitlements for a class-based culture forced a superior/ inferior distinction, not only for its citizens but also for other Indigenous societies it sought to dominate for financial gain. Thus, the concept of power, especially asymmetric power, can be aligned with racism: the belief that one group of people is superior to another. Transitive dependency: power → achievement (social superiority and esteem) power → security (avoiding or overcoming threats by controlling relationships and resources) Transformative value: success. 327 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited C. Conservation 6. Security: safety, harmony, and stability of society, of relationships, and of self, with a ‘moderate’ sense of belonging through the ‘reciprocation of favours’. Analysis: Schwartz argues that security values (a goal) derive from basic individual and group ‘requirements’ (needs)726; some security values serve primarily individual interests, others wider group interests. He asserts that national (wider) interests are – in the main – a cumulative expression of the security goals of the involved groups (social order, family security, national security). He does not dissect the ‘reciprocation of favours’ that is the basis of social order. But any social contract requires a dynamic relationship between ‘security’ and ‘freedom’. Surprisingly, Schwartz does not identify ‘freedom’ as a ‘value’. When Schwartz asserts that ‘security’ has the goal of ‘safety’ he assumes that imposed ‘security’ results in more ‘safety’ when the opposite can occur. Schwartz can be criticised on the same basis as Maslow, where his hypothesis is weighted towards a narrow sample of American-style neoliberalism that is becoming flawed, fracturing across inequity, social inequality, special interests such as the gun lobby, and undue authoritarianism. See, for example, the 1970 Kent State University shooting of students by the Ohio National Guard; the students were protesting the secret American war in Cambodia, authorized by Kissinger and Nixon.727 In Australia, the ‘security’ and safety of Aboriginal people was almost always subordinate to the ‘security’ of white society, where ‘security’ was defined in physical and economic terms within laws, policies and the role of repressive regulatory agencies such as land commissioners and the police. That is, ‘security’ was an expression of asymmetric power and hegemonic interests that devalued the safety of Indigenous people. In today’s Australia, reconciliation and a ‘moderate’ sense of belonging through the ‘reciprocation of favours’ remains unfinished business, with the social gaps widening, fuelled by oppressive policies involving policing, health, child welfare, employment and housing. Transitive dependency: security → tradition (preserving existing social arrangements that give certainty to life) security → conformity (protection of order and harmony in relations) security → power (avoiding or overcoming threats by controlling relationships and resources) Transformative value: safety. 7. Conformity: restraint of actions, inclinations, and impulses likely to upset or harm others and violate social expectations or norms. Subordination to the group. Adaptation to changing group expectations. Analysis: Schwartz argues that conformity values derive from the requirement to curtail disruptive individual behaviours (‘inclinations’) that might undermine smooth social interaction and group functioning. Therefore, such conformity values emphasize self-restraint in everyday interaction, usually with close others, and include obedience, self-discipline, politeness, loyalty, responsibility to the group, honouring parents and elders. 328 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited But conformity can also be imposed by the group through the threat of punishment or social isolation, as in the punishment of ‘crime’ or ‘dissent’. For authoritarian or collectivist societies, desired normative behaviour is controlled by risk/ reward measures in the interests of a privileged cadre. Imperialism or socialism are examples. Hierarchically ordered Imperialism, through a chain of command structure and obedience to levels of authority, encouraged dispossessory behaviour with the use of lethal force to further self-proclaimed territorial sovereignty. The Milgram experiment728 shows that blind obedience – conformity – can induce individual, group, or state-sponsored violence. The psychologist Albert Bandura proposed that individuals can learn to disengage themselves morally to avoid challenging their personal values and potentially causing self-condemnation. Moral disengagement can allow violence to be sanctioned if it is authorized by a superior or if the victim is dehumanized.729 People are complex. But they can also be manipulated or coerced, particularly where selfinterest is involved. For settler society, they could overlook Aboriginal extermination if they could believe that Aboriginals were vermin who threatened their physical and economic security. Obedience to authority quickly followed. And accelerated greed. We have barely changed today. Economic and security interests still override humanitarian and environmental concerns. Therefore, conformity does not necessarily lead to ‘restraint of actions’, as Schwartz hypothesizes, but can make us blindly follow a ‘safety in numbers’ survival strategy that bestows us with corporate ‘team building’, mindless chain of command structures, and ideological lock step for the greater good. For Aboriginal people, their society had a polity and moiety that was based upon traditional values, respect for elders, and sustainable sharing of resources. Their society was vulnerable to naked force and violent displacement by an acquisitive, aggressive culture that did not share the same values of familial and environmental respect. Transitive dependency: conformity → benevolence (normative behaviour that promotes close relationships) conformity → tradition (subordination of self in favour of socially imposed expectations) conformity → security (protection of order and harmony in relations) Transformative value: altruism. Also L. genocide. 8. Tradition: respect, commitment, and acceptance of the customs and ideas that one’s culture or religion provides. Subordination to religious and cultural customs. Respect for the unchanging past. Analysis: Schwartz argues that groups everywhere develop practices, symbols, ideas, and beliefs that represent their shared experience and fate. These become sanctioned as valued group customs and traditions. They symbolize the group’s solidarity, express its unique worth, and contribute to its survival. They often take the form of religious rites, beliefs, and norms of behaviour. 329 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited But at what point do traditions become sterile. And what allows traditions to live? Is any tradition of intrinsic value if it does not respect the customs and ideas of other societies? As a transplanted culture. Australian settler society inherited certain belief systems and religious practices from Britain, but settlers were able to convince themselves that it was still right and proper to take the land from Aboriginal people and destroy or displace the ancient indigenous totems, rites, and traditions. Why? British traditions were worn like armour, to override other societies and cultures. British traditional practices were focused on themselves. God was an Englishman. When traditions are contaminated by power, they lose their integrity. Schwartz ignores the dependency between tradition and the misuse of power. Nor does he consider group-centred traditions that are not tolerant of the beliefs of other groups are open to destructive values, for example, that might is right and cultural intolerance is a virtue. A sense of superiority by one party demands subservience from others, what is known as racism if the party is a cultural or ethnic group. Without group self-awareness, or if group traditions are solipsistic, they become self-limiting, ideologically blind and progressively irrelevant, their value sclerotic. As for a transcriptive lacuna, when traditions are eroded, so is cultural integrity and group identity. Erosion can be imposed (as it was for Aboriginal people) or it can arise from within, like the necrotic ulcer of crimes against humanity for which Imperial Britain and its economic priorities are an example, one that we still follow today in perpetuating Aboriginal and environmental disadvantage. Aboriginal society had a vibrant and ancient set of traditions, being possibly the oldest continuing culture on Earth apart from the San of North Africa, but it was purposefully destroyed, in whole or part, by an invasive society that did not respect such traditions. There was no accountability. The crime carried no cost. Or at least, the cost was minimal, like a small traffic fine, the cost of doing business where regulations are lax, such costs as blanket distribution in a form of census while being disguised as aid. If Aboriginal traditions had irreplaceable value for other displacive societies, their culture might have survived. The Mughul Empire of south Asia respected indigenous traditions (1526 – 1857), as did the Muslim Empire that extended to the Iberian Peninsula (711 – 1492), among many examples; but Imperial Britain was too absorbed in transforming occupied territory into private property for it to notice anything but a ‘feral’ obstacle to its economic ambitions where the life of a cow or sheep was of more value than that of an Aboriginal ‘trespasser’ on their own land and ‘shooting the vermin’ was the favoured solution. Transitive dependency: tradition → benevolence (devotion to one’s group) tradition → conformity (subordination of self in favour of socially imposed expectations) tradition → security (preserving existing social arrangements that give certainty to life) Transformative value: humility, respect, cultural preservation. D. Self-transcendence 330 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 9. Universalism: understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and for nature. Social justice, equality, world at peace, world of beauty, unity with nature, wisdom, protecting the environment, inner harmony, a spiritual life. Analysis: Schwartz argues that ‘universalism values derive from survival needs of individuals and groups. But people do not recognize these needs until they encounter others beyond the extended primary group and until they become aware of the scarcity of natural resources. People may then realize that failure to accept others who are different and treat them justly will lead to life-threatening strife. They may also realize that failure to protect the natural environment will lead to the destruction of the resources on which life depends. Universalism combines two subtypes of concern – for the welfare of those in the larger society and world and for nature’. In a cross-cultural survey, Schwartz found that spirituality did not have a consistent meaning, so he did not include it as a distinct value. It is not clear that ‘universalism’ as defined by Schwartz carries much cachet across different societies, not least the ambivalence of our own towards concern for the environment or refugees or Aboriginal disadvantage. If the ethos is captured at all, it is by animal rights groups or Nature conservancy organizations or ‘Greenies’, all widely derogated as being on the fringe and largely irrelevant to the economic priorities of mainstream Australia. Without normative behavioural changes that might be encouraged by a Bill of Rights, Australia seems destined to drift into the future unprepared, facing failures of our own making, while still complaining ‘jobs over the environment’, or ‘coal is good’, or ‘forget about Aboriginal rights, what about my rights’. Transitive dependency: universalism → self-direction (reliance upon one’s own judgment and comfort with the diversity of existence) universalism → benevolence (enhancement of others and transcendence of selfish interests Transformative value: spirituality, concern for the environment and Nature, altruism, compassion, non-violence, humanitarianism. 10. Benevolence: preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with whom one is in frequent contact. Helpful, honest, forgiving, responsible, loyal. Analysis: Schwartz argues that benevolence values derive from the basic requirement for smooth group functioning and from the biological need for affiliation. He asserts that the most critical relations within the family and other primary groups. And that benevolence values emphasize voluntary concern for others’ welfare. He concludes that both benevolence and conformity promote cooperative and supportive social relations, but benevolence provides an internalized motivation, whereas conformity is motivated by a desire to avoid negative personal outcomes. Once again, Schwartz does not clearly distinguish between ‘values’ and ‘behaviour’ in a ‘motivational continuum’. Nor does he consider such values as ‘altruism’ that are fundamental to evolutionary biology and group selection. 331 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Transitive dependency: benevolence → universalism (enhancement of others and transcendence of selfish interests benevolence → tradition (devotion to one’s group) benevolence → conformity (normative behaviour that promotes close relationships) Transformative value: Sense of belonging and spiritual purpose. Schwartz conducted an international questionnaire, where he concludes there is crosscultural evidence for his theory. For example, he finds that the polarity of self-transcendence with self-enhancement, and openness to change with conservatism, are ‘universal’. But this is like arguing that anger and love are universal emotions at polar ends of a spectrum. There will always be polarities, which calibrate agency along a scale. More surprising, he finds that benevolence, universalism, and self-direction are rated as most important, whereas power and stimulation are least important. That may be the bias of individuals, but it should not be induced that the same value hypothesis applies to groups. For example, Australians may believe they are benevolent as individuals, but how does this account for our collective antipathy to refugee boatpeople, an antipathy that is reflected in Government policy? And settlers of the past may have gone to Church on Sunday and expressed allegiance to the British Empire, but how could they then go on ‘nigger hunts’ for amusement, or poison Aboriginal water holes, or use paramilitary force, all to remove Aboriginal people from expropriated Aboriginal land? There is a fundamental hypocrisy: do as I say, not as I do. The hypocrisy expands with the size of the involved group and potentially embraces the reach of Government. The group has a mind of its own, and demands individual obedience for group reward, or inflicts ostracism and punishment as the price of disobedience. As Milgram’s study of behavioural obedience found, individual values can be subverted by authority structures to the point of inducing the individual to intentionally inflict harm through a desensitization process that depersonalises victim suffering.730 It is a form of learned or coerced behavioural shaping, where desired behaviours from individuals are rewarded by the group, which can be an organization or the State. Group approbation is a powerful shaper of individual behaviour, as is any system of imposed laws that punish non-conformance, or an engineered risk/reward gradient that offers a set of payoffs for prescribed actions that allow us to lump our choices in how we perceive reality. In this psychosocial crowd dynamic, group behaviour is subservient to the reward of some cohort through: lawful murder of a targeted group; or allocation of cheap Aboriginal land to white pastoralists; or the deterrence and detention of boatpeople arrivals; or jobs for coal mining at the expense to the environment; or the social cost for Government or Corporate malfeasance, redemptive taxpayerborne costs such as: mine remediation, or flammable building cladding remediation, 332 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited or Barrier Reef remediation from toxic agricultural runoff, or the economic costs of labour casualization, or the terrible human cost of Banking misbehaviour; or the cost to freedom caused by excessive Government secrecy; or the deferred psychological costs of Institutional child abuse or aged care abuse. That is, if the reward is intermittently immediate and the risk can be transferred, then behaviour can become normatively dysfunctional, especially if it is reinforced by the group or cohort for its own advantage. If we assess Australian settler society values (group) against Schwartz’ theory of values (predominantly individual), what would we find? To begin with, we would have to remap the values from the individual to the group level. We would immediately note that there is little Schwartz emphasis on moral values. But if we persist, we would find, as a first order heuristic approximation (scale 1 to 10, where 10 is high value): self-direction, 8; stimulation, 8; hedonism, 7.5; achievement, 7.5; power, 7.5; security, 8 (5);731 conformity, 7.5; tradition, 7; benevolence, 4; universalism, 4.5. Clearly, this doesn’t tell the full story. If so, perhaps Schwartz’ theory of values is inadequate or incomplete. If we measure the value of a society by its respect for morality, Nature, and human life above economic concerns, then a predatory society that was responsible for Lemkinian genocide, environmental destruction, and apartheid would rate less than an ordinary criminal responsible for the vilest of crimes. But there is no statistical diagnostic behavioural manual for societies, only individuals. And we can’t put a nation in gaol for its normative crimes. Schwartz’ schema encourages us to believe, in this example, that Australian settler society excelled in most measured values. But measured against moral imperatives, the score would be a D for fail. Nor can we argue, as some do, that ‘times were different then’. The real question is: did our predecessors know what they were doing, and did they know it was wrong? The answer is: they knew and did it anyway. It is barely better today, when we consider the progress we have made, with no Bill of Rights, appalling environmental degradation, accelerating species loss, and continuing Aboriginal disadvantage a remonstrance for our national character. In many ways, the Australian past is not another country. It shares familiar values of exploitation and self-interest, of unsustainable environmental practices that – like buy now, pay later, or use once and throw away – will condemn our children to pay the price of our profligacy. If they can. The price may well be too high. These Schwartz ‘values’, which he projects with ‘defining goals’, are weighted towards types of individual rather than social (collective) learned behaviour, instrumental (a means to an end) rather than inherent (intrinsic) or aspirational (an end in itself), for example: the end objective or moral imperative of chastity (what we ‘ought’ to do in a certain cultural or religious belief system); or a belief in something (say individual freedom) that might transform into a ‘right’. 333 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Consider the Schwartz value quadrants: ‘self-enhancement’, ‘self-transcendence’, ‘openness to change’. It is almost as though Schwartz seeks to free the individual from the group (‘conformity’). In this sense, the Schwartz value framework is culturally weighted towards individualism and nominally open societies, for which troubled democracies such as America is an example, with its gun culture and proud inequity; or Australia, with its reducing freedoms of the press and religion, and the calibrated environmental rape. Collectivist cultures watch and wait their opportunity for ascendency. Stating that a value has a defining goal does not make it so. Values, properly conceived, usually have a moral dimension with an immanent emergent quality to which we can aspire. They are not a means to an end; they are an end in itself. That is why they are best encoded into a Constitutional amendment such as a bill of Rights that draws our domestic rule-based order forward without undue missteps and false starts. Transformative ‘values’ include altruism, compassion, self-sacrifice, love, freedom, security, a sense of duty and obligation, primum non nocere, respect for Nature, and kindness. Such values lead us to become more than we are, to transcend the baser parts of our nature, exploitative greed, knowingly causing harm, the quest for dominance, narcissism, selfinterest. To be effective, transformative values must become normative, like ‘herd’ immunity against infection. It is these transformative values that we must preserve in a framework of rights. And it is this area where the Schwartz theory of values is lacking. The alternative is to rely on an unwieldy accreted system of laws and regulations that sometimes punish undesirable behaviour and overwhelmingly reward greed. We usually ascribe ‘values’ with a positive connotation, although it is possible to conceive of negative values, particularly those involving the worst consequences of the exercise of power, or inhumane belief systems. Consider Nietzche’s Übermensch, or utilitarianism when its ends are perverted, or Darwinian survival of the ‘fittest’ that helped justify group predatory behaviour, or China’s belief that cultural genocide against the Xinjiang Uyghur people is justified, or ‘exterminate the brutes’ for the greater good. 334 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 85 Schwartz theory of basic values732 Figure 86 Schwartz dynamic underpinnings of the 'universal' value structure 733 Because many of the Schwartz ‘values’ are codeterminate (conjoint), they are not logically sub-typed (disjoint) and become inconsistent, the resulting effect of a circular schema arrangement, a hall of mirrors. Conclusions The Schwartz ‘values’ are incomplete; as a set, they do not help us understand the biological or moral basis for goal directed behaviour and belief, either innate (genetic memories such as for inherited instincts or the non-learned inherent capabilities of savants) or acquired (memetically or epigenetically learned). They unravel around their points of inconsistency. They are, at best, a starting point for a more rigorous deconstruction and faceted classification. In the Schwartz schema, ‘values’ mediate an undefined stimulus with a behavioural response, either an action (categorial agency) or an affective emotion (reductive reaction). We note that It is a similar model for a repeatable process or for symbolic computation: at different levels of abstraction, there is a triggering condition and an expected outcome from some Involved 335 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Party agency within an intentionality envelope, although Schwartz does not deconstruct ‘values’ within a process dynamic. Consider the type occupation process for which the objective is to occupy a certain area (of land) according to some (constraint) rules, for example: acquire, displace, defend, develop. But the type process is also overlaid with type behaviours such as greed and exploitation, perhaps self-advancement, rarely compassion. In some cases, the process is reflexively self-adapting like an Escher drawing of a hand drawing a hand. That is, the type process can adapt to and be defined by type behaviours, as though the worst aspects of our collective motivations were embodied in a repeatable set of lawfully specified steps. ‘Values’ (what we consider important) cannot be separated from behaviours (how we choose to act in some context). These values’, both positive and negative, and the extent to which they are reinforced will depend on the risk/ reward gradient in any situation. 734 The Schwartz ‘values’ such as ‘achievement’ and ‘hedonism’ are delimited by what they do not include: altruism, kindness, charity, the best of ourselves; instead, they highlight hairychested aggressive qualities concerned with the projection of anthropocentric power and influence. As a type schema, they are an incomplete representation of human values; nor do they properly consider humanity’s role in Nature. This cognitive bias may reflect Schwartz’s focus on what is (pragmatic, concerned with selfgratification) rather than what ought to be, which is the moral dimension of how we choose (or should choose) to act. The Schwartz schema is circular, not transformative: that is its weakness. Figure 87 Continuum between emotions, values, rights, and constraint rules735 If instead we represent ‘value’ quadrants in a vector space whose key dimensions are importance and performance, we begin to form a picture of the evolutionary possibilities for human nature and the transformative steps involved. Social attributes and their relationships This table sets out a preliminary scoping matrix for categorial social attributes and their relationships: feelings → emotions → behaviours → values → rights → de facto and de jure constraint rules 336 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Consider some examples: a) pain (feeling) → fear/ anger (emotion)→ fight/ flight (behaviour) → secure and protect (value) → security and safety (right) → security legislation (constraint rule) b) insatiability (feeling) → craving (emotion) → greed (behaviour) → self-interest/ materialism (value) → property ownership (right) → Australia’s 19th century dispossessory land laws (constraint rule) It is when primary behaviours (or persistent patterns of emotional reaction to some stimulus) are overlaid that social organization becomes more complex and can result in group behavioural morbidity. For example, if we reinforce the fight/ flight response (the need for security) with greed (the desire for more along a risk/reward gradient), our values – if unconstrained – may in extreme cases become exploitative and predatory to the point of racism and genocide (or specism and ecocide), where asymmetric power is a weapon to secure competitive advantage over otherness (other people, other species). In this context, rights become a regulatory framework to potentially modify behavioural and legislative excess through a governance feedback process. If constraining laws – the domestic rule-base order - are not mediated by agreed rights, the laws may be inconsistent. Without mediating rights, our social model becomes exposed to authoritarianism and inequity. The data model for human behaviour and social organization does not yet exist, but it will set out entities and their relationships in a classification schema. We conclude that empirical research into mapping and ordering fundamental social concepts is far from complete and is basic to the formulation of any cross-cultural civitas maxima. Emotions:736 Positive: amazed, comfortable, content, determined, eager, energetic, excited, happy, hopeful, joyful, loving, motivated, peaceful, proud, satisfied Negative: angry, annoyed, anxious, ashamed, bitter, bored, confused, depressed, disdainful, disgusted, embarrassed, envious, foolish, frustrated, furious, grieving, hurt, inadequate, insecure, inspired, irritated, jealous, lonely, lost, miserable, nervous, overwhelmed, relieved, resentful, sad, scared, self-conscious, shocked, silly, stupid, suspicious, tense, terrified, trapped, uncomfortable, worried, worthless Behaviours (social):737 Positive: caring, charming, considerate, enthusiastic, excitable, faithful, funny, kind, pleasant, polite, sincere, thoughtful Negative: aggressive, argumentative, bossy, deceitful, domineering, inconsiderate, irritating, manic, manipulative, moody, rude, spiteful, thoughtless Behaviours (personal):738 Positive: active, adaptable, ambitious, assertive, brave, confident, conscientious, cooperative, courageous, creative, curious, debonair, decisive, determined, extroverted, generous, hilarious, honourable, impulsive, introverted, inventive, kind, lively, perfectionist, pleasant, pragmatic, productive, protective, receptive, reflective, responsible, romantic, self-assured, sensitive, serious, shrewd, trustworthy, unusual, witty, wonderful, zany, zealous Negative: abrasive, abusive, angry, anxious, belligerent, boorish, careless, cautious, conceited, cowardly, crazy, creepy, cruel, dangerous, docile, defiant, erratic, finicky, flashy, flippant, foolish, furtive, guarded, jittery, malicious, mysterious, nervous, obnoxious, 337 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited outrageous, panicky, passive, reserved, secretive, shy, strange, threatening, unsuitable, vengeful, volatile, wary Behavioural trait (Personality): 739 affectionate, aggressive, ambitious, anxious, artistic, bad-tempered, big-headed, boring, bossy, charismatic, creative, courageous, dependable, devious, dim, extroverted, egotistical, gregarious Values:740 Positive: achievement, ambitious, appreciation, authority, autonomy, benevolence, broadminded, capable, commitment, competence, conformity, controlling, cooperative, creativity, dependable, dominating, environmental protection, equality, excitement, explorative, forgiving, freedom, friendly, fulfilment, goal-oriented, harmony, healthiness, hedonism, helpful, honest, independence, influential, loving, loyal, motivated, national security, non-discrimination, novelty, obedience, politeness, power, protective, public image, respectful, restraint, risk-taking, safety, security, self-direction, self-discipline, selfgratification, self-indulgent, self-interest, sensuous, sense of belonging, social justice, social order, social recognition, subordination, responsible, social status, societal stability, spiritual, stimulation, success-oriented, tolerance, tradition, transcendence, unity with nature, universalism, wealth, wisdom. Negative: Rights: 741 These rights do not formally exist as a Constitutional amendment. Some are set out in various Conventions to which Australia may be a signatory; but unless they are incorporated in domestic legislation, they are merely aspirational; others may exist in disparate legislation that is easily overridden without Constitutional protection. Consider: right of free speech; right of free association; right to freedom of movement; right to liberty; right to freedom from persecution, vilification and slavery; freedom from labour racketeering; freedom from torture and genocide; right to self-protection; right to reasonable and affordable standard of health, wellbeing, education, paid employment and housing; right to life; right to freedom of the press; right to freedom from compulsion; right to protest; rights of individuals on arrest; right to affordable justice; right to information and the right to know; right to freedom of thought, religion and expression; right to privacy; right to own property; right to vote; right to clean air, water and food; right to be free from financial predation; right to equitable share in common wealth; rights of disabled and underprivileged to protection; right to a healthy environment; right to sustainability and a low carbon economy; right of Nature against habitat degradation and extinction; right of animals against cruelty and depredation; rights of Indigenous people to a treaty. Constraint Rules: These rules are primarily legislative and, without a ‘rights’ framework, can present a confusion of amendments and sometimes conflicting priorities. For example, hastily constructed security legislation can override the freedom of the press and individual liberties such as whistle-blower protection in the public interest. Figure 88 Categorial mapping (unnormalized single thread hierarchy) 742 We note that the Schwartz values are all positive, with some exceptions: humane, altruistic, compassionate, selfless are missing, although Schwartz may argue they are implied by his concept of ‘universalism’. But people and societies can also be defined by negative values: exploitative, racist, the pursuit of inequity and inequality, narcissism, gluttony, deliberately causing harm, repression, despoliation, murderous, mercenary, expansionary, inhumane, cruel. These values may place individual needs above those of society or Nature (liberal democracies) or may place individual needs below those of a ruling elite (collectivist communism). In general, for most societies economic and security priorities override humanitarian and environmental concerns. 338 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited For example, Communist China may think of itself as law abiding and peaceful, but a persecuted minority such as the Uyghur may not agree. Australian settler society may have considered itself virtuous and successful in ‘taming a harsh land’ but Aboriginal people would have a different view. So, is it a matter of perspective, or can fundamental values be corrupted in the service of power or greed? In Australia, our values have been skewed towards self-interest and the preservation of power structures such as corporations and sociopolitical ideologies. A personal story My father, a WWII returned soldier was a heavy drinker, obese, and violent. When he was in the mood, he would go to the woodshed and carefully construct a stick with which to beat me, holding my hands to get better access to my body. When he tired, he would let me slip to the ground where he beat me further. It usually ended with him kicking me in the body and swearing. Perhaps he blamed me for his failures. I was born a few months after he married. I tried to avoid him. Mornings were worst. That was when he occupied the bathroom, leaving a sickly humid smell of his body. Afterwards he would hang a towel around his waist. If I tried to pass him in the corridor, he expected me to duck; otherwise, I could receive a hit across my head. I did not want to live but did not realize that I was depressed. When he assaulted my mother, I could hear her shouting, ‘Help, Ray’, but I could do nothing. I was afraid of what he would do. My sister shot him in the back with a rifle he kept in a cupboard. He became a paraplegic, almost docile, with a budgerigar on his lap. She was adopted by a loving family. Her new mother once said to me, ’He must have his good qualities’ and explained away his behaviour as ‘due to his war experience’. No. Violence is violence. There can be no explaining away, no revisionism, no exculpation, no alternative facts, no gaslighting. To forgive the past is to condone its dysfunctional behaviour and forego accountability for the consequences of our actions, to renounce apology, to protest our innocence, an argument popularized by John Howard in the 1990s that the present generation of Australians should not have to say sorry for the past because they did not take the land from Aboriginal people or steal their children, crocodilian self-forgiveness, that we are also the victims, and that, if Aboriginal society suffered from the British Government invasion, so too did the unwilling transportees, victims of an unequal and festering class-based culture. In excusing ourselves, we plead transferred victimhood, an argument of reframing. Forgiveness without accountability is pointless; accountability without forgiveness is corrosive. We all demand a slice of the pie and – too often - how to get more. There are only two possibilities: to take more of the pie, or to grow the size of the pie. For some, this is still not enough: they also demand power and the respect they assume goes with power. To those people we say, remember the future because the future will likely not remember you, not with respect, perhaps not at all. In Australia, the Morrison Government has just announced (February 2021) a $3.47pd increase to the ‘job seeker’ safety net for those who are unemployed, raising the total fortnightly amount to $620.8743. This is the first increase since 1987. It slightly lifts one of our most vulnerable groups to 31% of the minimum income set by the OECD, the third lowest in the OECD (2019). 744 The Government claims the OECD measure is invalid 339 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited because unemployed people and pensioners also have access to subsidized housing, health, and transport. Why does a neoliberal Government – or any rightwing Government - take financial advantage of underprivileged and vulnerable people? Because it believes that a social underclass will not vote for them anyway or lacks an effective voice to protest. This is to deny our core values based around a ‘fair go’ which should surmount politics, but rarely do. It is a failure of the Australian democratic process and a failure of assumed but Constitutionally unspecified fundamental Rights. The consequence is greater inequality and an expendable underclass, forming a behavioural pattern that we also saw with 19th century transportees being shipped for the crime of being poor. In 2021, the Government has not set aside any additional funds for the development of social housing, a missed opportunity to grow the economy in a time of Covid. Affordable housing is now a chronic issue, along with underfunded aged care homes.745 Underfunding leads to further neglect and abuse. Australia is now the third most unaffordable country in the world for housing, an unenviable position it has held for almost a decade.746 It is instructive to compare politicians’ financial emoluments and aspirations towards self-entitlement with that of underprivileged people. 747 The average annual politician’s basic allowance is now $211,250, about 3.2 times the average wage. On average, the annual politician’s allowance has increased 2-3% year on year since 1990 while wages over the last ten years have remained relatively flat. In addition to a generous remuneration, a politician receives a $280pd ‘living away from home’ allowance, more than six-times what a social welfare recipient must survive on day by day, around $44. The political class argues, ’we don’t set the pay increases, it’s handled by an independent mechanism’ through an Act (The Remuneration and Allowances Act 1990, plus amendments), as though this justifies the inequality. Meanwhile, the fractures grow in our society, fractures induced by inequality and a failure to prioritise rights over ideology, fractures that expose our values. Greyness, the sum of missing spaces within our perception of reality, the liminal uncertainty, the cognitive gap, exists only if our values allow it. Without a heart, without memory and love, we become data to be excavated, datapoints to be manipulated like pixels on an electronic display, the images predetermined, the spaces ignored. Greyness measures the amount of our indifference that only compassion can remove through the grace of innocence, like a tabula rasa that is written in unfolding understanding, an expression of love. Our heart makes us, or should make us, human, the basis for our values, not power, not selfinterest, but a loving heart that allows us to confront, transcend even, the inevitability of mortality. In death, posturing and striving accounts for little. Our erstwhile reality becomes an illusion. The concept of a liminal space A liminal space allows a transformation between states, such as a cultural rite of passage for an individual, or the collapse and reconstruction of a society, or the merging of cultures, or the gradation of a geographic landscape between two ecosystems. That is, there is a state change in a group or structure from state a to state b, where the border or limit is a liminal space defined by a mapping transformation function between system states. In systems theory this process can be modelled as a finite state machine; in mathematics we invoke a homeomorphism; in anthropology, it is the method for managing the dynamic relationship with normative behaviour in a social structure and how otherness develops to reflect the interaction between power, place, and identity. Historians like to think of the cultural or ethnographic state between states as undefined or ambiguous and seek to instantiate it with intermediate constructs that have an amorphous shape and substance, for example, the emergence of Straitspeople creole culture between 340 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1810 and 1840 from a merging of the Palawa and sealers, some of whom now live on Cape Barren Island in Bass Strait and pursue seasonal mutton-birding, others who have engaged with multiculturalism, many embracing Palawa culture and identity from whatever wordlists were captured by Robinson and others. From despair and persecution in the decades following the British invasion of Tasmania when they were almost destroyed, they are now thriving as a uniquely proud people. It raises the question of ‘border’, how fluid is it, how big, and with what limits? Is there a coherent and stable reference framework? Does it have a functional and cognitive context? How can we analyse a liminal space other than through borders and limits? If any space has a limit or boundary, say a social structure, how do we dynamically manage the mobility and differentiation between spaces? We argue that ‘spaces’ are managed through processes that are mediated by roles and agencies and the relationship between ‘spaces’ depends on the limits or boundaries in relation to such processes, providing a conceptual framework for our analysis. Let us call a ‘space’ an entity or a thing of interest within a conceptual schema that represents assertions about the nature of the domain under investigation. We immediately note that a conceptual schema sets out what type of ‘things’ we are interested in, their characteristics (attributes) and the relationships (associations) between the things of interest. We conclude that the conceptual schema is a type map that can exist at different levels of abstraction, where the type entity ‘space’ can be instantiated with any number of specific ‘spaces’. What are the defining attributes of a ‘space’? There is the range and reach of a certain space. But our model must also allow for the concept of dynamic change of schema instances, including mobility, and transition from the limits or border of one space to that of another, that is, transformative operations against the ‘thing of interest’. Liminal space is a type of space or border zone where the relationship with other spaces is managed. Why is ‘space a’ different from ‘space b’? In this example, we introduce fuzziness in attributes where they may be either one thing or another. But this is another way of saying that state transitions can be mediated by specific roles, for example, the acquisition of a new identity. The anthropologist Van Gennep identified different categories of rituals that mediated a change in social status, where liminality defined an uncertain transitional state. The liminal concept can be extended beyond social structures to other objects – geographical,748 cultural, gender identity, physical status, ideology – and their relationship with some normalized object, either imagined or derived, where otherness is a comparative attribute. If we represent space A as entity A and space B as entity B then, in entity-relationship modelling, we are interested to specify their bidirectional relationship, how do the entities and their attributes interact through normalised type data, data with minimal redundancy, and what are the functional operants that can act on the canonical (simplest possible) data to modify its instantiation. Consider: the operant ‘invasion’ acts upon the entity [Palawa] to modify its attributive status [from ‘sovereign owners’ of the ‘space’ to ‘dispossessed’]. In this sense, Palawa liminal identity is the consequence of the social process that resolves stressors through hybridization, we create a new equilibrium or state change where the mobile border is stabilized around a variant entity class instance. Has the reference framework changed? No, only the relationships between entities. That is, space B is the consequence of a change in relationships caused by a sociopolitical process, giving rise to a changed space A. For example, the role of [invader] damages the type space [Palawa] causing a change in social status and dynamics within the type affected group [Palawa] and creates an [imposed] space. 341 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited That is, each ‘space’ can have one or more ‘people’. Each ‘person’ must be from one space. Each ‘person’ is a subtype of ‘involved party. Each role may have a person. How is space A mapped to space B within an entity class? Surely the transformation requires functional operations on the data instances. We introduce subtyping into an entity class that allows inheritance of specific characteristics. This allows us to perform operations or services on the entity subtype through a role-mediated process. The concept of a liminal space can be extended to a Lemkinian space where there is a set of bounded functional constraints operating against a targeted group causing a disruptive and transformative change in their state, what is sometime called a punctuated equilibrium. Modelling reality This paper argues that reality can be modelled using potentially falsifiable hypotheses or assertions. There are no liminal grey areas in mass violence as subaltern theorists like to argue, where beliefs and ideology overtake verifiable facts with nuance and hidden meaning, where roles and agency are fluid and constantly redefined, where cultures merge and form new structures, new accommodations, where truth and verifiable fact are made less certain through ambiguity, ‘Oh, [x] had good qualities even though he did bad things, therefore the small amount of good outweighs the bad’, or ‘in a societal class hierarchy there are thresholds or transitions between classes that reflect attitudes and beliefs’ or ‘Aboriginal women freely participated in miscegenation with sealers and emerged with newly affirmed power and cultural identity, they were empowered. There was no sexual trafficking or female predation or abduction or ‘domestic’ violence to force compliance. They were masters of their situation.’ On the contrary, an imposed asymmetric power structure asserts its own rules to which individuals and subaltern populations must succumb or break. We have the example of Britain’s calibrated territorial displacement of Aboriginal nations with a resulting intragenerational population collapse; and liminal theory will not save the subjugated group, not from the oppressor, not from Lemkinian consequences, although mixed race survivors may float to the surface of the displacive tsunami’s after shock and find new habitats and identity, an adaptive accommodation within an imposed society. Finite state machine: The finite state machine is made up of multiple potential states. At any point of time, the system is in one state and an event triggers certain actions in that state that prescribe a predictable change in state. For example, in a mass transit system I can tap a turnstile receptor with a value card to open the gate, which automatically closes when I pass through. Or an election event can be held in a closed system comprising eligible voters, the result of which is a defined group that is democratically appointed to handle the policies, legislative changes, and administrative machinery of government for a certain period, that is, a change of government state from one incumbent to another, which may be the same incumbent but with a different ‘state’. Group. A set of people or things considered together or regarded as belonging together. A set of people sharing something in common such as an interest, belief, culture, or political ideology. A set that is closed under an associative binary operation with respect to which there exists a unique identity element within the set and every element has an inverse within the set; for example, the integers are a group under addition, but not under multiplication. Group theory. The study of the formation and properties of mathematical groups. It has applications in the study of the symmetry of molecules and crystal shapes. To the extent that a specific society has symmetry, we can apply group theory to behavioural science, including political and economic structures, although such work is in its infancy. For introduced Australian Anglo-centric society, evolving rule-based constraints establish a structural homomorphism, where we can potentially analyse operations on the group and between different groups. 342 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Homeomorphism. A one-to-one correspondence that is continuous in both directions between the points of two geometric figures or between two topological spaces. It is an equivalence relation and preserves topological properties. See also diffeomorphism. Homomorphism. Mapping from one algebraic structure to another under which the structural properties of its domain are preserved on its range in the sense that if * is the operation on the domain, and ° is the operation on the range, then Ø (x * y) = Ø(x) ° Ø(y). In particular, a group homomorphism is a mapping Ø such that both domain and range are groups, and Ø(xy) = Ø(x) Ø(y) for all x and y in the domain. Holomorphic function. In mathematics, a holomorphic or analytic function is a complex-valued function of one or more complex variables that is, at every point of its domain, complex differentiable in a neighborhood of the point, satisfying the Cauchy-Riemann equations in the region. Holomorphic functions are the central objects of study in complex analysis. See box: the Riemann mapping theorem. In Western civilization, it is a subjective balance sheet approach to morality and societal structures that originated in utilitarianism (the greater good) and self-entitlement (where societies become more unequal, eventually collapsing). ‘Reading against the grain’ or ‘reading between the lines’ this ambiguity is often called by the Humanities, where nuance has crept into becoming liminal certitude, a shadow play without verifiable substance, grasping at ghosts. But it is denying history. At best it is interpretative history, open to apprehended bias and speculation. At worst, it is non-Cartesian, where it is ‘not even wrong’ as Pauli used to say, meaning, as a ‘hypothesis’, it was not falsifiable, therefore, not a hypothesis. Liminal: (Latin: limen: ‘a threshold’) relating to a transitional or initial stage; at or on a boundary or threshold. First introduced by James Sully in 1887 ‘Among these problems [of consciousness] is that of the limit, threshold, or liminal intensity’,749 and then by Arnold van Gennep in 1909, 750 to describe cultural rites of passage or changes of status within a group. That is, the original meaning of liminality was an illusory space, one that was ill-defined, but was picked up by social theorists to mean a transitory space between social ‘states’. In social anthropology, liminality refers to rites of passage within a society, where group members engage in a ritualized ceremony to formalize their change of status within the group. During the rite, the individual is at a threshold of restructuring their identity within the group where their status is ambiguous until the ritual is complete. It is a similar process to swearing in a newly elected member of parliament after which they can begin performing their duties; or the process of moving from collapse (pre-liminal) and replacement (postliminal) of a social order triggered by war or ecological crisis. The concept of a liminal space has been extended to include political, cultural,751 psychological, and ecological change, for example, the blending of cultures,752or to ‘fill the silent space’ between different historical accounts, 753 or to describe the geographic space between two climate zones, 754 or the space in which selfrealisation (or brain washing) occurs. During liminal periods, structures become less certain, more fluid, as new structures arise. We might now define liminality as the characteristic of a time bound process that engages a state change within a closed system, during which period the system state is ambiguous. This definition has limited predictive capability while it remains subjective, a shadowland of ghosts, the domain of imprecise words railing against process instantiations (events) and their outcome, verifiable models of reality. Subaltern: an officer in the British army below the rank of captain [sub ‘next below’, alternus ‘every other’]; the colonial populations who are socially, politically, and geographically excluded from the hierarchy of power and a society’s socio-economic roles and agency; the status of indigenous people in an imposed colonial structure; an oppressed and subordinate minority (political, social, religious, ethnic) that defines the role of the those who hold hegemonic power. The subaltern role may be transformed within a liminal space. If we don’t know something, then we should say ‘we don’t know’ rather than rely on a form of hermeneutics, unprovable inference, liminality, and unfounded assertions, say, that George Robinson was [P] ‘biased against sealers’ 755and [therefore] [cP] we won’t accept his written evidence that sealers abducted Aboriginal women.756 Or that, [P] ‘[because] a handful of Aboriginal people survived in Tasmania through mixed-race relationships’, [therefore] [cP] 343 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Britain is not responsible for Lemkinian depopulation [within the retrospectively applied parameters of the UN Convention]. You may respond, ‘Well, the UN Convention did not exist before 1948’, therefore Tasmanian genocide does not exist’ to which I reply, ‘mass killings have occurred through history, including the 1915 Turkish massacre of Armenian people, widely recognised as ‘genocide’. 757 Events can be retrospectively categorized before the word objects exist, just as a rock exists before we give it a name. It is sophistry to argue that something must have a contextual referent in agreed nomenclature before it is recognised as having an identity.’ Symbolic logic formalisms Categorial proposition: a proposition that can be analysed as being about classes, or categories, or types, affirming or denying that one class A is included in another class B, in whole or part. We will use this analytic approach in assessing the mapping between prescribed type events and Lemkinian articles. Proposition: A statement, what is typically asserted using a declarative sentence, and hence always either true or false, although its truth or falsity may be unknown. Propositional function: In quantification theory, an expression from which a proposition may result either by instantiation or by generalization. A propositional function may be instantiated when the individual variables within it are replaced by individual constants. It is the reasoning that is faulty, allowing a flawed conclusion to derive from a questionable premise, akin to Central American civilizations sacrificing victims to induce the gods to bring the rain; eventually the rain comes, so the priests can claim that the deity listened, that the sacrifices resulted in rain; and the circular reasoning continues, where A → B → A like an ouroboros. But if the rains do not come, we may see the collapse of a civilization. We are that dependent on climate, a climate we now create through our activities, a climate that may destroy us. The failure is ours, that we ascribe a deity with all the petty attributes of humanity. The mind of God is far more complex than we conceive, and far less limited as we seek to understand even the simplest mechanisms, say the genetic programme, a programme that we cannot yet decipher, or the infinitely more complex nature of entire ecosystems. We are like children, entertained by the sight and sound of rattles, while the ordered reality of lifeforms and geophysical processes barely intrudes on our limited grasp. And if the rattle disappears from our field of view, has it magically disappeared, or does it still exist, dependent on our memory of events? We can break what we see, destruction is easy, a blow, intentional degradation, taking carelessly from Nature, whereas creating and managing the Earth’s exquisitely balanced living and emergent systems is far beyond us, as is terraforming and controlling the weather and directing the great ocean currents and bio-sculpting genetic resistance to disease and creating life and engineering the Sun’s fusion process and recreating consciousness and duplicating how a honeybee, with a mere one million neurons, can navigate its environment and communicate to its companions and reproduce and build hives and show a range of complex behaviors and react to novel environments, when the feat is beyond our current supercomputers. Yet Nature does all this every day. Humanity’s modest achievements do not bear comparison. 344 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Another example: the proton’s interior swirls with a fluctuating number of six kinds of quarks, their oppositely charged antimatter counterparts (antiquarks), and “gluon” particles that bind the others together, morph into them and readily multiply. Somehow, the roiling maelstrom winds up perfectly stable and superficially simple — mimicking, in certain respects, a trio of quarks. “How it all works out, that’s quite frankly something of a miracle,” said Donald Geesaman, a nuclear physicist at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.758 We must not airbrush our mistakes from history and ‘move on’, not until we have confronted the worst of our normalised behaviors, accepted them, and learned. However, we don’t seem to have learned, merely changed the targeted modality of our exploitative behaviours. What began with violent dispossession of Aboriginal people has now become violent dispossession of the ecosphere. Do we seek to question the vocabulary of dispossession in the hope that the behaviour will go away or become irrelevant to our thinking? Adaptation begins with redemptive acceptance of our mistakes, contrition even, as we seek to undo what was done through the grace of more enlightened agency. Stanner’s ‘great Australian silence’ must be punctured with a levée en masse for the 21st century that recognises human and ecological rights in a spirit of compassion. It is not before time. Figure 89 Conformal-like mapping between two rule-based state spaces D1 and D2 (with adaptation)759 Riemann mapping theorem D1 and D2 are two simply connected regions different from C. The Riemann mapping theorem provides the existence of w = ⨍ (z) mapping D1 onto the unit disk and the existence of w = g (z) mapping D2 onto the unit disk. Thus (g -1 ⨍) is a one-to-one mapping of D1 onto D2. If we can show that g -1, and consequently the composition, is analytic,760 then we have a conformal mapping of D1 onto D2, proving that ‘any two simply connected regions different from the whole plane C can be mapped conformally onto each other’.761 If D1 is our existing constraint-based state space (within a Riemannian-like manifold) and D2 is our preferred value-based constraint state space, then we can postulate a unique conformal mapping function (g -1 ⨍) that 345 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited maps D1 to D2 through a logical transformation, much as information systems architectures and their instantiation are developed today. Within the social contract domain, we will call this mapping function (or logical transformative framework) a Bill of Rights. It allows our domestic system of laws to harmonize with UN international conventions and, as our circumstances change, extend optimally into future history, perhaps a time more rational and enlightened than our own, where our laws may be administered by an impartial AI acting as judiciary and are not subject to the interpretive vagaries of political and juridical ideology and too-often woolly thinking. Without such a transformative legislative framework, our society’s resilience will be challenged by cascading tipping points – global warming, inability to feed ourselves, resource depletion, dying oceans and rivers, collapsing economies, climate-induced conflict, extinction events, pandemics – that will compromise our impelling need for rapid evolutionary adaptation. We will become a failed species. Time is not on our side. 346 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Mapping ‘values’ within a state space How might we represent ‘values’ in some differentiable manifold? Let us conduct a thought experiment. We will use the well-known mass balance model of material entering or leaving a system, where the conservation of mass principle applies. That is, mass cannot disappear or be created. Let us suppose that a fundamental principle of human behaviour is the conservation of self-interest S within a domain L defined by legislative and societal rules and constraints, and that S can be dragged by a vector field V representing political and economic forces L within some legislative boundary B. Let us denote that ‘values’ exist in some vector field V: R 3 → R 3 defined by ‘legislative’ domain L with the boundary ∂L = B. Let us assume that the vector field V is acting on the value of ‘self-interest’ S, where S is conserved. The density volume is ρ V · V ∆t dB. Part of B with outflow The total flow S1 (in and out) through B is: S1 = ∫B ρv · ν ∆t dB = ∆t ∫B ρv · ν dB. The total S in domain L is ∫L ρ dx. The change of S in time ∆t is S2 = ∆t ∂t ∫L ρ dx. Domain L with the boundary ∂L = B and the vector field V. V = (x2, -x1) But S1 + S2 = 0, therefore ∫L ∂t ρ dx + ∫B ρv · ν dB= 0 and ∫L ∇ · v ϕ dx + ∫L v · ∇ϕ dx = ∫B v · ν ϕ dB where ∇ · v = i=1 ∑3 ∂xi vi from which ∫L ∂t ρ dx +∫L ∇ · (ρv) dx = ∫L (∂t ρ + ∇ · (ρv)) dx = 0 If a continuous function Φ: R 3 → R fulfils ∫L Φ(x) dx = 0 for arbitrary L in R3, then Φ = 0. Hence ∂t ρ + ∇ · (ρv) = 0 ∀x, t (continuity equation). If L has constant density ρ then ∂t ρ = 0, ∇ · (ρv) = ρ∇ · v and ∇ · v = 0 ∀x, t. In a free vector field R2, if we set V = (x2, -x1), then the vector divergence is circular within L. A Bill of Rights becomes like an attractor that will drag the vector field across the legislative boundary B with a transformative effect over time. Figure 90 Differential model for self-interest (S) constrained by a legislative framework (L) with boundary B. 347 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited I like to think of the transformative mapping problem – one involving a state change - in these terms, that we are all connected, Nature, all life forms, other people, and races, all forming a complex interdependent network, and that we move through time in a series of complex state changes involving the strengthening and weakening of relationships. Recent scientific evidence around natural phenomena seems to bear this out. Consider the work of ecologist Suzanne Simard, who wondered, like many, if old-growth forests in her native Canada were ageless and infinite, with low-impact methods used to harvest Douglas fir, cedar, and white pine. She later noticed that commercial clear-cutting had largely superseded the sustainable logging practices of the past. Loggers were replanting with neatly ordered rows of single species, thinking this was enough, but around ten per cent suffered disease and die-back. Simard suspected the answer was ‘buried in the soil’. She discovered that, underground, ‘trees and fungi form mycorrhizae partnerships’ where ‘threadlike fungi envelop and fuse with the tree roots, helping them extract water and nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for some of the carbon-rich sugars the trees make through photosynthesis’. Her research also indicated that mycorrhizae connected plants to one another in a living community, with patterns of behaviour and communication along chemotactic gradients. Her work inspired Richard Powers’ 2019 The Overstory, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. We now know that trees are not solitary individuals that compete for space and resources in some blind Darwinian struggle; they are not indifferent to one another; they cooperate in a complex script we did not understand before and only partly understand now. ‘An old-growth forest is neither an assemblage of stoic organisms tolerating one another’s presence nor a merciless battle royale: it’s a vast, ancient and intricate society. There is conflict in a forest, but there is also negotiation, reciprocity and perhaps even selflessness. The trees, understorey plants, fungi and microbes in a forest are so thoroughly connected, communicative and co-dependent that some scientists have described them as superorganisms.’ 762 Britain treated groups of Aboriginal people like solitary trees that could be removed from the landscape without consequence. But there has been a long tail of consequences: marginalization, intergenerational despair, the stolen generation and eugenics, excessive incarceration, systemic disadvantage, and failure to recognise them in the Australian Constitution, a woodchip industry of broken dreams. Our profound failure as an introduced culture is that we did not learn sustainable land management practices from Aboriginal people who knew the country and its moods intimately; our arrogance led to denuded landscapes and evermore intensive fires. We forgot our relationship with the Earth. What the British invaders saw as garden estates were not natural; they were manmade, firestick farming, something that Bill Gammage brought to our attention in 2012 with The Biggest Estate on Earth. Now those estates have largely been lost. Sclerophyllous scrubland has taken over, animal habitats destroyed, topsoil impoverished, rivers exhausted, species driven to extinction. 348 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We must urgently relearn what was too long ignored: intelligent land management, and sustainable use of resources. We are part of Nature, not its master. We must remember that racism – the concept that some are superior, some inferior - brought us to this mess of inequality and unfair use of resources that now confronts us. How did we become so insensitive? So arrogant? How did our values become so damaging? Was it through ‘nuance’ and ‘death through a thousand cuts’ that we fell down a slippery slope of populist utilitarian indifference, unreason, where what is real becomes misinformation, and misinformation gaslighting causes us to question our grasp of reality? So it is with liminal theory where the shadows cast by our cognitive misunderstanding can resolve out of the gloom as stubborn rumours and conspiracies. Those originating exploitative behaviours now persist in the ‘tragedy of the commons’ where we remove entire ecosystems and top predators as though it will have no consequence. Global warming is someone else’s problem. Poverty is part of the natural order with a wealthy one per cent making their own rules. Self-interest is rewarded, compassion derogated as a bleeding heart. But there are always consequences, even if delayed, like reaching some form of equilibrium with imposed stressors. It is an equilibrium we may not like. If we continue this collective behavioural trajectory, one defined by unsustainable exploitation, it is humanity that may not survive, our pseudo-scientific Darwinian instincts – Dawkins ‘blind watchmaker’ - proving insubstantial and chimeric, denying the complexity of Nature. Can we adapt? Only through a change in our values. Only if we change our behavioural phenotype. Value-linked Behaviour and categorial agency Are collective beliefs, values, behaviour. and type action linked in some way? Can this sequenced linking – as for a process with intent, agency, and expected outcome - work towards the selective advantage of one group at the expense of another? Should we be questioning why ‘we’ – some defined group - normatively acts the way ‘we’ do and whether ‘we’ have the capacity to learn, adapt, and change for the good of the Earth, not just the advantage of a sub-group with special interests that may conflict with the interests of other groups, both human and Natural? If we say, behaviours – especially dysfunctional behaviours - have shaped our historical trajectory for which events (instances of a process) are the signposts, can we point to categorial or type agency? Can type agency, if not sufficiently inclusive, work for the good of one group while being destructive of another? Yes, omnicide carried the bloody barbs of authoritarian dispossession, of Indigenous people, of the environment, driven forward by unsustainable economic development: • • • • First came invasive occupation, given momentum by Imperial hegemony, by an authoritarian power structure, by the asymmetric use of armed power. Then followed a genocidal race war that is now in the elongated tail of Lemkinian repression. Coterminous with genocide, we began our ecocidal war against Nature, a dispossessory war of displacive occupation that continues. Both genocide and ecocide originated in our precepts of capitalism, of property, which are the foundation for our evolving juridical rule-based order. 349 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited • The limits to growth require us to address how we can live sustainably, but we appear disinclined to change our exploitative behaviour, our increasing ecological footprint, and the evolving behavioural constraint rules – rules embedded in certain progenerative values - that shape us and our society, our social capital. If categorial agency – activated goal seeking - gives flesh to our behaviours, then what is it that gives them structure? Psychological studies suggest that ‘values’ are the precursor to type or characteristic ‘behaviour’.763 For individuals. For groups. We will argue that behavioural constraint rules – an ideologically-based juridical rule-based order – has, in the absence of a Bill of Rights, largely supplanted our values. Behaviour is linked to beliefs through attitudes and values. The systemic relationship can be represented as: Belief  → Value  → Attitude  → Behaviour. We will deconstruct this vectorial relationship further in Part 1, with reference to Schwartz and others. Suppose we assert that ‘beliefs’ guide ‘behaviour’ through mediating ‘values’ and ‘attitudes’. If we further assert, through data analysis, a many-to-many relationship between ‘Belief’ and ‘Behaviour’ (that is, one ‘belief’ can have many ‘behaviours’ and one ‘behaviour’ can have many ‘beliefs’) then we can create an intersection dataset for which each instance contains the key for an instance of ‘Belief’ and ‘Behaviour’ along with the associated instances of ‘Value’ and ‘Attitude’. We can further normalize the intersection data to remove repeating groups and allow all the attributes to depend on one primary key. The value-association between ‘Belief’ and ‘Behaviour’ can populate - or instantiate - an event with contextual information. Within the vectorial associative dependencies, we can obtain, for example: • • Belief (superiority of British civilization) → Value (self-interest) → Attitude (racism) → Behaviour (displacive genocide). Or Belief (‘if you have a go, you’ll get a go’) → Value (hard work) → Attitude (trickledown wealth) → Behaviour (unsustainable exploitation) Belief: Acceptance of truth of something. 764 • • • • • • Acceptance by the mind that something is true or real, often underpinned by an emotional or spiritual sense of certainty. A statement, principle, or doctrine that a person or group accepts as true. An opinion, especially a firm and considered one. Assumptions or convictions that are held to be true about a concept, or person, or entity. Beliefs confer meaning and purpose to individual (and group) existence. Beliefs shape behaviour. That is, a belief may not have to be verifiable, based on repeatable evidence, for it to be accepted. An irrational belief is one that cannot be verified by logic or experience. In Australian settler society, there was the derogatory and racist belief that Aboriginal people were vermin, or – as Darwin believed – a lower order of humanity, which led to their extermination and ‘dispersal’. Today, we have the example where an irrational belief in an ever-increasing GDP and the mantra of ‘jobs and growth’ or ‘coal is good’ can dismiss or eschew climate science as a hoax at best, notwithstanding the scientific evidence. Examples: the acceptance of cultural and societal norms; imparted education; a person’s individual biases and preconceptions about something; scientific hypothesis; ideology. Value. Worth or importance of something. 350 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited • • • A persistent belief about what is important. A ranking of persistent beliefs based upon their perceived importance. A belief can grow into a persistent belief or value, which embodies patterned behaviour. Values can relate to a person or group and can be innate, inherited, emergent, nurtured: 765 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Individual experience involving risk/ reward/ validation, Faith, spirituality, Political ideology, Social, ecological capital, Economic ideology, neoliberalism, (‘if you have a go, you’ll get a go’ unless the political capital is debased by pork barrelling or sandbagging or a sense of entitlement), Capitalism, Power, Individualism, communalism, Self-interest, group interest, national interest, Earth interest (terra carta) Happiness, Wealth, Morality, Social cohesion (code of behaviour for peer groups, communities, societies; legislative constraints, Rule-based order, Taboos, Code of conduct, Career, success, Family, group, nation, Personal/ group behavioural traits (traits that represent an individual or group’s moral character, for example, loyalty, honesty, selflessness, responsibility, integrity, courage). Values inform decision-making: • • • • A value system is the set of values adopted by an individual or society that influences behaviour, either consciously or unconsciously, informing or shaping our judgments. Value systems can be incompatible if they are culturally based. Aboriginal society believed in sustainability; British society did not, a belief that has led to our present ecological crisis. Values influence our priorities, about what we hold important and how we should act, either individually or as a group. Values can be degraded through a failure of consensual prioritization of what the group holds important, or reinforced through a Constitutional legislative framework (say a Bill of Rights) and a means to manage the ethical and governance framework, for example, a state/ national integrity commission or a corporate ethical oversight body. Attitude. A usually personal view of something. • • • A state of mind or feeling or disposition about something. An opinion or general feeling or evaluation about something. A set of opinions, prejudices and sentiments held by an individual or group. Formed from underlying values and beliefs. Influences that can affect attitude and decision making include internal beliefs, values, and external influences such as peer pressure, psychological stressors, and the desire to conform or please or obey. Attitudes can be learned as a result of experience, either emotional or evidentiary or hereditary or cultural or social. Behaviour. The way in which a person, organism, or group responds to a specific set of conditions. • • • • The response of an individual or group to its environment. The result of a person’s (or group’s) values, attitudes, and beliefs. The action or reaction to a situation, group, or person. Behaviours can be learned or acquired through individual or group experience. For example, the compulsion to exploit beyond sustainability is embedded in a risk/ reward gradient; but if the gradient is non-linear, we become ill equipped to adapt. Our resilience is then exposed by punctuated equilibria (a series of ‘new normals’), where the behaviour of natural systems can show a non-linear aberrant response to human excess. 351 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Our failure to recognize limits to growth inevitably leads to entropic reductive behavioural agency for the Earth’s ecosystems. But what if the group (say an organization of some kind) is a group of groups? What if the group was a nation or a culture? Here, behavioural psychologists are less dogmatic, the longitudinal studies more complex. It is the scientific equivalent to a neuro-endocrinal-epigenetic ‘theory of everything’ and is something we know least about. In Australia, invasive dispossession drove genocide. And ecocide. Only the timescales were different. Rolling genocide was achieved in one hundred and fifty years. Ecocide began slowly and is now gathering pace. The Aboriginal population was capped; the environment is seemingly limitless but is now reaching its limits. Whenever the subject of Australian genocide arises, so does the question of State intentionality: did Britain, its administrative functionaries (bureaucrats, police, military) and its settlers intend to exterminate the Aboriginal population as the necessary price for confiscating the land? Many researchers – Henry Reynolds among them - argue: there is no set of official policies or instructions that ordered and encouraged the categorial behaviour and indictable actions of genocide; and therefore that Aboriginal extermination may have been an ‘unintended consequence’ 766 of forcible land dispossession, if they acknowledge retrospective culpability at all. We will show that there were key Government documents and policies that placed genocidal intention (mens rea) in clear view, along with official orders to act (actus rea). These documents shaped and directed Aboriginal dispossession and extermination. We will further show that arguments against Australian genocide are misconceived at best or reflexive at worst. It raises troubling questions: If Australian history has been manipulated, then why and by whom? Is history written by a closed club? Are there many histories, many presentations of events, many narrative threads, each with a version of the ‘truth’? Or is there a core of verifiable facts? Must we forever confront misinformation, alternative facts, the liminal space that defines our cognitive weaknesses? Or can we change in the way we recollect; can we filter out our misremembering? Can we acknowledge the past? Should it be accountable? Or are we forever to perpetuate more palatable myths of heroic settler triumphalism in benignly ‘taming’ the land?767 Australia would now be a much different place if Britain had recognised Aboriginal land rights from the beginning; nor would state driven dispossession and ‘dispersal’ have been so likely. Racist laws and proclamations (as transcribed here) have racist outcomes. That, after all, is their intent. These are the questions we will ask in this prefatory introduction: • • • • What is the definition of genocide according to the United Nations Convention and why hasn’t the Convention been ratified in Australian law? Was British land policy the primary cause of Australian genocide? Can we set out a type process for genocide? Has Australian normalized behaviour changed today or are Aboriginals still suffering from late-stage Lemkinian genocide? 352 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited • • Are we still propagating the same collective behavioural mistakes that caused the destruction of Aboriginal society? Finally, and most importantly, are there official British documents in existence that provide evidence of genocidal intentionality? 768 The term genocide (genos race cide killing) was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, 769 when he began to generate international support for a United Nations Convention770 that would criminalise certain kinds of targeted mass killing and destruction by one group against another, in almost all cases triggered by some politically, ideologically, or ethnically motivated collaborative process. Lemkin’s specific concern was to prevent or forestall any further occurrences of the type of pogrom practised by the Nazi machine against the Jews and others in the middle of the 20th century. But Lemkin771 also had a broader objective in mind when he steered the 1948 acceptance of the Convention on genocide through the United Nations. He recognised that genocide was a malignant societal disorder whose symptoms we must be able to diagnose if we are to prevent further occurrences and reliably assess those in the past. In thinking about the defining characteristics of targeted group destruction, Lemkin identified that: genocide has two phases: One, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. 772 Lemkin was careful to point out that he was not referring to an old concept of ‘denationalisation’ (or even, in the simplest sense, the loss of citizenship) but something far more embracing and dysfunctional, which also connoted biological, mental and cultural destruction – in whole or part - of one group by another through a process in which the State and its instruments of power are often involved. 773 The reach of the Convention is both retrospective (although this is sometimes challenged by involved parties) and prospective.774 More formally, an Involved Party (or the Involved Party concept) represents all the participants that may have contact with the type reference model (or subject area conceptual schema, say the Occupation Process) and about which the model wishes to maintain information. The definition and characteristics of the ‘involved party’ are independent of the party’s involvement with the subject area. Types of Involved Party are individuals, organisations, functional areas, and roles. Examples are: British Government, Secretary of State, Governor, Land Commissioner, police, military, settlers, sealers, timbergetters, landowners, pastoralists, judiciary, Executive Council, Legislative Council, Aboriginals. An involved party can be the actor in a process. That is, an involved party can perform some role. Agency is the capacity and manner in which an individual or organisation (Involved Party) may act in a given environment or social structure. Agency corresponds to an ‘object class’, or the manner in which an object such as Involved Party is implemented (instantiated) within a found environment such as the type Occupation Process. Therefore, agency is bound up with the concept of Involved Party. 775 Event: Important incident; an occurrence, especially one that is particularly significant, interesting, exciting, or unusual. An event can be an instance of a process. That is, we can think of an event as the intersection of a role with process agency. Any genocide776 is a function of (usually) state sponsored intent, process characteristics (Lemkinian-type actionable components and how they are instantiated through events), and the process outcome comprising the proportional numbers lost or persecuted in the targeted population. 353 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The Convention reads in part: … any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, such as: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. [Article 2]777 Genocide can exist without the United Nations necessarily agreeing or ratifying any one claimed instance. For example, many lawyers and historians generally accept the evidence for Armenian genocide, but it is disputed by Turkey, who was the responsible entity (involved party).778 Although the State is often implicated in alleged cases of genocide, it is notionally excluded from prosecution by the articles of the Convention, in particular to protect members of the Security Council from culpability as a condition for ratifying the Convention. The term ‘intent’ in Article 2 has the legal meaning of ‘mens rea’ or awareness of wrongdoing (criminal intent) associated with a criminal act (actus rea). Our investigation predictably raises certain questions: • • • • • • • • What is the nature of Australia’s being, of its values? Is there a pattern to our post-contact social evolution? Was the outcome inevitable? What, if any, is the connection between genocide and ecocide? Is the compulsion towards dispossessory behaviour in the name of self-interest the prevailing link in omnicide, in destructive typological agency? Is profligate misuse of non-renewable resources a symptom of our throwaway exploitative society? What is the behavioural link between self-interest, exploitation and dispossession? Can we learn? Do we wish to? In the absence of Constitutionally agreed values, is our rule-based order a matter of social and economic convenience and is it responsible for our unsustainable society? We will further consider, in this preamble, • • • • the provenance of Australia’s dispossessory contextual landscape, the roots of antipodean omnicide, the rise of authoritarianism, and our failure to confront the ecological limits to our economic growth. This chapter sets out the patterned mechanics of Australian genocide and ecocide, the evolutionary provenance – dictatorial, determined - of our post-invasion dispossessory rulebased order, its weighted burden of imposed and crafted policies and laws, too-often selfserving, protective of dominant power structures and perverted hegemony, of a belief in racial superiority – over Indigenous society, over other species, over ecologies - with the unending pursuit of capital, the Lemkinian landscape caught on the barbs of human and environmental damage. Definitions 779 Dispossessory: the process of dispossession. 354 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Dispossess: to deprive somebody of the possession or occupancy of something. We would extend this definition to include the Right of Nature [something] to exist or occupy some territory or place, that is: to deprive somebody [or something] of the possession or occupancy of [something, of land or property], or deprive somebody [or something] of a Right [say the right to exist]. The act of possessing [something] creates the right or rule-based constraint to decide ‘ownership’ of [something] or entry to [something] and imposes the rule-based constraint of ‘trespass’. Trespass: unlawful entry onto somebody else’s land; the emergent act or an instance of going onto somebody else’s land or entering somebody else’s property without permission. The act of ‘trespass’ requires the corresponding concept of ‘property’. Property: something of value that is owned. The act of ‘trespass’ connotes the related concept of [something] as ‘property’, that is, ‘something of value that is owned’. According to the unsatisfactory Macquarie definition of ‘own’, it: ‘emphasizes possession; used to emphasize that somebody or something belongs to a particular person or thing and not to somebody or something else.’ Is Macquarie implying ‘slavery’? And what of ‘ownership’? – ‘the legal right of possessing something; the fact or condition of being an owner of something’. So, we have a circular definition that is tied to the concept of ‘property’ and the constructed rules – ‘ownership’,’ trespass’ - by which the concept is specified. Aboriginal people did not have ‘ownership’ of the land because they did not have the legal right of possession under British Law. As a result, they became trespassers, for which the laws of trespass applied, causing them to become refugees, deportees, and then detainees. The environment or Nature or other species do not have the right to exist except as a form of owned property, leading to animal cruelty, deforestation, habitat destruction, environmental despoliation, climate change, and species extinction. Australians do not have the right of free speech, or a free press, or the right to know, because we have no Bill of Rights that can balance the need for security with the need for basic freedoms that are enshrined by inalienable universal rights and values specified by the non-enforceable United Nations Human Rights Charter,780 ‘Human’, not ‘Universal Rights of Nature and Humanity’. We have some way to go. We may not succeed. Not while dilatory rule-based economic and security policies further limit our freedoms and those of Nature. Value: the worth, importance, or usefulness of something to somebody. Sustainability: not making excessive use of natural resources, recognizing the limits to growth. And why we need a Bill of Rights, more than interlocutory, a value-based jurisprudential framework to rescue us from ourselves, to dampen the worst of our collective behavioural morbidities by balancing economic and security considerations with humanitarian and environmental concerns, by reinvigorating and renewing our social contract, a new deal, one that is fairer and more equitable, where Nature also has a voice in the modalities of our emergent, and increasingly fragile, national identity. We can change the procedural relationship (ideologically driven policies → agency) and dispossessory outcomes (omnicide) by changing the behavioural motivations or type triggering conditions, where such behavioural motivations optimally exist in a shared or imposed value framework such as a Bill of Rights. It is a currency to which we might all aspire. 355 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 91 The procedural relationship between genocide, ecocide, dispossession, and authoritarianism But do we have the will to do so? The accumulating evidence is that we will not change our self-indulgent and destructive course until it is probably too late, when the catastrophic effects of climate change or the mounting evidentiary substantiation of Aboriginal repression or the existential consequences of unsustainable economic development will reduce us all to pointing a finger, ‘It wasn’t me’. Multicide → Omnicide: We have invented the term omnicide as a type class to denote the different types of mass killing - of people, of species, of ecosystems - any of which can potentially be instantiated with a multiplicity of specific events. In some literature, ecocide is defined as environmental genocide, but the term is still finding acceptance as the evidence accumulates for its categorial agency. We note that, in Australia’s implicit social contract, economic and security considerations generally have a higher priority than humanitarian and environmental concerns. Consider, for example, that environmental impact statements are easily subverted by economic arguments for a development project. The proposed Adani open-cut Carmichael project in Queensland’s Galilee Basin is an instance of the erosion of long-term societal values; such projects will have a short-term economic gain that will degrade the future for our children. For as long as miners demand job security and Governments are addicted to the blood spoils of economic development, ecocide will continue, just as genocide was perpetuated in Australia’s recent past for financial advantage. Authoritarianism: favouring strict rules and established authority; belonging to or believing in a political system in which obedience to the ruling person or group is strongly enforced. Authority: the right or power to enforce rules or give orders. [Macquarie International English Dictionary] Authoritarianism Authoritarianism is typically evident where the state enforces compliance with its constructed rules, its carefully contrived domestic rule-based order, an accreting legislative overburden that preserves territorial boundaries on property and person and a empowers a cabal of lawyers to navigate the legal maze. Is Australia any less authoritarian than in its past, when an armed British invasion violently confiscated the land from its Aboriginal owners, where ‘might was right’? No. Self-interest drove us then. It continues to drive us now, the theology of ever-increasing prosperity, at least for the few. Today we are more nuanced in our methods of hegemonic dispossession involving people and places; today it is the 99%, native habitats, entire ecosystems, all exploited for the limited benefit of a minority, the one percent doctrine of neoliberalism, a skewed society that relies upon structural inequality for the advantage of a small cohort. 781 356 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited But fundamentally we remain the same as our forebears, our values consistent with the past. In the absence of a Bill of Rights, individualistic capitalism in the form of self-interest still shapes our concepts of property and our aspirations towards prosperity. Economic determinism still guides our collective behaviour. Political ideology generally determines our rule-based order, our system of laws. And it is these laws that primarily right-wing Western Governments use to erode our freedoms, although suppression of dissent is all too common in collectivist Communist states also, the common factor being extremist populism, vested interests, and identity politics. Consider human-caused climate change. Our federal politicians aren’t listening. Without informed and organized dissent, without social activism, without clear policies, any concerted action on averting the effects of climate change or reducing the rate of species extinction become chimeric at best. It then becomes the task of our children who must show us the way and hold us to account. Matt Canavan, the recent Australian Resources Minister in the liberal coalition government, belled the cat when he said, ’The best thing you’ll learn about going to a protest is how to join the dole queue.’782 Canavan was supported by the current Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who offered: the nation needed ‘more learning in schools and less activism’. Scott Morrison went on to say in another forum, clearly rattled by the social protest against his lack of climate change policy by trying to change the subject, ‘No one is above the law in this country’ 783 but he then tightens and enforces the laws: • • • • • • • that allow police raids on journalists for upholding the public’s right to know, that allow whistleblowers to be prosecuted, that punish climate activists and ‘shut-the gate’ lobbyists who rail against waterintensive fracking and mining on prime agricultural land, that attempt to disallow secondary boycotts, that try to encourage insurance and finance companies to invest in climate damaging businesses, that charge people with unlawful trespass if they attempt to take photographs of animal cruelty or unremediated mining tenements, that criminalises people who may disclose information that has the potential to embarrass the Government. In a wide-ranging 2019 audit of how Australian legal rights are being eroded, the Institute of Public Affairs found that certain fundamental rights – burden of proof, right to silence, privilege against self-incrimination, natural justice - are being undermined or breached by federal legislation, and the trend is continuing.784 The authors conclude: Fundamental legal rights are necessary to achieve justice within a legal system, and act as a vital constraint on the coercive power of the state. A failure to uphold and respect these legal rights is inconsistent with the rule of law. […] In order to safeguard the rule of law and to achieve just outcomes in Australia’s legal system, we must be vigilant in safeguarding these rights. This means that all current provisions that breach fundamental legal rights must be repealed, and legislators should commit to a greater level of respect for the principles 357 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited for the rule of law and refuse to pass laws which fail to respect the fundamental legal rights of Australians.785 Good luck with that. It brings into question: • • Do we have a fundamental right to engage in social activism in circumstances where our Government is not listening to public concerns? Or become a whistle blower even if it embarrasses the Government? More worryingly, if laws are intended to enforce social compliance, does that mean we should become blindly obedient to authority? And in becoming obedient, do we then subvert our moral values, our critical thinking skills? Do we, in alienating or disengaging our moral compass, become mere agents of authority structures, like puppets under someone else’s control? The social psychologist Stanley Milgram thought so when he published his findings for a still controversial study in the 1970s that indicated experimental subjects could do bad things if they were ordered to do so.786 Milgram’s study questioned whether we really have free will. That is, does our tendency to follow orders blindly mean that our behaviour can become structured by deviant and perverse social regimes and their imposed laws, leading to social conformity and obedience, even if that conformity may involve destructive behaviour, including genocide and ecocide. The Milgram study suggests that we should be extremely careful about not eroding our core values with mischievous legislation that promotes ideology over basic human rights that are best expressed in a Constitutional framework, something that Australia does not yet have. Some argue that, if genocide happened in Australia, it was both unintentional and reflexive, ‘times were different then’, ‘we cannot judge the past’. This paper sets out why the argument is false, both in logic and in fact. We will offer evidence that Lemkinian genocide is still with us, where Aboriginal society remains repressed and disadvantaged as a group, the subject of targeted policing, inadequate housing, high levels of ill-health and mortality, and third world standards of health administration. Australian genocide, ecocide: facets (sub-classes) of omnicidal dispossession787 How did Aboriginal genocide – the targeted destruction of a group in whole or part - happen in Australia? Was it the ‘system’, as political scientists like to argue, ‘functionalism’ over ‘intentionalism’? Was it a tsunami of land-hungry pastoralists, driven by greed? Or was it a combination of dispossessory and disruptive rule-based behaviour, a ruthless hierarchical power structure and self-serving British Law that Australia has adopted and modified for its own economic and political purposes in a bloody occupation process788 that now extends to the environment? The distinction between ‘intentionalism’ and ‘functionalism’ was first suggested by Timothy Mason in a 1981 essay: Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy about the Interpretation of National Socialism in Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class, edited by Jane Caplan.789 It created a 20-year circular debate among holocaust historians. One side argues there was a Nazi master plan for death camps that arose with Hitler (intentionalism), the other that there was not, but rather a bureaucratic 358 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited understanding for extermination that organically grew as a self-organising model to embrace the Nazi objectives (functionalism). In summary: Intentionalism is the carrying out of a planned and deliberate act or process, usually by Government, and usually ‘top-down’. Functionalism, within the genocide debate, is the origination of collective behaviour from the will and motivation of a crowd, generally seen as a ‘bottom up’ process. The argument is that each type of behaviour is mutually exclusive of the other, and specifically that the Nazi genocidal excesses either derived from Hitler and his henchmen or from the Nazi bureaucracy, with the debate favouring the Nazi bureaucracy. By implication, the argument proffers that Australian genocide was not intended by the Government but was an unplanned functional consequence of other behaviours that involved land policy and the security of settlers. The distinction is an artefact of reframing or misdirection, where the parameters of the argument are shifted to a space that is seen as more winnable. The distinction between intentionality and functionalism dissolves when we consider, with process models, that ‘intentionality’ is embedded as a triggering condition, which causes certain sub-processes or ‘functionality’ to be activated, causing a statistically predictable dynamic behaviour in the system as a whole, in order to achieve some expected outcome. That is, in systems theory, ‘intentionalism’ and ‘functionalism’ are co-determinate; they are not either or. And how did we plant the behavioural seeds of Australian environmental destruction that festers like an open wound today? Was it inevitable, the result of a transplanted culture that saw the environment as property in one form or another and viewed the Aboriginal perspective of sustainability as backward, that is, uncivilized or inferior? The arrogance of the British invasion meant, in Manning Clark’s confident supremacist thinking, that civilization did not begin in Australia until the last quarter of the eighteenth century.790 We wil show how Aboriginal and environmental destruction originated in the same collective behavioural morbidity – rampant dispossessory exploitation – which was fanned and nurtured by State policies and legislation in an epigenetic-like process that remains evident today in our society’s acquired and inherited behavioural phenotype. How do we analyse a dispossessory process for its underlying patterns? The approach we will use here is to develop a typology and then examine the typology through its various facets, using case instances for process verification. We will show that genocide and ecocide procedural agencies are behaviourally linked within a type classification schema. We are what we were, and the sum of all experiences in between, the dance of the genome and its expression through time. Motivated, certainly. Fallible and self-interested? Definitely. Dispossessory? Our history provides the evidence. Able to adapt beyond a small niche? With global anthropogenic change upon us, the answer is: Unclear. Technology may not save us, not this time. Or Mammon. 359 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 92 Conditional trigger typology for the type process of omnicidal land acquisition 360 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited This simplified class diagram for territorial acquisition through invasive occupation shows the type instance of the omnicide process within a conditional trigger abstraction gradient (or typology), which we later examine. Predatory: Relating to or characteristic of animals that survive by preying on others. Greedily eager to steal from or destroy others for gain. 791 By ‘others’ we will include other people, other species, and other ecosystems. Displace. displacive: to force somebody to leave his or her home or country. 792 By ‘somebody’ we will include Indigenous people and native species, both plants and animals. Sentience is not limited to humanity. Type Occupation Process Almost any process of violent territorial occupation involves the displacement of the original population, either indigenous people or native species. If the displacement is predatory and non-negotiable, it can invoke the procedural mechanics of omnicide. When Britain occupied Australia, it resolved with the sharp edge of Lemkinian genocide. The process of invasive British occupation carries a primary affective aetiology, similar to the primitive survival strategy of a slime mould or a cancerous growth. Colonial occupation necessarily carries many of the characteristics of other violent and disruptive state sponsored processes, including invasion, mass killing, dispersal, genocide and ethnic cleansing. Invasion and occupation are mutual co-requisites. Occupation is an enabling pre-requisite for colonisation and eventual settler sovereignty. The commercial and political objectives of British occupation demanded that indigenous resistance must be suppressed or removed entirely, if the presumed rights of conquest and the ancillary usurping laws of property were to prevail. The only successful counter strategy to invasive occupation is to strengthen indigenous resistance to the prospective occupier or to form a mutually beneficial alliance with the occupier. The British briefly considered a treaty with the Aboriginals, but it was as quickly rejected when Britain believed it had the upper hand against Aboriginal opposition to the occupation of their land. It was not always so. For a considerable period, Britain was threatened by the superior numbers of Aboriginals, but as their numbers plummeted through British violence, sexual predation and introduced disease,793 Britain instead adopted a divide and conquer tactic which they had found effective in their other colonies, and did not require an expanded military, which was expensive. In Australia’s case, it was through the use of mounted Native Police, where Native was pitted against Native. The strategy was sharpened by racist land and criminal laws and legislated Aboriginal disenfranchisement. The British rules of evidence prevented Aboriginal witness testimony for most of the colonisation period, which meant that Aboriginals could be slaughtered without any real possibility of punishment for the perpetrators. Aboriginals were not allowed to vote until well into the 20th century. Government land legislation progressively made Aboriginals trespassers on their own land. 361 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The omnicidal occupation process applies to the predatory acquisition of Indigenous land through armed force (genocide) or the the violent displacement of native species and their destruction through habitat loss (ecocide). Ecocide and genocide are type instances of omnicide. For Indigenous displacement, the invasion and occupation processes substantially overlap,794 and share a common triggering event, being the British decision to invade Australia and claim a certain initial geographic area for the Crown • • • using armed force (or military and police protection), followed by a period when the territorial gains were fluidly consolidated through repression of resistance, followed by Indigenous subjugation (Lemkinian genocide by attrition) and closer settlement. The process was then replicated for other areas and depended upon mass killing and ethnic cleansing for its efficient operation. Occupation can mean: the act of taking or holding possession of a country, district, etc by military force; the act of occupying or state of being occupied.795 We will use a biological trope to elicit the actionable steps involved in the repeatable and patterned process of occupation, area by area, like the metastatic spread of a cancerous growth.796 We will identify the common actionable components between genocide and ecocide. 1. Invade and occupy the country held by other inhabitants or species. Seize their territory. This is likened to an opportunistic invasion of a host by a pathogen made possible through a weakened immune system or physical trauma or compromised genome. 2. When occupying numbers are weak, solicit the help of the original inhabitants in locating food and water and obtaining directions. Exploit Indigenous people and native species. Subvert the cellular process to assist with pathogenic metabolisation and replication. 3. Establish beach head settlements and protect them with armed force. Consolidate the invasive beach head. Grow the lesion. Disarm or weaken the defensive auto immune system protocols. Position for infective replication to other areas (Step 1). 4. Replicate the settlements through metastasization. Spread out from each settlement, protect and hold. Metastasize the infection to other locations, using available transport systems and pathways. 5. Impose repressive measures against the original inhabitants and native species. Evict or crowd out the original inhabitants, without their consent. Obstruct their chances of an economic future. Occasion cellular morbidity and death. 6. Coerce collaboration with the original inhabitants or species. Divide them and use one against the other. This is similar to step 2, with a level of refinement. For example, in 2014 Israeli soldiers resigned en masse because they objected ‘to continue serving as tools in deepening the military control over the Occupied Territories’. They claimed that the military created divisions within Palestinian society by ‘recruiting collaborators and driving parts of Palestinian society against itself.’797 The British used a similar strategy against Aboriginals, but with a more lethal intent, involving extra-judicial or quasi-legal mass killing and terror with roving mounted police, who were charged by the Government with 362 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited protecting the rights of squatters over the land and removing the indigenous inhabitants like so much feral fauna. The policy was euphemistically called ‘dispersal’, highly effective, but usually secretive, suggesting that Governments knew the policy was morally wrong and completely inhumane but went ahead anyway. The prize was unencumbered land at minimal acquisition cost. 7. Impose the rule of one sided laws. Introduce land and property legislation to legitimise ownership. If Indigenous people or native species trespass on acquired property, destroy or remove them. Overcome host resistance by overwhelming its defensive capabilities. Progressively increase the host debilitation. 8. Gather up and repress remnant populations and forcibly move them to detention centres or remove them from private property. This elaborates on step 7. 9. Continue the process until the entire country is occupied and turned into property. This elaborates on step 7 and repeats from step 1. 10. Subjugate the indigenous inhabitants or native species. • Native people: Use Aboriginal people as forced labour. Use the women for sexual purposes. Remove or exterminate any who resist. • Native species: Clearfell native vegetation. Destroy native habitat. Introduce monocultures, say cattle or sheep. Kill native animals. • This elaborates on steps 2, 6 and 7. Step 2 is repeated as an opportunity presents for the invasive pathogen. Although the processes are generalised (as meta-patterns) we will assume an Australian contextual typology for which specific instantiations will apply, based on actual events. The occupation process diagram shows a discrete number of sub-processes: initial occupation, protection, consolidation, repression, and subjugation. Different processes can and do share sub-processes and their actionable components. For Indigenous dispossession, the occupation process proceeded area by area, where it repeated itself each time, driving the processes of colonisation and settler sovereignty, each potentially enabled by ethnic cleansing and the sharp instrument of genocide. It is possible to iterate forward or back between processes, sub-processes and their actionable components, depending on specific triggering events, in themselves statistically predictable within the political and economic objectives of the nation state. Processes by their nature cannot go back in time. When we talk about iteration, we mean that a process can iterate through a separate (and later) instance of the model. For simplicity, we make no distinction between process flow and function flow. In general, a function (or sub-function) is represented by a noun; a process (or sub-process by a verb. In many cases of iteration, there can be a negative or positive feedback mechanism in play, which has the effect of amplifying or tempering the effect of some particular actionable component. In the political landscape of early Australia, Government policies usually accelerated dysfunctional behaviour through positive feedback. 363 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited For example, land alienation and accelerated immigration policies caused more squatting and land sales, which then caused demand for more land alienation, resulting in more (Lemkinian) ethnic cleansing. Government chose not to modify this iterative process, fully aware that it was causing great harm to the indigenous population. Another example: Government policies (dispersal, military campaigns) further drove Aboriginal dispossession and if Aboriginals resisted the occupation process, they were met with further repression and dispersal, with squatters joining in the ethnic cleansing process (extermination) when they realised that the Government would not hold them legally accountable for any mass killings (unequal justice). Native species and ecosystems had even less protection than Indigenous people. The environment was there to be exploited for financial gain and if it involved deforestation or the endless destruction of native fauna for their skins or meat, so it was done. Until yields began to drop and the costs of acquisition began to outweigh the financial return. The environment still has minimal protection under Australia’s existing laws, which begins to explain why we now have a looming climate catastrophe. • We continue to use the air as a sewer and water bodies for toxic runoff from agricultural development. • We continue to raze forests and vegetation for more livestock. • We continue because there are few regulatory controls against harmful environmental activity, not while a profit motive is involved. Figure 93 Omnicide typology This typology (or classification of types) is a simplified class diagram. We will examine each class from the important perspective of the Occupation process at different levels of abstraction. ‘class’ v ‘type’. A class is a template from which objects are created. An object is an instance of a class. An object can generate one or more types. A type summarizes the common features of a set of objects with the same characteristics. A type is an abstract interface that specifies how an object can be used. A class is an implementation of a type with a concrete data structure and a collection of methods. Classification derives from a branch of algebraic topology called category theory which seeks to understand the processes that preserve mathematical structure. 364 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited In category theory, a labelled directed graph is called a category, whose nodes are objects and the labelled directed edges are called morphisms. 798 If negative feedback had been part of Government policy - for example, enforced usufructuary land use, and strict criminal liability for any instances of wilful murder - Australia might now be very different: Britain might have resiled from its most damaging policies, But this policy of amending behaviour (based on learned experience and principles of morality) was never likely, when Britain itself was using one-sided laws for extra-judicial killing and the use of armed power to enforce ethnic cleansing. In British Imperial thinking, the projection of power came first; Indigenous and environmental rights were secondary. Australia was forced to some degree of accountability for crimes against humanity (genocide of Aboriginal society) through a belated and unfinished reconciliation process but crimes against the environment stubbornly persist, without any sign that ecocide will end voluntarily. Consider the violent dispossession and repression of Aboriginal society. We know the outcome of British invasive Indigenous displacement. Over 90% of Aboriginal people ‘disappeared’ between 1788 and 1911.799 But what was the cause, the type behavioural trigger? Was it merely opportunistic, to extend the reach of British hegemonic and mercantile interests on the back of a carceral destination for its disaffected and unwanted underclass? Or was it an ‘unintended consequence’ of land appropriation, of lawful theft? High Court Justice Gerard Brennan thought otherwise, with calibrated official intent clearly in his sights: To treat the dispossession of the Australian Aborigines as the working out of the Crown's acquisition of ownership of all land on first settlement is contrary to history. Aborigines were dispossessed of their land parcel by parcel, to make way for expanding colonial settlement. Their dispossession underwrote the development of the nation. 800 Could Australian genocide have been an ‘unintended’ consequence – as Henry Reynolds suggests - of British indifference to Aboriginal rights as they diligently transformed Indigenous land into white property? Were Aboriginal people no more than fauna and feral pests, able to be eradicated, a lower order of humanity hypothesized by Charles Darwin when he tried to put a flawed concept of ‘races’ into a hierarchy, that some ‘races’ were superior to others, what we now abhor as mindless and unscientific racism? In commenting on the Tierra del Fuego Indigenous people, Darwin wrote: Differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages, are connected by the finest gradations. 801 When visiting Tasmania in 1836, Darwin wrote: All the aborigines have been removed to an island in Bass’s Straits, so that Van Diemen’s land enjoys the great advantage of being free from a native population. 802 Henry Reynolds discounts genocide in the context of a proponed humanitarian British Government for which racial violence was an ‘unintended consequence’ of Aboriginal dispossession and their resistance. He writes: The question of intent is never far away in discussions of genocide. Was the killing of indigenous people done with the specific intention of destroying particular groups, or did it happen as a consequence of 365 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited action that had other motives, such as the taking of land, the imposing of a new order, or the pacification of a violent frontier? 803 There are some who will argue that history, human history, is comprised of almost random events, accidents, poorly planned actions, unforeseeable circumstances, unintended consequences, cognitive bias, the flight of reason. It may lead to the incorrect conclusion that we cannot be responsible for the past, that the principle of mens rea cannot apply to societies, or of it did, that the slate should be wiped clean with each new generation. I disagree. Any type event such as claim possession [of some territory] is embedded in a layered matrix of type instances – for example, develop policies, proclamations, regulations, legislation, programmes and the like - all of which may be connected through originating type triggers. They form what systems theorists call a process at different levels of abstraction, a prescriptive set of steps with an intended type outcome for each layer. The British territorial occupation process of Australia is an example, for which the objective was to achieve settler sovereignty in an unequal war of the races. In logical essence, Reynolds’ argument for ‘unintended consequences’ is: if case [xi] has a number of discrete actionable components [a1, a2, ..ai, aj] that originate through a bounded chain of ordered triggering conditions, then if a j follows on ai, it does not mean that aj depends on ai. Therefore, we cannot be held to account for aj . It follows that [genocide UN] ∌ xi. That is, L. genocide (genocide UN) is ruled out by Reynolds if it is the result of other actions such as violent dispossession of some targeted group from a desired tract of land (case x i). But such violent dispossession – the methods of displacement – cannot be separated from the agency of L. genocide; methods are synonymous with agency within the context of L. genocide. Logic attempts to provide a quality argument as to the reasons for accepting the truth of some claim. Reynolds’ logic proceeds from a false premise of unintended Government actions and (therefore) their unintended consequences (which is an oxymoron; Reynolds seems to be arguing that British expansionism and settlerism was a natural economic force that caused collateral but unintended and unplanned Aboriginal genocide; therefore it could not be genocide), or that Government actions arose from dispossessory motives, policies and triggers (leading to unintended genocidal consequences; therefore it could not be genocide): If British dispossessory actions were unintentional [p], then the consequences of those actions were unintentional [q]. British actions were unintentional. Therefore, the consequences were unintentional. This is summarized as modus ponens: p ⊂ q, p, therefore q. The logic fails if [p] is untrue. That is, if the premise is false, the conclusions are also false. Therefore, Reynolds’ argument is logically false, a non sequitur. Reynolds’ argument for ‘unintended consequences’ assumes ex parte there was a single act of land alienation and dispossession for which the consequences of this single act could not be anticipated; but it was no single act; it was a process that was intentionally carried out over three decades across each point of invasion until Britain’s territorial purpose was achieved, in the case of Tasmania, sovereignty over Palawa land. Throughout this violent dispossessory process, Britain was deeply aware of the purposeful destruction of Indigenous people, of the Palawa for example. It chose to do nothing. Or rather, it chose to hold course, without concessions or a treaty. We can reject Reynolds’ exculpation of British conduct. The consequences were intended. They were a result of Britain’s forcible occupation. In winter 2007, Griffith University published a wry reference to these ‘unintended consequences’ of British invasion: Griffith Review, ed. Julianne Schultz, Unintended Consequences. Among the many contributors, Noel Pearson tendentiously argues that ‘white guilt’ encourages Indigenous ‘victim-hood’ and that Black Rights should be black responsibilities in a new form of reconciliation. However, it is not evident that ‘white guilt’ is a commonly shared belief in our increasingly multi-cultural society. Some politicians go further: in rejecting responsibility for the past (‘I don’t kill Aboriginals’) they allow past mistakes to be repeated anew by denying Aboriginal society a supportive voice in the Constitution or denying them dual naming rights to towns and landscapes, the right to reclaim their heritage. Through cultural displacement, it is an extended form of persistent Lemkinian repression. And can we learn anything from the Lemkinian type displacive process, one of moral abdication and flawed values? For the same normatively destructive behaviours and distorted 366 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited juridical framework that drove violent Aboriginal dispossession are now impacting on the Australian ecological landscape. Contrary to glib and untruthful coalition Government assurances, since 2013 (following the repeal of the ‘carbon tax’ or a tax on carbon polluters) carbon emissions are increasing.804 It is symptomatic of our societal malaise. Species are disappearing, along with their habitats. We are blindly living in the middle of an extinction catastrophe, impotent, captive to economic imperatives. The Great Barrier Reef may soon be no more, or a poor remnant of what once was. Our lives are being eroded in proportion to the anthropogenic destruction; we just don’t fully realize it yet.805 While Australian type genocide is an intended consequence of displacive dispossession, so is Australian type ecocide an intended consequence of human-caused climate change and its associated environmental exploitation for economic motivations, for which species extinctions are collateral damage, the result of poorly regulated land clearing, habitat loss, ecological predation and human-caused climate change. Both genocide and ecocide are behavioural facets of dispossession and its various motivational morbidities that include self-interest and group hegemony, the pursuit of power for a limited and privileged cohort, the pursuit of economic growth at almost any cost. We can see ecocide and global warming taking place in front of our eyes, but our Governments generally only respond to the mantra of unsustainable economic development, something that Britain also understood two centuries ago in Australia as it poured immigrants into alienated Aboriginal land while purging the who resisted. The procedural similarities between genocide and ecocide are frightening. We have learned little since Australia was invaded. Our mistake is in allowing economic considerations to take priority over humanitarian and environmental concerns when they should all have equivalent weight. Our further mistake is to use enhanced security measures to ensure that capitalism is protected, along with economic determinism. When Britain invaded Australia, it was a military occupation; today we use hastily conceived security legislation to protect our political and economic interests, increasingly the interests of the one per cent; we tend to ignore environmental damage as ‘the cost of doing business’ if there is economic advantage. The process of ecological destruction is unfolding around us, being repeated over and over, only limited by our ability to exploit Nature. The exploitative process is unsustainable. We are being drowned in waste, suffocating in pollution. Unremediated mining and other extractive tenements abound, reminding us of our failures. 806 The prehistoric water from the Great Artesian Basin, which took millions of years to create, is being used unsustainably. 807 Ancient soils are being blown away as dust. Our dams are drying, and rivers are dying. Forests and ecosystems are disappearing. Time is running out. We must learn and adapt or become yet another failed species. 367 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited But learn what? And adapt how? We often hear politicians and other people talk about Australia’s ‘rule-based order’ as though it is something magisterial, an ideal system, almost archetypal, whose hushed provenance derives from the ancient of days and holds us up to the best of our values. But what is it, actually? And what is its scope? This s what we’ll investigate. If our human rights are inexorably being stripped away, what can we do? If environmental protections are being abused, how can we object? If our Government can now prosecute us for revealing ’secret’ information that may embarrass them and condemn their conduct, what options do we have in our defence? How can civil society assert equivalence for environmental and humanitarian concerns with issues of security and those involving the economy? What power do we have to enjoin the process of Indigenous recognition and reconciliation? How can our values be honoured in a social contract, assuming they can be agreed? Is there a verifiable pattern to our collective past environmental and humanitarian behavioural morbidities and, if so, can the pattern help us formulate more enlightened policies that will help us find a path out of our self-imposed existential difficulties, as a society, as a species? How should the known limits to growth help us adapt to existential risk caused by our own actions? Or will structural wealth and welfare inequality be our answer, within and across nations and cultures? Sustainable development and the limits to growth Can we have sustainable growth? Yes, if we don’t exceed the limits to economic growth, primarily non-renewable resource allocation that must be evenly commensurate with the global population if we are not to have structural inequality between rich (north) and poor (south) nations. 808 But what happens then, when these resources are finally exhausted at different times? Is our waste addicted society evidence of a deeper behavioural dysfunction that we have not felt compelled to excise? We will show how genocide and ecocide are linked through type rules that relate normalized behavioural morbidity to unsustainable economic growth which is sometimes conflated as GDP. These type rules, simple but progenerative, define Australia’s post-contact dispossessory contextual landscape. We began as an invasive society, pushing forward an expanding pastoral frontier until the entire continent was occupied or owned. Australia became property. Aboriginal people were displaced and marginalized in the oftenviolent process where the presumptive laws of British ‘civilization’ wore a white face. There was one overriding law: might is right, often translated as ‘the law of the bush’. And if not right, then the formulaic British legal proceedings could subvert natural justice and assert a racially biased outcome. We have become a throwaway society, exploitative beyond sustainability, when we should be focused on regeneration and renewal, on solar energy, on green energy, on environmental protection, on fundamental rights, both human and for Nature. 368 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We are defined by our ever-increasing garbage dumps, by polluted streams and rivers, by agricultural runoff into marine habitats, by deforestation and ecological destruction. We need to change our behavioural rules. If we are to survive. A sustainable economy is one where we live within our means: non-renewable resources are recycled and its energy resources are renewable, with minimal waste pollution. Aboriginal society was sustainable; the equilibrium of millennia was punctuated by invasive British society, for which sustainability was mocked as uncivilized. Economic development was the key mantra. Waste was the result. The last two hundred or so years of post-contact history have been catastrophic for Australia’s natural systems. A symptom of unsustainable growth is that GDP, however unsatisfactory that proxy measure is of economic wellbeing, begins to decline. We are at the beginning of a sixth extinction event, with rising ocean acidification, global warming, and decreasing natural ecosystems. We are drowning in waste. The world’s population is rising, but we are reaching the limits to growth. By 2050 we may need many Earths to sustain ourselves. Australia’s GDP is falling. And its wealth inequality is rising. Our ecological footprint per head – industrial waste, carbon pollution (direct and from exports), degraded environment, species extinction - is among the highest in the world. Our social capital is decreasing, and authoritarianism is on the rise, with our legal rights being eroded by creeping legislation. We are a rule-based society, not a value-based society. We are asleep. We just don’t know it. A sustainable economy is circular. It demands different technology to the fossil-fuelled internal combustion engine or electricity generation plant. Waste must be recycled or minimized. The energy source must, in principle, be renewable. Australia does not have an energy policy. Nor an electric vehicle policy. Nor a sustainable economic policy. Nor a ‘smart country’ policy, where free 5G Wi-Fi is available to everyone. Nor a carbon neutral building policy. Its adaptive resilience to existential risk is low, as we saw with the 2019/20 firestorms, where Government unpreparedness was on display. Yet Australia is blessed with abundant solar energy and is surrounded by water. It has considerable reserves of copper and lithium. But it is addicted to phosphorus in the form of fertilizer, for which the world’s reserves are running out. Vopson, on photovoltaic multiferroic solar cells, writes: The Sun radiates energy in all regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Human eye is sensitive to a fraction of the solar spectrum ranging from 400 to 750 nm, also called the visible spectrum. Although this is a very narrow region of the solar spectrum, it contains about 45% of all solar radiated energy. Spectral region Wavelength Percentage of solar radiated energy Infrared (IR) >750 46.3% Visible (VS) 400 – 750 44.6% Ultraviolet (UV) <400 9.1% Solar radiation is a fantastic source of energy that could be potentially harvested to power our planet. The solar power density at the Earth’s surface is 1360 W/m 2, also known as the Solar Constant. Taking the Earth’s radius 6350 Km, the total power received from the Sun is the solar constant times the area of a circle of radius equal to that of the Earth (  6.35 2  10 12 m 2  1360 W/m 2 = 172,193  10 12 W  173,000 TW). It is very instructive to compare this power with today’s planetary power needs. Currently the worldwide rate of energy use is estimated to be around 16 TW with the growth rate appearing to accelerate due to population growth and the rapid development of emerging economies. 369 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Excluding fossil fuel reserves, the table shows the global reserves in terms of the most important renewable energy sources. Solar radiation Wind energy Hydro Geothermal Biomass (50% land) 173,000 TW 2 – 4 TW 2 – 4 TW 20 – 30 TW cultivable 7 – 10 TW Solar radiation is by far the most suitable candidate for renewable energy harvesting. Taking today’s world power requirement, which is around 16 TW, and knowing that the solar power density at the surface of the Earth is 1360 W/m 2 , then harvesting 100% of the solar energy, in order to power the entire planet, would require a surface of A = (16  10 12 )/1360) m 2 = 11,764 Km 2 . Assuming a photovoltaic conversion efficiency of 10%, then the entire planetary energy requirements would be fulfilled by a solar energy-harvesting power plant with a total surface of 117,640 Km 2. This is a surface equal to about half the surface area of the United Kingdom, which is around 243,000 Km 2, while the entire Sahara Desert is about 4,619,260 Km 2. With the Sun providing abundant, renewable clean energy, it is rather obvious that developing more efficient and cheaper photovoltaic technologies can solve the planetary energy needs regardless of the annual energy usage or population growth projections.809 What of a hydrogen economy that uses solar power for water electrolysis? • • • • • • • • • Most hydrogen today is produced from fossil fuels, for which CO2 is a by-product. 9 litres of H2O → 1 kg H2 (electrolysis, using platinum electrode, solar energy). Research is being undertaken to find a cheaper and more sustainable alternative to Pt as a catalyst, for example, cobaltphosphide.810 But Phosphorus reserves are running out, through profligate misuse as an agricultural fertilizer. 1 kg H2 → 100km vehicular travel (approx.), which about 10l of petrol. The average global petrol consumption is about 1l/ day/ person.811 Assume 5 bn people per day travel 100kms pd, then 5bn kg H 2 are consumed, equivalent to about 50bn litres or around 312 m barrels/ day (upper limit). Alternatively, assume 1 bn people per day travel 10kms pd, then tis is equivalent to 1bn litres pd or around 6m barrels pd (lower bound) Assume 1kg water requires a volume of 0.001 m 3, then 5bn kg water require 5m m3 (upper) or 100k m3 (lower, where a cubic km is 1mn m3). Therefore, a hydrogen economy has a volumetric (logistical distribution similar to petrol and diesel) and resource (water availability) constraint. Where would the water come from? Sea water is not suitable, unless it is purified. When H2 is combusted in a car (or other) engine, water is produced but it is not directly reusable. There are limits to sustainable growth for a hydrogen economy, but they are far greater than what we have now with fossil fuel. What of electric vehicles (EVs)? We seem them as a technological solution to reducing the amount of carbon emissions from fossil fuelled internal combustion engines. But are they? They require battery technology, typically lithium ion. If they are a technological solution, they are transitional towards a hydrogen and solar economy, each of which have finite limits to growth that are constrained by access to non-renewable resources. Suppose there are 14m EVs in 2025 (up to 37m) and growing thereafter. 812 70kWh battery 63 kilograms of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) ➢ ➢ ➢ 70 kWh battery 14 kilograms of Nickel (Ni) ➢ ➢ 70 kWh battery Global lithium supply (2019) = 363,000 tonnes/ year 14m EVs (2025) 14m EVs x 63kg = 882,000 tonnes / 363,000 t = 2.4 years of 2019 production Global nickel production (2018) = 2.3 million tonnes 14m EVs x 14kg = 196mn kg / 2.3 mn = 8.5% of 2018 production 4.5 kg of cobalt (Co) 370 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited ➢ ➢ EV Global Co production (2018) = 140,000 tonnes 14m EVs x 4.5kg = 1,665 mn tonnes / 140,000 = 11.8 years of 2018 production 83kg of copper (Cu) Residential charger AI, 5G EV ➢ ➢ Global Cu production (2018) = 21 mn tonnes 14m EVs x 83kg = 1,162mn kg / 21mn = 20 years of 2018 production ➢ ➢ 2kg copper 20mn residential US charging points (2030) x 2kg = 42 mn tonnes / 21 mn tonnes (2018) = 2 years of 2018 production. ➢ ➢ Will become the backbone of the next industrial revolution Both are voracious users of critical materials Limits to economic growth include ecological, economic welfare, and social, but no international consensus has yet been agreed on the relationship between sustainable development and growth limits, although there is acceptance of the environmental damage resulting from unconstrained growth and the need for a strong policy framework to address the risk.813 Limits to economic growth (summary by ‘limit’ sub-type) The limit sub-types – ecological, economic welfare, social - are interdependent. Ecological: Economic growth causes rising environmental entropy through GHG emissions, deforestation, resource depletion, and waste production. Meadows (1972 Limits to Growth) assumed economic growth demanded a similar increase in resource consumption and when the limit of resources was reached, there would be a decline in population and industrial capacity.814 The model assumed exponential growth in population and industrial capacity, with a finite supply of food and non-renewable resources.815 There was an immediate scientific rebuttal that challenged the model assumptions by asserting that resources could exponentially increase by a process of technology innovation, discovery, resource substitution, reduction in resource misallocation (waste), and recycling.; moreover, that pollution could be controlled. Among those who refuted Meadows’ findings were Sussex University’s Policy Research Unit.816 However, the last fifty years have shown that the Meadows team was broadly correct in its urgent call to action, with global warming now a reality that is impacting upon GDP (with all its flaws as a measure of economic welfare), the environment, and social capital. Economic welfare: In poor countries, rising population, poverty, disease can be countered by economic growth, assuming it is possible. Rich countries depend on economic growth to enhance their lifestyle, but the downside is the uglification of cities and increasing air pollution, with rising social disintegration, overcrowding, crime, and wealth inequality. 817As income rises, so too does demand, and with rising demand, more waste follows unless there are stringent efforts at recycling. Social: Economic growth undermines social cohesion, if it drives inequality. It may eventually require more than one Earth to satisfy, so economic growth cannot continue indefinitely. With social disintegration, economic growth falters unless the means of production are transferred to other locations (countries), which is the strategy adopted by many global corporations. A steady state circular economy will curb demand, recycle waste, and hold income distribution within maximum and minimum levels. Scandinavian societies have come closest to this social model. 818 We can represent the circular effect of a degrading environment as a reinforcement diagram for which the closed system outcome (say, for the Earth) over time becomes non-linear through a positive feedback mechanism, represented by →: • • Degrading environment → Reducing GDP → Reducing well-being → Degrading environment … Reducing well-being → Increasing population → Reducing well-being … 371 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited • Degrading environment → Increasing entropy → Degrading environment … Figure 94 A degrading environment with declining resources is the primary cause of the limits to growth World GDP growth (annual %) 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 -1 -2 -3 Figure 95 World GDP is declining (1960 – 2018) and was negative in the post-GFC 819 372 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Hypothesis: Does population growth lead to a commensurate increase in GDP? Or a decrease? Does it depend on resource availability? Consider Sub-Saharan Africa. From the GDP and population data, there appears to be no evident correlation between the two variables. However, this may be an artefact of the time period under study. GDP growth (actual) is for 1960 to 2018, whereas population growth is for 2000 to 2050. Between 2000 and 2018, the GDP shows a downward trend, from around 6% down to 2%, during which period, population increases from 680m to 1080m (about 60%). That is, there is a direct inverse correlation. The dataset is too small to draw conclusions, but it does appear that GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa will decline in direct proportion to expected population growth. It is likely, without global sharing of resources, that Kennen’s observation will hold true, that the world will be split between the rich and poor countries in systemic inequality that must be maintained if wealthy countries are to maintain their standard of living. We can also conclude that the wealth disparity will also be maintained within rich countries to maintain the standard of living of the 1%. Unless technology saves us, technology that does not yet exist. Population (projected) almost doubles between 2020 and 2050 and is linear rather than exponential. This may also be unrealistic. Sub-Saharan Africa GDP growth (annual %) 12 10 Population Growth 2500 2000 8 1500 6 4 1000 2 500 0 -2 -4 0 2000 2010 2020 Africa 2030 2040 2050 Sub-Saharan Africa Figure 96 Comparison between population growth and GDP growth for Sub-Saharan Africa820 373 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Australia GDP growth (annual %) 8 6 4 2 0 -2 -4 Figure 97 Australian GDP is declining (1960 - 2018) and was negative in 1984 and 1992821 Australia weathered the 2008 GFC but fell into deep recession in 1984 and the early 1990s due to spiralling domestic inflation. 822 In 2020 Australia is likely falling into recession (that is two successive quarters of negative GDP growth) because of the reduced productivity caused by the 2019/20 bushfires and the effect of the Chinese coronavirus epidemic823 that has reduced Australia’s exports to China and has reduced Chinese tourism and students to Australia.824 Australia is now heavily dependent on China for its prosperity. Australia supplies 61 per cent of China's iron ore, 53 per cent of its coal and 23 per cent of its thermal coal. 825 About 10 per cent of all university students now come from China and this is worth an estimated $2 billion to Australian universities.826 Words bely actions, and the global community’s actions up to 2019 do not auger well for sustainability. Indeed, growth seems to have been at the expense of the environment, and ecological destruction is further assured by a rapid increase in global population, with global warming now likely beyond a tipping point causing further resource depletion through loss of biodiversity, degraded soils, non-renewable mineral extraction, and deforestation. Australia is at the forefront of a cohort of recalcitrant nations in its failure to curb unsustainable fossil-fuelled growth, along with other major greenhouse gas emitters such as the United States and China, none of whom has adopted the IPCC recommendations of net zero emissions by 2050. We can represent the system dynamics of the limits to growth by modelling the discrete variables, where → or  indicates ‘causes’ or ‘gives rise to’, usually through some kind of feedback loop, either positive or negative: • • • • • • increased global warming (G) rising emissions (E) increased poverty (P)  reduced access to resources (R) greater affluence (A)  better access to resources (R) more inequality (I)  reduced access to resources (R) finite resources (R) →increased poverty (P) (and) greater inequality (I) improved technology (T) → reduced emissions (E) (and) less inequality (I), 374 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited • • greater environmental degradation (E) more poverty (P), and rising population (N) → greater poverty (P) (and) greater inequality (I). Hypotheses: 1) Improved technology will lead to better use of resources (R), decreased global warming (G), less poverty (P), less inequality (I), less environmental degradation (E), support for a larger global population (N), more productive agriculture (T). For example, the change in affluence (A) due to improved technology (T) or the wealth effect αT is: αT = ∂A / ∂T 2) More poverty (P) will increase environmental degradation (E) such that αE = ∂P / ∂E 3) More affluence (A) will trickle down to poorer people and reduce poverty (P). This neoliberal theory of Friedman economics is now discredited.827 4) Both increased affluence (A) and increased poverty (P) wil increase environmental degradation (E) due to the unsustainable use of resources (R) by a growing population (N). Figure 98 System dynamics for limits to growth If we say ‘limits to growth’ are described by boundary conditions on system dynamics for global sustainability, then we can model a sustainability domain (the Earth) as a set of partial differential equations that include the effect of positive feedback loops on system behaviour as defined by constraint rules (or independent variables). The solution to these PDEs falls within the class of function known as the logistics or sigmoid function. A full analysis of this model is outside the scope of this paper, as are the hypotheses. Instead, we present a summary evaluation for the interested reader. The term ‘limits to growth’ was introduced in 1972 by Denis and Donella Meadows, with others from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.828 The team was interested in the question: if population and demand for food grew exponentially, and if food and non-renewable resources were finite, then the world’s growth will reach a limit that can be simulated in a model. Others829 counter-argued that the limit could be averted indefinitely by balancing population growth with technological innovation. However, the dynamic equilibrium argument collapses when we have systemic failures of resource allocation by vested interests that result in cumulative environmental degradation, that is, an inexorable increase in entropy or disorder, 375 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited unless we find a way to recycle wastes and power economic development through renewable energy. McDonough writes: Some commentators, particularly those from a neo-liberal economic background, challenged both the methodology used in the study and some of its predictions. When the price of oil fell back in the early 1980s, and the economic policies of both Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Regan in the U.S. seemed to produce both jobs and wealth, the limits to growth debate appeared to evaporate. For the next 15 years, especially after the demise of most centrally planned Marxist economies in the late 1980s, the market was king! Nevertheless, the main significance of the Limits to Growth was that it focused people’s attention on the fact that the earth is finite, and cannot sustain continuous depletion of resources and the irreversible destruction of ecosystems. It challenged one of the main assumptions of the economic-development model which had been in vogue almost since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the late 18th century by asking a crucial question: How the 5.6 billion people living on the planet in 1970 and the 9 billion who will be living on the planet in 2050, will be able to aspire to the present standards of affluence enjoyed by the majority of people living in the Minority world and by the elite and middle class in the Majority world without destroying the earth? In reality some of the demands which humans are currently making on the planet have already breached important limits in the biosphere and done irreversible damage. The truth is that continuous spiralling demands are not possible in a finite world.830 Not unless we tap into the potential for renewable solar energy that can be used directly, through photovoltaic cells, or indirectly, through splitting water for a hydrogen economy. Melvin Vopson makes the argument that most of the sun’s energy – around 46.3% - is in the infrared spectral region. Such disruptive technology may postpone – but not remove - the Earth’s limits to demand growth. Yet Governments still insist that, without an ever-increasing GDP and associated economic welfare, we would have impoverishment, disease, and starvation; moreover, that environmental catastrophe can be deferred indefinitely. That is, so the argument goes, poorer countries need economic growth to reduce poverty; wealthy countries need economic growth to maintain their lifestyle. But poorer people need access to resources, say affordable food and housing, neither of which is mandated by a rising GDP. Similarly, the evidence from wealthier countries is that their wellbeing – as distinct from economic welfare - is degraded by concrete high-rise accommodation, noxious road traffic, and disappearing green canopies. A transactional economy erodes social capital as surely as ecological damage, which is the consequence of a throwaway society and resource depletion. In a 1992 update, Meadows et al argue that continuous growth is not possible where resources are bounded, and that we must bring consumption down to a sustainable level or let Nature impose limits through food scarcity and global warming. This conclusion was reinforced by a 1992 World Bank Report831 The achievement of sustained and equitable development remains the greatest challenge facing the human race. Despite good progress over the past generation, 376 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited more than 1 billion people still live in acute poverty and suffer grossly inadequate access to the resources, education, health services, infrastructure, land, and credit required to give them a chance for a better life. The essential task of development is to provide opportunities so that these people, and the hundreds of millions not much better off, can reach their potential. But although the desirability of development is universally recognized, recent years have witnessed rising concern about whether environmental constraints will limit development and whether development will cause serious environmental damage in turn impairing the quality of life of this and future generations. This concern is overdue. A number of environmental problems are already very serious and require urgent attention. Humanity's stake in environmental protection is enormous, and environmental values have been neglected too often in the past.832 In a wide-ranging 1992 summary of how the world might achieve sustainable development within ecological constraints, Paul Ekins writes: 833 At its simplest, the sustainability of something is its capacity for continuance into the future. Where economic activity or, more generally, a way of human life, is concerned, this sustainability will depend on economic, social (including cultural and ethical), and ecological factors. These factors are themselves interdependent, so, for example, ecological sustainability (the absence of ecological constraints on the capacity for continuance) will be influenced by social arrangements. 834 The interdependence of these factors, and their change over time, is captured by Norgaard’s concept of ‘coevolution’. 835 As we have seen, there is now widespread agreement, which formed the basis of UNCED, that most current economic development is not ecologically sustainable and that the unchecked consequences of this are likely to be unpleasant and perhaps catastrophic. The core of continuing disagreement lies in the extent to which new technologies can resolve problems of ecological unsustainability, while permitting continuing growth of GNP. The disagreement derives from differing positions of technological optimism and pessimism. It is now clear that this issue will not be resolved theoretically. It is essentially an empirical question. But there is no reason for the lack of a priori theoretical agreement on this point to impede practical implementation of a policy which all sides agree to be desirable on both ecological and economic grounds; namely, the internalisation of environmental externalities and/or their reduction through the determined introduction of technologies to reduce environmental impacts. If the optimists are proved right, so much the better; if the pessimists are nearer the mark, at least environmental calamity will have been averted.836 Ekins then discusses why the policy emphasis must shift from growth to sustainability: I have argued in detail elsewhere on the need for a shift in policy emphasis from growth to sustainability if environmental problems are to be adequately addressed837 (Ekins, 1989). Maintaining the current orientation towards growth, with all its concomitant pressures towards business as usual, is much less likely to introduce the changes for ecological sustainability that are necessary. An equation used by Paul and Anne Ehrlich838 indicates the scale of the technological challenge if both sustainability and GNP growth are to be achieved. The equation relates environmental impact (I) to the product of three variables: population (P), consumption per capita (C), and the environmental intensity of consumption (the 377 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited environmental damage per unit of GDP, T). This last variable captures all the changes in technology, factor inputs, and the composition of GNP. Thus: I = PCT In accordance with the widespread agreement at UNCED, it is assumed that current levels of I are unsustainable. With regard to energy consumption and climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculates that carbon dioxide emissions will quickly have to fall by a minimum of 60% to halt global warming. Three other greenhouse gases – N2O, CFC-11, CFC-12 - also need cuts of more than 70%. 839 With regard to other environmental problems, the Dutch National Environmental Policy Plan840 argues for cuts in emissions of 80-90% for SO2 , NOx , NH3 , and wastedumping, 80% for hydrocarbons and 100% for CFCs. Thus with regard to I overall, it seems conservative to suggest that sustainability demands that it should fall by at least 50%. With regard to population, the UN’s recent projections indicate a global figure of 10 billion by about 2050, 841 about twice today’s level. With regard to consumption, what is considered a moderate economic growth rate of 2-3% results in a quadrupling of output over 50 years. Thus, where subscript 1 indicates the quantity subscript 2 indicates the quantity in 50 years time, we have: I2= 0.5 I1 (for sustainability) where P2 = 2P1 , C2 = 4 C1 (by assumption) For the Ehrlich equation to hold, this means that T2 = (1/16) T1 . In other words the environmental impact of each unit of consumption would need to fall by 93% over the next 50 years to meet the rather conservative condition for sustainability that has been adopted. Moreover, in order not to check GNP growth, the technological innovation involved would have to be non-inflationary. Tinbergen and Hueting 842 are openly sceptical of the possibility of this: “Saving the environment without causing a rise in prices and subsequent check of production growth is only possible if a technology is invented that is sufficiently clean, reduces the use of space sufficiently, leaves the soil intact, does not deplete energy and resources.. . and is cheaper (or at least not more expensive) than current technology. This is hardly imaginable for our whole range of current activities.” The extent to which growth itself undercuts improvements in environmental technology is illustrated by the Fraunhofer Institute’s study on the macroeconomic effects on the (West) German economy of measures to prevent global warming, preliminarily reported in Schoen (1992).843 While technical measures were estimated to be able to cut CO2 emissions from industry by 81.2 million tons per annum from 1987 levels by the year 2005, increased production over that period (taking into account intersectoral changes in favor of less energy-intensive sectors) resulted in more CO2 emissions of 64 million tons p.a. Thus only 17.2 million tons p.a., or 21% of the technical potential, actually shows up as reduced emissions. The rest simply goes to counteract the increased emissions due to production growth. 844 Elsewhere, 845 I have performed another calculation on the basis of the Ehrlich equation using different assumptions and the following figures in World Bank: 846 1988 GNP/Capita (C) in High-Income Countries = $17 080 1988 Population (P) in High-Income Countries = 784.2 million (m) 378 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1988 GNP/Capita in Low- and Middle-Income Countries = $750 1988 Population in Low- and Middle-Income countries = 3 952m The different assumptions for 50 years on were: that I must still be halved; that P will double, with all the increase in the Third World; that C will quadruple in the Third World (low- and middle-income countries), but stay constant in high-income countries. These assumptions yield the following figures for the year 2038 (1988 + 50): 2038 GNP/Capita (C) in High-Income Countries = $17 080 2038 Population (P) in High-Income Countries = 784.2m 2038 C X P in High-Income Countries = $13.4 tr (all as before) 2038 World Population (P2) = 2 P1 = 9 472m 2038 Population in Low- and Middle-Income countries = 8 688m 2038 GNP/Capita in Low- and Middle-Income Countries = $3 000 2038 C X P in Low- and Middle-Income Countries = $26.06 tr With P2 = 2P1 and I2 = (1/2) I1 (by assumption), it is easily verified from the Ehrlich equation that T2 = 0.21 T1 This means that T in this case would need to fall by 79%. The difference between the two figures with and without Northern income growth (93% and 79%) is further evidence of the enormously skewed nature of current consumption patterns. With no increase in consumption anywhere in the world, but with other assumptions unchanged, the Ehrlich equation indicates a necessary cut in environmental intensity of 75%. Allowing the Third World, with three quarters of the world’s population, to more than double its population and quadruple its consumption per head (when its average level becomes still only about 20% of that in the First World) only raises the figure to 79%. But quadrupling the much larger consumption of First World countries as well raises it to 93%. Such considerations suggest that the best and perhaps the only strategy for achieving ecological sustainability involves differentiating between North and South. In the South, very considerable percentage increases in current very low per capita income levels would appear to be compatible with environmental sustainability, even allowing for forecast population growth, provided that this is accomplished using the most environmentally advanced technologies, although the problems of transferring the technologies between different economic and cultural milieux should not be underestimated. There should also be a determined programme of ecological regeneration in the South through afforestation, soil conservation and small-scale irrigation, which could increase production there and simultaneously increase the natural resource base. In the North the sustainability problem is quite different. High levels of per capita income mean that relatively small percentage growth rates result in large absolute increases in consumption and, therefore, in associated environmental impacts. That production growth in the North does not necessarily alleviate poverty there is shown by the evidence of the 1980s which indicates that the number of people below the poverty line in some countries (e.g., the US and UK) increased despite growth in GDP 379 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited .847 Further, Goodland and Daly (1992)848 from the World Bank give ten reasons why growth in the North is also not the solution to poverty in the South. This decoupling of Northern growth from poverty alleviation, and the fact that such growth greatly increases the demands on environmental technologies in the resolution of environmental problems, strengthens the argument for a wholesale shift of objectives in the North from growth to sustainability, through the radical ecological transformation of production and consumption. Any production growth that may still result would have to be compensated for by even greater falls in environmental intensity. A further condition for sustainable development in North and South is a restructuring of the economic relations between them; a complex issue I have discussed in Ekins (1991),849 but which can be no more than mentioned here. Ekins concludes: The debate about economic growth has focused attention on three extremely important sets of questions, which remain unanswered and extremely relevant today, concerning the current level and likely future increase of human economic activity. These questions are: a) Is such activity having an environmental impact which, at best, reduces the economic possibilities in the future and, at worst, is likely to precipitate widespread collapse? (The ecological sustainability debate.) b) Is such activity generating a range of negative social and environmental effects that actually outweigh many of the benefits of current affluence and of its nominal increase? (The welfare-from-growth debate.) c) Is such activity in market economies producing intense competitive and individualistic pressures that not only prevent individuals from enjoying their affluence, as in (b), but also undermine the cultural and moral fabric of society on which the economy itself actually depends? (The social sustainability debate.) In the twenty years or so since these debates began in earnest, none of these questions have been conclusively answered in the negative. On the contrary, (a) now commands an almost universal positive response, which has given rise to UNCED, the largest intergovernmental conference ever held, and the ongoing concern with sustainable development. However, the debates have so far yielded nothing approaching consensus as to the ultimate relationships between economic growth and welfare or environmental or social sustainability. It has, however, clarified some of the key parameters of these relationships. First, with regard to the environment, World Bank850 sums up the basic conclusion thus: “Whether the limitations (of the earth’s ‘sources’ and ‘sinks’) will place bounds on the growth of human activity will depend on the scope for substitution, technical progress and structural change.” It has been argued here that achieving possible reductions in environmental intensity and sustainable development will require different strategies in the North and South: more emphasis in the former on sustainability as a policy objective than on economic growth; and an emphasis in the latter on growth that is equitable and minimally environmentally damaging, with a combined focus on environmental regeneration, social reforms and careful industrialisation using the most environmentally advanced technologies. Such Southern growth will only be achieved in the context of reformed North-South economic relations. Maintaining the current undifferentiated emphasis 380 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited on growth in both North and South is likely to increase unsustainability whatever the rhetorical commitments in favour of sustainable development. Second, with regard to welfare, there can be no presumption that GNP growth, especially if it increases environmental destruction but even if it does not, increases social welfare. The relationship between GNP growth and welfare can only be elucidated by placing GNP in an operational indicator framework of economic welfare that goes well beyond it. Third, with regard to social sustainability, it is quite possible that the type and pace of technological change required to make GDP growth and environmental protection compatible objectives, will exacerbate the sort of social problems identified by Mishan and Hirsch,851 with unpredictable results. These problems can only be addressed by explicitly exploring the moral and cultural issues raised by the predominant emphasis in economic thinking on individual preferences, self-interest, and competitive growth. Such approaches provide an opportunity to invest the term ‘sustainable development’ with some deeper human, social and institutional significance, which may prove as important to its realisation as the mere development of and implementation of ecotechnologies.852 What has changed since Ekins wrote this paper in 1992? Were his projections realized? What is the situation nearly three decades later? The United Nations, in its Global Sustainable Development Report 2019, raises an alarm that the World is falling behind its sustainability goals: Adding to the concern is the fact that recent trends along several dimensions with cross-cutting impacts across the entire 2030 Agenda are not even moving in the right direction. Four in particular fall into that category: rising inequalities, climate change, biodiversity loss and increasing amounts of waste from human activity that are overwhelming capacities to process them. Critically, recent analysis suggests that some of those negative trends presage a move towards the crossing of negative tipping points, which would lead to dramatic changes in the conditions of the Earth system in ways that are irreversible on time scales meaningful for society. Recent assessments show that, under current trends, the world’s social and natural biophysical systems cannot support the aspirations for universal human well-being embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals. Just over 10 years remain to achieve the 2030 Agenda, but no country is yet convincingly able to meet a set of basic human needs at a globally sustainable level of resource use. All are distant to varying degrees from the overarching target of balancing human wellbeing with a healthy environment. Each country must respond to its own conditions and priorities, while breaking away from current practices of growing first and cleaning up later. The universal transformation towards sustainable development in the next decade depends on the simultaneous achievement of countryspecific innovative pathways853 Australia is a signatory to the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) so it is interesting to hear Australia report on its progress: The SDGs reflect Australia’s values and belief in a ‘fair go’. 381 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The SDGs reflect things that Australians value highly and seek to protect, like a healthy environment, access to opportunity and services, human rights, inclusive economies, diverse and supportive communities and our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and heritage. Our support for political, economic and religious freedoms, liberal democracy, the rule of law, equality and mutual respect underpin a strong, fair and cohesive society. Core to the Australian understanding of the SDGs is the Australian value of a “fair go”. Like “leaving no one behind”, it is a call to action for fairness, justice and equality of opportunity. This is a ‘whole of Australia’ endeavour, across the whole Agenda. The 2030 Agenda is not just for and about government initiatives and activity: it also involves the business sector, civil society, academia, communities, families and individuals. Australians are already contributing to achievement of the SDGs through their work in the care economy, by volunteering, by preserving the natural environment and through their everyday activity. Australia’s youth play a crucial role given their potential to deliver on the SDGs into the future and their stake in the realisation of the Goals. Australia is committed to the 2030 Agenda, including the SDGs and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development. Australia is committed to the SDGs as a universal, global undertaking to end extreme poverty and ensure the peace and well-being of people across the world. The 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper highlights Australia’s responsibility to contribute to global efforts to reduce poverty, alleviate suffering and promote sustainable development. Achieving the SDGs is in Australia’s interests: it will contribute to lasting global prosperity, productivity and stability. The SDGs are consistent with Australian Government priorities and long-standing efforts across a range of sectors. Likewise, the Addis Agenda’s emphasis on issues like trade and infrastructure investment are in line with Australia’s approach to driving growth and prosperity. Our development assistance supports efforts to build a stable and prosperous world, with a focus on infrastructure, trade facilitation and international competitiveness; agriculture, fisheries and water; effective governance; education and health; building resilience and gender equality.854 This is the reality. Australia is failing in its development of a sustainable economy. Hagiography is not policy. Nor is the mindless mantra of ‘jobs and growth’ or a ‘fair go’. Both are meaningless without evidence-based policy: • The Federal neoliberal (might we say Neolithic) Government is arguing in the United nations against the modest 2030 emission reduction targets recommended by the IPCC. • We are the world’s largest exporter of fossil fuels: coal and gas. Yet rising domestic gas prices have seen the cost of electricity soar. Short-sighted Government export policies introduced by ex-liberal Prime Minister Howard in 2002 mean we have no mechanism to sequester some of our gas at reasonable prices for ourselves.855 The export contracts are locked in until 2027. We therefore import some of our exported gas at international market prices, causing an increase in the domestic cost of electricity. Criminally obtuse? Probably. • Our Liberal-Coalition Government has no energy policy and pays polluters to pollute. It forces many Aboriginal people to live in third world conditions, with systemic poverty, ill health, and high rates of incarceration. 382 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited • Australia’s overseas aid budget has been falling since 1986; it rose briefly to nearly 0.35% while labour was in power from 2007 to 2013 but has now almost halved to little more than 0.2% of Gross National Income.856 • Rising inequality and flat wages are causing financial hardship for ordinary Australians. • Deforestation and species loss – the result of Government policies – are contributing to a degraded environment. • Australia’s GDP is falling. • Australia has no climate policy to address the national emergency of climate change. Weasel words and protestations of a ‘fair go’ do not make for real action. Nor is a mindless slogan any substitute for a Bill of Rights. Our values must be Constitutionally recognized if they are to have proper meaning, that is, be legally enforceable or to have legal standing. In 1948, George Kennan, a US strategic planner and career diplomat, is widely quoted as writing about the need to maintain wealth disparity, in order to maintain the United States’ standard of living. This is the clumsily excised quote used by John Pilger, but he is not alone in taking quotes out of context: We have 50 percent of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period... is to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with all sentimentality... we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation.857 The use and misuse of Kennan’s quote does not diminish its relevance to contemporaneous sentiment about the 1% doctrine, most recently articulated by Joseph Stiglitz (winner of the 2001 Nobel prize for economics)858 and the magnificent research by Thomas Picketty, that neoliberal and laissez-faire ideologies can only deepen wealth inequality within and between countries.859 But the quote does remind us of the dangers of textual excision and selective quoting, so favoured by many narrative histories. The actual Kennan quote is instructive. Although it was expressed just after a disastrous Second World War and during the uncertainties of the Cold War, it reveals that some of the exclusionary economic thinking persists, as shown by the increasing wealth difference between a small percentage of any given population and the rest. The probabilistic wealth distribution for most societies is becoming more skewed, the collective behavioural dysfunction within a smaller controlling group becoming further entrenched. My main impression with regard to the position of this Government with regard to the Far East is that we are greatly over-extended in our whole thinking about what we can accomplish, and should try to accomplish, in that area. This applies, unfortunately, to the people in our country as well as to the Government. It is urgently necessary that we recognize our own limitations as a moral and ideological force among the Asiatic peoples. Our political philosophy and our patterns for living have very little applicability to masses of people in Asia. They may be all right for us, with our highly developed political traditions running back into the centuries and with our peculiarly favorable geographic position; but they are simply not practical or helpful, today, for most of the people in Asia. This being the case, we must be very careful when we speak of exercising "leadership" in Asia. We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have the answers to the problems which agitate many of these Asiatic peoples. 383 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction. For these reasons, we must observe great restraint in our attitude toward the Far Eastern areas. The peoples of Asia and of the Pacific area are going to go ahead, whatever we do, with the development of their political forms and mutual interrelationships in their own way. This process cannot be a liberal or peaceful one. The greatest of the Asiatic peoples-the Chinese and the Indians-have not yet even made a beginning at the solution of the basic demographic problem involved in the relationship between their food supply and their birth rate. Until they find some solution to this problem, further hunger, distress, and violence are inevitable. All of the Asiatic peoples are faced with the necessity for evolving new forms of life to conform to the impact of modern technology. This process of adaptation will also be long and violent. It is not only possible, but probable, that in the course of this process many peoples will fall, for varying periods, under the influence of Moscow, whose ideology has a greater lure for such peoples, and probably greater reality, than anything we could oppose to it. All this, too, is probably unavoidable; and we could not hope to combat it without the diversion of a far greater portion of our national effort than our people would ever willingly concede to such a purpose. In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to "be liked" or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and -- for the Far East -- unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better. We should recognize that our influence in the Far Eastern area in the coming period is going to be primarily military and economic. We should make a careful study to see what parts of the Pacific and Far Eastern world are absolutely vital to our security, and we should concentrate our policy on seeing to it that those areas remain in hands which we can control or rely on. It is my own guess, on the basis of such study as we have given the problem so far, that Japan and the Philippines will be found to be the corner-stones of such a Pacific security system and if we can contrive to retain effective control over these areas there can be no serious threat to our security from the East within our time. Only when we have assured this first objective, can we allow ourselves the luxury of going farther afield in our thinking and our planning. If these basic concepts are accepted, then our objectives for the immediate coming period should be: 384 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited (a) to liquidate as rapidly as possible our unsound commitments in China and to recover, vis-à-vis that country, a position of detachment and freedom of action; (b) to devise policies with respect to Japan which assure the security of those islands from communist penetration and domination as well as from Soviet military attack, and which will permit the economic potential of that country to become again an important force in the Far East, responsive to the interests of peace and stability in the Pacific area; and (c) to shape our relationship to the Philippines in such a way as to permit the Philippine Government a continued independence in all internal affairs but to preserve the archipelago as a bulwark of U.S. security in that area Of these three objectives, the one relating to Japan is the one where there is the greatest need for immediate attention on the part of our Government and the greatest possibility for immediate action. It should therefore be made the focal point of our policy for the Far East in the coming period.860 Although Kennan wrote for a different time, the thrust of his comments could apply equally well to Colonial Australian Governments, in their policies of Aboriginal exclusion and intentionally imposed disadvantage through homelessness and extirpation for those who had been dispossessed. It could also apply today, where the wealth and health inequality between Aboriginals and mainstream society is extreme, with the gap widening. Unequal societies are social and political constructs; they are generally made not born, the product of the environment more than genetics. Nevertheless, such societies can be selfsustaining for a time, until they begin to fracture and erode through systemic weaknesses caused by inequality. In Australia, over the last decade, the richest 1% now attracts over 20% of all income gains.861 The disparity is increasing, but is defended by right wing neo-liberal conservatives, who argue that free enterprise alone creates wealth, ignoring the rapid rise of communist and statecontrolled China. In June 2014 a report on increasing wealth equality was released: Advance Australia Fair? What to do about growing inequality in Australia.862 It goes on to state that wages growth has been concentrated at the top end of income bands, and that the richest 10% have received almost 50% of the growth in incomes in the last decade. The report was produced by the Australian National University among others. While trying to remain impartial, it is difficult to ignore other contemporary political examples. Among them, Abbott’s attempts at social engineering in his 2014 budget863 allowed income inequality to increase, a trend that continues in 2020, driven forward by neoliberal policy that favours the ideals of capitalism as a social bulwark, where little has changed in the six years since Abbott, under successive Liberal Governments: • • • Trusts, negative gearing, generous superannuation tax breaks, transfer pricing schemes, no capital gains tax, and offshore accounts are predictably untouched, and an ideological conservative budget policy will contribute to more class warfare. Support for renewable energy, scientific research, and carbon reduction through emissions trading is either cut or removed, but consumer electricity prices are trending up, although per capita energy consumption is going down! Aboriginal programme funding is drastically reduced. 385 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited • • The poor will further subsidise the rich. Such budgets are anti-logic, prepared by the scientifically ill informed, with little regard for evidence-based policy. Social unfairness is exposed, along with the dogma driven liberal right-wing politics of unregulated markets, an unshakable belief in private enterprise and relaxed safety nets. This may seem paradoxical, that with falling electricity demand, prices are increasing, leading to more falling demand. It was a result of electricity industry deregulation. Electricity retail prices have roughly doubled in Australia since 2007, well before the GFC for that to be a key factor. The reason is that some parts of the electricity supply chain are monopolies, whose prices are regulated to increase by fixing the maximum rate of return the businesses can earn on the capital they have invested. This means that these businesses are encouraged to ‘gold plate’ their investment, in the main poles and wires, with over capacity, and takes no account of falling demand in the regulated price. The regulated increases are then passed through the supply chain, leading to more falling demand, and so on. The other reason for rising electricity prices is that the price of liquified gas has been rising. Australia has to import much of its gas from other counties to whom we have exported the commodity and then bought it back for a premium, a consequence of Federal Government obtuseness in its trade policy that values export revenue over its citizens’ financial wellbeing, the result of skewed economic priorities. We are now the world’s largest exporter of gas but pay among the world’s highest domestic prices because we have to import it at global market rates. We now have insufficient gas for our local market because export gas contracts have been locked in until at least 2025 under a Howard Government initiative in 2002. The problem of inequality compounds when the rate of return from capital is greater than the percentage economic growth, which is happening in all developed economies including Australia. Those on fixed incomes are left further behind. It seems to be the result of a deregulated market that inequality increases, driven by the natural forces of free enterprise. We are fortunate that, with Federation, the Constitution provided for a minimum liveable wage (unlike America), a happy accident that many neoliberal politicians still regret. What of 19th and 20th century settler society? • • • • • • • • • • • As a normative group, we see from the primary sources and witness accounts that it was unequal, avaricious, and murderous; it sought individual wealth through exploitation; it was overwhelmingly racist; it used the legislature to suit its own purposes. There was no minimum wage, there were no safety nets. Aboriginal land was expropriated for the ‘Crown’. Enfranchisement was restricted to male landowners or lessees. Aboriginal trespassers on their own land could be shot. Sexual predation against Aboriginal women was condoned. Aboriginal wages could be stolen, along with part Aboriginal children. Aboriginal witness testimony against the homicidal violence was disallowed. Introduced disease in the Aboriginal population was an ‘Act of God’. Aboriginals could be incarcerated or detained in the interests of public order. Aboriginal extermination was ‘the law of the fittest’. Eugenics was Government policy in an attempt to breed out the ‘Aboriginal trait’. 386 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited This was the toxic soup that fomented collective behavioural dysfunction until the late 20th century. Catastrophic Aboriginal depopulation was the result. Along with progressive ecocide. We have failed to learn. It is the ‘gimme’ fairy-tale of endless prosperity, of a boundless technologically induced magic pudding. The world is failing to address limits to growth and how it can achieve sustainable development. So is Australia. The dilemma is compounded by global warming and a rapidly increasing population, expected to reach around 9 bn by 2050. The total size of the world population is likely to increase from its current 7 billion to 8–10 billion by 2050. This uncertainty is because of unknown future fertility and mortality trends in different parts of the world. But the young age structure of the population and the fact that in much of Africa and Western Asia, fertility is still very high makes an increase by at least one more billion almost certain. Virtually, all the increase will happen in the developing world. For the second half of the century, population stabilization and the onset of a decline are likely. In addition to the future size of the population, its distribution by age, sex, level of educational attainment and place of residence are of specific importance for studying future food security. 864 Area 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 World 6124 6885 7617 8233 8699 9021 Africa 821 1032 1271 1518 1765 1998 Sub-Saharan Africa 680 867 1081 1308 1540 1760 Asia 3705 4145 4546 4846 5024 5095 China 1270 1330 1371 1374 1324 1238 India 1046 1220 1379 1506 1597 1658 North America 316 349 379 405 427 445 Europe 729 730 722 707 687 664 Currently, about 8 per cent of the total world population is above the age of 65. This proportion is likely to double over the coming 20 years and by 2040 reach the level of 16 per cent, which is the level currently experienced in Europe.865 Can the world’s population sustain a standard of living currently enjoyed by the 1% in wealthy countries? No. There are not enough resources. 866 What non-renewable resources are becoming unsustainably depleted? • • • • Fresh water. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations is predicting that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity. Phosphorus. With the need to feed 7 billion people, scientists from the Global Phosphorus Research Initiative predict we could run out of phosphorus in 50 to 100 years unless new reserves of the element are found. Rare earth elements. Scandium and terbium are just two of the 17 rare earth minerals that are used in everything from the powerful magnets in wind turbines to the electronic circuits in smartphones. The elements are not as rare as their name suggests but currently 97% of the world's supply comes from China and they can restrict supplies at will. Exact reserves are not known. Fossil fuels: oil. The fear of reaching peak oil continues to haunt the oil industry. The BP Statistical Review of World Energy in June measured total global oil at 188.8 million tonnes, from proved oil 387 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited • • resources at the end of 2010. This is only enough to oil for the next 46.2 years, should global production remain at the current rate. Fossil fuels: natural gas. A similar picture to oil exists for natural gas, with enough gas in proven reserves to meet 58.6 years of global production at the end of 2010. 867 Helium. Helium is primarily used to cool the superconducting magnets within Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners. It is also used to make silicon wafers, which are the precursor of integrated circuits, and it is used in photovoltaics, or solar cells. The United States holds most of the reserves.868 On balance, Kennen’s argument may be correct. The only way for the world to live sustainably is to allow structural wealth inequality within advanced economies and between 1 st and 3rd world economies. There are simply too many people for a world that is approaching a climate and resource tipping point. Unless the ‘north’ is prepared to share with the ‘south’, which seems unlikely, based on the evidence. In Australia, we saw how fragile we were when confronted with the 2019/20 firestorms on the east coast and elsewhere, how quickly the trappings of civilization collapsed around us, te Government in disarray, people wandering homeless, without food and water, huddled in shelters. Many are still waiting to clean up the debris of their lives because they lack the finances, or because planning laws are inflexible and cumbersome, causing excessive delays. Of course, what should logically have happened is that the Australian army was immediately called in to commence urgent recovery, a little like the post-Katrina clean up in 2005 by the US Army Corps of Engineers and National Guard troops in New Orleans, who were on the ground within hours of the hurricane’s landfall. 869 It didn’t happen. Not in Australia. The Australian Government was unprepared and didn’t know what to do. They floundered. Many of the ruined homes and buildings remain. People were under insured, or if insured, some were told they weren’t covered by bushfires, only fires caused by adjoining buildings! The Government failed to protect the affected citizens - indeed, we could argue they were abandoned - and still fails to help them adequately through the post-trauma period with clean-up and supplies. Victims rely on charity handouts for food, clothing and animal fodder, while the Federal and State Governments watch, wondering about the meaning of resilience. Government agencies such as Centrelink require a mountain of paperwork to prove eligibility before a small amount of cash is issued or a low interest loan is approved. The trauma is compounded. The pattern of climate-related catastrophes can only continue through a series of inevitable shocks that question our resilience and make existential risk more certain. Rebuilding after each catastrophe may maintain our GDP but entropic dissolution must increase. The world – and Australia - will enter disequilibrium. Our rule-based order will become unstable. Without political leadership, there is little appetite for us to change, not Australia, not America, not China, almost no one. Australia will continue to pollute beyond the point of meaningful recovery. We will continue to discharge waste. We will struggle to maintain agricultural production. Clean air and water may be beyond us. Jobs and growth may become a hollow catchcry, impotent in the face of Nature’s challenge to our excesses. We have shown how sustainable development must recognize and manage the physical limits to growth, the inexorable consequence of declining resources and a burgeoning global population. 388 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Technology will not save us from this pinch effect, although it may postpone the repercussions for a few and for a short time. The promised Friedman cornucopia of endlessly increasing GDP has been found wanting. For winners, there are losers. If people have much, they tend to want more. There are countries in the ‘north’, as Ekins points out, just as there are countries in the ‘south’. Whether they have different expectations or can be conditioned to accept different standards of living, this seems to be a principle of structural inequality at play, where some must lose out for the greater good’, either within a society or across countries. Just as Australian genocide and ecocide are artefacts of asymmetric power, so is economic inequality. Therefore, must we also accept that our behaviour should also change, that our collective agency reflects our values? In a challenging world, must we all accept the need to share rather than take? It is unlikely, unless our hand is forced. For example, Australia’s overseas aid budget is declining, while the need is mounting. Our wasteful use of resources continues, driven by a profit motive, where green scruples are derogated by the right-wing political class. Coal is good. People who object are anti-progress. Prosperity is a God-given right. Our trajectory is set. We know how it will end, but perhaps – we convince ourselves - we can transfer the cost to another generation. Ad infinitum. And if we are selfishly tied to economic development, whatever the price, are we inevitably tempted towards aspiring for a greater share of less and less, the one percent doctrine of structural wealth inequality, where someone’s good fortune is at someone else’s expense? Just as there are rules for sustainable – and unsustainable - development, are there also rules that constrain our behaviour, for better or worse? We will argue, yes. In the race of selfinterest, ‘worse’ is winning. Rule-based behavioural constraints Collective societal behaviour is driven by rules, whether explicit or implicit. For exploitative dysfunction, we identify a typology of rule-based constraints that have found their way - through enacted instances - into ideologically based legislation and juridical precedent, post 1788. We note that unconstrained or barely constrained exploitation in its various forms inevitably results in dispossession: dispossession of other groups (Aboriginal society), or other species (fauna and flora), or other ecologies (complex interdependent biological and physical habitats). In such a transactional displacive arrangement, the rights of the other involved party are barely considered unless they are set out within a Constitutional or other overriding framework. A maze of Acts is barely sufficient for social justice – or injustice -- and is expensive to administer, requiring a cabal of lawyers to interpret the rules and precedents for a fee, making a mockery of affordable ‘justice and fairness’. How can the impasse be resolved? We need a superordinate framework. 389 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited A Bill of Rights is the obvious candidate for a cantus firmus, one that can potentially be invoked by a Federal level standing Commission to prosecute corruption and malfeasance by politicians, federal agencies, corporate bodies, religious bodies, councils, and other entities. Its role must be to hold parties liable for abuses, such as: • • • • • • • introducing policies that cause ecological destruction or other harm, or fraudulent banking behaviour, or failure to declare conflicts of interest, or cash for comments, or sand-bagging marginal electorates with taxpayer funded grants, or misuse of taxpayer funded entitlements, or selling products that cause human damage, for example: cigarettes, sugar laden convenience foods, and other products whose consumption socialises the downstream health cost. Measured against a Bill of Rights, politicians could be held responsible for policies that contributed to global warming, or for vote-buying, or for nepotism, or for wilfully ignoring evidence-based science in actions that caused environmental or human harm. Without such governance, authoritarianism sneaks through the door of our tacit democratic values. In our democracy, it is the lack of political accountability that is exposed as a key societal vulnerability, and if we answer ‘elections will hold parties to account’, it is missing the point that we have no formal body to provide checks and balances on poor political governance. This is our challenge. If it is not resolved, we will continue much the same as we have always done. We see the result today. In apathy. In inertia. We can quietly suffer and withdraw into ourselves, or we can take action. We can tell our political representatives, we want change. We can tell them ‘we will no longer be silent and compliant’. Indifference is no longer an option when we face existential risk. Past destructive practices will not save us in the future. These bounded Lemkinian genocidal constraint rules as they apply to Australia are the basis for an evolutionary algorithm that is set out in the Appendix, Modelling Lemkinian Genocide. The rules form a typology within an intentionality envelope (boundary condition) defined by behaviour. That is, the rules give structure and modality to the supra-categorial agency of L. genocide in Australia. Therefore, the rules can be mapped to the clauses of Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention. The rules involve displacement (dispossession) and destruction (physical and other modalities) through categorial agencies, where a category is the facet of a type classification. Equivalent constraint rules apply to the environment; simply substitute ‘environment’ (or native species or Nature) for ‘Aboriginals’ or any phrase with the same meaning. Lemkinian constraint rules within an Australian context Dispossession policy Dispossessory/ land Government policy does not allow [Aboriginals] to own land Government alienates ‘Crown’ land for allocation to squatters 390 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited [Aboriginal people] become trespassers, refugees, then deportees. Immigration Government accelerates immigration through subsidisation arrangements, which increases the demand for more land. [More Aboriginals] are displaced. Disenfranchisement [Aboriginals] were not allowed to testify in court as witnesses, nor were they allowed to vote until well into the 20th century. They were belatedly recognized as citizens in 1967, through a referendum. Extermination policy Depopulation/ dispersal/ predation If [Aboriginals] trespass on their own land, or kill stock, or resist their dispossession, squatters or police are permitted to exterminate them without punishment. Repression policy Sexual dispossession Because white women are scarce, allow and encourage sexual predation; attempt to breed out the [Aboriginal] trait through eugenics. Introduce disease as a weapon of targeted mass destruction Do nothing to protect the [Aboriginal population] from diseases or afflictions against which they had little natural immunity: syphilis, gonorrhoea, influenza, smallpox, diphtheria, malnutrition, depression, alcoholism, among others. Conclusions For the body politic to survive and be healthy, it must be nurtured. Do we have the resolve? Will we stand up for our values? What are those values? Mateship and a fair go? The Eureka miners’ rebellion against British authority? Gallipoli and the ANZAC spirit? Waltzing matilda? ‘For we are young and free’? Or something more meaningful: constitutional recognition of certain inalienable rights that balance economic and security considerations with humanitarian and environmental concerns? This is the subject to which we’ll now turn after we first deconstruct the mechanics and logistics of genocide and ecocide, the predatory values of conquest over ‘otherness’, the use of asymmetric power to enforce self-interest. 391 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited PART 3: Lemkinian Roles and Agency The patterned logistics and mechanics of Australian genocide We will draw out the pattern of Australian genocide by examining the key factor: the theft of Aboriginal land. We will use the land wars in Queensland and Tasmania as summary case studies. To begin this discussion, we will pose the question: Did colonial genocide take place? If so, was there a definable pattern, a typology? Can we use some case examples, say for Queensland and Tasmania, to induce if the dispossession of Aboriginal people across Australia followed an intentional State-driven Lemkinian process? The Question of Colonial Genocide870 If any genocide occurs, we may not immediately discern the patterned agency, but we can see the consequence. The consequence is mass killing, sexual predation and cultural destruction. The first hand Australian historical narratives are rich with the evidence. Aboriginal people were there and then they were not there. The war, if that is the right word, was over in about 140 years, happening in dispossessory waves of about 30 or so years across each invaded part of the continent. Few people questioned the disappearance. Some claimed it was an act of Nature, that Aboriginals as a group were unfit to survive and simply followed a Darwinian process of extinction. Others applauded the disappearance in the interests of pastoralism and economic development. But the disappearance was not ‘natural’; it was hastened by Government dispersal policy and settlers who enforced the genocidal process with the gun as arbiter. The impact of British power on Aboriginals was calibrated and ruthless, but we are now asked to question British ‘intent’, that there was no documented intention by Britain to commit genocide or mass extermination against a targeted group, that is the group of Aboriginal groups across Australia. The apologist argument is an example of ‘reframing’: it’s not about genocide, some say, but the unintentional consequence of violent dispossession. In its more pernicious form, reframing invokes the defence that the perpetrators were the victims. Mass killing almost never has a written order. It is unlikely and highly self-incriminating, that a Government would issue instructions for carrying out deliberate murder. Nevertheless, ethnically targeted mass killing, or racial destruction, is usually the expected result of some official policy, or reactive social behaviour within a policy context. We are asked by some politicians and historians to absolve or reject Britain’s role in colonial genocide, because there is no evidence of written orders from the British Government that authorise mass killing. We are asked by some (such as Windschuttle and other denialists) to dismiss any allegations of mass killing because there is no body of legal evidence (that is, case histories) to support such a charge. Instead, we are exhorted to consider violence against Aboriginals, if we accept it at all, as the aberrational excesses of a few settlers at the lawless frontier; or if we reluctantly accept that targeted racial violence and Aboriginal antipathy did occur, we are encouraged to play it down 392 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited as ‘a black armband’ view of history that is unhelpful in the myths we prefer to create for ourselves. Or we are asked to consider violence against Aboriginals being caused by Aboriginals themselves, when they behaved ‘unlawfully’ by resisting their dispossession. Denialism is a slippery slope. Consider the massive Aboriginal depopulation in only 140 years, since the initial British invasion. The evidentiary fact of depopulation is difficult to ignore, less than denying or rejecting any number of individual skirmishes or ‘collisions’ or ‘dispersals’ or massacres that collectively make up the total genocidal effect, so we often see the nett percentage depopulation figure and causes challenged from different quarters through a range of questionable tactics and false logic Let us examine the small graduated steps that can lead us from black to white, from the selfcondemnatory ‘black armband’ view of history to self-congratulatory settler supremacy and heroic triumphalism. It is a differential geometry of evil, a gradient with many small increments, for which the only practical visualisation is to stand back and examine the immoral topology from an objective distance. We can reflect on the Lemkinian contours, note the valleys and the peaks, and better appraise the path integral that gets us to a preferred point by the categorial agency, in this instance the British sense of superiority to Aboriginal society. The optimal pathway is seen by the observer as a kind of ‘sum over history’ that relies on procedural intentionality to reveal purposes and outcomes, rather than the individual assessment of relatively miniscule separate functional events, which converge over time with the dimly perceived and broader intentionality envelope generally defined by Government. This moral calculus defines the slippery slope of Australian genocidal denialism: 18. First, to diminish the size of the genocidal problem, some of us argue that the percentage amount of depopulation was not very great, and even less due to British violence (this is the thesis of Geoffrey Blainey), whereas we now know the precontact population catastrophically declined by over 90% from various avoidable causes between 1788 and 1911; 19. Or if we accept a certain percentage reduction in the targeted population, some argue that the actual numbers involved were not great, because there were relatively few Aboriginals at first contact by the British in 1788 (this is the argument of Geoffrey Blainey and others): 20. Or if we agree on an Aboriginal precontact population band, which has been significantly revised upwards from about 300,000 in 1930, to somewhere between 750,000 and 1.2 million today), we make the evidence for extermination inaccessible (it is exceptionally difficult to locate the primary sources that provide evidence for the pattern of past wrongdoing and the details of the individual events, in part because there were so few prosecutions, and even fewer convictions, making the legal case history sparse, in part because the information is buried deeply within non-digitised microfilm repositories, and in part because some of the primary evidence held by Governments has been carefully destroyed, for example, the Queensland police records of ‘dispersals’); 393 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 21. Or if we argue the absence of evidence (Windschuttle), we tend to misunderstand that this does not mean the evidence of absence; 22. Or if the evidence is located, we deny its relevance and say it depends on the context; 23. Or if we accept the context, we argue that if the British had not invaded, some other European power would have done so, presumably with a similar result (this is the Geoffrey Blainey argument); 24. Or if we accept that depopulation did occur, we convince ourselves it was mostly due to introduced disease, or Acts of God, or changing climate (this is also Blainey’s contention, that the Aboriginal population was hand-to-mouth and varied greatly depending on droughts, or rising sea levels, or mini-ice ages); 25. Or if we accept that some Aboriginal depopulation was due to British violence, it was only because the Aboriginals resisted the occupation process and were guilty of criminality that caused their own deaths (this is Windschuttle’s flawed argument); 26. Or if we agree that some Aboriginal deaths were caused by British homicidal behaviour, we argue that these perpetrators were a minority and their behaviour an aberration and did not reflect upon the humane values of settler society as a whole; 27. Or if we reluctantly accept that the British did cause Aboriginal deaths, we assert the standards of behaviour were different then (this is the ‘standards of the time’ argument, that we cannot judge the past by our present standards, an argument preferred by Inga Clendinnen and others); 28. Or if we concede that the targeted group was exterminated in an area through British policy and practice, it was not genocide because mixed race descendants still remain (this is Henry Reynold’s view with regard to Tasmania, but it misconstrues the formal meaning of genocide); 29. Or if we admit that perhaps colonial society did know that what they were doing was wrong (we have equivalent legal notions of mens rea today that still retains its original meaning), then we cannot be held to account for what our predecessors did (this is the John Howard argument, first introduced by Geoffrey Blainey, that we should reject the ‘black armband’ view of history); 30. Or if sexually transmitted diseases had a severe effect on viable Aboriginal procreation, it was not caused by sexual predation but by willing participation (when in fact STDs resulted from multiple causes, none of which would have arisen with a more compassionate Government policy that legally protected Aboriginal women from predation in all its forms, including sexual enslavement and female trafficking); 31. Or if there was catastrophic Aboriginal depopulation, we argue that much of it was due to Acts of God (meaning diseases such as smallpox, measles and so on), when in fact those diseases were introduced by the occupation process, and the destructive effects on indigenous groups – with the need for quarantining on land exclusively set aside for Indigenous use - were well understood by the British from their experience in other countries such as north America;871 32. Or if dispossessed Aboriginals, without a home, become malnourished and starving we teach them the love of God through missions; 33. Or if Aboriginals were incarcerated in detention centres (the Reserve system set up by Government), this was for humane Aboriginal ‘protection’ where they could be allowed to become extinct872 (many of the centres were under the control of an appointed Aboriginal Protector) but most Aboriginals regarded the excessive control over all aspects of their lives with great fear, because it caused the legal breaking up 394 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited of families, the removal of paler skinned children, and the destruction of Aboriginal society and culture in a Lemkinian genocidal process; 34. Finally, we should deny, deny, deny and never say ‘sorry’ (the John Howard approach), because it may have implications for legal compensation, or because we now believe that Aboriginals have been fully assimilated and should be treated like any other citizen or culture or ethnic group in a plural society, while arguing that the past is no longer relevant to our future, a demonstrably absurd thesis. Intentionality usually drives functional circumstance. But circumstance can bite back. Perhaps we now begin to see how easy it is for us to bind ourselves to a utilitarian argument (embraced by Imperial Britain) for the ‘greater good’, where we may have to make difficult momentary choices, with winners and losers. In utilitarianism, ‘bad’ can become ‘good’ through moral gradualism and the politics of denialism. Influential moral philosophers such as Peter Singer and J.S. Mill, favour Utilitarianism. They propone that an action is judged morally right, but only if it produces at least as much good or ‘utility’ or ‘happiness’ as the individual can achieve. With this ‘greater utility’ approach, we can convince ourselves that any desired or expected outcome is the result of many random events over which we have limited control, that life is a lottery, and that we must all compete against each other for raw survival, while striving for general ‘happiness’ and ‘good’. What is left unsaid: Whose ‘greater good’? The nation’s? For Imperial Britain, the nation’s ‘greater good’ equated to the good of a privileged few. And they intended to keep it. For as long as possible. This functional view of ‘utility’ tends to ignore collective intentionality, and the State’s structural role in shaping expectations, that is, the role of the State in managing civil society. If utility is defined as the greatest general happiness, however that may be measured, it leads directly to potential conflict with individual and collective moral judgments. For example, the happiness of squatters was realised by selecting and securing land, subject to Government land alienation policy, which ignored the unhappiness it caused dispossessed Aboriginals, who in the early colonial period were the majority of the population. The ‘greater good’ of the British Empire was served through having a strategic outpost in the South Pacific, with the prospects of profitable bi-lateral mercantile trade using British ships. In this utilitarian moral equation, the human rights of Aboriginal society were overlooked or rejected. Utilitarian philosophy was ultimately self-serving and one-sided, overtaken by an economic imperative. It led to racism and eventual Australian genocide. It led to despoliation of the landscape. The principle of ‘utility’ also results in a common official stratagem around managing any evidence of genocidal wrongdoing for the ‘greater good’, functionally equivalent to the good of those in power, summarised as: e) Hide the evidence (in hard to access datastores and repositories); 395 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited f) Redact the evidence, as Lord Goderich ordered when he was sanitizing the record of Arthur’s military operations against the Palawa;873 g) Destroy the evidence (as the Queensland Government did with its records of mounted police dispersal operations); h) Suppress the evidence (through reflexive arguments that deny their relevance); i) Or reject the evidence or its relevance, as shown by our slippery slope utilitarian gradient (supported by some historians and politicians). Alternatively, we can accept our culpability, on the evidence of the past human rights abuses and the clear lack of accountability, which has led us to post-Lemkinian genocide today (under Articles 2a and 2b), with many Aboriginals still suffering systemic physical, mental and cultural disadvantage. Expressed another way, any expected outcome such as racial oppression and cultural destruction arises from intention, and we can iterate around the planned actions until we come close to realising our expectation. Iterations occur within a different instance of the planned actions, which can be a process or sub-process. For example, the British intent to achieve maritime supremacy over other European powers and establish strategic colonial outposts is a planning process that iterates around actionable elements from strategy to tactics, policies, legislation, administrative procedures, and the use of organised force. It was an enforcement model that Britain had used many times in attempting to extend the reach of its sovereign power. Similarly, the intention to dispossess Aboriginals, using legislation and armed force, resulted in ethnically clearing large areas of land for the use of pastoralists, who were encouraged in greater numbers by Governments eager to increase the settled areas, for the increase in revenue and trade that it brought. So, we can simplify the expanded vertical models we saw earlier to: Intention Planned action(s) Expected outcome Figure 99. Lemkinian genocidal model, triggered by intentionality The abstracted (or type) intention for the planned action(s) was to achieve Government and settler sovereignty for an area. It follows that the expected outcome at the different levels of intentionality was also to achieve settler sovereignty. If not, the process iterates around the planned action(s) for the hierarchy of contexts. For each beachhead settlement, the instantiated model continues to apply; dispossession is achieved area by area in an iterative process that involves the same triggered network of actionable components. 396 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Repeat within an area. Metastasise to other areas . Intention to dispossess Aboriginals from each beachhead settlement Land alienation, immigration, dispersal, massacre Aboriginals removed from an area Figure 100. Primary Lemkinian genocidal model for Australia As dispossession and extermination for an area is more or less completed, and the land is in the hands of pastoralists and settlers, the Lemkinian genocidal process moves to the next phase, subjugation, involving eugenics, ‘stolen children’, incarceration in detention centres (euphemistically called ‘reserves’), living under ‘The Act’ and its state variations. Finally, we come to where we are today, where Aboriginals are amongst the most disadvantaged on Earth, particularly in remote communities, with endemic despair and marginalisation. The model allows us to understand the pattern of British oppression and reduce the complexity to a form where we can verify the process. Repeat within an area. Metastasise to other areas. Intention to dispossess Aboriginals from each beachhead settlement Land alienation, Immigration, Dispersal, massacre Aboriginals removed from an area Subjugation and repression Limit compensation and welfare cost Figure 101 Summary Lemkinian genocidal model as it applies to Australia since first settlement We can now begin to perceive that Lemkinian genocide was the intended consequence of Britain’s land and immigration policies. Aboriginal genocide was intended, as a result of forcibly removing them from their homelands, as a result of ‘legal’ dispossession, and using armed force against them if they resisted. Almost no settlers were ever prosecuted for Aboriginal homicide, and even fewer convicted. Aboriginal extermination was either justified ‘as a war of the races’ or ignored as being caused by ‘some mysterious agency’, invoking a mystical Darwinian process. The Australian genocidal process was not driven by formal Government orders (almost no genocide is), but in this case was the foreseeable and deliberate consequence of intentional British land and immigration policy, exacerbated by overt racism, and by a settler society that believed it was ‘superior’ to the Aboriginal race and could use force if necessary to ‘remove’ them, with the help of Government where necessary. The policy of ‘dispersal’ was evident across all the Australian colonies. Each state was aware of the others’ actions in handling the Aboriginal ‘problem’. All states were culpable of officially condoned mass killing on a massive, rolling scale. Imposed starvation and introduced diseases also played their part, along with despair and incarceration. 397 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Tasmania and Queensland were symptomatic of a continent-wide urge to exploit those who were at a comparative disadvantage. It was the face of racism expressed through bloody state-sponsored violence and exploitation.874 Many genocides arise from an ideological or cultural clash. Australia was different. Genocide had a political use, with racism its underbelly. The political motivation was economic, charged by racism, although it shared the variously weighted Lemkinian modalities or categorial agencies with that abhorrent supertype of massacres we call genocide, an aggregate of sustained massacres, each massacre a fractallike (self-similar) element in a policy-driven blitzkrieg of targeted antipathy towards some group, say the Armenians, or the Tutsi, or Jews, or Australian Aboriginals. Australia’s colonial past has an overarching pattern; the pattern exists, whether (or not) it is a named precept. Some historians have imbued this pattern with heroic settler triumphalism, employing language and identity to shape collective historical memory. But it was far from heroic or triumphal, although it did give rise to a form of identity: take, exterminate, exploit, segregate, prosper, repress. Mateship, yes, but only for those with shared beliefs, of shared backgrounds, a brotherhood of taciturn racism and laconic acceptance of evil, nigger hunts, black velvet, bush law. If justified, genocide was always clothed in Darwinian armour that proclaimed, ‘might is right’. If we accept for the moment the overwhelming evidence that genocide occurred in Australia within its Lemkinian meaning, we will determine that it had a distinctive trigger: it was a war for ownership of the land, especially pastoral land as the frontier advanced, and Aboriginals were in the way. There was money to be made. By speculators and squatters, a democracy of hard yakka and financial reward. But first, Aboriginals had to go. The undeclared race war progressed across genocidal phases for each locality and region: • • • • • • • militarised invasion of an area after a unilateral British claim to sovereignty, with the corollary that Aboriginal society had no land rights whatsoever; armed displacement of the Aboriginal inhabitants of an area; if Aboriginal people resisted, extermination and ‘dispersal’ (ethnic cleansing); imposed marginalization and ‘parasitism’; forcible relocation of Aboriginal survivors to ‘reserves’ (detention centres); repression and subjugation (stolen children, stolen wages, segregation); continuing disadvantage as a group (in health, education, financial security, and excessive incarceration). The role and agency of Aboriginal society, when faced with this implacable confrontation, moved from custodians of country to trespassers to insurgents to victims to refugees to mendicants to deportees to detainees to forgotten people. Most massacre sites are unremembered and uncommemorated, including Murdering Creek. To remember is – possibly – to be accountable. Our past is now a foreign country, less relevant to cultural pluralism and a future defined by climate change. Unless we recognize our past and the contributions of Aboriginal society to a sustainable environment. But such recognition becomes increasingly unlikely as ever-pressing ideological and economic priorities override humanitarian and ecological concerns. 398 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The key historical flexion point for colonial Australia was the decision by Britain to claim sovereign possession, initially over the east coast of New Holland, and follow up with a military invasive force at various points around the continent over the next few decades. A displacive pattern was set. Tasmania and Queensland followed the brutal pattern, as we will see. Land speculators and pastoralists were in the vanguard of a rapidly expanding homicidal frontier as it spread inexorably to the farthest reaches of Australia’s land mass. Aboriginal society was in the way. Australia became an occupied country, with the machinery of Government used to force the targeted dispossessory process. Without their land, Aboriginal people became vulnerable to armed aggression; they could be killed, and no questions were asked. Having been dispossessed, the survivors became trespassers, then refugees, objects of derogation, many forced to live day by day. Finally, they became detainees, captives of their oppressors, or held on missions where their culture was too often amputated. The politics of suffering remains with them today, but the shame is ours. Logistics differs from mechanics in the same way that process is not the same as agency. Logistics is the planning and implementation of a complex task. And indeed, the dispossession of Aboriginal society was complex: it took time and coordinated resolve; it took proclamations, orders and legislation; it took the delegation of responsibilities and the marshalling of cooperative resolve; racism was the mantra and morality was an orphan; economic determinism overrode humanitarian and environmental concerns. By comparison, mechanics deals with the effect of energy and forces on systems, say the elaboration of roles and agency, who did what, and how within a process; if self-interest was the driver, it operated within a risk/reward gradient where capitalism was the primary ideological motivation; land alienation and immigration programmes were the enablers of economic policy, where genocidal paramilitary resolve was the means. That is, a logistical process is a repeatable set of steps with some expected outcome, whereas a system is a complex whole of related parts, say a social organization, that provides the functionality or agency invoked by the process to achieve its ends. As we examine the Australian genocidal process from its various ‘aspects’ (facets) or categorial agencies (modalities), we will begin to see a pattern of type instances, of independent variables, and it is this overarching pattern or type schema that will also calibrate what we see; it will be the dependent variable for our hypothesis of Lemkinian genocide, a directed graph construct where each ‘aspect’ instantiation (also called a ‘use case’ or event or instance of the independent variable) will verify or falsify the Cartesian hypothesis, the type schema and its mapping decompositions along an abstraction gradient, logically leading us to some rigorously tested conclusion. In object modelling, a use case is a list of actions or event steps typically defining the interactions between a role (actor) and a system to achieve a goal (some event outcome). The actor can be a human or other external system. Our preferred myth is that ‘we are young and free’, the words of Australia’s national anthem speaking to the pastoral triumphalism and accelerated immigration that followed the British 399 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited occupation process and the rise of settler sovereignty. But the myth ignores ancient Aboriginal society, which was ruthlessly displaced and marginalised. We still see the consequences today. Aboriginals across Australia continue to suffer through high levels of suicide, incarceration and systemic disadvantage. We do not heed. Perhaps we do not care. Australia’s lethal history will haunt us for as long as we allow Aboriginal injustice to continue. The state of any society is like a Fourier transform, or a mapping of the contributions from many vectorial agencies, a point in n-dimensional space, the cumulative representation of its many facets at a point in time. To focus on one idealised type agency – say settler supremacy - is to remain blind to the originating forces of history, forces that were of human making. It encourages a scotoma in our collective perception of who we are and how we came to be. While the term ‘genocide’ was unknown in the 19 th century, we can immediately recognise those Lemkinian genocidal modalities in Australia today, particularly articles 2 (a), 2 (b) and 2 (c). Indeed, the colonial British administration noted the type methods in Tasmania – the dispossession, the uncontrolled killing, the predation - and their probable outcome (Palawa extinction) among official despatches. Along with some hand-wringing, Imperial Britain regretfully but purposefully continued on its terminally destructive path of what was then called extirpation (martial law and its variants including the laws of trespass and the right to protect one’s property) for the ‘greater good’ of Empire and general economic prosperity of its colonists. The past is encapsulated by the present. Any culture is past-dependent. Is it just coincidence that such oppressive colonial methods persist in what we now call a Lemkinian pattern, with widespread continuing Aboriginal disadvantage? No, the patterns of oppression continue for as long as human behaviour can be dysfunctional. The patterns persist as normative behavioural archetypes, greed, exploitation, racism, but there are few legal deterrents, while morality is usually mute, its voice quietened in obedience to authority. Unless we express our values in a Bill of Rights. Was the British Government knowingly and deliberately genocidal, motivated by ideological supremacism (Imperialism imbued with the hues of nationalistic pride) and territorial acquisitiveness (hegemonic self-interest that drove normative greed), or was genocide merely the accepted consequence of its land policies? Group behavioural dynamics are complex; but they often reduce to relatively simple type behaviours like racism or self-interest that can be trans-generational, sometimes subject to hereditable mechanisms, either cultural (memetic) or epigenetic, giving cause to persistent behavioural agency effects that are reinforced by a distorted risk-reward profile and accreting legislation that generally derives from ideologically based policy framed around economic development. 875 For the economically-motivated type Occupation process in Australia, examples of embedded categorial agencies include Accelerated Immigration and Land Alienation, invariably policy- 400 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited driven and for which the associated consequential modalities (which can be sub-typed as behavioural co-morbidities) are Omnicide (Genocide, Ecocide), Dispossession (Indigenous, Environmental), Repression (Marginalization, Commodification), and so on, forming an inferential tree structure, probabilistic and therefore correlative with antecedent causative factors. Australian genocide across its patterned Lemkinian phases shows a fractal-like behaviour, self-similar for each contested space as the invasive pastoral front metastasized, clearing Indigenous people from its path. For a brief comparison of late-stage genocide in Queensland (for the Kabi) and Tasmania (for the Palawa), each of which had similar pre-contact populations, see the Appendix under The Kabi People. A more detailed analysis is to be found in Ray Gibbons (2019), Deconstructing Queensland Genocide, and Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide, both of which are in draft. Social learning and collective adaptive behaviour are enabled within a structured social context. Can we characterize the normative behaviour of Australian settler society? Given a certain motivation, say the financial lure of stolen Indigenous land, can we hypothesize that the moral implications of Aboriginal dispossession were brushed aside by a collective ethos of white supremacy that doggedly pursued British Imperialism from 1788 until the mid-19th century as Australian colonies were progressively granted self-government, and subsequently for almost a century time thereafter, realized in such policies as Aboriginal dispersal and a white Australia? Yes, the British occupation process was asserted on the belief of racial superiority, on racism, on dehumanizing 876 Aboriginal people as sub-human, as vermin, as feral pests. It provided justification for violent Indigenous dispossession, but left later colonial governments with the dilemma: what was to happen to the displaced Aboriginal people who were made refugees by the British Occupation process? Extermination - a scorched earth ethnic cleansing policy - had been costly but effective, and was embraced as the reasonable response to Aboriginal resistance, but when only defenceless survivors remained, unable to feed or house themselves, what might be an appropriate solution? It proved to be deportation and segregation, what we call apartheid. Queensland Police Commissioner DT Seymour – in office from 1864 to 1895 and can therefore be considered the architect of Queensland’s Lemkinian ethnic cleansing operational programme - was constantly poring over his paramilitary Mounted Police deployment spreadsheets trying, with a constrained budget, to decide where to focus his dispersal efforts for maximum effect in order to please his squatter dominated political masters. Dispersal was the official policy of the Queensland Government from 1861 until Aboriginal resistance was broken for each area and – towards the end of the century - the survivors were rounded up for deportation to detention centres where their lives were rigidly controlled. 877 That is, normative, Government-led Lemkinian genocidal behaviours followed a predictable pattern, and we still see the evidence today in Aboriginal subjugation and repression. The politics of suffering is real and acute. As Peter Sutton asks, ‘Why, after decades of liberal thinking, has the suffering and grief in so many Aboriginal communities become worse?’ His answer: continuing racism and the failure of reconciliation. He writes: The Stolen Generations inquiry and its Bringing Them Home report,878 for all their original necessity and wrenching truths, were marred by politicisation and by a lessthan-technical attitude to collecting factual information. Had the inquiry been sufficiently factual in a detailed historical sense it might have provided an unassailable basis for some kind of collective closure, on that subject if no other. 401 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The trauma of raking over the past has to be compensated for by something truly significant, if it is to be taken on. That clearly did not happen in this case. The general outcome of Bringing Them Home was to vitally raise awareness of a relatively unknown negativity in Australia’s past, but at the same time it enhanced victimhood as a basis of positive regard for Indigenous people, and polarised opinion about state or other collective historical guilt. It certainly didn’t put chickens on the kitchen tables of Docker Rive, if there were any, and reconciliation won’t do that either. To hold out to those suffering the grim realities of certain Indigenous communities the expectation that they will be safer, healthier, less arrested, because of the contracting of a formal Reconciliation package is to offer them goanna oil. Surely by now we understand that to peddle the grand national gesture as a cure for early renal failure and child abuse is not just whimsy-minded, it is dangerous mumbo jumbo. And it distracts from urgent realities.879 Expressed another way, our existence is fragile. We can sustain ourselves for as long as we have the means to do so. If we lose our health, we may lose our job. If we lose our job and are unable to work, we may lose our home. If we are homeless, we may lose our family and our will to live. If we are destitute, our mental health can deteriorate; our physical wellbeing may suffer; we may fall into an accelerating decline. Something like this happened to Aboriginal society. Yet we look on and judge and begrudge and punish and justify our actions. Is there a path to genocide? Can we predict that genocide will occur? Can people whom we consider ‘ordinary’, that is, not exhibiting any behavioural psychopathy, become involved as a group in genocide against another group? For example, were people such as Hitler or Pol Pot deranged within a psychiatric meaning? Was settler society in Australia collectively infected or imbued with a certifiable behavioural disorder? The somewhat surprising finding is that ordinary people can be involved in genocidal acts, beginning with dehumanizing the victims, as though this justifies targeted persecution that escalates to structural and directed violence against some group that involves the State. Johanna Volthardt writes: Dehumanisation is central to every genocide; we know from the Holocaust, Cambodian genocide, Rwandan genocide and many other cases that victim groups were labelled as vermin, cockroaches or snakes. This is argued to make the act of violence less aversive and less morally reprehensible – dehumanisation is one of the mechanisms of moral disengagement through which human beings manage to preserve a positive image of themselves or their group despite doing harm to others. […] People become desensitized to violence they are exposed to; and participating in violence makes us more likely to engage in future violence. Moreover, exclusionary ideologies are one of the main predictors of genocide that Harff identified in her analysis of 126 instances of war and regime collapse distinguishing the 35 cases that led to genocide from those that did not. Of course, psychology does not explain everything, and psychologizing social problems runs the risk of overlooking clear structural issues and deep inequalities that are a source of oppression and violence. Structural and political factors that are linked to a decreased risk of genocide, even in the presence of exclusionary ideologies, include less political upheaval, no prior genocide, a partial of full democracy in place, and greater trade openness. Yet these structures are also created by human beings and shaped by psychological processes. 402 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We should therefore never give in to the illusion and optimistic bias – which also helps explain some behaviours of victim groups in times of genocide that reduce their survival, as well as the likelihood of resistance – that we are immune to the risk of genocide.880 Does Australia’s past have a pattern? Does this pattern, if it exists, influence our collective behaviour today? Australian post-contact history shows that Britain chose a predatory path that was realized in Lemkinian repression, an intentional outcome that was necessary if Aboriginal land was to be forcibly confiscated. We will use Queensland and Tasmanian genocidal agency as summary case examples.881 Australian genocide was driven by British land and immigration policy. It exhibited a fractallike pattern of massacres, self-similar at different scales, where local extermination was replicated across regions and thence for all Australia in a formulaic process of Lemkinian displacement, racial cleansing. Australia Territorial/ State Regional Local Figure 102 The fractal-like geometry of Australian genocide The process architecture of Australian genocide had a repeatable pattern, reinstantiable at different scales, that was enabled through the patterned Occupation Process and driven through Government policy. 403 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 103 Simplified model of the Australian Occupation Process, showing the role of Involved Parties The Process Flow decomposition derives from the process architecture and reflects the political and economic purpose for the Occupation Process. The identifiable pattern of mass killing commences with the initial armed occupation for an area, peaks through the consolidation phase when all land is being acquired through alienation followed by grants and sales, and levels off as larger nominated areas are being portioned off and reportioned for closer settlement. Ethnic cleansing slightly lags the mass killing curve and continues strongly with other forms of removal and subjugation until the Aboriginal problem is finally resolved for each pastoral property and territory and state. Unencumbered land had greater value for Governments and pastoralists. Usufructuary use was rarely tolerated unless Aboriginal labour could be exploited, and rarer still after a system of Government detention centres was established. As a use case example, we will deconstruct these genocidal roles and agencies in Part 2 of Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide.882 404 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 104 Process Flow decomposition for Australian Lemkinian genocide Figure 105 Type Occupation Process showing actionable components Australia’s racist Constitution and the 1967 Aborigines Referendum883 The Constitution: The original Australian Constitution made two references to Australia's Indigenous persons in Sections 51 (xxvi) and 127: 51. The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: (xxvi.) The people of any race, other than the aboriginal people in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws 405 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 127. In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted. The reasons for these provisions were threefold. On a practical level there was a concern that to include Aboriginal people in a census might distort the number of House of Representatives seats to be allocated to the different states. A second factor was the widely held belief that Aboriginal people were 'dying out’ and, hence, would soon cease to be a factor in questions of representation. Finally, many believed that indigenous people were not intellectually worthy of a place in the political system. Shortly after the new Constitution came into force, the general view in the new national Parliament was that expressed by a Western Australian Senator who stated that there was a need to ‘take some steps to prevent any aboriginal … from acquiring the vote’. A Tasmanian Member of Parliament (MP) dismissed the need to include indigenous people in a national census: ‘There is no scientific evidence that he is a human being at all’.884 Typology for British genocidal land acquisition in Australia Let us now flesh out the typology to sub-type the British process for predatory and displacive land acquisition in New Holland, what became Australia. It will become evident why the occupation process was – or quickly became - genocidal. Each sub-type, say ‘displacive’ within ‘predatory’, has a unique set of characteristics that contextually depend on Government policies and agency. It should be no surprise that the sub-types are behavioural, reflecting British normative dysfunction, although Britain may have had another perspective: the glory of Empire; or perhaps the self-interest of its privileged governing-class. The typology shows us that Britain could have chosen an alternative path to ‘exploring’ new territory but was overwhelmingly driven by political and economic self-interest in an urge, a compunction, for complete and exclusionary control, where Imperialism demanded Indigenous racial subservience and where Indigenous rights to land and cultural identity, even life, were generally ignored. If Aboriginal subservience and acquiescence was not forthcoming, if there was resistance to the displacement process, the British punishment of Aboriginal society, group by group, was brutally destructive. Britain would not countenance Indigenous opposition to the land heist, to the rise of pastoral triumphalism and settler supremacy. In this genocidal occupation process, area by area, deliberate and implacable, it is exceptionally difficult to sustain the argument that there were no unintended consequences of British racially discriminatory and genocidal policies. In this violently displacive process, the voice of the language and mechanics of conquest. Aboriginal protest is lost, drowned out by To understand this process, we now develop a land acquisition typology, where we will link British policies and behaviour with Lemkinian agency through a classification schema. It is this collective behavioural pattern or schema that will inform our deconstructive analysis through a potentially falsifiable hypothesis for the destruction of Aboriginal society. A process is a pattern of connected event types, of patterned purpose across a network of actionable components. 406 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Within our analytical framework, a process is a defined and repeatable series of actionable components, forming a directed graph with a specified (intentional) originating trigger and sharing a planned or expected outcome. A directed graph is a network of nodes within some process, or across a set of processes, each node representing an actionable component. There can be many paths through the network, depending on the conditional trigger for any node. However, any graph has a consistent and uniquely identified input and output condition, which together define intent for the process. Therefore, if we are to understand the Lemkinian genocidal process as a set of instantiations, we should work from the pattern, rather than examine individual events, where it can be difficult to see the overarching regular order of things, the cause-and-effect chain, the structure of normative dysfunction. Put another way, it is difficult to establish evidence of genocide from an event; it is easier to find evidence of genocide if an event is verified as an instance of the genocidal process. Of particular interest in our study are the processes of Indigenocide, Lemkinian genocide, ethnic cleansing, invasive occupation, colonisation, settler sovereignty, mass killing (along with its variant terms), and ecocide. The extent to which these processes overlap is determined by their shared or common actionable components. 885 Such hypothesized process models are potentially falsifiable, within the scientific meaning, if we find an example where we cannot map - or functionally relate - any case instance (or event) to the particular model. By ‘hypothesis’ we will mean a testable conjecture, or an assumption used in an argument without being endorsed, a tentative explanation for a phenomenon, used as a basis for further exploration. Consider our hypothesis for the geometry of the Occupation process. Let us call this hypothesized geometric manifold the dependent variable, say space A. Let us now consider a specific event (space B) comprising a potential instance (triggering condition, role, and agency) of a sub-class in space A. We want to establish if the mapping between space A and space B is falsifiable. Any mapping from one space to another involves some functional relationship between a specific object, for example an event or case, and a target space that we have defined by a reference model (dependent variable), say the type occupation process or the Lemkinian type genocide process. If we can show that some event or case such as Murdering Creek886 can map to or instantiate the type or referent process, then we have verified that the hypothesized type process is a necessary and sufficient mapping of observed or reported reality (ontology), prescribed by some level of fact-based analysis (epistemology). In terms that are mathematically more rigorous, a function is the relation between two sets. The relationship can be either a mapping or a transformation. The functional relationship is a set of ordered pairs, x and ⨍(x). If we write y = ⨍(x), then y is the value (or dependent variable) for the argument x, where x = x 1, x2, x3,.. xn and di represents some actionable component domain over x. 407 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 106 Preliminary behavioural typology for Australian settlerism 408 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 107 Typology of Lemkinian Genocide in Australia: Acquisitive, Predatory, Displacive, Genocidal 409 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 108 Queensland Occupation Process, showing Genocidal Phases 410 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We hypothesize, through induction by concomitant variation, that, for example: If variations in Land Alienation (A) are correlated with variations in Immigration (I), then: 1. 2. 3. A causes I, or I causes A, or some other factor X causes variations in both A and I, which are co-determinate. This analytical approach is widely used in scientific investigations. Using the case example of Queensland’s occupation, the genocidal phases overlap,887 with the far north and north west Indigenous people the last to face a predatory racial purge by white settlerism. The south west succumbed between the early 1860s and 1890. For the Kabi, speculative pastoral invasion of their territory began in the late 1830s, with the period of maximum societal destruction between 1840 and 1880, followed by repression post 1880 that included forced deportation of now homeless Aboriginal people to detention centres. In 1900, very few Kabi survived from a pre-invasion population of possibly several thousand, commensurate with the original pre-invasion Tasmanian Palawa population. For this reason, we will use Tasmanian genocide to compare and contrast the destruction of the Kabi, and then – by induction – infer a similar mechanism for the collapse of all other language groups in Queensland and across Australia. The occupation process can be seen in equivalent biological terms as a type of predatory constrictor that processes its prey in one end, moving the victim’s body down its length in defined stages until it is expressed as excrement, without form and identity, almost all its essence removed. The occupation process in Australia comprehensively destroyed Aboriginal culture and identity, a genocidal period from which Aboriginal society is yet to recover. 411 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 109 Australian Occupation Process, showing Pre-Genocidal Phase 412 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Land Alienation/ Immigration: Lemkinian agencies 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d). We hypothesize that invasion of an area, together with its unilateral expropriation in the name of the Crown, caused concomitant and measurable correlative variations between Land Alienation (A) and Immigration (I) that are subject to regression analysis. The pre-genocidal phase was the triggering condition for subsequent genocide within each invaded area. For Tasmania, we show empirically that there is a strong correlation (0.96) between the Total Free Male immigrant population (excluding the military) and the Cumulative Total Acreage Granted for areas less than 500 acres, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive.888 For Queensland, we empirically determine that there is a strong correlation of 0.92 between Population Size and Cumulative Land Alienation between 1860 and 1900 inclusive.889 We can infer, by induction, that a similar concomitant variation applies to all other Australian regions, including Queensland. This dispossessory agency had the effect of causing bodily and mental harm to the targeted group (2b), harrying the group with the intention to destroy it in whole or part (2c), and imposing conditions that made it difficult for the group to create and raise families (2c). The invasion of any area caused almost immediate conflict, resulting in targeted killings (2a). 413 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 110 Australian Occupation Process, showing Genocidal Phase Dispossession/ Resistance: We might similarly conjecture an algorithmic relationship between dispossession and resistance, measured quantitatively, which is outside the immediate scope of this book.890 These co-determinate Lemkinian agencies were determined by the conditional trigger arising from: Invasion/ Resistance → Land Alienation/ Immigration. Dispersal/ Extermination: Lemkinian agency 2 (a): Evans and Ørsted -Jensen analysed Native Police and settler dispersal operations in Queensland and identified a strong correlation between the number of operational sorties (around 6000 dispersal attacks) and the total number of Aboriginals killed (extermination), which they calculate as 61,680 homicides over 40 years. However, their dataset is fragile because many of the relevant police operational records have disappeared, presumably destroyed to avoid culpability.891 The size and stability of the data bundles does not allow easy regression analysis. 414 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited These homicidal sorties necessarily caused bodily harm to the group (2b) and were intended to bring about the disruption and destruction of the group (2c) along with reducing the group’s ability to create and maintain a family (2d). The concomitant variation between dispersal/ extermination was conditionally triggered by the outcome of dispossession/ resistance. Predation/ Population Collapse: Lemkinian agencies 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d). If we exclude Evans and Ørsted –Jensen numbers of those killed under Article 2 (a) between 1860 and 1900, we are left with a Queensland Aboriginal depopulation figure of over 200,000 between 1788 (1824 Queensland invasion) and 1911. The primary cause is likely to have been the drop in birth rate that resulted in an intragenerational population collapse. See this document for the section: Modelling Lemkinian Genocide, which sets out the categorial agencies and their enumerative demographic effect. The population was not replaced because of ongoing sexual predation (2b), enslavement (2b, 2c, 2d, 2e), the inability to raise a family (2c), gonorrhoea and infertility (2d), introduced disease (2b, 2c, 2d), cultural destruction (2b, 2c), lack of food (2b, 2c, 2d), poor food such as flour, sugar (2b, 2c, 2d), homelessness (2b, 2c, 2d, 2e), and the introduction of drugs such as alcohol and opium (2b, 2c). Predation/ Population Collapse was conditionally triggered by the outcome of Dispersal/ Extermination. Britain refused to withdraw from primary areas of invasion but persisted in its colonizing activities, no matter the human cost to Indigenous society. Britain’s obdurate expansionist policy inculcated a normative behavioural ethos (shared values or axiology) among settler society that resolved itself as overwhelmingly racist and violently dispossessory. Removals/ Mortality: Lemkinian agencies 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d), 2 (e). In this document we show empirically that Barambah Removals and Mortality between 1905 and 1939 are strongly correlated (0.88) and hypothesize that other State detention centres (including those across Queensland) will show a similar correlative variation though inductive inference. We show that the Queensland Government’s removals programme, culminating in the 1897 Act and its subsequent amendments, caused bodily and mental harm to the group (2a), with the lethal conditions knowingly causing the cultural and physical destruction of the group (2c) and initially causing a low birth rate (2d). The programme also forcibly transferred children away from their families (2e) and encouraged eugenics to ‘breed out the colour’. The objective of the programme was stated to be one of ‘protection’, presumably from white predation; it was further assumed that the race was becoming extinct because – in Darwinian thinking - it was biologically unfit to survive the invasion of a superior culture. But the self-serving assumption ignored the evidence – including that of the 1837 Report of the Parliamentary Committee on Aboriginal Tribes - that catastrophic depopulation was being caused by white supremacist aggression. 415 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Homeless, they became trespassers on the own land and refugees in their own country, subject to internment and segregation in what the Government thought would be a final solution, with all of its emotive connotations. The Removals/ Mortality co-determinate Lemkinian agencies were conditionally triggered by the preceding Predation/ Population Collapse period. 416 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 111 Australian Occupation Process, showing Post-Genocidal Phase in context892 Repression/ Incarceration: The co-determinate agencies of Repression/ Incarceration are conditionally triggered by the outcome of the genocidal phase. The postgenocidal phase is one for which we see lingering evidence today in: targeted policing (2b, 2c); excessive rates of incarceration (2b, 2c, 2d); continuing deaths in custody (2b, 2c, 2d); slow reparation for stolen wages and stolen children (2b); the efforts to obstruct a treaty and first people’s recognition in the Constitution (2b); the failure to amend the Constitution by removing its racist elements (2b); the continuing struggle for post-Mabo land rights (2b); systemic indigenous ill-health (2b, 2c); the sub-standard accommodation, water supply and sanitation, especially in remote communities (2b, 2c, 2d); continuing marginalization, family violence, family breakup, and despair (2b, 2c, 2d, 2e); and the pernicious presence of white supremacists, particularly in right wing Queensland politics. 417 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Across Australia, Queensland was among the worst perpetrators of violence against Aboriginals, its 1897 Act893 simply continuing a lethal and racist process, a trans-generational policy of racial antipathy that denied Aboriginal people the rights to their land. The ‘dying race’ theory was born, and not just for Queensland, to acquit the invaders of any guilt or remorse. Many genocides arise from an ideological or cultural clash, some from territorial expansionism where, if there is resistance, violent Indigenous displacement is a corollary. Australia was little different; it shared the variously weighted Lemkinian modalities or categorial agencies with that abhorrent supertype of massacres we call genocide, an aggregate of sustained massacres, each massacre a fractal-like (self-similar)894 element in a policy-driven blitzkrieg of targeted antipathy towards some group, say the Armenians, or the Tutsi, or Jews, or Australian Aboriginals. Australia’s colonial past has an overarching pattern; the pattern exists, whether or not it is a named precept. Some historians have imbued this pattern with heroic settler triumphalism, employing language and identity to shape collective historical memory. But it was far from heroic or triumphal, although it did give rise to a form of identity: take, exterminate, exploit, segregate, prosper, repress. Mateship, yes, but only for those with shared beliefs, of shared backgrounds, a brotherhood of taciturn racism and laconic acceptance of evil, nigger hunts, black velvet, bush law. If justified, genocide was always clothed in Darwinian raiments that proclaimed, ‘might is right’. If we accept for the moment that genocide occurred in Australia within its Lemkinian meaning, we will determine that it had a distinctive trigger: it was a war for ownership of the land, especially pastoral land as the frontier advanced, and Aboriginals were in the way. There was money to be made. By speculators and squatters, a democracy of hard yakka and financial reward. But first, Aboriginals had to go. If nothing else, for the glory of Empire. The undeclared race war progressed across genocidal phases for each locality and region: militarised invasion of an area after a unilateral British claim to sovereignty, with the corollary that Aboriginal society had no land rights whatsoever; armed displacement of the Aboriginal inhabitants of an area; if Aboriginal people resisted, extermination and ‘dispersal’ (ethnic cleansing); imposed marginalization and ‘parasitism’; forcible relocation of Aboriginal survivors to ‘reserves’ (detention centres); repression and subjugation (stolen children, stolen wages, segregation); continuing disadvantage as a group (in health, education, financial security, and excessive incarceration). The role and agency of Aboriginal society, when faced with this implacable confrontation, moved from custodians of country to trespassers to insurgents to victims to refugees to mendicants to deportees to detainees to forgotten people. Most massacre sites are unremembered and uncommemorated, including Murdering Creek. To remember is – possibly – to be accountable. Our past is now a foreign country, less relevant to cultural pluralism and a future defined by climate change and increasing environmental destruction in the name of economic development. Or so some historians claim when they assert, ‘times were different then’. Unless we recognize our past and the contributions of Aboriginal society to a sustainable 418 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited environment. But such recognition becomes increasingly unlikely as ever-pressing ideological and economic priorities override humanitarian and ecological concerns. Societies must adapt or die. As our climate changes, as our resources diminish, we begin to acknowledge that we must live within found constraints: economic, security, environmental. Our ongoing survival may depend on our group’s ability to thrive at the expense of other groups, other species, other ecosystems;895 but such a strategy ultimately will destroy us, as it involves unsustainable development, unsustainable exploitation, unsustainable growth. The alternative adaptation is one that Aboriginal society adhered to for millennia: sustainability in all our collective agency, our careful use of Nature, our preservation of binding values, our shared sense of community. There is one important difference that our invasive society may never overcome. Aboriginal people are custodians of the land for future generations, whereas – in Australia - acquisitive capital-oriented Anglocentric society ‘owns’ the land as private property. In a recent work, Simon Winchester made a similar observation, ‘that it was Britons dispossessed from land in their own country who migrated to dispossess Indigenous people of theirs’.896 The key historical flexion point for colonial Australia was the decision by Britain to claim sovereign possession, initially over the east coast of New Holland, and follow up with an invasive force at various points around the continent over the next few decades. A displacive pattern was set. Queensland followed the brutal pattern. In April 1770, Captain Cook RN arrived on the east coast of Australia in a converted collier (coal hauler) where, on first landing at ‘stingerray bay’ (now Botany Bay, what the local Gweagal people called Kamay) he shot at Aboriginal people who were gesturing ‘go away’, having earlier massacred nine Maoris at Gisborne in New Zealand who also did not want him. Australia continues to haul coal to the world as it shows a middle finger to global warming concerns.897 After successfully observing the transit of Venus, it is correct that Cook’s instructions were to find and map terra australis incognita, what we now call Antarctica, presumed to be somewhere below the 40 th parallel according to Ptolemaic theory, where he was to ‘take possession’ with ‘the consent of the natives’. Cook never discovered the great south land, being driven back by the cold, so he was unable to take possession ‘with the consent of the natives’, as he was instructed. Nevertheless, after tacking generally west from Tahiti, he determined that New Zealand was not part of some larger land mass, and then decided to explore the east coast of New Holland, not part of his instructions, where he ‘took possession’ at various points of the coastline in the name of King George III, without specifying a longitudinal band. This may have been in recognition of the Dutch claim to Western New Holland. You are also with the Consent of the Natives to take Possession of Convenient Situations in the Country in the Name of the King of Great Britain: Or: if you find the Country uninhabited take Possession for his Majesty by setting up Proper Marks and Inscriptions, as first discoverers and possessors.898 There is no evidence he sought the ‘consent of the natives’, as were his secret instructions. Nor did Britain insist upon it after the event. The pattern was set for what was to become a violent process of British occupation, beginning with east New Holland, renamed New South Wales, and rapidly expanding west.899 Cook’s first encounter with Aboriginal 419 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited people in New Holland was unpromising; they gestured to him to go away. Shots were fired on Cook’s orders, as they were at Gisborne in New Zealand, where nine Maoris were killed. 28 April 1770. Joseph Banks’ journal. Botany Bay (Stingray Bay): After dinner the boats were mann'd and we set out from the ship intending to land at the place where we saw these people, hoping that as they regarded the ships coming in to the bay so little they would as little regard our landing. We were in this however mistaken, for as soon as we aproachd the rocks two of the men came down upon them, each armd with a lance of about 10 feet long and a short stick which he seemd to handle as if it was a machine to throw the lance. They calld to us very loud in a harsh sounding Language of which neither us or Tupia understood a word, shaking their lances and menacing, in all appearance resolvd to dispute our landing to the utmost tho they were but two and we 30 or 40 at least. In this manner we parleyd with them for about a quarter of an hour, they waving to us to be gone, we again signing that we wanted water and that we meant them no harm. They remaind resolute so a musquet was fird over them, the Effect of which was that the Youngest of the two dropd a bundle of lances on the rock at the instant in which he heard the report; he however snatchd them up again and both renewd their threats and opposition. A Musquet loaded with small shot was now fird at the Eldest of the two who was about 40 yards from the boat; it struck him on the legs but he minded it very little so another was immediately fird at him; on this he ran up to the house about 100 yards distant and soon returnd with a sheild. 900 Cook’s log shows this event took place on April 29; he did not allow for the International Date Line. It is clear from this first encounter with Aboriginal people that they wanted him to go away. Instead, he shot at them. It would be the pattern of race relations thereafter. Saw as we came in on both points of the bay Several of the natives and afew hutts, Men women and children on the south shore abreast of the Ship to which place I went in the boats in hopes of speaking with them accompaned by Mr Banks Dr Solander and Tupia- as we approached the shore they all made off except two Men who seem'd resolved to oppose our landing - as soon as I saw this I orderd the boats to lay upon their oars in order to speake to them but this was to little purpose for neither us nor Tupia could understand one word they said. We then threw them some nails beeds &Ca a shore which they took up and seem'd not ill pleased with in so much that I thout that they beckon'd to us to come a shore but in this we were mistaken for as soon as we put the boat in they again came to oppose us upon which I fired a musket between the two which had no other effect than to make them retire back where bundles of thier darts lay and one of them took up a stone and threw at us which caused my fireing a second Musquet load with small shott and altho' some of the shott struck the man yet it had no other effect than to make him lay hold of a ^Shield or target ^to defend himself emmediatly after this we landed which we had no sooner done than they throw'd two darts at us this obliged me to fire a third shott soon after which they both made off, but not in such haste but what we might have taken one, but Mr Banks being of opinion that the darts were poisoned made me cautious how I advanced into the woods.901 Banks summarizes: This immense tract of Land, the largest known which does not bear the name of a continent, as it is considerably larger than all Europe, is thinly inhabited even to admiration, at least that part of it that we saw: we never but once saw so many as thirty Indians together and that was a family, Men women and children, assembled upon a rock to see the ship pass by. At Sting-Rays bay where they evidently came down to fight us several times they never could muster above 14 or 15 fighting men, indeed in other places they generaly ran away from us, from whence it might be concluded that there were greater numbers than we saw, but their houses and sheds in the woods which we never faild to find convincd us of the smallness of their parties. 902 Land speculators and pastoralists were in the vanguard of a rapidly expanding homicidal frontier as it spread inexorably to the farthest reaches of Australia’s land mass. Aboriginal society was in the way. 420 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Without their land, and even with it, Aboriginal people became vulnerable to armed aggression and random mass murder by mounted pastoralists and police; having been dispossessed, the survivors became objects of derogation, many forced to live day by day, until they were eventually rounded up and deported to detention centres. Australia became an occupied country, Indigenous people mere fauna, allowing Lemkinian genocide to do its loathsome work. It was a process of territorial expansion where the wishes of the Aboriginal people carried negligible weight. Indeed, they were not consulted at all. The British Imperial process for extending the range and reach of its power led inevitably to invasion, then armed metastatic colonization that also involved a ‘protect and consolidate’ strategy, usually followed by indigenous resistance, and an ancillary juridical process of repression, subjugation and the rise of settler sovereignty, followed by a lurch to post-colonial values built around shifting concepts of hubristic nationalism, pluralism and identity politics. Aboriginals became a forgotten people. Another way to look at this Imperial invasive process is through a simplified force vector diagram: [Imperialism → colonization] → [invasion  resistance] → [repression → subjugation] → post-colonial nationalism → [multiculturalism → reconciliation  historical revisionism] → colonial/Imperial amnesia If the vector force (or vectorial agency) of expansionary Imperialism is represented as a field D, then we can say that D is a source (determined by the rate of immigration and corresponding land alienation) that gives rise to a positive displacive flux into (and out of) a (contested) space V at a geographic boundary S (the frontier of occupied territory). This is conceptually equivalent to Maxwell’s first field equation, which is based on Gauss’s Theorem: where, in our two dimensional representation, the divergence of the invasive field D (the expansionary squatting pressure) flowing from the ‘volume’ (in our limiting case, this is an area of occupied land) V at some boundary (or frontier) point on S (that is, Vs) is proportional to the force inside the ‘volume’. So the strength of the originating expansionary (colonizing) force (immigration) determines the Aboriginal disruptive effect at some spreading geographic boundary or frontier (Vs). In our case, the expansionary pressure ρv is only limited by the amount of available land, Government resolve, and Aboriginal resistance. Government resolve was determined and absolute across all colonies, Aboriginal resistance was finite and desperate. Therefore, ρv is a function of land availability, which was alienated in Queensland up to its limit over a discrete period of about forty or fifty years within various regions as they were successively opened up for pastoralism, corresponding to an orderly Government process for ‘economic development’. ρv is more difficult to measure unless in terms of the hard to quantify rate of expansion of the pastoral frontier. 421 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited However, the rate of immigration is supported by actual numbers, so we will test our hypothesis in our study of Tasmanian and Queensland genocide and extend this falsifiable hypothesis to Australia. 903 With constrained land availability, ρv (t), t = 0,… n follows a sigmoid rather than exponential curve (see later). We will show that the internal divergence force ρv is the sum of the expansionary pressure created by each infinitesimal element, represented by an individual immigrant with certain characteristics of land acquisition, say ∂It. Figure 112 Expansionary pressure ρv on boundary Vs as a function of D That is, in its integral form, ρv = i=1 Σ n ∂Ii at some point in time. In its differential form, dI/ dt = r I, where I (t) = I (0) e r t . As the number of immigrants increases, the expansionary pressure or displacive flux ρv at the boundary Vs increases exponentially, creating the demand for more Government alienated Aboriginal land. It is a falsifiable hypothesis - it can be tested as true or not true, based upon the available evidence - that we will investigate in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide and Deconstructing Queensland Genocide. See Gibbons, Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa, Part 2, The codeterminate roles of immigration and land alienation in Tasmanian genocide. In the extended form of this functional relationship, we must consider the parameters of the Occupation process more generally. That is, we must include the summed effect of the functional variables (categorial agencies) for invasion, extermination, closer settlement, cultural destruction, and repression. For this referenced paper, we will focus on the co-determinate relationships of mortality, loss of Palawa women, land alienation, and immigration across the various dispossessory phases, especially extermination and closer settlement. 422 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We will show that this hypothesis is at the phenotypical heart of Australian genocide, imposing a characteristic shape and form, a fractal-like pattern that reproduced itself at different scales from a small localised ‘collision’ to a region to a state, all bound by normalised intentionality along an abstraction gradient for the repeatable fractal-like Occupation process whose purpose was the destructive removal of Aboriginal society from their ancient-held country. We can further postulate, as an extension to this conceptual field equation for the type Occupation process, that the rate of displacive colonizing expansion (ρv) is therefore a function of the rate of immigration (I) which varies with the rate of land alienation (and vice versa) according to some mathematical pattern. At this point of our discussion, we have not defined I. It could be: • • • the total immigration in any year (including women and children, soldiers and their families, and the arriving convicts, many of whom were assigned as labour to grantees; or the selected population of immigrants in any year (perhaps limited to free males arriving; or it could be the cumulative population of selected immigrants over some defined period of interest. We will specify I and A in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide, Part 2, under the Co-determinacy of immigration and land alienation, where we will use regression correlation analysis to establish the nature and value of I, either as a singular count for a year or the sum of a time series or some other more complex variable. That is, dρv / dt shows an exponential growth in the rate of expansionary pressure due to increasing immigration, which becomes sigmoid under bounded constraints, say, the decreasing availability of land that restricts the pull-through immigration effect, hence slowing the displacive pressure ρv at the pastoral frontier Vs. The introduction of closer settlement reduced ρv at the boundary Vs as it allowed land subdivision within the boundary rather than relying on further alienation of Crown land at the frontier. We therefore obtain: dρv / dt = ƒ (dI/ dt) = r ρv , where ρv (t) = ρv(0) e r t assuming unconstrained land availability (At), t = 0, 1,…n and a proportional unconstrained flow of immigrants (It), t = 0, 1,…n where I and A are positively correlated such that ƒ (dI/ dt) strongly correlates with ƒ (dA/ dt) , using a Pearson correlation index, with the values of It (immigration numbers at time t) and At (land alienation amount in acres at time t) obtained empirically for different annualized time samples in a pull-through process dynamic controlled by Government co-determinate policies for land alienation (A) and immigration (I) over discrete time. If At is constrained, we expect that the rate of expansionary pressure dρv / dt will increase. Similarly, if It is allowed to increase without a corresponding increase in At (t = 0…n), then we expect dρv / dt to increase. 423 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Another way of viewing this: ⨍I (I, A, …) , ∂⨍/ ∂I (I, A…) is a partial derivative of a function of at least two variables I, A with respect to one of the variables I, with A held constant, allowing us to employ vector calculus and techniques of differential geometry for their study, which will be undertaken in a separate paper (to be published). We will investigate the Lemkinian categorial agencies of immigration and land allocation on Tasmanian genocide in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa, Part 2, The co-determinate roles of immigration and land alienation in Tasmanian genocide through regression analysis using a Pearson correlation, where we will also plot the change of I and of A as an exponential time series. That is: I (t) = I (0) e r t and A (t) = A (0) e r t are strongly correlated, as we will there show. By ‘co-determinate’ we will mean both positively correlated and covariant, that is, as I changes, then A changes in proportion, and vice versa (usually within some bounded constraint, say, the availability of land or the flow of immigrants). The covariant relationship between dA/ dt and dI/dt will apply, as part of our testable hypothesis, to all other regions and territories, including Queensland, depending in the availability of relevant data sets. It was a Government led land rush, where Aboriginal land had no legally recognized sunk cost or equity investment for the rightful Indigenous owners. The sunk cost fallacy and the dynamics of consumerism are subordinate to the study of behavioural economics, which considers the effects of psychological, cognitive, and emotional factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions and the market prices, returns and resource allocation. Such economic decisions generally depend on risk tolerance, where the financial outcome is uncertain. Strictly speaking, the sunk cost fallacy refers to the behavioural predisposition to throw good money after bad instead of walking away. For colonial society, the risk was determined by speculation: that the return from stolen Aboriginal land would be greater than the subsidized capital investment in property improvement. 904 In 2017 Richard Thaler was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science for his work in establishing that people are predictably irrational in ways that defy economic theory. 905 Behavioural economics finds that people make 95% of their decisions using ‘gut feel’ or heuristic rules of thumb, with anecdotal evidence providing a decision filter that depends on market inefficiencies. In market terms, we would categorize the acquisition (granting) or purchase of colonial land as a ‘sure bet’ when it was accompanied by ‘free’ convict labour or ‘cheap’ land confiscated from Aboriginal society. Pull through immigration ensured that the demand for colonial land accelerated in an irrational and unsustainable process. Our behaviour has barely changed today; arguably it has accelerated; we live in a giant Ponzi scheme: spend now, pay later; squander the Earth’s resources and leave the debt to future generations; the Earth may yet shrug us off as yet another failed species. Figure 113 Simplified model of British Occupation Process (from de facto to de jure sovereignty) 424 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We will analyse the nature of ‘causality’ (in particular, procedural causality) in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. In general, ‘causation’ is the relationship between two or more ‘events’ (or independent variables), where one is the ‘cause’ or originating conditional trigger and the other is its ’outcome’ or conditional effect. In this document, we are primarily interested in the role of the State, where causation is generally modelled as [on condition x] [do y] [with some outcome trigger z] in a procedural modality, and where [x] is the cause or conditional trigger of the outcome [y][z]. Two examples of an originating conditional trigger within some specified parametric envelope defined by Government policy are: 1. On exploring the east coast of Eastern New Holland, Cook extends the reach of British Imperial power by claiming sovereignty over and annexing the eastern littoral section of New Holland in 1770 (he did not specify longitudinal boundaries, only latitudinal) on behalf of the British Government; or 2. Arthur responds to the escalating Aboriginal resistance by proclaiming Tasmanian martial law in 1828, with the endorsement of the British Government, to enforce ethnic cleansing. We see that conditional triggers (causal events) are anchored in time and space through people and policies. An alternative and consistent model is: if [x] then [do y], else [z].The procedural triggers are embedded in intentionality; because the triggers and actions are purposeful and repeatable, they can be discretely modelled at different levels of abstraction, as we will see. This allows the possibility of positive feedback loops, sometimes ambiguously called reflexivity. An example is the ‘causal’ (co-determinate) relationship between accelerate immigration and increase land alienation, each defined by ‘State’ policies. In our models, ‘events’ have conditional triggers (in and out) that relate them to other events in a causal (procedural) chain. We will therefore see that ‘events’ are case instantiations (or contextual referents) of some overarching process which, in this document, is the British occupation process where, for example, accelerate immigration and increase land alienation are sub-processes. The occupation process occurred area by area along the expanding pastoral frontier until the entire region or State was taken over by Government-led white supremacists. Aboriginal land became private property in a great land-heist, a forcible transfer of ownership, a State-driven militarized juridical process of land confiscation with the objective of reinforcing settler sovereignty over the rights of the original inhabitants. The process of violent occupation caused - and required - Aboriginal genocide within Britain’s territorial expansionary imperative. In this case, correlation (the rate of land alienation and immigration) is indeed causation (the destruction of Aboriginal society). The occupation process repeated area by area from each invasive beachhead until the entire Australian land mass was claimed by Britain and its subsequent vassal States as they were granted independence. 425 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 114 Summary system model for the State-driven Occupation Process in Australia906 More immigrants need more land, requiring more Government land alienation, causing an expanding frontier, encouraging more land speculation, improving the amount of Government land revenue, displacing more Aboriginals, causing more Aboriginal resistance, resulting in more genocidal ethnic cleansing, improving the unencumbered land values, encouraging more immigration, accelerating the demand for further land, causing further frontier expansion, causing end-stage subjugation and repression for the surviving Aboriginals. It is a State-calibrated feed-forward process that proceeds through definable meta-stable process ‘states’ from armed invasion to the removal of Indigenous people to the repressive consolidation of power, with few checks and balances other than the finite supply of land to cap immigration pressure, a constraint that led to the increased sale and exchange of existing property through closer settlement rather than speculatively squatting on the frontier, causing a shift in the economic dynamics from ‘slash and burn’ territorial exploitation to capital-based agricultural development and land-clearing.907 Without a change in Government policy, or expressed another way, if the Government actively facilitates this positive feedback process, territorial expansion can only cease when there is no more land on offer, or the demand for land abates with a drop in immigration or a collapse in Government-induced property speculation; resistance to the expansionary force ceases when Aboriginals have been exterminated, defeated, captured, subjugated or otherwise removed by military and paramilitary force from the contested space at some colonizing boundary that, unchecked, eventually subsumed an entire State-claimed geographical area, legally reducing the Aboriginal land owners to homeless trespassers. 426 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Policies for land allocation and immigration determine ipso facto the degree of Indigenous resistance RS (or level of counter-insurgency) at the geographic boundary S of a contested space Vs, which corresponds to the invasive boundary (or the spreading pastoral frontier) in a process pattern that can be likened to the programmatic behaviour of any invasive pathogen or insect plague following simple mathematical models of biological interaction, for example, rates of diffusion across a boundary due to invasive population pressure. Consider the classical diffusion model, with diffusion coefficient D and flux J, where D increases with n, depending on the population density, such that: J = - D (n) ∇n, dD/ dn > 0, which has an exact analytical solution. 908 The solution presents as a type of wave front, with a position and velocity. The wave front at x = x ⨍ = r0 𝜆 (𝑡). The speed of propagation is d x⨍ / dt = r0 d𝜆/dt (D0 = 0). Suppose the settler dispossessory wavefront speed is 320km/ per annum. 909 Then d𝜆/dt = 320/ r0. Nineteenth Century Tasmania is a case study into this systemic procedural morbidity that repeated as a pattern for each militarized invasive beachhead across Australia, including Moreton Bay, Melbourne (Port Phillip), Perth, Adelaide and the Northern Territory. Pastoral invasion quickly followed. This system model for the Occupation Process is further delineated in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa (Context and Part 1), where we set out a conceptual faceted classification schema for the genocide process in Australia and how it overlays the process of colonizing occupation.910 The intended effect of occupation by an invading power is forcible dispossession and displacement of the Indigenous inhabitants, leading to depopulation in the targeted group. This is a process whose outcome we will examine elsewhere from a logistical statistical point of view, using the violent occupation of Queensland and Tasmania as extended case examples.911 Genocide as a type instantiation We have an apparent dilemma that each genocide is different, so how can they be compared?912 Can we introduce a Lemkinian type process (space A in order to carry out conformable retractile mapping of a putative genocide (space X1) to L. type genocide (space A) and thereby compare different instances of putative genocide (Xn, n= 1, 2, 3..) by showing they are therefore variant instantiations of L. type genocide (A)? In the language of algebraic topology, two spaces (or process instances or ‘directed graphs’) are equivalent if they have the same ‘shape’ (or are homotopic). How do we know if their ‘shape’ is the same? By a deformation retraction of some space X (a process instance such as the violent occupation of Tasmania between 1803 and 1833) onto a subspace (or homotopy type or process type such as Lemkinian genocide) A giving a family of maps: ⨍t : X→X , t ∈ I, such that ⨍0 = ∏ (the identity map), where ⨍1 (X) = A, and ⨍t |A = ∏ for all t. The family ⨍t should be continuous in the sense that the associated map →⨍t (x), is continuous. X × I → X , (x, t) 427 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Two maps ⨍0 , ⨍1 : X→Y are homotopic if there exists a homotopy ⨍t connecting them, such that ⨍0 ≃ ⨍1 . 913 Conceptually, a deformation retraction is equivalent to (for example) collapsing a 3dimensional torus (doughnut shape) onto a 2-dimensional circle, or (in our case) attempting to retract a directed graph instance such as some massacre event or set of such events onto the type graph of L. genocide. We will make use of such retractile mapping analyses in another paper,914 where we deform (retract) some categorial (vectorial) agency (or instance of a sub-process) onto Lemkinian type genocide (homotopy type or process type) to determine if they are ‘homotopic’. We will conclude, yes.915 Human history is like time travel: we can visit layers of space that have accumulated over time, each accretionary overburden existing in a rich matrix of biological striving, of once living matter, of ‘onceness’, of being and becoming, of horizontal and vertical connectedness within a period of time and across spans of time, of shaping events. History, in its woven intricacy, becomes both a form of geospatial landscape and a revelatory storybook, open for our exploration. How do we understand such a multi-dimensional puzzle? We can carefully and forensically remove the detritus from objects of interest in each layer, analyse their context in situ, and – only then - read the layered past like pages of a book, with a beginning and a tentative end, if the end is in the future. To continue the analogy, pages have words, and any word – as an object of interest - exists in a contextual meaning cloud, revealing its origins and evolution. • • • • • Consider the overlapping word meanings for: exterminate, murder, massacre, kill, extirpate, ethnically cleanse, rout, slaughter, pillage; and the softer variants: disperse, remove, banish, exile, exclude, displace, exploit, purge, eliminate and so on. Consider the contexts of such words: Pax Romana, Imperialism, Pax Britannica, Social Darwinism, totalitarianism, fascism, or right-wing neo-liberalism. Any form of extremism. For example: exterminate derives from the Latin vulgate exterminat - ‘driven out’, from the verb exterminare, in turn derived from ex - ‘out’ + terminus (termin) ‘boundary’. So the original word sense for exterminate was: drive beyond a boundary or drive over a border or banish from an area or in the limiting sense, exclude from life. Mid-16th century English accrued the connotation of ‘destroy or remove something or some group completely’, a meaning it retains today, which can refer to some targeted group, say mice or cane toads or unwanted people. Derogating the target group, objectifying them, calling them ‘vermin’ or ‘animals’, reduces our sensitivity to their destruction and asserts our superiority by belligerently justifying our behavioural motivations, further reinforcing our acquisitive legitimacy by invoking God and 428 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited the Law. It was a teetering house built of political and economic sand, held together by blood, and protected by the bullet. In 1850, Herbert Spencer, the influential English father of Social Darwinism, represented this blindly racist and influential view when he wrote: The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way, with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants. Be he human being, or be he brute, the hindrance must be got rid of. Just as the savage has taken the place of lower creatures, so must he, if he have remained too long a savage, give place to his superior. And, observe, it is necessarily to his superior that, in the great majority of cases, he does give place. For what are the prerequisites to a conquering race? Numerical strength, or an improved system of warfare; both of which are indications of advancement. Numerical strength implies certain civilizing antecedents. Deficiency of game may have necessitated agricultural pursuits, and so made the existence of a larger population possible; or distance from other tribes may have rendered war less frequent, and so have prevented its perpetual decimations; or accidental superiority over neighbouring tribes, may have led to the final subjugation and enslaving of these: in any of which cases the comparatively peaceful condition resulting, must have allowed progress to commence. Evidently, therefore, from the very beginning, the conquest of one people over another has been, in the main, the conquest of the social man over the anti-social man; or, strictly speaking, of the more adapted over the less adapted. 916 The idea of extermination therefore lies at the centre of Imperialism, fascism and communism, to destroy in order to rebuild. Extermination on a mass scale was defended by Imperialism as a necessary and utilitarian means to an end, even a law of Nature.917 Some genocide scholars now speak of the ‘phenomenological uniqueness’ of the Holocaust.918 They deny there can be similarities between different genocidal events and processes. While it is correct that any event has a unique instantiation of a type process, yet it is the type process that acts as a template for any event to the extent that it sets out a type behavioural envelope like racism that in turn circumscribes such resolve as Imperial intentionality. Therefore, different genocides can be homotopically compared (retractile mapping) through a type model. Hannah Arendt summarized this insight when she drew the behavioural link between Imperialism and racism in exterminatory practices. Her focus was on Britain’s colonial adventurism in Africa and India, but she could equally have been referring to Australia: Lying under anybody’s nose were many of the elements which gathered together could create a totalitarian government on the basis of racism.919 The Latin semantics of forced banishment in extermination is now lost, with the present focus on mass killing of some targeted group, usually towards some end. That is, ‘exterminate’ has become to mean ([completely] [remove (destroy)] [something or some group] by [lethal 429 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited force]) rather than its original meaning of ‘exile’ or ‘banish’ in the sense of ([move] [something or someone] [elsewhere]). Contemporaneously, the exterminatory qualifier completely is sometimes softened to mean in some specific bounded area. The term ethnic cleansing is increasingly used for mass killing, relegating older terms like exterminate to history, to times past, as its word potency is reduced through overuse and misapplication. But in Australia’s past, particularly in the invasive Blitz Krieg of settler expansionism during the 19th and early 20th century, we routinely see written words such as exterminate, murder, disperse, and exile in the violent conquest of Australia. These word expressions reflect a generalized ethos, the attitudes of a predatory culture that represented the spirit of an era concerned with the process of territorial occupation and, as intended, the displacement of Aboriginal people. It was the scale of the Australian mass violence that made the horror of what we now call Lemkinian genocide, but then was simply defended as exculpatory within an asymmetric power structure (might is right) and realized by ideologically justified ‘extermination’, a sharp and sudden mass killing of vermin and feral pests area by area that were an impediment to economic progress, and the advancement of Empire and its pastoral interests. A rapidly spreading settler frontier meant that displaced Aboriginals had nowhere they could realistically move to, leaving a politically pragmatic but racially inhumane solution of extermination (slaughter, mass killing, massacre, crimes against humanity or large-scale removal and deportation to detention centres where their lives were rigidly controlled. It was racism in the service of the State, racism as Government policy, racism as extermination. Many killings were carried out by the Government, at first through the agency of military assaults and later, when the mechanics of extermination (mass killing, genocide) became more administrative and procedural, through roving mounted police, together with paramilitary pastoralists and their employees. From first settlement in 1788 until the mid-20th century, there was a coterminous behavioural dance between Government and pastoralists. Each had similar and racially motivated objectives: enforced settler supremacy in expansive territorial occupation; and the overwhelming desire to win the ensuing war of the races in the contest for land and water, for resources. The agency methods were those of murderous conquest. The vectorial agency, in turn, was given form by proclamations, policies, legislation and edicts. Extermination of Aboriginal family groups became ethnic cleansing of tribes and fractal-like ethnic cleansing, as we will see in another paper,920 became racial genocide, the deliberate and targeted killing of a race, in whole or part. Aboriginal bodies were often burned to destroy the evidence, indicating mens rea or awareness of a crime. 430 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited There were few to no prosecutions. Not in one hundred and forty years of racially targeted killing. Aboriginal repression and subjugation followed. Colonial society turned a blind eye to the killing. The Australian race war continues in full view today, with systemic disadvantage – in health, education and living conditions - for swathes of Aboriginal society, particularly those living in more remote areas. We also have a blind spot. Pastoralists and miners still seek the arm of Government to erode Aboriginal land rights for commercial advantage and walk away from their remediation obligations by transferring them, with Government complicity, as a social cost, one that is rarely paid. Capitalism – the pursuit of capital - defines our values. Land as property: its role in genocide How did the concept of land as property become so firmly anchored in British thinking? Would Aboriginal dispossession have been less likely without this precept? Behaviours generally have an origin, especially collective behaviours. Eric Wolf has an interesting insight into this categorial morbidity: Only England would take the step from accumulation and distribution of mercantile wealth to a thoroughgoing capitalist transformation.921 He writes in explanation: Two characteristics, however, distinguished the English economy from developments on the continent. The first was the gradual abrogation, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of heritable peasant tenure held from an overlord, in favour of rents renegotiable at intervals with terms set by the prevailing economic situation. This made possible, over time, the conversion of “customary” dues into variable money rents. In France, in marked contrast, the peasantry was able to strengthen its grip on the land through increased guarantees of perpetual inheritance. The overlord could attempt to increase tribute to him by multiplying dues receivable; but he was not able to alter in any fundamental way the conditions of land management and cultivation. Thus, the English peasantry was surprisingly weak in comparison with that of France. The use of land to yield profit in the form of variable money rent placed in the hands of the overlord the power to reallocate land to tenants who could maximize profits. It was, therefore, easier for the English tribute taker than for his French counterpart to turn land itself into a commodity. In the course of the sixteenth century, then, English landowners began to pursue commodity production as “improving landlords”. 922 Of course, with a questionably acquired antipodean territory, the messy problems of prior land title did not apply. The British Crown could simply claim sovereign possession of an entire land mass, without legal redress for its original owners. 431 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Lisa Ford elaborates: the court itself invariably asserted the rights of the Crown to hold absolute sovereignty and title over the territory of New South Wales.923 Her assessment is based on R. v. Steele, 1834, in a judgment by the Superior Courts of New South Wales, who concluded: By the laws of England, the King, in virtue of his crown, is the possessor of all the unappropriated lands of the kingdom, and all his subjects are presumed to hold their lands, by original grant from the crown. The same law applies to this colony. It is a matter of history that New South Wales was taken possession of, in the name of the King of Great Britain, about fifty-five years ago… The right of the soil, and of all lands in the colony, became vested immediately upon its settlement, in His Majesty, in right of his crown, and as the representative of the British nation. His Majesty by his prerogatives is enabled to dispose of the lands so vested in the Crown. 924 Conclusion For the Tasmanian Palawa, the dispossessory timeframe was foreshortened, a mere thirty years, a harbinger of what was to come for their fellow peoples across the continent. When we examine the time frame from initial invasion of some area to the effective displacement of Indigenous people from that area, we will find empirically that the period of three decades is consistent across all separately invaded areas; it was the time it took for settler paramilitary agency with the help of armed authorities (until the 1840s the military, but afterwards the police) to break Aboriginal resistance through a process of occupation, dispersal, extermination and subjugation, until each area became the uncontested property of the foraging invaders. Queensland and other states followed the same pattern as Tasmania: invade, exterminate, disperse, deport, subjugate. The political and economic process of genocide in Queensland was legislated and intentional, as it would be for the other states, and as it had been for Tasmania. The period of Herbert’s first term as Queensland Premier established the pattern of what was to follow: Aboriginal society was destroyed and catastrophic depopulation with it. While Britain progressively granted self-government to its Australian colonies, it continued to support genocide by the sale of armaments. It maintained an amused detachment as it saw the violence play out and rarely interfered, except perhaps on one occasion, when it refused to allow Queensland to annex New Guinea, being rightly fearful that there would be a blood bath of the kind they had already seen in that state. This would have been a step too far, even for Britain. In 1883, the Queensland Premier, Sir Thomas McIlwraith, unilaterally attempted to annex that part of New Guinea not claimed by the Dutch, which was the area controlled by the Germans. McIlwraith was supported by the Queensland Governor, Sir Arthur Kennedy. The British Colonial Office under Lord Derby repudiated McIlwraith’s action, more for geo-political reasons than anything else. In 1884, the territory became a British protectorate, with Germany keeping control of the North (Papua New Guinea), and the Dutch retaining the rest. 432 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Britain’s options were limited when there were competing territorial interests from other European powers, particularly the Germans. At the time, Britain needed German support, and was further driven by anxiety that Germany might align itself with France. Nevertheless, in 1888, Papua New Guinea was annexed as a British Crown Colony. Queensland’s interests in the area were motivated by the prospects of resource exploitation and the lure of wealth, although it denied that it was also interested in cheap labour for sugar plantations. Who can imagine the fearful depopulation that may have occurred, if Queensland under McIlwraith had secured its intentions for annexation? McIlwraith continued to rail against Britain’s decision, which was informed more by the territorial ambitions of other European powers than any humanitarian concerns. McIlwraith repeatedly argued in Parliament that New Guinea should be a ‘portion of Queensland’, but at the time, Britain could over-rule colonial Governments, and could continue so, until Federation in 1901. 925 We will summarize three case examples of the pattern of British genocide in Australia: Australia (1788 – 1928), Queensland (1860 – 1920) and Tasmania (1803 – 1846). They will be deconstructed in more detail in companion works.926 433 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The Australian land war and Aboriginal depopulation: 1788 - 1928927 Between 1788 and 1928 (the date of the Coniston massacre in the Northern Territory) defines the longest and still largely unrecognised war in our history, a war that lasted for 140 years and resulted in Aboriginal depopulation of well over 90%. This chapter examines Aboriginal population statistics and proposes a time series projective Aboriginal population today, if the British invasion had not occurred. This projection reveals the true impact of Australian genocide. We will consider Australian genocidal depopulation as a statistical metastudy, for which Queensland and Tasmania will be partial use case studies. However, no part of Australia escaped Lemkinian ethnic cleansing. The entire continent became a killing field, laid waste by the repeating rifle, until the Aboriginal presence was substantially purged. It left the victors to proclaim their heroism over desperate Indigenous resistance, over the ‘savages’. The land was not ‘half won’ as Blainey suggests; it was looted, raped and despoiled. The survivors were deported and repressed. Reconciliation remains unfinished business. Have we changed today? Not really. Racism persists. Economics still trumps environmental and humanitarian concerns when they should all have equal weight. That is why we are in denial over climate change, preferring to be reassured by three-word political slogans more than the momentary discomfort of urgent action. It will not be until the Titanic sinks that we may realize we left it too late and moan in selfpity, ‘Why me?’. By then, there will be no one to hold accountable. Politicians will have disappeared from our sight. But their actions will live on after them, to be despised in perpetuity along with their magic pudding of never-ending prosperity. In the early twentieth century, the Australian Bureau of Statistics published a series of Yearbook diagrams that showed the rapid effect of Aboriginal depopulation caused by Government land and immigration policies that advanced the cause of heavily armed pastoralists as they began the occupation of the continent. The occupation was supported by the non-accountable authority of marauding police, dancing to the orders of their political masters. Aboriginal deaths were seldom prosecuted, the perpetrators rarely charged and almost never convicted by an all-white jury. It was a racist process, genocidal, from which we are still to recover as a nation. If the murderous process is mentioned at all, it is usually denigrated as a ‘black armband’ view of history. In 1999, the conservative Prime Minister, John Howard, made an oration to the Parliament that defended the slaughter. He declaimed: ‘I have frequently said, and I will say it again, that present generations of Australians cannot be held accountable, and we should not seek to hold them accountable for the errors and misdeeds of earlier generations’. Howard did not understand the deep Aboriginal hurt at his refusal to say ‘sorry’, an omission that was not corrected until Rudd’s ‘sorry’ speech on 13 February 2008, where weeping Aboriginals in the audience were able to feel for the first time that their deep sense of hurt 434 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited and injustice over more than a century of violent and racist persecution was officially recognised by the Australian Government. It was not enough, but it was a start. Indigenous population statistics (various sources) a) ABS Year Book, 1994 Estimates of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population prior to the 1967 census. For some reason, the census year 1911 is excluded.928 Census Year Number 1901 93,000 1921 72,000 1933 81,000 1947 76,000 1954 75,000 1961 84,000 1966 102,000 Figure 115 ABS Year Book, 1994 (Ian Castles) b) Commonwealth 1911 census929 The 1911 full-blood indigenous population count was 37,789, making it the lowest across all censuses. 435 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 116. ABS Year Book, 1911 From the 1911 population census, we can derive the percentage of the total Aboriginal full-blood population for each State. 1911 Population Census New South Wales Victoria Queensland South Australia Western Australia Tasmania Northern Territory Federal Capital Territory Total Full-Blood Population 11,507 6,049 11,336 1,079 5,658 541 1,612 7 37,789 Percentage of Total 30.5 16.0 30.0 2.9 15.0 1.4 4.3 Figure 117 . Derived Aboriginal population data, based on 1911 Census c) Radcliffe Brown 1930 In 1930, the anthropologist Radcliffe Brown concluded: ‘available evidence points to the original population of Australia having been certainly over 250,000, and quite possibly, or even probably, over 300,000.’930 436 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 118 Radcliffe-Brown pre-contact Aboriginal population estimates d) Smith estimates931 Smith developed revised estimates, based on Radcliffe-Brown estimates. State Population % of total Lowest prior to British population population/ contact prior to year British % of total % of lowest lowest population population compared with population prior to British NSW VIC QLD SA WA TAS NT Total 48,000 15,000 120,000 15,000 62,000 4,500 50,000 314,500 9.8 1.1 28.5 5.8 22.2 0.0 19.5 15.3 4.8 38.2 4.8 19.7 1.4 15.9 7,434 850 22,500 4,598 17,500 18 15,386 68,736 15.5 5.7 18.8 30.7 28.2 0.4 30.8 Figure 119. Smith population estimates (based on Radcliffe-Brown) Estimated Aboriginal population statistics prior to the British invasion, using figures developed by Smith in 1980, based on the Radcliffe-Brown estimates.932 The table underestimates population figures by state and overall, by a factor of at least 2 to 4. Within the table, the lowest population figure in any census year of 68,736 is interpolated as around 1923. The figure is arguably overstated by almost 80%.933 Based on census records, the lowest figure is around 37,789 in 1911, yet this figure may also be too high, based on Smith’s further analysis. e) Butlin estimates ‘Other researchers, particularly Butlin, argue that there were many more Aboriginals living in Australia at the time of European contact than had been previously estimated. Butlin considers that in 1788 the Aboriginal population may have been 1,250,000 – but that this was reduced to one-tenth within sixty years’. 934 f) Prentis compiled population figures935 Prentis notes how the remnant Aboriginal society, following their dispossession, tried to adapt to their circumstances through a cycle of alienation, poverty and assimilation. He compiled a widely cited table of the Aboriginal population from 1788 to 1986. I have adapted the Prentis table of compiled values to an area graph, so that we can render the uncertain 437 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited population recovery by state, as determined by various official commonwealth censuses.936 State or 1788937 Territory 1788938 1921939 1966940 1971941 1986942 NSW ACT Vic Qld SA WA Tas NT TOTAL 160,000 45,000 300,000 32,000 150,000 5,000 100,000 792,000 6,067 0 573 15,454 2,741 17,671 0 17,973 60,479 13,613 96 1,790 19,003 5,505 18,439 55 21,119 79,620 23,109 248 5,656 24,414 7,140 21,903 573 23,253 106,288 59,011 1,220 12,611 61,268 14,291 37,789 6,716 34,739 227,645 40,000 11,500 100,000 10,000 52,000 4,000 35,000 252,500 Figure 120. Aboriginal Population 1788 – 1986 Aboriginal population 1788 - 1986 600,000 500,000 1986 400,000 1971 1966 300,000 1921 200,000 1788 100,000 0 NSW 1788 ACT Vic Qld SA WA Tas NT Figure 121. Aboriginal population as a stacked area chart (after Prentis) 943 If we remove the unreliable 1788 estimate due to Radcliffe-Brown, we can begin to see the trend lines. 438 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Aboriginal population 1788 - 1986 900,000 800,000 NSW 700,000 ACT 600,000 Vic 500,000 Qld 400,000 SA 300,000 WA 200,000 Tas 100,000 NT 0 Total 1788 1921 1966 1971 1986 Figure 122 Aboriginal population (1788 - 1986) showing trends. [data source: Prentis] Estimated Resident Indigenous Population, 30 June 1986, 1991 and 1996944 State/Territory 30 June 1986 based on30 June 1991 based on 30 June 1996 based on the 1986 Census the 1991 Census the 1996 Census Number New South Wales 61,483 Victoria 13,313 Queensland 64,260 South Australia 14,986 Western Australia 39,333 Tasmania 6,870 Northern Territory 38,674 Australian Capital1,072 Territory Australia) 240,152 Percent Number Percent Number Percent 25.6 5.5 26.8 6.2 16.4 2.9 16.1 0.5 75,020 17,890 74,214 17,239 44,082 9,461 43,273 1,616 26.5 6.3 26.2 6.1 15.6 3.3 15.3 0.6 109,925 22,598 104,817 22,051 56,205 15,322 51,876 3,058 28.5 5.9 27.2 5.7 14.6 4.0 13.4 0.8 100.0 282,979 100.0 386,049 100.0% Figure 123. Estimated Aboriginal population 1986, 1991, 1996 In 2011, there were 669,900 people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, representing 3% of the total Australian population. The estimated resident Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population of Australia at 30 June 439 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2001 was 534,700 people. Between 2001 and 2011 the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population increased by 2.3% per year on average, compared with 1.5% for the total Australian population.945 In 1996, the total Aboriginal population was 386,049, increasing to 669,900 in 2011. The rapid increase may be due to the number of people choosing to identify as having an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage. The population graph extends the Prentis compilation by adding census data for 1996 and 2011. Aboriginal population 1788 - 2011 900,000 800,000 NSW 700,000 ACT 600,000 Vic 500,000 Qld 400,000 SA 300,000 WA 200,000 Tas 100,000 NT 0 Total 1788 1921 1966 1971 1986 1996 2011 Figure 124. Aboriginal population 1788 – 2011 Aboriginal population 1788 - 2011 NSW 1788 1921 NSW 160,000 6,067 1966 1971 1986 1996 2011 13,613 23,109 59,011 109,925 208,476 ACT 0 0 96 248 Vic 45,000 573 1,790 5,656 Qld 300,000 15,454 19,003 24,414 61,268 104,817 188,954 SA 32,000 2,741 5,505 WA 150,000 17,671 55 Tas 55 NT 5,000 0 1,220 3,058 6,160 12,611 22,598 47,333 ACT Vic Qld SA 14,291 22,051 37,408 WA 21,903 37,789 56,205 88,270 Tas 7,140 573 6,716 15,322 24,165 100,000 17,973 21,903 23,523 34,739 51,876 68,850 NT Total Total 792,000 60,479 79,620 106,288 227,645 386,049 669,881 Figure 125. Data supporting the population graph 1788 to 2011. g) Raymond Evans, Robert Orsted-Jensen estimates ‘Estimated original pre-contact population for Queensland of 250 000 – 300 000’ 946 440 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited h) ABS Year Book, 2008 ‘minimum pre-1788 population of 315,000 to over one million people. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that a population of 750,000 Indigenous peoples could have been sustained.’ 947 i) The Australian Bureau of Statistics Aboriginal population data.948 The Commonwealth Government, post-federation, was complicit in the horror of Aboriginal depopulation, by carefully downplaying the extent of the humanitarian problem and through refusing to admit that a crime had been committed, by the ‘mother country’, or by vassal colonial states before or after federation. We will constantly see attempts by Governments, then and now, to reduce the size of the total Aboriginal pre-contact population, as this reduced proportional culpability. By ignoring or refuting the scope of the problem, Governments could continue with their genocidal policies, which continued well into the 20th century, and arguably continue today with systemic Aboriginal disadvantage. As we read these Year Book reports on Aboriginal depopulation, we remind ourselves that, by the time of Federation, most of the peak killing had already been carried out, although police massacres continued up to at least 1928. Along with violent police sorties, the ABS data shows that Aboriginal depopulation was still continuing, largely driven by Government policies and racist neglect. In the second half of the 20th century, Australia’s racial discrimination was becoming an international embarrassment. In October 1960, Khrushchev949 in a speech to the 15th session of the UN General Assembly accused Australia of exterminating her Aboriginal population: ‘Everyone knows in what way the aboriginal population of Australia was exterminated’, something which Menzies vehemently denied as ‘fantastic accusations by a person and a State clearly on the defensive’. But to a considerable degree and notwithstanding his undoubted agenda, Khrushchev was correct. He was correct about extermination, as these pages make very clear. He was also indirectly correct. Extermination can involve more than mass killing. It can include cultural, physical and psychological destruction, causing death by malaise, by despair. Or death by sexual predation, the generational death of syphilis and gonorrhoea. Or trans-generational afflictions caused by the inheritance of environmentally acquired characteristics, such as epigenetic diseases and disorders. Or the slow death of an inadequate diet, or the eroding effect of poverty, or the disproportionate incidence of preventable diseases like trachoma and diabetes, or the death through obesity and drugs, or the loss of hope through family breakdown and excessive levels of incarceration. Or the loss of culture and language. Do you remember the time of the civil rights movement in the early sixties in the United States, which eventually convinced the US President, John Kennedy, that the federal administration had to intervene? Kennedy introduced a Civil Rights Bill in 1963 to make it illegal to discriminate against black people in 441 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited employment and hotel accommodation and local schools. Yet Australia continued to deny what was obvious to the rest of the world. Kennedy’s actions highlighted that Australia had forgotten the plight of the Aboriginals, who could only aspire to the freedoms he introduced. The Commonwealth government largely left Aboriginal affairs to the states. They argued that the Constitution did not allow them to do more. Section 51 stated that Parliament had the power to make laws with respect to ‘the people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any state’. Section 127 excluded Aboriginal people from the census. Aboriginal society still suffers today. j) Smith calculation (1980) L.R. Smith completed a substantial Aboriginal demographic study in 1980, using Commonwealth census data and analyses by other historians and demographers. Figure 126 Aboriginal depopulation since 1788 Among his observations, Smith developed a population curve for the period from 1788 until 1970, showing an 88% population loss between 1788 and 1911 (from an estimated 350,000 to around 40,000 full blood). The figure shows Aboriginal depopulation since 1788, based on RadcliffeBrown and annual censuses. Smith’s data points include full-bloods and halfcastes. The 1788 population estimate derives from Radcliffe-Brown in 1930. Researchers have since revised Radcliffe-Brown’s pre-contact population estimate upwards by a factor of two to four. This makes Smith’s steep 442 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited population decline between 1788 and 1920 much greater, indicating a population loss over a period of some hundred and forty years of around 97% in the worst case (1.25 million down to around 40,000 excluding half-castes) or 95% in the best case (750,000 to around 40,000 excluding half-castes).950 k) Boyd Hunter calculation (2013) In 2013, Boyd Hunter, a senior fellow at the Australian National University, revisited Aboriginal pre-contact population data.951 Figure 127. Boyd-Hunter revised population estimates (pre-contact) l) Revised pre-contact Aboriginal population distribution by State. We will use the 1911 census data and Smith’s 1980 revisions to RadcliffeBrown’s 1930 estimates to derive the percentage Aboriginal population splits by State. We will apply these percentage apportionments by State against a currently accepted precontact Aboriginal population band, due to Butlin. Of these comparative proportions, New South Wales and Victoria are anomalous, and Queensland is skewed, as is the Northern Territory. The Tasmanian figures, although consistent, may be too high overall. To project the population bands by state, we will use the 1911 census breakdown, as this shows less apparent distortion. The Radcliffe-Brown estimate is ‘bottom-up’, whereas the census is ‘top-down’. Either approach will introduce noise: the census from the questionaire methodology; and Radcliffe-Brown from ethnographical assumptions. Evans writes ‘the guesstimate of 100 000 to 120 000, once widely quoted for the whole of Queensland, is no longer tenable. These were figures set between one-third and one-half of the 250 000 – 300 000 ‘irreducible minimum’ for the 443 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited entire mainland and Tasmania in 1930, which cautiously doubled previous estimates… In 1983, however, this ‘gross undercount’ was again revised radically upwards by economic historian and demographer Noel Butlin to at least one million.’.. Thus, an adjustment of the pre-contact Aboriginal populations of Queensland upwards to above 200 000 does not seem injudicious.’ 952 REVISED PRE-CONTACT ABORIGINAL POPULATION BY STATE % of Total953 % of Total (1911 Census) Pre-contact Population Band 750,000 1,200,000 NSW 15.3 30.5 114,750 183,600 Victoria 4.8 16.0 36,000 57,600 Queensland 38.2 30.0 286,500 458,400 South Australia 4.8 2.9 36,000 57,600 Western Australia 19.7 15.0 147,750 236,400 Tasmania 1.4 1.4 10,500 16,800 Northern Territory 15.9 4.3 119,250 190,800 Federal Territory - - - - Figure 128. Revised Aboriginal population estimates, by state (pre-contact) m) A new population curve for prehistoric Australia: Williams (2013) In 2013, using extensive archaeological data, Alan Williams developed a new population curve for pre-historic Australia, up to the catastrophic invasion and occupation by Britain. Based on the observed proto-historic populations, he determined that an initial founding population between 1000 and 2000, with an accepted annual compound growth rate of 0.01, and a starting point of 50ka, will produce a population high of approximately 1.2 million at approximately 0.5 ka. Data suggests an 8% decline at approximately 770 000 – 1.1 million at the time of European (British) contact, giving a figure consistent with ethnographic estimates and with historical observations. 954 444 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 129. Revised Aboriginal population estimates, Alan Williams (pre-contact) Williams shows a plot of population estimates from 50 – 0 ka using uncorrected radicarbon data. Each graph was developed by implementing founding populations at 50ka and applying a compound interest equation to determine quantitave palaeo-populations. Numerical estimates of prehistoric population were derived by taking the ethnographic population of 750 000 – 1.2 million as an endpoint (in 1788) and fitting the time-series curve to this.955 The GR (growth rate) analysis of the uncorrected dataset indicates an average annual growth rate of 0.01 per cent over the last 50ka, with a range of between 0.07 and -0.03 per cent. 956 The GRAnn value was then integrated into a compound interest equation to determine quantitative values of palaeo-populations: Pfinal = Pinitial(1 + GRAnn)t, where Pfinal is the final population, Pinitial is initially the founding population followed by the P value from each preceding 200-year data bin, GRAnn is 1.01 and t is the number of years. 957 445 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited l) Projected Aboriginal population in 1911 We want to determine the Aboriginal population in 1911, if the British invasion had not occurred. We want to calculate the final population P over the period from 1788 to 1911, the time of lowest population, given the Commonwealth census evidence. We will use the start population points in 1788 of 750 000 and 1.2 million, which provide a pre-contact population band. Lower limit: Given an initial population of 750 000 in 1788 and where t = 123 years, the final projected population in 1911 is 750,000 x (1.01)123 or (750,000 x 3.4003918) or 2.55 million. Upper limit: Given an initial population of 1.2 million in 1788 and where t = 123 years, the final projected population is 1,200,000 x (1.01)123 or (1,200,000 x 3.4003918) or 4.08 million. Initial population in Initial population in 1788: 750 000 1788: 1 200 000 Projected population 2.55 million at 1911 Actual full blood 37,789 population at 1911 census Estimated 2,512,211 population loss at 1911 due to British invasion 4.08 million 37,789 4,042,211 Figure 130. Projected Aboriginal population estimates at 1911, based on Williams/ Butlin precontact population band between 750,000 and 1.2 million That is, the 1788 British invasion and occupation resulted in a projected Aboriginal population loss at 1911 of somewhere between 2.5 million and 4 million people (or a percentage depopulation between 98.5% and 99.1%). The occupying British authorities and later Governments did not consider it necessary to keep detailed Aboriginal population statistics, or perhaps they should be called depopulation figures. The Australian Bureau of Statistics began to compile this quantitative demographic data a few years after Federation. Until the late 1960s, Aboriginals were citizens in name only: they could not vote, or drink in the front bar, or use public swimming pools, or own land. Aboriginal communities were razed to make way for mining developments.958 Australian segregation policy imposed apartheid on Aboriginals well before South Africa adopted the practice. The actual depopulation curve is nonlinear and exponentially decreasing, with a rapid early decline in absolute Aboriginal numbers from the impact of violent 446 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited invasion, followed by continuing proportional decline from the subsequent genocidal phases.959 Depopulation - Actual 1,400,000 1,200,000 Population 1,000,000 800,000 Lower precontact population limit 600,000 Upper precontact population limit 400,000 200,000 0 Precontact (1788) Census (1911) Figure 131. Actual depopulation caused by British invasion The population graph is shown as a simplified linear time series, originating from a pre-contact population band between 750,000 and 1.2 million, with a catastrophic actual population loss in 130 years of occupation of around 1 million. The projected Aboriginal population loss in 1911 is much greater again, between 2.5 million to 4 million people, making it commensurate with the genocide of European Jews. The key difference is that the Jewish people suffered extermination through the Nazi machine over a few terrible years, whereas Aboriginal extermination endured for more than a century in a sustained politically driven process, followed by later Lemkinian genocidal phases of predatory subjugation and societal destruction.960 447 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Projected Aboriginal population - without British invasion (1788 - 1908) 4,500,000 4,000,000 3,500,000 3,000,000 2,500,000 2,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 500,000 0 Lower projected population (without British invasion) . 1908 . 1884 . 1860 . 1836 . 1812 1788 Upper projected population (without British invasion) Figure 132. Projected population without British invasion The projected population in 1911, without the British invasion, is shown as a simplified exponential time series, originating from an Aboriginal precontact population band between 750,000 and 1.2 million. The graph represents what economists call a lost opportunity cost, but here it is measured in lost human capital rather than money. 1788 represents the pre-contact population. 1908 represents the approximate date of the 1911 Census. At the 1911 census, the actual Aboriginal population count was negligible, being about 37,000. m) Projected Aboriginal population in 2014 We now want to determine the Aboriginal population in 2014, if the British invasion had not occurred. We will use the originating population band in 1788 of between 750 000 and 1.2 million. Lower limit: Given an initial population of 750 000 in 1788 and where t = 236 years, the final projected population in 2014 is 750,000 x (1.01)236 or (750,000 x 10.46752996) or 7.85 million. Upper limit: Given an initial population of 1.2 million in 1788 and where t = 236 years, the final projected population is 1,200,000 x (1.01)236 or (1,200,000 x 10.46752996) or 12.56 million. Initial population in Initial population in 1788: 750 000 1788: 1 200 000 Projected population at 2014 7.85 million 12.56 million Figure 133. Projected Aboriginal population estimates at 2014, based on Williams/ Butlin precontact population band 448 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The projected Aboriginal population, within a lower and upper limit confidence band, is shown as exponentially increasing at a modest 0.01% per annum, using the Williams algorithm. The mid-point of 1911 is chosen because it was the earliest census after 1788 and provides a calibration point to measure the projected population increase against an actual count. Coincidentally, 1911 is exactly midway between 1788 and 2014. Measured over a period of 226 years, from pre-contact until today, the true size of politically driven Australian genocide becomes quite clear, with the projected number of people lost as between 7.2 and 11.9 million. The Aboriginal population is only just beginning to recover, but suffers commensurately greater disadvantage than the normalised population, with poorer health and financial outcomes. Projected Aboriginal population - without British invasion (1788 - 2016) 14,000,000 12,000,000 10,000,000 Lower projected population (without British invasion) 8,000,000 6,000,000 Upper projected population (without British invasion) 4,000,000 2,000,000 2004 1980 1956 1932 1908 1884 1860 1836 1812 1788 0 Figure 134. Projected Aboriginal population as a simplified exponential time series, The times series shows the population projection, if the British invasion did not occur, originating from a pre-contact band between 750,000 and 1.2 million. At the 1911 census, the Aboriginal population was negligible, about 37,000. In 2012, the actual Aboriginal population, or those claiming an Aboriginal or Torres Strait heritage in some part, was about 700,000. The continuing politically driven discriminatory process against Aboriginals, particularly those living in remote communities, has the characteristics of Lemkinian genocide under articles 2b and 2c. Australian legislation still does not recognise genocide as a domestic crime. n) Current Indigenous Population961 Based on information from the 2011 Census, the ABS estimates that there were 698,583 Indigenous people living in Australia in 2013. NSW had the 449 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited largest number of Indigenous people, and the NT had the highest percentage of Indigenous people. Indigenous people made up 3% of the total Australian population. For more details on the Indigenous population in each state and territory see the table below.962 State/territory NSW Vic Qld WA SA Tas ACT NT Australia Number of Indigenous people Proportion (%) of Indigenous population living in that state/territory 216,612 49,715 198,206 91,898 38,981 25,269 6,517 71,111 698,583 31 7.1 28 13 5.6 3.6 0.9 10 100 Figure 135. Current Indigenous population by State, 2014 In 2011, around one-third of Indigenous people lived in major cities.963 The number of Indigenous people counted in the 2011 Census was much higher than the number counted in the 2006 Census.964 This could be because: o the number of Indigenous people has increased o more Indigenous people were counted because of improvements in how the Census was conducted o more Indigenous people identified as Indigenous in their response. In 2011, 90% of Indigenous people identified as Aboriginal, 6% identified as Torres Strait Islanders, and 4% identified as both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.965 The Indigenous population is much younger overall than the non-Indigenous population (see Figure). In 2011, more than one-third of Indigenous people were aged less than 15 years, compared with one-fifth of non-Indigenous people.966 Almost 4% of Indigenous people were aged 65 years or over, compared with 14% of non-Indigenous people. 450 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 136. Population pyramid of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, 2011967 The Figure (Figure 38) is a population pyramid; it shows a comparison of the age profiles of the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations.968 The bars show the percentage of the total population that falls within each age group. The general shapes of the Indigenous and the non-Indigenous pyramids are different. The Indigenous pyramid is wide at the bottom (younger agegroups) and narrow at the top (older age-groups); this shape shows that the Indigenous population is a young population. Aboriginals do not live long, because of the harsh living conditions imposed upon many of them by Government. The non-Indigenous pyramid has a more even spread of ages through the population. o) Projected Aboriginal Population Loss at 2014 We can now determine the likely Aboriginal population loss at 2014 because of the violent and costly British invasion, based upon a specific 1788 population band. Initial population in Initial population in 1788: 750 000 1788: 1 200 000 Projected population 7.85 million at 2014 Actual Indigenous 698,583 population at 2011 Estimated 7,151,417 population loss at 2014 due to British invasion 12.56 million 698,583 11,861,417 Figure 137. Projected Aboriginal population loss at 2014, based on revised pre-contact population band (Williams et al) 451 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited That is, the 1788 British invasion and occupation resulted in a projected Aboriginal population loss at 2014 of somewhere between 7.2 million and 11.9 million people. Aboriginal Depopulation Summary and Conclusions We have shown that the Tasmanian genocidal outcome had patterned logistics that reveal the procedural nature of extermination as Britain blindly followed a politico-economic dispossessory imperative. We are now on a similar trajectory to extinction, induced by anthropogenic global warming and the unfolding ecocide. Just as our ancestors attributed the disappearance of the Palawa to a Darwinian fantasy of biological unfitness, it is now our own unsustainable practices that may cause Nature to throw us off as a failed experiment, where we are unfit to survive as a species. We may hear the argument ‘But Aboriginals were hunter gatherers, who needed great amounts of land to sustain them. The country would not have supported 7 to 12 million people living a nomadic existence.’ It is a false argument that wrongly assumes societies do not evolve and grow. What would Aboriginal society be today if Britain had not invaded? We only must itain look at societies in Southeast Asia, which emerged from the yoke of British, French, American and Dutch colonialism, countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, or even New Guinea, and Fiji, to see that the contrived logic for Australia is unsound. These places in Southeast Asia were unattractive to British and other settlers. They were too small, or too hot, and Britain, for its part, limited their role to trading outposts or perhaps plantations. They escaped the mass killing and avoidable deaths carried out in Australia because of Government policy. They have now generally grown to be vibrant, prosperous, and independent. They are now some of the most populous countries on Earth, although some have an extremely limited land area compared with Australia. Country 2010 Population Indonesia 260 million Cambodia 15 million (post genocide) Malaysia 28 million Philippines 92 million Papua New Guinea 7.3 million (excluding West Papua, which was annexed by Indonesia) Singapore 5.5 million Thailand 65 million Vietnam 90 million (post war) Figure 138. Population of various Southeast Asian countries (2010) 452 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited This is what was stolen from Australian Aboriginals: Britain stole their future. After the process of exterminatory genocide, their numbers are still only about 700,000, which includes all those people who claim an Aboriginal identity, whether it is mixed race or not. The Australian indigenous and mixed-race population number is now about the same as tiny Fiji, which has a mixed population of around 900,000. Conclusion We conclude that Britain and later Australian Governments are responsible for a major crime against Aboriginal society but have never been found accountable or admitted liability. They and we are responsible for the projected loss of millions of indigenous lives in Australia, through racist land and immigration policies, unrestricted settlement, discriminatory legislation, uncontrolled racial warfare, and other late phase genocidal actions that caused rapid Aboriginal depopulation from the time of the 1788 invasion until 1911, with the last known massacre in 1928. The long tail of Lemkinian genocide in Australia continues today, under UN articles: 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; and 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. We may attempt to rewrite history, or ignore it, but until we accept that the past is not another country, until we acknowledge the genocidal process of invasive occupation, we must remain a nation without honour, building our most treasured myths on the military ineptitude of Gallipoli, or the conflated heroic triumphalism of subduing a harsh pastoral frontier. 453 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Tasmanian Genocidal Roles: Actors and Agency The hypothesized genocidal patterns of Tasmanian meta-history are falsifiable, whereas an individual event can have multiple perspectives, any of which may be inconsistent with another. It gives rise to apparent type event contradictions such as invasion (from the Palawa view) to settlement (from the British view). The structural patterns of the imposed Tasmanian social complex for the period of Palawa extermination conform to a collective diagnosable spectrum disorder that reflects different levels of intentionality along an abstraction gradient. These levels range from State driven political-economic policies (including constraint rules for land and immigration), 969 to State driven practices (including constraint rules such as the British rules of evidence and the legal right to protect one’s ‘property’), to constraint rules for individual behaviours that are defined by self-enrichment and self-preservation. The system dynamics, both behavioural and procedural, are further shaped by these constraint rules. The more detailed instances, the contextual referents, the actors and their agency, and the dynamics are statistically predictable within an intentionality envelope. For example, ‘killing members of the group’ may only have a limited effect for a single incident but, if the State condones the behaviour and thereby perpetuates it, the outcome is more conclusive, particularly if the State is actively and intentionally involved in targeted killing through its various instruments of projected power, the police, military, legislation, proclamations and judiciary. Such was the case in Tasmania. We remind ourselves that the United Nations definition of genocide (genocidal process), under Article II, means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. In Tasmania, all these Lemkinian defined acts were carried out by both Government and settler society, and all were both intentional (planned) and systemic (structural): 2 (a) Killing members of the group: declarations of martial law; settlers openly spoke of extermination and a ‘war of the races’; systemic massacres; policy of ‘dispersal’; indiscriminate homicides; poisoning; imposed starvation. 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group: sexual predation; stealing children; introduction of drugs and disease; destruction of hunting equipment, dogs, totems and sacred sites; destruction of water holes and hunting grounds. 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical and mental destruction: Remnant Aboriginal populations were forcibly moved to a detention centre where they were expected to become extinct; derogation as ‘vermin’. Aboriginals could be shot as trespassers. British law was racist and did little to protect Aboriginals from abuse by settlers. No Tasmanian settler was ever convicted of Aboriginal murder or mistreatment. 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group: Women were abducted or preyed upon. Expropriation of Aboriginal food resources caused 454 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited starvation. Declaration of martial law meant that Aboriginals could be shot without legal consequence. 2 (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group: There was a common practice of child abduction by pastoralists and settlers, usually for child labour. Figure 139 Simplified Lemkinian genocide model. Each of these ’actionable components’ can be reduced to detailed sub-processes and repeatable activities. An ‘actionable component’ is also equivalent to some identified repeatable behaviour. Mapping of Tasmanian targeted destruction with Lemkinian genocidal behaviour We are interested to map the intersection of the articles of the UN Genocide Convention, particularly the paragraphs of article 2, with the roles and agency (behavioural categories or categorial agencies or faceted classifications) of the broad executable components of the Genocide conceptual schema, as previously specified. 455 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited These behavioural patterns, because they repeat, can be prescriptively modelled. Therefore, we must develop an analytical vocabulary for key terms such as Involved Party and Agency. This will allow us to understand the nature of cascading intentionality in the behavioural pattern of Tasmanian genocide, from the role of the British Government down to that of a field policeman or colonist and provide a rigorous - or as rigorous as possible - framework for the case instances. Agency is the capacity and manner in which an individual or organisation (Involved Party) may act in a given environment or social structure. Agency corresponds to an ‘object class’, or the manner in which an object such as Involved Party is implemented (instantiated) within a found environment such as the type Occupation Process. Therefore, agency is bound up with the concept of Involved Party, which was introduced on page 18 and cited thereafter. An Involved Party (or the Involved Party concept) represents all the participants that may have contact with the type reference model (or subject area conceptual schema) and about which the model wishes to maintain information, for example, case instantiations for the occupation process. The definition and characteristics of the ‘Involved Party’ are independent of the party’s involvement (or agency) with the subject area. Types of Involved Party are individuals, organisations, functional areas, and roles. Examples (or type instances) are: British Government, Secretary of State, Governor, Land Commissioner, police, military, colonist-settlers, sealers, landowners, judiciary, Executive Council, Aboriginals, Tasmanian Lieutenant-Governor. The Involved Party ‘types’ (or more strictly, ‘classes’) can form a classification taxonomy or schema, corresponding to the labels for nodes on a directed graph: for example, the class ‘British Government’ includes the role (or sub-class) of ‘Lieutenant-Governor’, which can be instantiated with the name of a particular Governor, say ‘George Arthur’. Each level of the taxonomy can be instantiated at varying more levels of nested abstraction. Involved Party types can also be sub-typed: for example, the Executive Council includes Colonial Secretary, Colonial Treasurer, Chief Justice and so on. Sub-types are instantiated with case instances such as John Pedder (in the case of the Chief Justice on the Executive council at a certain period of time). An Involved Party (object class) can have many types, as we saw, but an object such as ‘sexual predation’, although it can exist in different sub-classes (such as the occupation process, or genocide process), can have the same type (settler-colonist, or military officer, or other specific type of Involved Party). A typology focuses on the often dynamic type relationships between nodes, whereas a classification schema (or taxonomy in its simplest form) is based upon the properties of real objects in a static hierarchy. For this reason, typologies and taxonomies can often – and do overlap. We will refer to our referent type models as classification schema that can be instantiated at different levels of abstraction, forming a nested decomposition. Our models can also be sub-typed within a behavioural envelope determined by imposed constraint rules 456 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited (or type agencies) that modify the operation of a particular object class and are contextually dependent. A classification schema can be faceted, that is, the view or facet of the schema can reflect different behavioural criteria. Facets can apply to both data and process models. A faceted data classification shows the uniquely peculiar data uses of a particular data view, such as: Occupation typology/ Tasmanian genocide/ Martial Law Proclamations/ ‘roving’ - ‘pursuing’ parties/ extermination/ massacre events/ Involved Parties. We assert that these ‘views’ are procedural and are facets of the type genocidal process; they show the various categorial behaviours (facets) and how they intersect the classification schema in a patterned (or faceted) manner. We will argue that behavioural agency (or categorial behaviour) can be deterministic to some measurable degree within any system of social rules and constraints - including Government legislation, systems of criminal law, policies, proclamations, notices, and edicts - but is subject to value judgments that impose agency responsibility for any and all consequences. The argument ‘I had to kill him’ is not necessarily a reasonable moral or legal defence. But for colonial Tasmania, the defence was almost never required, being overtaken by the larger utilitarian argument ‘It was a war of the races’ or ‘I was protecting myself’ or ‘I was protecting my property’ or ‘I was using force against force, so my actions were sanctioned’. We then have to consider how the ‘war’ started, a war imposed by Britain on an increasingly desperate Aboriginal population, a war that employed the methods of Lemkinian genocide for the ‘greater good’ of Empire but justified itself as a counter-insurgency measure against Palawa ‘outrages’, when Aboriginals resisted the British occupation process of their country. This conspective analysis becomes the basis for categorial conformable mapping, to determine if Lemkinian genocide occurred in Tasmania within the balance of reasonable legal and behavioural probability. The conclusion is yes. Each point of intersection by some agency (or categorial behaviour or type sub-process) with one or more Lemkinian Articles has a variable aggregate weighting, which lends the analysis to a statistical assessment. For example, the type behaviour ‘indiscriminate killing’ may, in a specific case instance, have certain weightings of Articles 2 (a) to 2 (e) that may be different to the weightings for other instances. The type behaviour or categorical agency is therefore contextually dependent, as we would expect. That is not to say that the conformable mapping is invalid.970 The type behaviours (or categorial agencies) are extensible. They are not meant to be exhaustive, but in their progressive application can reveal the overall genocidal picture in increasing levels of detail, like a low-resolution photograph that is successively filled out into an ultra-high-definition picture, representing the cumulative view of a number of overlapping representations. Subjective weighting is on a scale: 1 to 10, where 10 is highly important in the genocidal outcome. Based on the subjective weights, we determine that all the type behaviours (agencies) had a significant effect (with 457 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited high importance) on Palawa genocide at different times during the genocidal process, which overlaid the type schema for the Occupation process. The agency subjective weight (importance) together with the agency extent (the range of UN genocide articles 2(a) to 2(e) invoked by the agency; scale is 1 to 5) determines the genocidal impact of a type behaviour. Quantitative analysis: If we plot importance against extent, we find that all the genocidal type behaviours fall within the top right quadrant, that is, high genocidal impact. For example, the agency ‘British Government’ (colonizing policies) has the coordinates (10, 5) on the graph of genocidal impact; and so on for the other agencies. It begins to suggest why the British invasion of Tasmania was so destructive of the Palawa. The proportional number of Palawa impacted by any one agency (including but not limited to proportional depopulation) varies according to the phase within the genocidal process over time. Roles and Agency (type behaviour) British Government (politics) Economics Indiscriminate killing Armed oppression Kidnapping Ecocide Dispossession Settlement Cultural destruction Pastoralism Immigration British Law Arthur's 'final solution' Martial Law Sexual predation Introduced disease Friendly mission: Conciliation Forced detention: Wybalenna Subjugation and repression: Oyster Cove Subjective Weighting 10 10 10 10 10 8-9 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 9-10 9 9 9 UN Genocide Articles 2 (a) 2 (b) 2 (c) 2 (d) 2 (e) x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x Figure 140 Intersection of Tasmanian Roles and Agency with Lemkinian Article 2 paragraphs It is also the characteristic of any categorial behaviour that it can intersect other such behaviours in specific ways. For example,’ indiscriminate killing’ can (and usually does) intersect ‘armed oppression’, with the point of intersection defined by activities that are shared between the agencies. In a 458 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited verifiable sense, this means that the agencies are co-determinate. The particular intersection is contextually dependent. An instance of the type agency ‘indiscriminate killing’ may reveal a contextually based association (shared activity) with some related instance of ‘armed oppression’. Within the context of the type ‘occupation process’, Arthur proclaimed Martial Law that established and legalised death squads to pursue, capture and in many cases kill any Aboriginals who were found. The Emu Bay massacre, which we will examine in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide as a case study instantiation, took place within this contextualised behavioural landscape (type occupation process), including the type agencies (behavioural sub-processes) of ‘indiscriminate killing’ and ‘armed oppression’, each of which were triggered by Government policy (Martial Law). More detailed modelling can expose the nested referents.971 We note that an instance of ‘armed oppression’ may or may not include an instance of ‘indiscriminate killing’. The point of intersection between the two categorial behaviours is where an instance of killing or murder is involved. The homicide can be judicial or extrajudicial, depending on the triggering referents. Associative Lemkinian behavioural network We can group these agency functions and map their group relationships in a form that can allow us to construct a layered typology. The functions subscribe to a type process flow for the Tasmanian Occupation process that overlaps the Lemkinian Genocidal process, an intentional process that was driven by British Government policy. In Australia generally (and more specifically in Tasmania), Lemkinian genocide cannot be separated from systemic racism, which was the corollary to violent British exploitation and expansionism. When a party takes something by force, the theft is more acceptable if the perpetrator can derogate the victim, or otherwise specifically target the victim as a member of some group. The result is racism, a dysfunctional behaviour that can infect an entire society, and we still see the effects today in Aboriginal disadvantage. 459 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 141 Agency relationships (un-normalised) and their type vectors (or vectorial associations) for Tasmanian genocide Within this associative network of type agency relationships, we note that Government political and economic policies drive land and security policies that drive enhanced immigration that accelerates the alienation of more land that increases the rate of settlement and expanded economic development though pastoralism that increases the alienation and location of more land, that increases greater Aboriginal dispossession that increases indiscriminate killing and cultural destruction, that is enhanced through a juridical and legislative process of martial law and ethnic cleansing (‘friendly mission’) and so on. The vectorial agencies are interconnected in a pathological system dynamic that has only one purposeful outcome: the targeted destruction of the Palawa through the methods and behaviours of Lemkinian genocide. 460 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Beyond racism, vectorial agency for Lemkinian genocide embraces persistent type triggers such as strategic, legislative, administrative, operational and displacive. These type triggers can also be instantiated at multiple levels of abstraction. For example, in the context of Tasmania, the type trigger strategic (political and economic) is sub-typed as: block the influence of the French in Tasmania; extend sovereignty for the claimed area of East New Holland (or New South Wales) to include Tasmania; establish a beachhead settlement in Tasmania, at first with a predominantly carceral population; protect the early settlement by military and paramilitary force from Aboriginal objections to the invasion; expand the area of settlement through immigration; promote economic self-sufficiency; and so on. All other referent type triggers can be sub-typed in a similar way, each creating a typology, and each typology interconnected.972 Strategic Uses Uses Uses Invasive Administrative Legislative/ Operational/ Juridical Displacive Coercive/ Destructive Repressive Figure 142 Vectorial associative directed graph network for level 0 (type) triggers The type triggers also exist as a coplanar associative network, with Governmental strategic policies as the root segment or agency group, corresponding to a node on a directed graph for which the categorial trigger is British Imperial intentionality to claim sovereign possession of New Holland. For any particular trigger, each level of abstraction carries its own associative network 973 against other sub-typed referent triggers. Along with behavioural constraint rules,974 this typological network (or type trigger classification and association schema) further defines Tasmanian genocide as a complex bounded dynamical behavioural system. The sub-typing schema for any type trigger logically follows from the British Government intentionality to claim sovereign possession over an area and deny the rights of the original inhabitants to their traditional lands. Genocide was the result. Palawa lives were taken, then their culture, and finally their identity, leading to the mental and physical destruction of the targeted group. Britain employed its own system of laws to ensure that any Aboriginal resistance was deemed criminal and that crimes against Aboriginals were left unpunished. 461 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited If we are to understand the Lemkinian process as it played out in Tasmania, we must understand who, how and why. This will involve an examination of roles and agency within a behavioural schema, along with evidentiary arguments (what and when) that will support (or falsify) our hypothesis for Tasmanian genocide. Lemkinian behavioural schema For our analysis, each paragraph of Article 2 of the UN Convention on genocide defines a specific and actionable Lemkinian sub-process, where: 1. Any Lemkinian behaviour or agency can action one or more Lemkinian subprocesses. Example: The role of the British Government (Involved Party) through the agency (behaviour) of British Government Imperialism carried out all Lemkinian subprocesses (Article 2 paragraphs) in Tasmania. 2. Any Lemkinian sub-process can be used for one or more agencies (behaviours). Example: Article 2(a) defines a Lemkinian sub-process that can be carried out by agencies such as indiscriminate killing, or enforced detention, or the ‘friendly mission’, or sexual predation, or introduced disease. 3. Any Lemkinian sub-process can be actioned by one or more roles (Involved Parties). Example: Article 2(a) defines a Lemkinian sub-process that can be carried out by roles such as the British Government, or field police, or the military, or settlers, or sealers. 4. Any Lemkinian role (Involved Party) can have one or more agencies (behaviours). Example: The British Government (role) carried out indiscriminate killing and enforced detention (behaviours). 5. Any Lemkinian agency (behaviour) can have one or more roles (Involved Parties). Example: Indiscriminate killing (behaviour) was carried out by more than one Involved Party or Role, including paramilitary groups, settlers and the military. 6. Any role can contain one or more other roles. Example: The role of the British Government contains the role of George Arthur. 7. Any Lemkinian agency (behaviour) can contain one or more other agencies (behaviours). Example: The agency (behaviour) of indiscriminate killing can contain introduced disease. 8. Any role can action one or more agencies (behaviours), where each agency can action one or more Lemkinian sub-process. Example: A settler (role) can engage in sexual predation, or indiscriminate killing, and so on, where the agency (behaviour) of indiscriminate killing invokes paragraphs 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), and 2 (d) of the Convention. Similarly, sexual predation 462 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited invokes multiple Lemkinian sub-processes. Other roles show a corresponding extension, using the same logic. 9. Any sub-process can contain one or more repeatable activities975 that can be shared by other sub-processes. Example: The sub-process ‘causing serious bodily or mental harm to the group’ can contain the activity ‘sexual predation’, which can also be shared with the subprocess ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical and mental destruction’. ‘Sexual predation’ is a repeatable activity but it can also be an agency (categorial behaviour). This is best shown through a diagram. We can see that where Lemkinian agencies (patterned behaviours) overlap, they are sharing Lemkinian sub-processes (or paragraphs of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention) or, in some cases, the repeatable activities within sub-processes. Where there are repeatable activities, say sexual predation, the triggering conditions will vary depending on context. Sexual predation can be an agency (behaviour) or an activity within a Lemkinian sub-process. Agency A1 Agency A2 Agency A3 Figure 143 Lemkinian agencies (behaviours) overlap through shared Lemkinian sub-processes If we tag Lemkinian agency sub-processes with assigned roles, we define an accountability matrix corresponding to a process flow across Involved Party responsibilities. Together, roles and agencies form a bounded behavioural system within the meaning of Lemkinian genocide, where triggers connect any agency or sub-process with another in order to achieve some purposeful outcome. An example of such a purposeful (or intentional) outcome is the completion of Palawa ethnic cleansing (the removal of the Palawa from the island of Tasmania) through the agency of Arthur’s (Involved Party) ‘friendly mission’ (behavioural agency) by Robinson (Involved Party). 463 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The ‘friendly mission’ intersects multiple Lemkinian Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. Role 1 Role 2 sub-processes, as we show in P4, P5 P1, P2 P2, P3 Figure 144 The relationship between roles, agencies and Lemkinian sub-processes. Legend: 1. A role is equivalent to an Involved Party. In some cases, an Involved Party can take many roles. 2. A sub-process is equivalent to a Lemkinian paragraph within Article 2 of the Convention. 3. Each rectangle represents a specific agency comprising one or more sub-processes. 4. pn is sub-process n (paragraph n) within Lemkinian Article 2. 5. Agencies can interact in a behavioural flow that corresponds to a bounded process flow. 6. The boundary condition for a Lemkinian sub-process is determined by Government policies and intentionality. 7. In the diagram, we see that Lemkinian sub-processes can be reused by different agencies. For this example, P2 is shared between two agencies. 8. The Lemkinian Convention specifies five ‘sub-processes’ or paragraphs for Article 2, any of which can overlap through reusable shared activities within a sub-process. That is, reusable Lemkinian activities (say ‘kill Aboriginals’) can be repeated in different Lemkinian sub-processes and each instance becomes a contextual referent for that sub-process. Another way to understand the relationship between categorial agencies and Lemkinian subprocesses is by examining their intersections. For example, following the invasion and colonization of Tasmania, the prescribed agencies of pastoralism and immigration share a common type sub-procedural link in articles 2 (b), (c) and (d) of the United Nations Genocide Convention. The instantiation of that common link is a contextual referent that depends on the circumstances of associated events. The axes are ‘Time’ and ‘Involved Party’ bands. 464 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Agency 1 Agency 2 Agency n Figure 145 Categorial agencies intersect at shared Lemkinian sub-processes In some cases, we will simplify the analysis by equating a role with agency, unless otherwise stated. For example, the behaviour (agency) of Imperialism is logically equivalent to the role of the British Government (Involved Party). Each categorial agency had an economic and political momentum that was incompatible with a continuing Palawa presence. Britain would not resile. The die was cast for the Indigenous population. History would not judge because it was blind to the past, having been written by the invader. Typology for British land acquisition in Australia Let us now flesh out the typology we introduced in the Preface to sub-type the British process for predatory land acquisition in New Holland. It will become evident why the process was – or quickly became - genocidal. Each sub-type, say ‘displacive’ within ‘predatory’, has a unique set of characteristics that contextually depend on Government policies. It should be no surprise that the sub-types are behavioural, reflecting British normative dysfunction, although Britain may have had another perspective: the glory of Empire; or perhaps the self-interest of its privileged governing-class. The typology shows us that Britain could have chosen an alternative path to ‘exploring’ new territory but was overwhelmingly driven by political and economic self-interest in an urge, a compunction, for complete and exclusionary control, where Imperialism demanded racial subservience and where Indigenous rights to land and cultural identity, even life, were generally ignored. If Aboriginal subservience and acquiescence was not forthcoming, if there was resistance to the displacement process, the British punishment of Aboriginal society, group by group, was brutally destructive. In this genocidal occupation process, area by area, deliberate and implacable, it is exceptionally difficult to sustain the argument that there were no unintended consequences of British racially discriminatory and genocidal policies. 465 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 146 Typology for British Land Acquisition in Tasmania George Arthurs’s role in Tasmanian genocide - reprised George Arthur (1784 – 1854) was Governor of Tasmania (Van Diemen’s Land) from 1824 until 1836.976 In this period, he oversaw the wholesale extermination of the Palawa and their culture,977 while claiming to be anti-slavery, a humanitarian, and devout Calvinist evangelical Christian. Among his other qualities, Arthur was a populist, who tried to maintain public order by not punishing those settlers who killed Aboriginals and by placing economic priorities above humanitarian concerns for Aboriginal rights and welfare. He allowed the practice of Palawa slavery to continue among the Bass Strait Islands and accelerated the process of Aboriginal land alienation. Arthur was also an authoritarian who had little time for press freedoms and was driven by his pursuit for personal wealth. Nor was he above nepotism, handing out sinecures to his cronies. The Australian Dictionary of Biography regarded him as ‘a distinguished public servant’. It depends upon how distinguishment is measured. Perhaps if we understand the decisions that were made by Arthur and the British Government, we can also understand how genocide was inevitable, not just in Tasmania, but across the continent. Perhaps, the chain of decisions involving the genocidal process was not some unintended consequence of land policy, as some historians argue. Perhaps, intentional British land policy drove extermination through a calibrated Government process. 466 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We will see in this paper that this was indeed the case, through delineating some of the key policy events and understanding the effective way that Arthur sought the complicity of his superiors in their execution. By understanding the process of Tasmanian genocide, we can also discern the pattern of invasive British occupation that was to repeat for all its other Australian colonies and would cause cataclysmic Aboriginal depopulation over the next century, like a metastasizing cancer that corrupted humanitarian and environmental values with economic and ideological priorities. Little has changed today. We are what we were. How Arthur’s (and Britain’s) policies shaped Aboriginal genocide The peak depopulation categorial agency probably took root from 1807 to 1820, with female abduction (removal, kidnapping) and sexual predation (causing STD induced infertility). The practice was widespread. No one was charged. There was an intragenerational population collapse. The peak extermination of Aboriginals in Tasmania probably happened in the mid to late 1820s, when Aboriginal guerrilla resistance to British autocratic occupation was becoming determinedly fierce, concluding during the period of martial law between 1828 and 1832. Extrajudicial killings were rife; no one was charged; Britain encouraged colonists to use ‘force against force’; from 1828, roving/ pursuing paramilitary groups slaughtered at will. During this turbulent time from 1824, Arthur was alienating land at an accelerating amount and, because of his policies, immigrants were beginning to pour into the colony. Settlers were demanding that the Aboriginal problem be forcefully resolved. Arthur’s job security was at stake. Arthur did not ask the question: Where were the Aboriginals to go? Perhaps he did not care until the final solution of a detention centre for the few survivors on an island became attractive. During this apocalyptic period, Aboriginals were dying at an increasing rate. They were unmercifully harried by Arthur’s roving parties, who watched for the smoke of campfires and then ambushed the Palawa while they slept. Aboriginal family groups were being broken up. Women were still being kidnapped. Introduced disease was rife. Few Palawa were unscarred by the conflict. Able-bodied men became a rarity, along with children and young women. A race was quickly being forced into extinction. The dispossessory process took little more than a generation. Meanwhile, Arthur pretended to his superiors that his attempts at conciliation were effective and humanitarian while he argued the necessity of preventing Aboriginal outrages on the ‘settled districts’ by increasingly draconian measures, culminating with Martial Law, where Aboriginals could legally be shot on sight. Arthur reassured the Foreign Office that the cost of Aboriginal containment and detention would be minimal. Britain was quick to accommodate Arthur’s racist and punitive proposals for Palawa removal. Settlers were demanding that Arthur find some conclusive solution to the Aboriginal problem; their preference was to round up and relocate the Palawa to some remote island; and indeed, this is what Arthur did, carrying out state-wide ethnic cleansing under the mantle of 467 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited conciliation. The Aboriginal problem was finally solved. Arthur’s career prospered. The settlers rallied. But it was genocidal. Britain adopted a similar solution throughout Australia as each new frontier was opened to an influx of settlers: exterminate, dispossess, purge, disperse, relocate, destroy, subjugate, repress. In 1828, Arthur forbade any Aboriginal to enter the settled districts along their annual migration routes, and later that year declared martial law, which remained in place until 1832. With the declaration of martial law, the value of any Aboriginal life became forfeit, and murder of Aboriginals became decriminalized, if carried out against an enemy combatant during Arthur’s (and the British Government’s) genocidal war. In 1830, Arthur unsuccessfully attempted to drive all Aboriginals into the Tasman Peninsula, using 5,000 men. Only two Aboriginals were caught. From 1829 to 1834, he employed George Robinson to induce remnant Aboriginal groups to relocate to some island, which eventually became Flinder’s Island in Bass Strait. Arthur wrote about the destructive effects of his policies in despatches to the British Foreign Office, but he would not resile. He was supported in his decisions by his superiors, for which Tasmania was merely a branch subsidiary in Britain Inc. These colonial despatches appear more about managing the expectations of his superiors and engaging their support than any serious attempt to balance his land and immigration policies with establishing a treaty978 or setting aside land for exclusive Aboriginal use. Indeed, with his success in Aboriginal depopulation and ethnic cleansing, there was no need to make any concessions to Aboriginal humanitarian and territorial rights. His successful strategy for managing the Aboriginal problem - to dispossess, violently suppress and then relocate any survivors - was widely adopted across other Australian colonies. For example, he pioneered the use of Aboriginal ‘protectors’. He also pioneered Aboriginal segregation in geographically isolated detention centres, preferably islands, which proved to be a perfect solution for managing remnant homeless populations. Yet Arthur clearly recognized after Aboriginal dispossession was completed by the early 1830s that a treaty might have been offered. Was this more for posterity than any genuine concern? After all, he did little enough to stop the carnage when it was happening, and he was granting land at a frantic pace for the term of his office, knowing the consequences for the Aboriginal population. In 1832, he wrote to Hay in the Colonial Office, making him an accomplice in the bloody story of British occupation: It was a fatal error in the first settlement of Van Diemen’s Land, that a treaty was not entered into with the Natives, of which Savages will comprehend the nature, ... had they received some compensation on the territory they surrendered, no matter how trifling, ... and had adequate Laws been, from the very first, introduced, and enforced for their protection, His Majesty’s Government would have acquired a valuable 468 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited possession, without the injurious consequences which have followed our occupation, and which must forever remain a stain upon the Colonization of Van Diemen’s Land. 979 Arthur’s regret was after the fact of dispossession and wholesale extermination when a treaty became redundant. In 1835, Arthur belatedly reflected further that: ‘on the first occupation of the colony, it was a great oversight that a treaty was not, at that time, made with the Natives, and such compensation was given to the Chiefs, as they would have deemed a fair equivalent for what they had surrendered’ 980 Arthur’s despatches show him to be duplicitous, on the one hand attempting to make his superiors complicit in his condemnable policies, on the other, taking no action to stop the deliberate genocide, believing that economic growth was more important. Some historians invoke the ‘standards of the time’ argument that Arthur was an efficient administrator in a period when the killing of indigenous people was widespread because they were an impediment to possessing the land. But his writings and despatches reveal a guilty mind or mens rea, that he knew what he was doing was wrong, but chose to do it anyway. He chose self-interest, for his career, for his financial security. Importantly, the British administration also understood they were guilty of intentional genocide, in the sense of extirpation.981 They chose not to resile from their destructive policies. Let us further remind ourselves that genocide is not limited to mass killing of a targeted population in whole or part, although the British administration generally viewed it in those restricted terms, with introduced disease, sexual predation and malnutrition being considered secondary effects of violent invasive occupation. Britain saw genocide (as they understood it) taking place as early as 1830 in Tasmania, 982 but disowned responsibility for its own policies and rewarded George Arthur with a baronetcy for his supposedly excellent service. Arthur returned to Britain in 1836 with a healthy £50,000 sum, 983 the proceeds of land speculation, of land that he had acquired at the expense of Aboriginals, of blood money. In 1838, a magnanimous Britain appointed him as colonial governor of Canada. Conclusion We find that, in understanding the operants (roles and agencies) within a repeatable type process (the British Occupation process), we begin to understand the mechanics and logistics of Lemkinian genocide in Tasmania. Cataclysmic depopulation between 1803 and 1833 was the main demographic effect of Britain’s invasion, but the key questions are when, where, and why. Did Palawa depopulation have a single cause or were there multiple causes? Can these causes be ranked according to their demographic effect? Were these causes consistent across Tasmania, or did certain 469 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited causes have a different weighting, depending on the geographic area? Is a Lemkinian process implicated? Did causes have a different weighting depending on the ‘phase’ of British aggression? How many areas were there? Did the areas correspond with the territorial distribution of Palawa nations, as Robinson referred to them? Can we quantify how many Palawa fell beneath the scythe of Britain’s racially targeted blitzkrieg and for what categorial reason? These are complex questions, and we will now turn to their analysis, using such empirical evidence as exists. We will begin by examining the Queensland genocidal land war to determine if it has identifying characteristics that we may then recognize in the Tasmanian land war when we come to its consideration. If so, we are confronting a brutal shared repeatable process – we will argue Lemkinian - that adopted common methods across different regions of Australia, with Tasmania as its early repressive model, like some evolutionary algorithm. A full depopulation analysis of all regions of Australia is beyond the scope of this paper, but our working hypothesis will be that the nature of the metastatic Occupation process in Australia was Lemkinian, a potentially falsifiable hypothesis, where each militarised invasive beachhead allowed the pastoral frontier to expand until it had reached all parts of what became Australia and the original inhabitants became refugees in their own country, subject to deportation, eugenics, labour racketeering, sexual predation, and the methods of apartheid, commodified objects rather than citizens with rights. 470 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Queensland genocidal land war: 1860 - 1920 Across Australia, Queensland was among the worst perpetrators of violence against Aboriginals, as we will now show, its 1897 Act984 simply continuing a lethal and racist process, a trans-generational policy of racial antipathy that denied Aboriginal people the rights to their land or liberty. The ‘dying race’ theory was born, and not just for Queensland, to acquit the invaders of any guilt or remorse. The newly formed Government of Queensland could have chosen a different path that recognised Aboriginal rights. With economic priorities in mind, and driven by its settler constituency, it coldly and carefully chose not to. Aboriginals were treated as trespassers on their homelands. If they resisted the invasive occupation, they were generally pursued and shot, as they were in all other parts of Australia. The rule of law was bush law; take no prisoners, destroy the evidence, the dead can’t talk. The surviving stragglers were rounded up into detention centres, their lives controlled by harsh legislation until the late 20th century. Arguably, the racially motivated antagonism continues still, and is all too evident in remote Queensland communities where Indigenous disadvantage is numbly accepted as the natural order under imposed settler sovereignty. In July 2014, Raymond Evans and Robert Ørsted–Jensen produced a paper for the Australian History Association conference, which was widely reported in newspapers: 'I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed': Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier. The paper was insightful and deeply sobering. The Brisbane Times reported ‘the estimated death toll was at least on a par with Australian casualties during World War I’.985 Using aggregated datasets of police operations and extensive primary details of ‘collisions’, the paper revised upwards, by a factor of at least three, the numbers of Aboriginals killed in the Queensland land war, which was a fractal-like part of what happened across Australia as the British violently occupied the land. This is a summary of their findings, including the timeframe for samples and arising statistics:986 Numbers killed in Queensland Land War 1850s to 1897 Upper limit (indigenous) 1860 to 1897 Lower limit (indigenous) Lower limit (indigenous) Total indigenous (indigenous plus non-indigenous) 115,000 66,680 65,180 Nonindigenous Total (indigenous plus nonindigenous) 1,500 61,680 471 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 147. Number of Queensland Aboriginals killed (Orsted-Jensen, Evans estimates) This histogram of the numbers killed by decade is a first order approximation of the dataset developed by Orsted-Jensen and others, based on their painstaking review of the primary sources. The dataset has not yet been cleaned or filtered. Nor has the dataset yet been submitted to a probability density functional analysis. Most of the police operational reports of the killing events have been purged from the public record as part of Government ‘data retention’ policy, so the Orsted-Jensen figures are likely to be under stated by a significant amount. Number killed by decade (Queensland) 2500 2000 1500 Number killed 1000 500 0 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s Figure 148. Number of Aboriginals killed in Queensland by decade The statistical table shows that the average number of those killed per ‘dispersal’ gradually increased by decade, a likely result of increasingly lethal and more efficient weaponry in the hands of police and pastoralists. The killing began to level off in the 1880s, almost certainly because the Aboriginal resistance had largely been broken across the state and end stage Lemkinian genocidal phases were about to begin, involving cultural destruction and forced relocation. Statistics for Aboriginals killed in Queensland: per collision and per decade Decade Number of collisions 20s 30s 4 4 Average number of Aboriginals killed per collision (or ‘dispersal’) 1 12.3 Median number of killings across all collisions Total number of Aboriginals killed for the decade 1 7 4 49 472 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s Totals 15 36 148 49 9 3 268 141 27.9 15.8 18.7 39.4 6.3 10 10 10 10 50 8 1410 1004 2331 917 355 19 6,089 Figure 149. Statistics for Aboriginals killed in Queensland 987 The numbers of those Aboriginals killed is also broken down by locality and decade, showing the direct correlation with Seymour’s police deployment spreadsheets for an area and period. The median of 10 deaths for most decades is an artefact of the estimating assumption that the likely minimum number of those killed in any one dispersal is 10. As the Queensland pastoral frontier grew, so did the violence, where mounted police and paramilitary pastoralists were judge and jury. The consequence of Aboriginal resistance was summary justice. Few body counts were kept. Corpses were burnt, to destroy the evidence, or left to rot if the area was remote. What we have left is a massive depopulation effect, greater than 90% within a century, which has previously been explained disingenuously as ‘a mysterious process’ where the Aboriginals died because they were ‘unfit to survive’. Queensland population statistics988 Government land and immigration policies, supported by armed force, drove Aboriginal depopulation. Queensland immigration was heavily subsidised from 1861. As the size of the white population grew, the Aboriginal population diminished in proportion. Aboriginal society was removed or marginalised, with little consideration for their human rights or ongoing welfare. Aboriginals were not permitted to own land. If they trespassed on their homelands, their existence was often forfeit. Remnant survivors were removed to detention centres from the late 19th century, their lives heavily controlled by racist legislation. Year Qld (,000) % of Australia 1896 1900 1905 1910 1915 453 494 531 599 685 12.7 13.1 13.2 13.5 13.8 Figure 150. Queensland population counts: 1896 – 1915 (excludes Aboriginals)989 473 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The pre-contact Aboriginal population for Queensland is estimated at between 34.2% and 38.2%990 of a total Aboriginal population between 750,000 and 1.2 million, making the Queensland 1788 population band between 255,000 and 458,400. Large scale Aboriginal killings conducted by the Queensland Government began to taper off towards the end of the 19th century. Assuming a modest 1% per annum population growth over 111 years from 1900 until 2011, the originating population in 1901 was about 51,632. That is, the Queensland Aboriginal depopulation from pre-contact until 1900 in the limiting case is between 203,368 and 406,368 people, assuming no population replacement.991 The calculated 1901 Queensland indigenous population, p = 155,825 / (1.01111) = (155,825 / 3.018) = 51,632. This figure includes Torres Strait Islanders. The figure does not reconcile with the enumerated ABS indigenous population count for 1911 for all of Australia of about 31,000, but is roughly consistent, within an order of magnitude. The difference may be accounted for if the population growth was greater than 1% per annum. The demographic difficulty further arises because Governments at the pre-federation state level did not see the need to include Aboriginals as part of the irregular population count. Aboriginals were not seen to be human beings or citizens. They were not enfranchised until 1967. Conversely, if we project the Queensland Aboriginal pre-contact population (between 255,000 and 458,000) with a continuous conservative increase of 1% per annum from 1788 to 2011, the expected projected 2011 population is between 2.07 and 4.21 million, which is a nett projected Queensland Aboriginal population loss between 1.9 and 4.1 million.992 In 2011, the Australian Bureau of Statistics conducted a national census that included Aboriginals. Queensland recorded 155,825 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, or 28.4% of the national indigenous total of 548,370.993 Queensland Aboriginal population growth 1788 - 2011 10000000 1000000 Lower Upper 2000 1980 1960 1940 1920 1900 1880 1860 1840 1820 1800 100000 Figure 151. Queensland projected Aboriginal population growth without invasion (1788 - 2011) 474 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The time series projection shows the true scale of Queensland Government genocidal policies. Queensland was not alone. All states made their contribution towards massive Aboriginal depopulation from the time of first British settlement. The role of land policy in Queensland genocide We are interested in the contextual history of the Murdering Creek event, which leads us to focus on the early period of Herbert’s Government from 1860 to 1863, a time when economic priorities were foremost and Aboriginals were an encumbrance, a feral pest to be exterminated. The first Government statistical register for 1862 is revealing. Nowhere is Aboriginal welfare or the setting aside of Aboriginal land mentioned. Herbert’s priorities were to grow the revenue and the population. 994 In 1862, almost a third of the total area of Queensland had been occupied (194,000 square miles995 out of a total of 678,000 square miles), with 10,975 white males counted. By the turn of the century, almost all the available land was occupied in some manner, and the white population had grown fifty-fold.996 Aboriginal society was simply broken and pushed aside. It still struggles today, much of it existing at the margins, on reserves or in remote areas, out of the public mind. Figure 152. Occupied area of Queensland (1862) 997 In the Registrar-General’s report for 1863, he writes that land sales were £135,615, although only £40,007 was received, the balance of £95,608 being received in land orders for immigrants.998 In 1862, land revenue was £192,585, increasing to £223,436 in 1863. 999 With no place to call home, Aboriginals became homeless. Destitution soon followed. 475 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Cumulative land sales (acres) 250,000 200,000 150,000 Cumulative land sales (acres) 100,000 50,000 0 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 Figure 153. Land alienated for sale (1859 - 1863)1000 The Registrar –General’s report for 1863 on Government land transactions show just how far invasive occupation had spread across the newly formed Queensland state within a few years. It was a land rush. For Aboriginal society it was a blitzkrieg. We see Government land returns for Moreton, Darling Downs, Port Curtis (near Gladstone), Wide Bay and Burnett, Kennedy, Leichhardt and Maranoa. Only the far north and northwest were untouched at this time, two years after Queensland became self-governing. Over the ensuing thirty years, all of Queensland would be turned into property of some form or other. Towards the end of the century, the far north into Cape York would become the new battleground, as the war of possession continued. Queensland would achieve a reputation for bloody violence. 476 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 154. Government land transactions, 1863 (1 of 3), ibid, p. 61 477 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 155. Government land transactions, 1863 (2 of 3), ibid, p. 62 478 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 156. Government land transactions (1863), (3 of 3), ibid, p. 63 479 The role of immigration policy in Queensland genocide The Electoral Roll for the March 1861 revision shows the spread of settlement across the various Queensland electorates, a process that would rapidly expand before the end of the century. Figure 157. Comparative returns of electors on the Roll: 1860, 1861 and 1862 1001 Figure 158. Queensland budget allocation, 18621002 One of Herbert’s first pieces of legislation, after land alienation, was to put funds aside for accelerated immigration, and force Aboriginal dispossession through the expanded use of heavily armed mounted police.1003 Comparative census results of total population (excluding Aboriginals) 480 April 1861 Census December (estimated) 30,059 45,0771004 1862 December (estimated) 59,7121005 1863 January 1864 Census 61,6401006 Figure 159. Comparative Queensland census and estimated results (1861 – 1864) 1007 The gender imbalance of about 3:2 in the white population created a shortage of white women, leading to sexual predation on Aboriginal women. Queensland population growth (1859 - 1863) 70,000 60,000 50,000 40,000 Males 30,000 Females Total 20,000 10,000 0 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 Figure 160. Queensland population growth (1859 - 1863)1008 During Herbert’s term, from 1859 to 1863, his Government’s immigration policies saw the white population increase from 25,146 to 61,640, with a corresponding increase in land alienation and sales. During this period, land sales (land alienated in fee by the Crown) grew from 23,587 acres to 62,948 acres with a cumulative total of 213,123 acres; cattle from 432,890 to 880,392; and sheep from 3,166,802 to 5,672,400. 481 Live stock growth (1859 - 1863) 6,000,000 5,000,000 4,000,000 Cattle 3,000,000 Sheep 2,000,000 1,000,000 0 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 Figure 161. Growth in livestock (1859 - 1863)1009 Figure 162. Queensland statistics (1859 - 1863) inclusive1010 An Aboriginal life was worth less than that of a head of livestock. The regularised punishment for cattle spearing or sheep killing by Aboriginals was death. Poisoning was preferred because it allowed plausible deniability. But vigilante death squads were frequently invoked, if the circumstances allowed a justifiable reprisal, say the killing of a stock keeper. In the event, no white was convicted of killing an Aboriginal until well into the 20th century. The political uses of Queensland genocide The process of genocide in Queensland was legislated and intentional, as it would be for the other states, and as it had been for Tasmania. The period of Herbert’s first term established the pattern of what was to follow, as Aboriginal society was destroyed and catastrophic depopulation with it. ‘Dispersal’ became Government policy. While Britain progressively granted self-government to its Australian colonies, it continued to support genocide by the sale of armaments. It maintained an amused detachment as it saw the violence play out and rarely interfered, except perhaps on one occasion, when it refused to allow Queensland to annex New Guinea, being rightly fearful that there would be a blood 482 bath of the kind they had already seen in that state.1011 This would have been a step too far, even for Britain. In 1883, the British High Commissioner Sir Arthur Gordon wrote to the British Prime Minister Gladstone: The habit of regarding natives as vermin, to be cleared off the face of the earth, has given to the average Queenslander a tone of brutality and cruelty in dealing with the ‘blacks’ which it is very difficult for anyone who does not know it, as I do, to realize I have heard men of culture and refinement, of the greatest humanity and kindness to their fellow whites, and who when you meet them at home you would pronounce to be incapable of such deeds, talk, not only of the wholesale butchery (for the iniquity of that may sometimes be disguised from themselves) but of the individual murder of natives, exactly as they would talk of a day’s sport, or of having to kill some troublesome animal.1012 For the newly separated state of Queensland, the priority was to find money and manage the land expectations for newly arriving settlers, who saw their opportunity to make rapid wealth. But Aboriginals were in the way. Legislation was a priority. First, the Queensland Government repealed the bunya reserve in 1860, set aside for Aboriginals in 1842. Then there was the need to alienate more ‘Crown’ land, also in 1860. But the influx of settlers had to be protected from Aboriginals who might object to their dispossession. So the Government also held an 1861 enquiry into police methods, ostensibly because some pastoralists objected to the wanton Aboriginal slaughter by roving mounted police. In fact, the Government wanted to make the police killings more efficient, and because of the enquiry, ordered that the latest weaponry be acquired from Britain, to facilitate the ‘dispersal’ policy. The process of Aboriginal depopulation in Queensland grew quicker. Immigration was accelerated, creating a greater demand for land, in turn requiring more practiced roving police methods to put down the inevitable Aboriginal resistance, as the frontier inexorably advanced. Thousands of Aboriginals were to be massacred in Queensland over the next thirty years, as the pastoral frontier pushed north. It would not slow down until the pastoralists had won and the process of dispossession and depopulation was overwhelmingly complete. Genocide then moved to the next phase of subjugation and repression, with stolen children, stolen wages and stolen hopes. Murdering Creek The massacre at Murdering Creek on the southern shore of Lake Weyba is a case example of the Lemkinian displacement process, where many of the circumstances remain shrouded in myth, requiring forensic analysis to tease out the verifiable facts.1013 There are thousands of such stories across Australia, most waiting to be investigated.1014 483 Figure 163. Murdering Creek massacre process flow diagram 1015 From Murdering Creek, we can establish a genocidal system model that shows the industrial nature of Aboriginal purging, the mechanics and logistics of mass killing in the cause of statesponsored economic development across Australia. Murdering Creek became a relatively small mass killing, one of many, that was induced by Government land and Aboriginal policies, and a general ethos of virulent racism. It is a fractallike example of Lemkinian genocide, where thousands of other similar massacres also took place, driven by Government policy. No one was ever charged for Murdering Creek. No one really cared. After all, the Government endorsed Aboriginal ‘dispersal’ by police and pastoralists.1016 It was a virulent form of ethnic cleansing, which improved the economic value of land. Just as it is today, the economy was king; humanitarian and environmental issues were a distant second. This secretive course of action, although well known by pastoralists, was disclosed inadvertently as Government policy by the 1861 Queensland enquiry into police methods, chaired by R.R. Mackenzie, a Government minister. The Government was unwilling to reveal the true nature of this practice, knowing that it was illegal. The most recent example of ‘dispersal’ was in 1928 at Coniston in the Northern Territory, where a police party led by Constable George Murray conducted a mass killing of between 31 and 70 men, women, and children over some period. The Government reluctantly charged Murray, but he was exonerated. Even today, police are generally above the law. But deaths in custody, as they are known, continue. When Senior Constable Chris Hurley murdered Cameron Doomadgee on Palm Island in 2004, the Queensland Police Union and the Police Commissioner defended Hurley’s actions. Hurley was cleared of wrongdoing, given substantial financial compensation for his ‘suffering’ and promoted. The only person convicted over the incident was an Aboriginal relative of 484 Doomadgee’s, who had rioted in protest. Doomadgee’s son committed suicide soon after his father’s murder.1017 The newly formed and squatter dominated Herbert Government hove to the task of dispersal and dispossession with enthusiasm. At the time of the Murdering Creek massacre, the Queensland Government continued to alienate ‘Crown’ land for the benefit of an increasing settler population, brought into the State with the hollow promise of cheap land and a new life, leaving remnant Aboriginal populations further marginalised and destitute. Much of the auctioned land was taken up by wealthy speculators. Dummy bidding was rife. Economic determinism – the gospel of neoliberalism as we call it now but was then called economic development – had set its course. Queensland continues to be driven by right wing excess, by jobs and growth, by jobs over the environment, by coal and cattle over sustainability, by exploitation over a circular economy, by the Hansonist push button, by the chimera of an ever-growing GDP. Queensland political accountability From 1860 to 1864, in South East Queensland near Murdering Creek, we can ascribe accountability for Government Lemkinian genocide to Herbert (the ‘father’ of Queensland), Mackenzie, Wheeler and assorted pastoralists, including Chippindall, Goggs, Costello and many other land speculators. The genocidal process was to repeat, area by area, as the pastoral frontier moved north in a rolling wave of extermination, of ethnocide. Scattered Aboriginal survivors were scooped up by the Government in end stage Lemkinian genocide, where the right to the enjoyment of life was a privilege, at the mercy of the oppressors. This stage persisted until the 1970s, and continues in some form today. Across Australia until the 1970s, apartheid was rampant, and Aboriginals were disenfranchised. In Queensland, Pat Killoran was exercising his racist and discriminatory influence as Director of Native Affairs from 1964 to 1989. Successive Queensland Governments have fought to exclude or deny evidence of wrongdoing in cases brought by Aboriginals before the Courts.1018 In 1864, around the time of the Murdering Creek event, the Government appointed David Seymour as the Police Commissioner. For the next thirty years, Seymour dutifully executed the Government’s ‘dispersal’ policy, deliberately keeping few operational records, or destroying those that were evidence of culpable Government wrongdoing.1019 We know Seymour’s actions through what he achieved. Seymour became the architect of Lemkinian genocide across the state, as he reviewed his police spreadsheets and redeployed mounted police personnel to maximum effect through ‘flying detachments’ into the ‘trouble spots’, as pastoralists advanced their takeover of Aboriginal land. When Aboriginals (apart from native police) were not allowed firearms, or the right to own land, or the right to enjoy their culture free from oppression, there could only be one result. 485 For the newly separated state of Queensland, the priority was to find money and manage the land expectations for newly arriving settlers, who saw their opportunity to make rapid wealth. But Aboriginals were in the way. Legislation was a priority. First, the Queensland Government repealed the south eastern bunya reserve in 1860, set aside for Aboriginals in 1842. Then there was the need to alienate more ‘Crown’ land, also in 1860. But the influx of settlers had to be protected from Aboriginals who might object to their dispossession. So, the Government also held an 1861 enquiry into police methods, ostensibly because some pastoralists objected to the wanton Aboriginal slaughter by roving mounted police. In fact, the Government wanted to make the police killings more efficient, and because of the enquiry, ordered that the latest weaponry be acquired from Britain, to facilitate the ‘dispersal’ policy. 1020 The process of intentional Aboriginal depopulation in Queensland became more rapid. Immigration was accelerated, creating a greater demand for land, in turn requiring more practised roving police methods to put down the inevitable Aboriginal resistance as the frontier inexorably advanced. Queensland’s was a ‘secret war’ as Jonathan Richards appositely calls it, but perhaps not so secret as undeclared, poorly documented and hidden. The Queensland Government and its pastoralists had much to hide. The graph of cumulative massacre events derives from tabulated figures in Baldry,1021 using Bottoms maps. 1022 The actual number of massacre events and overall Aboriginal numbers killed is much greater when police dispersal operations are included, but – as noted by Evans and Ørsted–Jensen1023 - we can infer a much larger number of judicial (police) and extrajudicial (‘settler’) killings beyond those for which we have records, as many massacres went unreported. The graphical pattern does not change, only the numbers and time frame. When we compare the cumulative massacre events for Queensland over an eighty-year period (1830s – 1910s) with those for Tasmania (1824 – 1831),1024 it is evident that the recorded data points (massacre events) for Queensland are probably under-reported by a significant margin. We will infer a similar under-reporting pattern across Australia. For example, between the 1830s and 1910s in Queensland, Bottoms’ dataset shows less than one hundred massacre events; but for Tasmania, between 1824 and 1831, Plomley records more than seven hundred such events; Evans and Ørsted-Jensen postulate around 6,000 attack events by police and pastoralists on different Queensland Aboriginal groups before the turn of the 20th century.1025 Therefore, the Bottoms dataset probably represents less than 1 in 60 of the actual number of massacre events in Queensland. What is of more interest: the depopulation sum over history. This tells us that over 90% of the Aboriginal population disappeared within a century, suggesting that unreported massacres were a large part of the overall racial violence, together with other drivers of mortality and societal collapse. We conclude that the expanding frontier in any area of Australia invoked a Government-led firestorm of violence, of ‘clashes’, of massacres that cannot be fully represented by a partial lists of events; indeed such lists can lull us into believing that the frontier was won by a 486 discrete number of ‘battles’ or ‘skirmishes’ as for a gentlemanly military campaign, where each side accepts its losses and a winner is declared according to notional rules of combat, along with treaty arrangements and other forms of negotiated appeasement. Genocide is far from a military campaign; it is messier and more brutal where truth is a casualty and propaganda is as important as killing; there is nothing gentlemanly about it.1026 Decade Cumulative Number of Recorded Massacres Cumulative Number of Recorded Queensland Massacres: 1830s to 1910s 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1830s 4 1840s 10 1850s 19 1860s 53 1870s 73 1880s 86 1890s 88 1900s 93 1910s 94 Figure 164 Cumulative number of recorded massacres in Queensland, by decade 1027 When we graph the cumulative number of recorded Queensland massacres by pastoralists over time, we clearly see the sharp increase from the 1850s to the 1880s and the rate then levelling off to the turn of the century, following a typical sigmoid curve. That is, between 1830 and 1860, acts of dispossession and associated ‘clashes ‘were relatively low when capitalists began to take up large runs in Kabi territory as they were pushing north, west and northwest. After 1860 it would change for the Kabi and other Aboriginal groups, as we have shown. In our modelling, all displaced Aboriginal groups in Queensland (and elsewhere in Australia) can be considered as a single group of groups within the Lemkinian meaning. That is: we can examine the circumstances of individual instantiations of violent Aboriginal displacement within the repeatable Occupation process, the aggregation of these instances to the level of each State or territory, and the pattern for Australia. We have shown that this pattern is selfsimilar at all scales along an abstraction gradient, driven by prescribed intentionality defined by policies and the like. The critical factor for Queensland genocide is that Queensland became self-governing in 1859. With Queensland self-government, land alienation began to grow exponentially making large tracts of land a contested space in a one-sided war of invasion. 487 The period from 1860 to 1880 was when most of the Aboriginal killing occurred, and this was also true for the southwest and other areas of the state, following a rapidly expanding pastoral frontier. By the 1880s, a large part of the Aboriginal population had ‘disappeared’ along with their homelands, so the number of clashes and racial violence dropped away. We can infer that each area and region in Queensland will show a similar sigmoid pattern of cumulative killing events over some period, as for the Baldry/ Bottoms partial data. The time periods may differ, depending on the area; each area became a pastoral frontier at different times as invasion expanded across the State. It is likely that the estimated cumulative numbers of those Aboriginals killed in successive decades between 1830 and 1910 will show a similar sigmoid pattern as for the cumulative number of massacre events, although this work has yet to be carried out. There is likely to be a strong correlation between the number of killing events by period and the number killed by period, subject to data availability. We have earlier shown that direct killing is not the only way to destroy a targeted race whom a trenchant pastoralist-dominated Government or committed land-hungry cohort may want to displace for economic advantage. Removal of Aboriginal women potentially able to bear children has (and had) a devastating effect in contributing to rapid population decline. Did predation on Aboriginal women have genocidal intent?1028 Could white society reasonably have expected that such predation would have a catastrophic depopulation outcome? Was depopulation an unexpected consequence of female predation? As for most genocides, rape and violence against women is used by the oppressor to delegitimize another race; it is a form of imposed degradation by those with the power to dehumanize another person, especially one who is female, and through that mistreatment cause anguish to that person’s family and a sense of shame to the victim.1029 But you will argue, some Aboriginal women willingly cohabited with a white. That is certainly true, but how was a defenceless Aboriginal female to act when presented with a violent alternative, forever being pursued by homicidal pastoralists intent on clearing vermin from their property or seeking sexual favours – sometimes by holding the women captive, or by offering inducements of drugs and alcohol, or by offering the ‘safety’ of station life. Selfprotection was a logical response to an existential threat: to submit and thereby survive. Of ‘harlots and helots’, Evans, Saunders and Cronin quote Archibald Meston: The aboriginal women are usually at the mercy of anybody, from the proprietor or manager to the stockman, cook, rouseabout and jackaroo…If they have aboriginal husbands who are likely to object, th[e]se…are either employed on distant parts of the run or are sent away altogether. Frequently the women do all the housework and are locked up at night to keep them from their own people… 1030 They continue: Many Aboriginal women living on western properties were known as “stud gins”, wrote the constable at Boulia. “The men living around here talk freely about seducing ‘Gins’ and reckon they have done a clever act if they seduce a ‘Gin’ belonging to an 488 adjoining station.1031 As the Queensland Figaro commented sardonically of a fashion item in 1883: “Says a Society paper, - ‘Black velvet is very fashionable’. That is no news to Queenslanders”.1032 It was wrong then, and sometimes deplored by officialdom, but nothing was done. How could sub-humans have rights? Sexual oppression was no aberration; it was intended, condoned; it was endemic to an invasive society where women were scarce and ‘black velvet’ was readily available, where ‘gin-riding’ was accepted, and no questions were asked. If sexual predation and slavery were common, so were the disease consequences. Successive Queensland Governments ignored the epidemic of syphilis and other venereal disease; further genocidal depopulation resulted from death and sterility. Evans et al summarize the effects of widespread sexually transmitted disease that was devastating the Aboriginal people across Queensland as a result, primarily, of the white pastoral invasion: In May 1887, Inspector Frederick Urquhart found venereal disease “a difficult subject to write about”, but he persisted with his report simply because “the evil as it exists can hardly be exaggerated” and he felt something must be done. After examining natives in the Cloncurry region, he estimated: …about half the adult males are infected with it. Among the females it is all but universal. Fully 90 percent of those who come under notice are in a more or less advanced stage of this dreadful disease and of those employed in the town of Cloncurry or camped in its vicinity, I do not believe there is one free from it. I have also seen many young children with it. The wild blacks in the ranges are nearly as bad as the quiet ones – especially the females – and many die early from this cause. Although he called for an “effort…to check the spread…on an extensive scale”, his report was merely “read” and filed “away. Further communications from the North and West during the early nineties upon the appalling state of the natives were received with apparent disbelief, and cursorily treated.1033 Edward Quest reported that the Diamantina Aborigines were: …fairly rotten from the most loathsome diseases, some of them living skeletons and covered with erosion. When those unfortunates see a white man, their cry is not as of old ‘grog or tobacco’ but ‘medison’ (medicine) in such emploring [sic] tones as would move the heart of a stone.1034 The Queensland Government was unmoved. Having introduced venereal diseases to them, the suffering Aboriginal people were left to die untreated, their deaths untallied, their memory erased, future generations unborn through imposed sterility. It was genocide through sexual predation and deliberate neglect of the inflicted morbidities, a convenient way to clear the pastoral land of an unwanted encumbrance by claiming that such disease was an Act of God, outside their control. It was far from the case, a truth denied. Successive Queensland Governments have denied accountability since. 489 Sexual predation and Aboriginal depopulation Could sexual predation - with a corresponding collapse in procreation - have been the smoking gun for massive intragenerational depopulation, as it was for the Tasmanian Palawa where there was a catastrophic fall in births over a few decades? ‘Black velvet’ was a prized commodity in the bush. With limited demographic data, is it a hypothesis we can test? Perhaps it can be modelled? A model would allow some verification against known facts. Clearly, if there were no births, then the entire Indigenous population would disappear within a generation or so, depending on co-morbidities such as reduced lifespan through poor diet, general induced ill-health, sexually transmitted disease such as gonorrhoea, and the imposed effects of dispossession, psychological depression, and targeted racial repression. What if there were catastrophically reduced births due to indiscriminate murder, sexual predation, female kidnapping, miscegenation, STDs, infertility, genocidal displacement, loss of territory, starvation, homelessness, and destruction of family groups along with their polity and moiety, their cultural traditions, and memories? How might we calculate the demographic effect, given the variables? Can a potentially falsifiable model explain intragenerational population collapse for a defined group, say Aboriginal society and all its different people, the Kabi, Palawa, and so on? The first order population growth or decline r – without lags or constraints - is given by the exponential sigmoid logistics function, where r can be positive or negative. The growth/ decline pattern is distinctive, following an s-curve, with three discrete phases. For the middle phase, where population growth (either positive or negative) is near exponential, we can postulate that: d P / d t = r P, where P is the population size at time t and the population at time t+1 is a function of the population at time t. Therefore, the Population change from Poriginating to P new is: originating ∫ new (d P / P) = originating ∫ r dt or ln ( P / Poriginating ) = rt , where P originating = P (t) , (t = 0). Exponentiating, we determine the population at time t: P (t) = P originating e r t If we divide the Queensland Indigenous depopulation s-curve into thirds, each third is called a tertile. We are particularly interested in the shape of the s-curve: how the value of r varies over time; and the value of r in the second tertile when r had its maximum value. If the overall value of r between 1845 and 1885 was around -12% pa (from the estimated Kabi depopulation evidence), then we can hypothesize an approximate tertile distribution for r, say: -9%, -18%, -9% for the periods: 1830 to 1845; 1845 to 1885; 1885 to 1900. 490 We will examine this falsifiable hypothesis in the later section: Modelling Lemkinian Genocide, based upon our preliminary modelling work in Gibbons (2018), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa and Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Queensland Genocide the massacre at Murdering Creek as a contextual referent. We assume, based on the demographic depopulation data across Australia, that similar patterns of Indigenous mortality and depopulation applied for each Aboriginal group across the continent, leading to an official depopulation figure well in excess of 95% between the time of first invasion of an area to the 1911 Census, a maximum period of 123 years in the case of NSW, although depopulation peaked there much earlier, perhaps form the 1810s to 1840s, slightly before the period of maximum Kabi depopulation between the 1850s and 1870s. These tertiles for the estimated pre-contact Queensland Kabi population correspond to the time periods: 1840 - 1855; 1855 - 1870; 1870 – 1885. Preliminary calculation: Suppose this is the total Kabi population loss by tertile: 1000; 4000; 600 for which the tertile depopulation distribution is -17%, -70%, -10% (similar to the Tasmanian Palawa). For the moment, ignore the population effects of the first tertile. Assume zero births within the second tertile, that is, a female born at the beginning of the second tertile will not reach reproductive age until halfway into the third tertile. Assume half the population in the second tertile were women and of these, a quarter were able to reproduce. Assume linear depopulation per second tertile. We can then calculate that a 10% annual reduction in such potentially child-bearing women is a mere 50 per year over the fifteen year second tertile, or a modest one per week across the Kabi language territory, about the same as for the Tasmanian Palawa and for a similar originating pre-contact population size. The consequent 70% population reduction over the tertile (assume a loss of 4,000 Kabi people) can be caused by removing Aboriginal women from the reproductive pool by various means: killing, psychological and physical trauma, kidnapping, disease (gonorrhoea in particular), infertility, sexual predation, family breakup, homelessness, loss of hope, and so on. It shows how sensitive the demographics model is to reducing fecundity, when the ability to procreate and raise a family is severely impacted by the invader. It is sufficient to account for the cataclysmic generational population loss. Given the parametric transparency, this logistic model is readily adapted. Therefore, in our first-order depopulation logistics model, we begin to understand the brutal mechanics of Queensland Lemkinian-type genocide, including imposed demographic collapse and physical extermination which, at the time, was called ‘dispersal’ or ‘taming the country’ or ‘keeping the blacks quiet’ or ‘smelling the gunpowder’ or ‘a picnic with the Natives’ or a ‘nigger hunt’. 491 We are left with the observation that, under British law, Aboriginal women had almost no rights over how their body could be used; there were no prosecutions whatsoever against white malfeasance. Aboriginal women were mere chattels, to be used as the invader chose, with no redress. Even when successive Governments saw the result of frequently predatory miscegenation,1035 with unwanted pregnancies and an STD epidemic, the official reaction was to do nothing against those whites responsible and allow the mistreatment to continue.1036 This official indifference to female oppression is therefore ascribed as genocidal under Lemkinian article 2. 1037 Tens of thousands died, but no records were kept. All we know is that a large percentage of the Aboriginal population ‘disappeared’ by the turn of the 20th century. The torment of the Aboriginal people was about to enter a new phase; the deaths would continue. Queensland Aboriginal persecution, sponsored by the State, did not end with mass killing and sexual predation; it merely entered a new Lemkinian phase of deportation, labour racketeering, sexual slavery, stolen children, and wage theft. Cumulative Barambah Deaths: 1905 - 1939 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 1939 1937 1935 1933 1931 1929 1927 1925 1923 1921 1919 1917 1915 1913 1911 1909 1907 1905 0 Figure 165 Cumulative Barambah Deaths: 1905 - 19391038 Year 1905 Cumulative Deaths 30 Year 1922 Cumulative Deaths 818 1906 54 1923 863 1907 76 1924 897 1908 109 1925 923 1909 134 1926 951 1910 162 1927 975 1911 213 1928 998 1912 265 1929 1022 1913 325 1930 1042 1914 374 1931 1077 492 1915 418 1932 1110 1916 477 1933 1146 1917 505 1934 1189 1918 584 1935 1218 1919 708 1936 1243 1920 745 1937 1273 1921 773 1938 1295 1922 818 1939 1339 Figure 166 Cumulative Barambah Deaths: 1905 – 1939 1039 Cumulative deaths over this period are lineal over time rather than sigmoid. The death rate was around 120 per thousand between 1905 and 1919, reducing to about 42 per thousand between 1920 and 1939. Compare this with a current Australian death rate of around 6 per thousand across the general population 1040 or around 10 per thousand for today’s Aboriginal population.1041 At the end of the nineteenth century, the few thousand unwanted survivors of the genocidal Queensland land war were deported to labour camps such as Barambah in southeast Queensland, near Kabi country, where deaths in detention from the overcrowded conditions continued the imposed pattern of genocide, repeating the lethal conditions of Wybalenna on Flinders Island where the last of the Tasmanian Palawa were forcibly exiled in the 1830s, destined to pine and die. Summary and conclusion Thousands of Aboriginals were to be massacred in Queensland over the next thirty or so years from 1860, as the pastoral frontier pushed north and west. It would not slow down until the pastoralists had won the land and the process of Aboriginal dispossession and depopulation was almost complete. State-sponsored genocide then moved to the next phase: of subjugation and repression, with stolen children, stolen wages and stolen hopes. Through this decades long process of calibrated societal disruption, successive Queensland Governments saw their role as protecting the interests of economic development, of protecting the rise of pastoral sovereignty, of extrajudicial mass homicide for the greater good of Anglo-society; they did not see their role as prosecuting the law without fear or prejudice, or protecting Aboriginal people from the white ongoing racist violence. When asymmetric power resorted to targeted State-sponsored killing, the Law became silent. Aboriginal homicide – even mass homicide - was ignored. In this undeclared race war, Aboriginals who ‘trespassed’ on squatter occupied country became – all too often – either enemy combatants or feral pests without the right to their land or their lives. They were fauna, feral pests, cleared from their homelands like weeds and vermin. 493 The key to uncovering past historical behavioural patterns is to examine use case evidence. We will now synoptically evaluate Tasmania for further clues to the patterned mechanics of Australian genocide that was enabled by an invasive occupation process, with asymmetric force (juridical, paramilitary) and weapons the arbiter of ‘rights’. Australia’s rule-based order was on its way. 494 Tasmanian Palawa Lemkinian extermination: 1803 - 1846 Historical truth has many guises. Some might call them narratives. Others, interpretations, that ‘truth’ is relative. This is the ‘true’ synoptic story of our colonial history in Tasmania told by the actors themselves, a set of eyewitness accounts, the story we are now asked by some politicians and historians to forget. Why? Because it is embarrassing. It exposes our human rights credentials, of how we prefer to see ourselves. Many of us do not want to be reminded. 1042 Perhaps, we may hope, if we can ignore the past, if we discourage criticism of our history, the problem can somehow be made to go away, like an unwanted illness we refuse to have diagnosed, or a story we don’t wish to hear. Tasmania established the pattern set by New South Wales: the oppression, the extermination, the displacement, the deportation. Other Australian colonies adopted strategies developed in Tasmania – roving paramilitary, pitting Aboriginal against Aboriginal, dispersal, ethnic cleansing, ‘friendly missions’, segregation, managed detention - and adapted their methods in the mechanics of genocide. For Imperial Britain, Tasmania was like a small branch office in a global enterprise aimed at blocking the influence of other European powers and securing access to local resources for mercantile gain. That it also provided a penal settlement was a short-term benefit, with the convict assignment system providing a powerful added inducement to wealthy capitalists (and less wealthy service personnel who could call up a favour, people such as ex-military officers and excolonial administrators), British immigrants all, for whom the Government provided subsidised land grants and ‘free’ convict labour, apart from the cost of their food and lodging. In Tasmania, the wholesale extermination of Aboriginals and the removal of survivors to an island detention centre had a conjoined political and economic use. Britain measured the utility of Tasmania through economic growth and its initial deterrent role as a transportation destination for a carceral population. The politics of induced suffering became an industry. Britain discounted the economic value of Palawa society and its territories to almost zero; therefore, no indemnification was required, and none was offered. Under British law, Palawa land belonged to no one and hence became the property of the Crown, which was then free to grant (or later sell) it to an increasing flood of avaricious settlers, primarily British. In British Government thinking, the Palawa should meekly accept their dispossession; if not, they would be destroyed. The primary calibrated means or policies employed by Britain for economic self-sufficiency in Tasmania were land alienation of ‘Crown’ land (followed by grants, later replaced by sale), and a phased amount of subsidised settler immigration, with the considerable advantage of the free use of assigned convict labour by settlers until the mid-19th century. 495 The British methods of Tasmanian genocide included martial law, a bounty system for the capture of any Aboriginal, 1043 unceasing extermination, sexual predation, child kidnapping, land and resource expropriation, unsustainable exploitation, ethnic cleansing, unconstrained occupation of prime grazing areas (the legacy of careful Aboriginal firestick farming over millennia), imposed starvation, restrictions on Aboriginal movements, forced detention with associated high mortality, and a racist legislature that failed to prosecute a single white for killing or mistreating an Aboriginal. Britain would not tolerate Aboriginal resistance, which became a criminal offence under the imposed system of laws. We should not measure the ‘state’ of a process, for example the consequent state arising from violent Tasmanian occupation, by some bland economic measure as Gross Domestic product at a certain time. The measure discounts the sum of how the state was achieved. The bucolic green pastures of today’s Tasmania do not carry an engram or CT scan of bloody Aboriginal conquest. The end state is not a preferred progression from benign occupation to pastoral triumphalism, where the Original occupants ‘mysteriously’ disappeared. It may be one view, but it is not the only view as it confuses myth with reality. We will use the stylistic device of a storyboard-like narrative to engage the key aspects of Tasmanian genocide as it played out between 1803 and 1846. How else to express the horror of British Government infamy, of ‘enduring the ending of the world’ as Doctor Wooreddy describes it, as the Palawa are implacably destroyed.1044 Tasmanian genocide redux… In considering the hypothesis of Tasmanian genocide by the British Government and its settlers, we must wonder why the possibility has been resisted for so long. After all, early Tasmania between 1803 and 1833 (then Wybalenna to 1846) has one of the most welldocumented histories among all the Australian colonies where the colonial archives are replete with correspondence, official and unofficial, detailing Palawa persecution. Part of the answer lies in Governor Arthur’s meretricious and devious behaviour 1045 in carrying out British policies during his long and pivotal term of administrative office from 1824 to 1836, where what he wrote and what he did could be quite different. It is something we will carefully examine in Part 2 of Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide,1046 where there is also evidence of British Government censorship of certain facts that might have placed their conduct in a condemnatory light.1047 But another important aspect of that period of calibrated and purposeful Palawa extermination up to the 1830s is in how the conflict was reported by many writers. We have valuable firsthand accounts from some of the participants, including Government despatches between senior Government figures; but many other more contemporary published accounts show apprehended bias and, in some cases, a tendency to revisionism. Finally, much of the primary source material has only become readily available in the last twenty years if we discount microfilm records and other relatively inaccessible repositories. We are left with an observation. If, as Popper first identified, knowledge within any subject area or discipline tends to be managed by a closed club with a recognized cabal of 496 gatekeepers,1048 then the doors to epistemic perception can only be widened by persistent objective questioning, not a heavy reliance on orthodoxy. … and its verification How do we verify this historical unfolding of how we view Palawa extermination? These are some of the key documents, a representative panoply of published books, key Government despatches, and their release date. From them, we will discern a pattern where the core narrative changes over time: from exploratory, to defiant, expository, exculpatory, revisionist, defensive and – more recently - accusatory. Some historians are now beginning to accommodate the evidence-based reality of Tasmanian genocide. Why the changing perception? After all, the events have not changed. Arthur has not changed. The cast of characters have not changed. The answer is complex: as we commented earlier, much of the primary source material has only become generally available quite recently, perhaps in the last forty years; some of the primary material has been edited and censored by the British Government and we are only now beginning to discover where documents were censored; Arthur sought to present himself as a humanitarian in his written legacy, when he was far from that; some historians have a reflexive view that reflects their cultural bias and ‘standards of the time’ arguments; some have an agenda where they want to focus less on the undoubted violence and more on reconciliation. But some are also beginning to consider the facts objectively, within the exigencies of an empirical Cartesian modality. There are also those who are extending the interdisciplinary investigative reach by examining past events within a legal framework; but I am less sanguine about a juridical approach, even though it is the primary basis for criminal and civil accountability within a bounded society; jurisprudence is caught up in its own world of rules and conditions that are less about justice than the administration of whatever set of laws we invent for the protection of various parties and their ambitions. …or falsifiability How do we deal with things unseen, the measure of words unsaid? Perceptual reality is often considered the sum of what we know through the senses; but much of what we know depends on faith, or on the observations of others. It leaves much that we don’t know – how life is created, or how the body maintains itself in a way that is invisible to the mind, or how consciousness works, many things that we see happening before our eyes but remain a mystery. We exist in a cloud of unknowing. A cognitive gap perfuses our lives, yet we live. The grainy pattern that resolves through this documented retrospective is not complete but it is indicative, like a fuzzy picture that reveals itself in greater detail through increasingly dense pixilation where each pixel is a verifiable event within a canvas painted by various observers from a variegated palette of Aboriginal blood, Palawa blood. Sometimes the imagery that emerges is distorted through interpretive reconstruction. In an age of ‘fake news’, the person uttering the word ‘fakery’ can themselves reasonably be accused of historical reframing, of hermeneutics, of apprehended bias, of adapting the facts to suit their observational perspective. 497 The study of history – in particular, social history - is not the only soft discipline to grapple with issues of structuralism and functionalism, of objects (things) and systems (a collection of objects and their interactions), of trying to understand the relatedness of things (the typology), cause and effect (dynamics), without falling through a recursive mirror of ‘thing’ interactions, the system behaviour over time. Sociology has had a similar dilemma, which some practitioners attempt to avoid by rejecting the distinction between statics and dynamics in order to accommodate time-space relations in a functional view. For example, the social theorist Anthony Giddens argues that theories are undetermined by fact: that no amount of accumulated fact will in and of itself determine that one particular theory be accepted and another rejected, since by the modification off the theory, or by other means, the observation in question can be accommodated to it..1049 . It is an argument that misunderstands the nature of scientific enquiry, of how science moves from the known into the unknown through a considered mix of hypothesis and empiricism. This book considers ‘structuralism’ and ‘functionalism’ as verifiable aspects of the same observed phenomena, say a hypothesized pattern of categorial behaviour that can be verified through the occurrence of type events and their physical instantiation. To counter such historical embellishment, such myth-accretions, deconstructive analysis will be our tool. We will go back, where possible, to the original event or related set of events based upon whatever primary sources we can find and limit secondary and other sources to providing narrative social context. It is an analytical process of data renormalisation and counters the observational problem of referring to successive layers of interpretation, any of which may introduce reflexive bias as we will see from this synoptic series of publications, each of which purports to be the real history of colonial Tasmania. Data renormalisation to first-order form: for any primary fact (say person name), remove those keydependent attributes (such as a multiplicity of roles and events) that relate to each other, that is, through a transitive dependency. Such redundant dependencies can be introduced by accretion over time from different interpretations of historical events. For example, if we are interested in Arthur’s role in genocide, we might want to identify the date of a massacre event, what happened and why, together with who was involved and their role. Renormalization requires us to show who, how, what and when in a separate dataset from event. With successive historical reinterpretation, we may find multiple, possible conflicting, entries for each event. For optimal database management, to avoid update anomalies, it is more reliable to separate out timestamped historical interpretations of any event as records in a separate database. That is, we separate event from person/ role from interpretation. This renormalisation minimizes duplicate, recursive, redundant data and simplifies search queries. Deconstruction is simpler: pare back the event - layer by layer - to its primary source material. In this sense, deconstruction follows the principle of first-order forms. And because collective human behaviour tends to be predictable, given certain triggers such as land policy we are able to hypothesize the processes that shape the dynamic system behaviour over time, the critical period between 1803 and the 1840s, and test the resultant 498 model for falsifiability.1050 We will see the categorial agency of genocide take root in British Imperialism as it swept Aboriginal (Palawa) society aside. This is a selected bibliographical summary showing, by publishing chronology, how our reporting of early colonial Tasmanian history has changed its focus and impact across time. It is intended to be representative, but not exhaustive. Only published books are included. Each is assessed as a contextual referent. Have the facts and events changed? No, what has changed is the way we assess those facts. For each type reference, we will later provide a brief deconstructive analysis within the context of dispossessory Lemkinian genocide. For 19th century writers of Tasmanian history, we will see their focus was on economic development, but they were not afraid to talk about Aboriginal extermination. For the 20th century and beyond, we begin to see a culture of forgetting as new priorities take hold, priorities such as Tasmania’s place in the world. A similar pattern is evident across Australia, although the detailed investigation is outside the scope of this paper. We have forgiven the past but carry the same exploitative behaviours into the future. We have failed to learn. It is through writing that we can convey meaning, and it is through the collective weight of historical writing that an interpretation of history is imposed for a time or briefly revealed in some original guise when new facts emerge. All that is reliably common between different interpretations of past events are the verifiable or partially verifiable event facts, the attributive data around an event. But in examining evidentiary data around an event or related set of events that are embedded in some replicable causal chain or network (that is, a repeatable process or directed graph), how do we understand the event causes, the why? ‘Why’ confers knowledge, the epistemic agencies, the conditional triggers that invoke any process instantiation like genocidal territorial occupation by an invading power that originates – for Australia - through a declaration of sovereignty and a policy of land confiscation from the Indigenous population for the benefit of incoming settlers and accelerated immigration. By understanding type causes, what once was believed true, with re-evaluated evidence we may now question. And what we now question may become new truths of historical authenticity or, alternatively, with misquoted or misconceived evidence, may lead us into further forms of myth. Henry Reynolds is an exemplar of such a retrograde myth-creation journey where Australian past and present genocide may be rejected through contrarian arguments that are based, not in verifiable facts and coherent logic, but on questions of Aboriginal identity and becoming, of ontology, of what we choose to believe rather than falsifiable hypotheses that are measured against empirical evidence. For Reynolds, as for Blainey and Manning Clark, there are deeper meanings, principles, even ideologies, that support what we prefer to see, and that provide ways of seeing as though our visual cortex was filling out the observed retinal image with an imagined information typology creating a false or distorted perception.1051 It is the path of reflexive bias. 499 As Thomas Kuhn pointed out, truth of any kind can be relative, hostage to a form of group thinking and dominant paradigms, where facts become subordinate to ideology and collective thought. In this distorting socio-political environment, Interpretation of facts becomes more important than verifiable evidence. It was so when Aboriginals were being legally dispossessed by racist asymmetric power in the service of Imperial aspirations. It is so now, when the facts of climate change are being assessed through the lens of short-term neoliberal economic determinism. Date Author Title Impact 1830 Commissioned by Governor Arthur Report of the Aborigines’ Committee Provided Britain’s justification for the Palawa final solution. 1832 James Bischoff Sketch of the History of Van Diemen’s Land Bischoff’s history is focussed on how Tasmania could be exploited, including his role in the Van Diemen’s Land Company. He was probably the first to publish official despatches from 1828 to 1831 on Arthur’s military campaign against the Palawa. 1836 Henry Melville The History of Van Diemen’s Land From the Year 1824 to 1835, inclusive During the Administration of Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur Melville was a trenchant critic of Arthur’s corruption. 1837 Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes, (British Settlements). In this seminal report, Britain had a chance to withdraw from its genocidal practices. It chose not to. 1852 John West The History of Tasmania West concludes ‘the assumption of sovereignty over a savage people is justified by necessity - that law, which gives to strength the control of weakness.’ 1869 James Bonwick The last of the Tasmanians; or, The black war of Van Diemen’s Land Bonwick lived and worked in the Hobart area from 1841 to 1849, where he was influenced by Henry Melville. He developed a thesis that would become familiar in various publications for the next century or more: that the destruction of the Palawa was due to a well-intentioned but failed British 500 ‘conciliation’ policy carried out by a succession of ‘humanitarian’ governors on behalf of the British Government, a theme briefly introduced by West around two decades before. 1921 1923 Fred Watson (ed) Historical Records of Australia (Series 3) Vols: 1 – 6 An invaluable reference to the official Government despatches of the time, which had previously only been available, with some effort, through the Colonial Office records. 1954 RM Hartwell The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850 Hartwell’s economic focus perpetuates the myth of an ‘empty island’ which had ‘no native civilization’ and an indigenous culture that was ‘too weak to cause serious conflict’. 1962 1987 Manning Clark A History of Australia Clark begins his six-volume tome with ‘Civilization did not begin in Australia until the last quarter of the eighteenth century.’ He barely mentions Aboriginal society and then usually dismissively, setting the investigative approach for other historians, including Geoffrey Blainey. Clark does not mention genocide but rather, his focus is on heroic colonizing achievement. (1948) 1965 Clive Turnbull Black War the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines 1970 Charles Rowley The Destruction of Aboriginal Society Aboriginal Policy and Practice Volume 1 Rowley was one of the first historians and Aboriginal rights activists to focus their gaze on the role of Government policy in the destruction of Aboriginal society. , with scattered references to Tasmania. He does not mention genocide although he does use other terms such as ‘obliteration’. 1971 Tasmanian Historical Research Association Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies on the subject of the military operations lately carried out against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land A compelling account, based on official despatches, of Britain’s final military campaign against the Palawa. 501 1973 David Davies The Last of the Tasmanians 1980 Geoffrey Blainey A Land Half Won 1981 Lyndall Ryan The Aboriginal Tasmanians 1987 Robert Hughes The Fatal Shore 1987 Henry Reynolds The Law of the Land 1989 Henry Reynolds Dispossession Black Australians and White Invaders 1991 NJB Plomley Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land 1995 Henry Reynolds Fate of a Free People 1997 2013 Peter Chapman (ed) Historical Records of Australia (Series 3) (, 1996) Blainey is a genocide denialist who argues against what he calls ‘a black armband view of history’. In consequence, he can be seen as a revisionist historian with little regard for the verifiable evidence, more concerned with speculation than fact in order to support his particular reflexive bias and populist narrative that most Aboriginal deaths were caused by intertribal warfare and disease, not policy-led Lemkinian destruction. Vols: 7 – 10 1999 Henry Reynolds Why Weren’t We Told? 2001 Henry Reynolds An Indelible Stain? 2002 Keith Windschuttle Fabrication of Aboriginal History: volume one, Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1847 2008 James Boyce Van Diemen’s Land 2011 Bill Stanner (1936 – 1979) (intro Robert Manne) After the Dreaming & Other Essays 2012 Lyndall Ryan The Tasmanian Aborigines A history since 1803 502 2014 Tom Lawson The Last Man A British Genocide in Tasmania 2015 2015 2017 Ian McFarlane, Murray Johnson Van Diemen’s Land Nicholas Clements The Black War Nick Brodie The Vandemonian War The secret history of Britain’s Tasmanian invasion An Aboriginal History Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania Figure 167 Selected Bibliography, Historiography, and Changing Perceptions of Palawa Extermination Commissioned by Governor Arthur (1830), Report of the Aborigines Committee. In March 1830, Arthur convened a hastily appointed Aboriginal Committee1052 to enquire into the causes of the racial conflict and provide recommendations.1053 The report was a whitewash of British genocidal agency and provided Arthur with the legitimized excuse to move forward with a final solution against the Palawa, having secured the full support of the British Government. Sir George Murray to Lieutenant Governor Arthur, 5th November 1830, [.] I approve of your increasing to a reasonable extent, the field police, & the awarding of a moderate bounty to the Military who may be employed upon this particular duty.1054 Among the Committee’s findings: ‘On turning their attention from the proceedings of individuals to those of the Government, the Committee derive the utmost satisfaction from discovering that, on the part of the latter, an uniform anxiety has prevailed to protect the Natives, and to secure for them the treatment which justice and humanity require.’ 1055 Arthur regularly repeats the importance of conciliation while denying it in practice. For example, in November 1826, following Bathurst’s 1825 direction through Darling to ‘oppose force with force’. 1056 Arthur issued a Government Notice that: ‘When a felony is committed any settlers have the ordinary powers of constables such that, If they overtake the parties, they should bid or signify to them to surrender; if they resist, or attempt to resist, the persons pursuing may use force such as is necessary; and if the pursued fly, and cannot otherwise be taken, the pursuers may then use similar means.’ 1057 Compare this with Arthur’s Government Notice 161, 20th August 1830: 503 […] and if, after the promulgation of this notice, any wanton attack or aggression against the Natives becomes known to the Government, the offenders will be immediately brought to justice and punished. 1058 Arthur was not alone in this hypocrisy. His predecessors had professed much the same: Collins in 29th January 1810, ‘any person who should offer violence to a Native, or should in cold blood, Murder, or cause any of them to be Murdered, should, on proof being made of the same, be dealt with and proceeded against as if each violence had been offered to, or murder committed on, a civilized person.’ Davey made a similar proclamation in 1813 and Sorell on 19th May 1817 and again in 1819. Prosecutions were rarely taken by the British Government against a white for killing an Aboriginal; until well into the 20th century, convictions were rarer still, Myall Creek in 1838 being the only such case.1059 But the Committee’s findings were not true. Arthur’s proclamation of martial law was a case in point,1060 where he invoked Lord Bathurst’s 1825 direction 1061 that whenever the Native Inhabitants should make hostile incursions for the purposes of plunder, when such disturbances could not be prevented or allayed by less rigorous measures to oppose force with force; and to repel such aggression in the same manner, as if they proceeded from an accredited state.1062 Such Government orders were not unique as the colonizing struggle for racial supremacy continued in the one-sided war for control of the land. Committees of Enquiry were a favoured instrument in Governments securing draconian outcomes with the semblance of impartiality and measured objectiveness. Consider another compelling example: In 1861, the newly formed Queensland Government held an enquiry into how it could make the police force more ‘efficient’.1063 R. R. Mackenzie1064 chaired the enquiry.1065 He became premier in 1867. Henry Challinor was particularly frank with his recommendation, not believing that the Committee would ever contemplate such extreme measures, but he was wrong: With regard to the Protective Force to be employed, I still think that it ought to consist of white men and black trackers, and that it should be sufficiently numerous and efficient as to deter, if possible, from the commission of crime. If, however, the sole object of a Protective Force is to pursue the aborigines into scrubs and there slaughter them without discrimination or remorse, I think no force could be better adapted for that work than the present Native Police Force. But, as this mode of protection appears to be as utterly repugnant to British law as it is to every principle of justice and equity, I could never consent to the continuance of such a system; I have the honor to be, Sir, Your most obedient servant, HENRY CHALLINOR.1066 504 Arthur’s Aborigines’ Committee deceptively concluded its report by talking about benevolent colonization, having recommended an increase in military and paramilitary numbers along with rewards and other incentives to protect the ‘settled districts’, a policy much like the Queensland Government would pursue from the 1860s. The Committee concluded: In conclusion, they venture to express a hope that the experience of present transactions may be even rendered useful in the history of the World, and that in all future attempts of colonization it may be steadily borne in mind how strict an obligation exists to exercise mercy and justice towards the unprotected Savage, and hoe severe a retribution the neglect of those duties, even by individuals, may ultimately entail upon an entire, an unoffending Community.1067 The Committee ignored the cause of the racial conflict, which was the violent expansion of settlerism through Arthur’s aggressive land alienation and increased immigration, policies he was dutifully carrying out on behalf of the British Government. In responding to the Committee’s report, Murray wrote to Arthur: The Committee has expressed an opinion “that these Acts of Violence on the part of the Natives are generally to be regarded, not as retaliatory for any wrongs which they conceived themselves collectively or individually to have endured, but as proceeding from a wanton & savage spirit inherent in them, & impelling them to mischief & cruelty, when it appeared probable they might be perpetrated with impunity” 1068 Murray was not so easily taken in and challenges Arthur: – In order to the unqualified admission however, of this opinion, it would be necessary to have established the fact that aggression had not begun with the new Settlers.1069 However, Murray did not press the point and approved Arthur’s request to send out an increased number of convicts as an armed paramilitary force, an extraordinary decision.1070 Arthur had the backing of his Committee in proceeding to the next genocidal phase, ethnic cleansing, and now it was endorsed by the British Government. The final chapter in Palawa extermination was about to be written. James Bischoff (1832), Sketch of the History of Van Diemen’s Land. James Bischoff wrote one of the earliest accounts of Tasmania’s developing economy, an economy where Aboriginal dispossession is not mentioned except as an afterthought.1071 In his Sketch of Van Diemen’s Land, Bischoff notes the urgent nature of expanding British settlement, fuelled by land grants, a process that excluded the Aboriginal landowners and pushed them to the margins – socially, economically and territorially - where they struggled against the British invasion: The immediate neighbourhood of Hobart Town was the first part of the island brought under cultivation; and in order to induce emigration, grants of land were given by General Macquarrie, Governor of New South Wales,1072 almost indiscriminately, to those who applied for them.1073 505 Bischoff is not blind to Aboriginal disadvantage and mistreatment when he encapsulates the dispossessory process: The original possessors of the land must have regarded the European settlers as invaders or uninvited, obtrusive guests; and the occupation of land and encroachment upon their hunting grounds, could be alone justified, by the hope that these degraded and wretched savages might be taught the arts of civilized life, and from a state of misery and precarious subsistence advanced to comfort and happiness. These objects ought to have been kept in view and perseveringly followed, and so far as it has been in the power of government at home to instruct, and the colonial government to follow their orders, every effort has been made to conciliate and civilize the Aborigines. Unable, however, to draw distinctions, they have regarded all white men as their enemies, and have visited the innocent with that cruelty and resentment which a savage must naturally feel for injuries received. Finding that all efforts to conciliate failed, it was at length determine to endeavour by one general effort on the part of the military and the settlers to surround the natives, to drive them to a corner of the island, where there was sufficient space allowed for their hunting and fishing, and then to prevent them from going to the located district. This plan also has not succeeded; the savage was too well acquainted with the nature of the country, and eluded his pursuers; but since that time, a gentleman, Mr. G. A. Robinson, has nobly volunteered to visit the different tribes, and personally to risk his own life, by throwing himself unarmed amongst them, and endeavouring to induce them to accompany him to one of the islands in Bass’s Straits, which will be assigned to the natives and to them alone. 1074 Bischoff’s focus is on how Tasmania could be exploited, but he also attaches an Appendix1075 that includes transcripts of British Government despatches between 16th January 1828 and 4th April 1831 on Arthur’s war against the Palawa,1076 a race war supported by Britain, a war that Arthur sought to justify through an Aborigines Committee he convened to report on the failure of ‘conciliation’. Murray makes a key point that the failure of conciliation is the trigger for more draconian Government measures: I regret to find the steps which have been already taken should have proved ineffectual in establishing a more friendly feeling on the part of the natives towards the settlers. 1077 By ‘conciliation’, Murray meant that the Palawa should peacefully cede their land to Britain without compensation or any other entitlement and should accept Christian teaching as their primary reward along with servitude to their white masters. Among a number of despatches, Bischoff sets out the note from Sir George Murray and Arthur, dated 5th November 1830, where Murray summarizes: The Committee has expressed an opinion, that these acts of violence are generally to be regarded not retaliatory for any wrongs which they conceived themselves collectively or individually to have endured, but as proceeding from a wanton and savage spirit inherent in them, and impelling them to mischief 506 and cruelty when it appeared probable they might be perpetrated with impunity’. 1078 The Committee was incorrect, and therefore Murray. Both chose to ignore the British Government’s master role in prosecuting the fearful racial violence through its land policies. Arthur was exonerated. Murray went on to approve an escalation of the war, with additional troops from the 63rd regiment, a bounty on captured Palawa heads and increased numbers of field police, having earlier concluded: I am aware of the extremely difficult task of inducing ignorant beings of the description of those alluded to, to acknowledge any authority short of absolute force, particularly when possessed of the idea which they appear to entertain in regard to their own rights over the country, in comparison with those of the colonists,1079 even though he noted: the great decrease which has of late years taken place in the amount of the Aboriginal population1080 through a policy whose object was the extinction of the native race that could not fail to leave an indelible stain upon the character of the British Government.1081 When a race is destroyed, how can they complain? Arthur had achieved settler sovereignty with the support of his superiors. Colonists now had exclusive possession of their land. The Crown had the rest of the island. Capitalism prevailed. Henry Melville (1836), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 to 1835, inclusive During the Administration of Lieutenant-Governor Arthur. Many have written of the economic development of Tasmania since early settlement. Among the first was Henry Melville1082 who, in 1836, was a trenchant – and not always favourable - observer of Arthur’s policies.1083 In 1835, Melville published an article ‘A comment on the action of the Supreme Court in the case of R. Bryan’ on a cattle-stealing charge, which led to his imprisonment, probably at the urging of Arthur. It seems the freedom of the press was challenged even then; both periods are linked by authoritarianism and a criminal justice system that was bound through an oppressive rule-based order to political cronyism. Melville exposes what he describes as the ‘unfair’ process of granting land under Arthur’s administrative incumbency.1084 He neglects to highlight that the people most 507 disadvantaged were the Palawa, who saw the land of their ancestors being given away without compensation or redress. There can be no doubt but that the plan, according to which land has hitherto been located, has been exceedingly unfair and injurious, and under such a system, it cannot be wondered that the most extraordinary instances have occurred of oppression and injustice. When land was first given to the free emigrant, it has already been observed, very considerable stimulus was held out, rations and workmen being allowed the new settler, in proportion to the number of his family, and the quantity of acres given to him. But even in these times, when land was not of much value, the grossest jobbing prevailed – and so it has continued ever since, only varying according to new promulgated regulations. In former times, the free settler, on landing, called upon the Surveyor General, and a map was immediately laid before him – but that was all! – for as to any further information being afforded, that depended upon other circumstances. If the new comer had no friend to show him how to proceed, he would immediately go in search of land in the interior – he would return to the Survey-office, with the knowledge of perhaps a dozen spots suitable to his fancy; the first he would be told had already been taken – the second was a township reserve – the third a private reserve; and so on; in fact, the whole number of selected places, he would find either reserved or located, although no mark whatsoever, to that effect, might appear on the charts. After much waste of time, and very considerable expense and inconvenience, the new settler would by chance fix upon some distant spot, which being so remote, was totally valueless in the estimation of the Surveyor-General, and this land the settler was allowed to possess. If, however, a settler arrived who had a friend to counsel him, the business was soon settled, and a hogshead of wine, a piano-forte, or a harp, or such like present, would point out on the chart in the Survey-Office, the most desirable land in the Colony. In former times, the free emigrants brought with them orders to locate land, but in later years this was not necessary, for a Land Board was appointed to fix the rate of quit-rents, and to examine the amount of capital the fresh settlers might bring with them; and the Local Government had the authority to give away the land in proportion to the capital introduced. Here also fraud was most common; the capitalist entitled to a large grant, would often find an almost beggar that came out with him in the same ship, receive a like quantity adjoining him. It was a common practice for individuals to borrow sums of money, and to shew the bank receipts to the commissioners – and when the location order was issued, they money, of course, was returned to the lender. The favouritism too, practise, will scarcely be believed by any individuals not fully aware of the true circumstances of the Colony – some friends of those in power would have large grants given them, besides suburban, and township allotments in numbers, in every township in the Colony, if they so pleased to have them! Government officers, without bringing with them one farthing of capital, have had the most extensive gifts of land; whilst the industrious capitalist, the real settler, has ha his time and money frittered away with the difficulties and negligence he has had to combat with at the Survey-Office. The land patronage, too, has been so disgracefully made use of, that the Government officers and friends of those in 508 authority or favour, have had large additional grants for “improvements made,” when the applicants for such additions have not even seen the land first given to them, nor cultivated an inch thereof, or expended thereon one farthing. Whilst land of the finest description and the most valuable, has been squandered on men holding Government situations, who were necessarily prevented from residing thereon, or improving the same, every obstacle has been thrown in the way of the capitalist, who unfortunately has had no friend at the Colonial Court. Bandied about from one office to another, if a fortunate settler obtained the number of acres his property entitled him to, he would at length proceed in search of land, and after the shuffling of the Survey Department, and much labour and expense, would have the spot marked out on the chart as his own.1085 Melville’s tirade at the poor treatment of the immigrant ‘capitalists’ who wished to obtain a free grant of land for a quit-rent fee is not supported by the evidence. In fact, emigration from Britain was a booming business, and would continue so until the early 1860s. Melville gives a list of Arthur’s properties, amounting to at least 12,804 acres in the Jerusalem district alone:1086 Location Name Acreage Carrington On the charts Davey 3,000 Hill’s ditto Nightingale 500 Two grants ditto Underwood 1,600 One grant ditto Clitheroe’s 350 ditto ditto Phillips 100 Ditto Ditto Maddox 500 Ditto Ditto McDonald 100 Ditto Ditto Walkinshaw 1,200 A veteran’s grant Ditto Eves 100 One grant Ditto Hunt’s 1,000 Tolmay purchase Ditto Tolmay 640 Lot 82 Purchased from the Crown Pitcairn 818 Lot 87 Ditto Ditto 756 Lot 88 Ditto Ditto 756 Lot 89 Ditto Ditto 640 Lot 90 Ditto Ditto 640 12,804 Figure 168 Lieutenant-Governor Arthur's property holdings in the Jerusalem district 509 These are only some of Arthur’s property portfolio. When Melville conducted his investigation, he commented: There are, besides these, several other grants of land, said to belong to His Excellency in the district of Jerusalem, but the writer is not certain that the public report is correct. The extent of the landed property of His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor must not be judged from the above-named grants, because these point out his property is in one district only; whereas, other of his extensive landed estates are to be found in most parts of the island – one property alone, that of Cottage Green, situated at the New Wharf, in the vicinity of which place some hundred thousand pounds of public money has been expended, is extremely valuable; the area is about thirteen acres, and if it were put up for sale, would realize about twenty thousand pounds.1087 In 1835, Melville was thrown in gaol for contempt of Court by publishing an article that was damaging to the Supreme Court and Arthur’s authoritarian administration. He wrote from gaol: It is a folly to imagine that British subjects can be protected in this distant settlement by referring to the Home Authorities. The most outrageous – the most oppressive and tyrannical conduct – might be imposed by those in authority, and without any means of obtaining either justice or compensation; nor will it ever be otherwise, until the people have a power, by means of an Assembly of their own, of redressing their own grievances, and their own wrongs.1088 Tasmania was granted self-government in 1856. Today, creeping Government authoritarianism means that freedom of the press and the public’s right to know is still being challenged. Melville proposed that the Governor’s authority could be countermanded by selfgovernment. Today, we propose that Government authoritarianism and abuse of power can be countermanded by a Bill of Rights and a Federal oversight body such as an Independent Commission Against Corruption. British Government (1837), Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (British Settlements) With systemic targeted violence against Indigenous societies across the Anglo-world, and after political pressure by British humanitarian groups, the British House of Commons formed a select committee to report on the racial effects of colonization with the objective: ‘to consider what measures ought to be adopted with regard to the native inhabitants of countries where British settlements are made, and to the neighbouring tribes, in order to secure to them the due observance of justice, and the protection of their rights; to promote the spread of civilization among 510 them; and to lead them to the peaceful and voluntary reception of the Christian religion’. 1089 Although the results of the enquiry were horrific, the terms of reference ensured there was no Government accountability and that the displacive process of colonization would continue. The committee found ‘The leading causes of these frightful calamities are not difficult to discover. Much of the evil may be regarded as resulting from vicious or mistaken legislation. The acquisition of new territories, and the advancement of British ascendancy, have too often been preferred to the claims of justice and sound policy.’ 1090 This text should be required reading for any student of history, as it shows how humanitarian concerns can be subverted by economics and self-interest, something with which we are uncomfortably familiar today. The text also shows that it was British Government intentionality that drove its racially targeted extermination. We have learned little since, if repeated failure of humanitarian policy is an indication. Consider, for example, the institutional abuse of Australian children over decades, where entities such as the Catholic Church and State institutions continue to resist adequate compensation or accountability. In 2012, the Gillard Government commissioned an enquiry whose findings shocked our conservative beliefs.1091 Or consider the ‘closing the gap’ policy introduced by the Council of Australian Governments in 2007, which put measures in place to address Aboriginal disadvantage in health, education, housing, employment, rates of incarceration, life expectancy, and financial wellbeing. 1092 In the last 10 years, the Aboriginal inequality gap has steadily widened, so the Turnbull Government was seeking to set the bar lower, 1093 along with succeeding neoliberal Governments. John West (1852), The History of Tasmania One of the first to write about Tasmania’s history in a formal sense was John West, 1094 who introduces his chapter on the Aboriginals by reminding us of D’Entrecasteaux’ visit in 1792, when Labillardière notes the very high percentage of children, a demographic that rapidly collapsed by 1830 into proportionally few women and fewer children for reasons we examine in Part 2. West summarizes: in a party of forty-two, there were seven men and eight women; in another of forty-eight, there were ten men and fourteen women. Thus, the females were more numerous, and the rising generation nearly one-third more than the adults.1095 They were generally healthy; one only suffered from cutaneous disease, one from a defect of vision, and several from slight wounds. It will be told, that a sad reverse was afterwards their fate.1096 West identifies the causes of the genocidal race war as: the introduction of Sydney blacks; the abortive conciliation process; the infliction of judicial punishments if the Aboriginals resisted their dispossession, which the Palawa saw as unfair; the loss of food sources upon which the Palawa depended for survival; and the abduction of Palawa women by sealers and others.1097 511 West notes: It is true they had no permanent villages, and accordingly no individual property in land; but the boundaries of each horde were known, and trespass was a declaration of war. The English of modern times will not comprehend joint ownership, notwithstanding the once “common “ property of the nation has been only lately distributed by law. The rights of the aborigines were never recognized by the crown; yet it is not less certain that they saw with intelligence the progress of occupation, and felt that the gradual alienation of their hunting grounds implied their expulsion and extinction. 1098 West acknowledges that Britain’s dispossessory actions were intentional and calibrated but his comment that the Palawa had ‘no permanent villages’ is not correct. We now know that in some places in the NW of Tasmania and elsewhere in Australia there were permanent dwellings, fish traps and the like built from stone and other materials. The evidence of these still exists after two centuries. 1099 West also notes that in the early days of British settlement, after unreliable crops the colonists had to forage for their food, particularly from 1805 to 1810 when they began competing with the Palawa for kangaroos and other game. 1100 That is, the early Tasmanian settlement was a foraging economy, similar to the Palawa, but with unsustainable foraging practices. Other early Australian settlements had an almost identical characteristic. 1101 West concludes: The original occupation of this country; necessarily involved most of the consequences which followed […] The assumption of sovereignty over a savage people is justified by necessity – that law, which gives to strength the control of weakness.1102 That is, West attributes the extermination of the Palawa as overwhelmingly due to the British Government’s ‘justified’ land policies and practices, for which all else was a consequence. We will examine this key genocidal agency in Part 2.1103 It directly ties Aboriginal extermination to British Government policy and intentionality. It underlies British culpability for what we now call Lemkinian genocide but was then known as justifiable extirpation in its various forms. For Britain the term ‘conciliation’ resolved itself as brutal Aboriginal repression and deportation for the survivors. Colonization involved a process like that in a slaughterhouse where Aboriginals were progressed through stages of displacement, to extermination, and finally, detention centres and subjugation, followed by racial segregation. Such were the mechanics of genocide, the product of virulent racism and British Imperialism. 512 James Bonwick (1869), The last of the Tasmanians; or, The black war of Van Diemen’s Land More than a generation after the Palawa had been destroyed as a group, James Bonwick1104 wrote an illuminating but often inaccurate history of early Tasmania that called upon the firsthand accounts of people such as Jorgenson. 1105 Bonwick lived and worked in the Hobart area from 1841 to 1849, where he was influenced by Henry Melville. He developed a thesis that would become familiar in various publications for the next century or more: that the destruction of the Palawa was due to a well-intentioned but failed British ‘conciliation’ policy carried out by a succession of ‘humanitarian’ governors on behalf of the British Government, a theme briefly introduced by West around two decades before. Bonwick begins his flawed argument: In all probability the experience of the infant days of New South Wales had prompted the then Secretary for the Colonies, Lord Hobart, to give specific instructions to Captain Collins in 1803, when proceeding to form a new penal settlement in the south. This statesmanlike and humane despatch runs thus: “You are to endeavour, by every means in your power, to open an intercourse with the Natives, and to conciliate their good-will, enjoining all parties under your government to live in amity and kindness with them; and if any person shall exercise any acts of violence against them, or shall wantonly give them any interruption in the exercise of their several occupations, you are to cause such offender to be brought to punishment, according to the degree of the offence”.1106 It was pure humbug, of course, where the British Government’s deeds were different from their self-righteous words, as would be shown by Lord Hobart in 1802 when he pardoned five Argyle Reach settlers for the horrific killing in 1799 of two Aboriginal boys on the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales.1107 Bonwick continues: This despatch, at least, exonerates the home authorities from the charge of indifference to the welfare of the aborigines, while utterly oblivious of their rights to the land, as the humane nobleman was then instructing Captain Collins to appropriate it without consideration,1108 and later concludes: the conquest of the Aborigines was necessary before the settlement of the country.1109 That the conquest was also genocidal is now beyond dispute, as we will show in Part 2. Bonwick followed up this book with an amateurish ethnographical work that has to be read more as opinion than reliable fact, although he is sometimes quoted on Palawa demographic estimates. For example, he asserts: The Native women, as a rule, had very few children, and fewer still were, from abortion or infanticide, permitted to live. Apart from the long suckling, for three, or even four years, the period during which their powers of reproduction existed was much shorter than with Europeans. Children were difficult to rear, less from the exposure of climate than unsuitability of food, harassment of 513 travel, annoyance to parents, and the absence of effective remedies under disease. Fearful epidemics, common in all uncivilized or semi-civilized countries, would make serious inroads upon a population, and check any possible increase. 1110 Bonwick is writing around 40 years after the Palawa were destroyed. His views are more historical yarn than fact and may reflect his observations from the 1840s, when the Palawa were in fearful decline as a consequence of predatory British behaviour. His comments on the causes of Palawa population decline and associated low reproductive rate are wildly inconsistent with the first-hand observations of the early French explorers such as D’Entrecasteaux in 1792, as we saw earlier, where they reported scant evidence for epidemics or less than healthy family groups with a preponderance of children. But Bonwick was also one of the few to take an interest in Palawa society; the British Government took little interest at all in what became their prey: the confiscation of Aboriginal land consumed their priorities. Fred Watson ed. (1921 – 2013), Historical Records of Australia (Series 3) Between 1921 and 1923 the Historical Records of Australia Series 3 (HRA 3) was progressively published for the period of Tasmanian colonizing history between 1803 and 1827, after which there was a 74-year hiatus following the release of Volume 6. The series resumed from 1997 to 2013, covering the tumultuous period from 1827 to 1831, when Arthur’s response to Aboriginal resistance became febrile. From the time it first began to be published, HRA 3 immediately provided an invaluable reference for the official Government despatches of the time. Prior to HRA 3, the primary source material was only available through Colonial Office microfiche records, the Australian Joint Copying Project, and occasional printed Government transcripts such as from Bonwick and Melville. Volume Despatch Period Editor Date Published Vol 1 1803 to June 1812 Fredk. Watson 1921 Vol 2 July 1812 to December 1819 “ 1921 Vol 3 January 1820 to December 1820 “ 1921 Vol 4 January 1821 to December 1825 “ 1921 Vol 5 December 1825 to March 1827 “ 1922 Vol 6 April 1827 to December 1827 “ 1923 Vol 7 January to December 1828 Peter Chapman 1997 Vol 8 January to February 1829 “ 2003 514 Vol 9 January 1830 to December 1830 “ 2006 Vol 10 January to December 1831 2013 “ Figure 169 Historical Records of Australia, Series 3, regarding the colonization of Tasmania Since being published, HRA 3 has provided a rich and accessible source of official British correspondence between Tasmanian administrators and the British colonial office, giving us an explicative insight into British Government thinking through a sustained period of genocidal repression, forming a dispossessory pattern that was to become the model for other Australian colonies. Through painstaking research by Peter Chapman and his team, some of this HRA 3 correspondence is now known to have been redacted by the British Government for fear of self-incrimination. 1111 However, Chapman was being diplomatic. The House of Commons Papers 259 of 1831 that formed the basis of Van Diemen’s Land, copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land comprised much of the correspondence between George Murray and Arthur during the period of martial law when Arthur was also commander in chief of the British armed forces in Tasmania. Murray was Secretary of State from 30th May 1828 to 22nd November 1830. He was replaced by Lord Goderich, who almost certainly approved the 1831 redaction of any of Murray’s culpable correspondence in order to hide British Government accountability in genocidal operations. Goderich gave Arthur carte blanche to continue mopping up and dispersal operations against the Palawa in the penultimate phase of genocide, before they were interned at Wybalenna. There can be no better overview of the calibrated British dispossession of the Palawa than by reading the editor’s compelling and incisive introduction to each of these ten volumes and their Government despatches, allowing the brutal drama to unfold in less than thirty years. RM Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850. Hartwell’s account of Tasmania’s early trade cycles and economic development1112 was made possible by the ‘rich source material in the archives of the Chief Secretary at Hobart’.1113 Many other historians have similarly benefited. His economic account, although retrospective, stands the test of time, but the Aboriginal presence is curiously missing. This is what he had to say: ‘The drive for exports destroyed the fisheries and hampered the development of agriculture; the extermination of the Tasmanian aborigines was a cruel story of indifference by government and ruthlessness by colonists; the convicts, in many cases, were badly treated.’ 1114 British Imperial colonization practices could often avail itself of inexpensive Indigenous labour, but Australia’s Aboriginal population was initially less compliant, preferring their nomadic attachment to Country. 515 Native labour was not easily exploited, not until the process of dispossession was more or less complete (1850 – 1960), when surviving Aboriginals were forced to become servants in a form of enslavement wrapped in a general policy of segregation. Hartwell’s comment: ‘Van Diemen’s Land had no exploitable native labour’ 1115 must be qualified with: ‘at least, not in sufficient numbers for economic development’. Most had been exterminated; the survivors lost hope for their future and many succumbed to alcohol, ill-health and disease. Little has changed today. This is misleading at best and leads to contrived myth making. The Arthurian Government, in particular, was deeply aware that its policies were destroying Palawa society but would not be deterred from its militarized campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing. Hartwell’s interpretation of why Aboriginals were exterminated is far from ‘indifference by government’. Indifference implies a lack of interest and thereby a lack of planned thought or intent. Arthur obsessed about putting down the Palawa insurrection; settlers were complaining; agrarian development was faltering; Arthur’s career was in the balance. Hartwell continues: ‘In 1820 the colony was an autocratically governed prison farm. Britain wanted to retain the prison (with its autocratic government), but, at the same time, thought that the colony should pay its own way.’ 1116 Britain’s desire to encourage economic self-sufficiency in its Australian colonies led to Lord Bathurst commissioning the Bigge enquiry (1822 – 1823), which formalised the economic concept of land as property, able to be bought and sold. The phasing out of land grants in the 1830s accelerated the legalized theft of Aboriginal land through accelerated alienation by the Crown, followed by auction sale. Arthur resisted Bigge’s recommendations1117 - the system of land grants gave him autocratic leverage - until he was forced by the Ripon regulations of 1831 to comply. Introduced in 1831 by the Earl of Ripon (then Viscount Goderich), ’instigated a new system for the sale of Crown land in the Australian colonies.’ Crown land had previously been granted by the Governor in a system of patronage that was open to abuse. By 1831, in Tasmania and New South Wales, ‘much land had already been disposed of through large land grants.’ ‘The Ripon Regulations standardized the sale process by introducing compulsory sale by auction and by setting a minimum sale price of 5 shillings per acre.’ ‘The proceeds from land sales were used to fund the assisted immigration of labourers and servants into the colonies.’ 1118 Hartwell then makes an extraordinary statement that seems to justify extermination by denying its existence. His argument seems to be: How could there be extermination when there were no (or few) Aboriginals to exterminate? [..] Van Diemen’s Land had no native civilization. The history of colonization is often the history of the ‘clash of cultures’, but in Van Diemen’s Land the indigenous culture was too weak to cause serious conflict. Within thirty years 516 the British were in possession of an empty island. The colonization of Van Diemen’s Land was ‘classic colonization’, the movement of British people into empty lands and their attempt to reproduce the old society in a new environment.’1119 The reference to ‘empty island’ with its connotation of ‘terra nullius’ or Bank’s ‘uninhabited’ reference is unfortunate and conjures up some of the hyperbole offered by Windschuttle that helped fan the continuing ‘history wars’. Later, Hartwell discounts his assertion that Tasmania was empty of an effective Aboriginal presence: ‘The transplanting of British economic life into Tasmania, however, was not hampered by a native civilization vigorous enough to influence development. ‘1120 Arthur and the Colonial Office would be unlikely to agree; they had to pour large amounts of public money and significant human resources into combating the highly effective Palawa guerrilla war in the 1820s, which only petered out when most of the remaining Aboriginals had been destroyed, leaving the survivors vulnerable to Arthur’s final ethnic cleansing programme, a programme that Arthur called ‘conciliation’. We conclude that Hartwell’s account seems to write the Palawa out of Tasmania’s history. The question of genocide is not raised at all, nor Britain’s accountability. But then, some economists have little regard for humanitarian concerns. It is only more recently, with works such as that by Stiglitz, where the human cost of economic inequality is now being raised.1121 In 2018 Anglicare commissioned a report into ‘The Cost of Privilege’, which showed that, for tax concessions, a total of $68.55 billion is received by those with the top 20% of incomes, compared with $66.85 billion by the other 80%. Not surprisingly those Australians with the lowest 20% of income gained only $6.14 billion from these concessions. The flow to the top 20% is over six times the amount spent on Newstart in the same period. Even the aged pension, the single biggest item in the federal budget is only two thirds of this amount at $44 billion every year.1122 Manning Clark (1962 – 1987), A History of Australia Manning Clark1123 is best known for his six-volume A History of Australia, published between 1962 and 1987, a sprawling work that attempts to cover the sweep of colonizing settlement and the birth of federation. Aboriginal society barely gets a mention and then usually dismissively. Clark set the tone for other historians, including Geoffrey Blainey. The first paragraph in volume 1 tells us what to expect: ‘Civilization did not begin in Australia until the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The reason lies partly in the environment and way of life of the people 517 inhabiting the continent before the coming of the European, and partly in the internal history of those Hindu, Chinese and Muslim civilizations which colonized and traded in the archipelago of south-east Asia. The early inhabitants of the continent created cultures but not civilizations.’ Clark defines ‘civilization’ as ‘a people brought out of a state of barbarism’, and ‘culture’ as ‘the sum of the efforts made by a community to satisfy and reconcile the basic human requirements of food, clothing, shelter, security, care of the weak and social cohesion by controlling its natural environment’. Clark’s distinction is questionable: Is it ‘civilized’ to cruelly exterminate a weaker race? Is it ‘barbaric’ to live sustainably with the land for 65,000 years? Clark does not define ‘barbarism’, but if we refer to the OED we find ‘extreme cruelty; an uncivilized or primitive state’. With this definition, we might find British Imperial society to be barbaric in one significant meaning: extreme cruelty. What Clark is really arguing is that Aboriginal culture – because it was ‘inferior’ - could not be absorbed into that of Britain and therefore collapsed: ‘[…] it was this very inability to live outside the framework of his own culture that prevented any subsequent invaders from using the aborigine for their own purposes. This, in turn, relieved the European from the evil consequences of reducing an indigenous population to slavery or semi-slavery. It protected the aborigine from such slavery or some form of forced labour, but at the price of the total destruction of the Tasmanian aborigine, and the gradual destruction of aboriginal culture on the mainland.’1124 This grotesque conclusion ignores that the Tasmanian Palawa were exterminated within a generation, a dispossessory blitzkrieg, hardly leaving time for their enslavement; while on the mainland, slavery of a unique Australian kind was becoming in evidence as semi-forced labour on the pastoral stations that continued into the 1960s where Aboriginals had few rights, leaving a legacy of broken families, stolen children, stolen wages and a form of apartheid (segregation) whose consequences we still live with today. Until the 1960s, Aboriginals could not vote; they could not swim in public pools; they were confined behind a roped off section at the front of movie theatres and to the back room of public bars; they were forced to live parasitically in tin shanty towns on the edges of regional towns; some were restricted to detention centres, euphemistically called ‘Aboriginal reserves’. Clark’s quotidian and ill-informed observations on Aboriginal society became woven into the fabric of a flawed historicity we are only now beginning to unpick. No, in many respects that we will investigate in Part 2,1125 it was Britain’s inability to question its belief that it was superior which caused it to assign inferiority to other cultures and races. Clark falls into the same error. 518 Clive Turnbull (1948, 1965), Black War the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines Charles Rowley (1970), The Destruction of Aboriginal Society Aboriginal Policy and Practice Volume 1. One of the first historians and Aboriginal rights activists to focus their gaze on the role of Government policy in the destruction of Aboriginal society as a group was Charles Rowley (1906 – 1985).1126 He divided this epic first volume on The Destruction of Aboriginal Society into two parts: the failure of colonial administration; and the destruction of Aboriginal society after 1856. Why 1856? Rowley points out that ‘by the mid-century the frontier extended to almost everywhere where there was good water and grass.’1127 By this time also, many fledgling Australian colonies were or were about to become self-governing and the: ’frontier clashes became geographically more remote from Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth (and from Melbourne-Canberra after 1911, when the Commonwealth took over the Northern Territory). They tended to take on more of the aspects of distant colonial questions, towards which the attitudes of thinking people in ‘the south’ now became openly critical; and as time passed the kind of criticism which had formerly come mainly from interested groups in Britain began to come from the capital cities and to be expressed in the southern press.’ 1128 Rowley’s time-bounded summary is perhaps too neat, too ordered, as the exceptions against ‘the thinking south’ show. For example, in 1863 the Victorian Aboriginal Protection Board, a paternalistic organization, set up the 2000 hectare Coranderrk Aboriginal Station in the Yarra Valley for a remnant population of dispossessed and dislocated Aboriginals; the Station was unacceptably successful, and its land increasingly valuable, so the Board closed it down in 1923, the closure brought on by Government assimilation policies that forced part Aboriginals off the Station. As the ABC notes, ‘Coranderrk remains deeply symbolic of a continuing indigenous struggle for land, culture and identity.’1129 Victoria was not alone. Take another example. In 1880, the Brisbane-based journalist Carl Feilberg (1844 – 1877) wrote a series of scathing articles on ‘The Way We Civilize’,1130 exposing some of the horrific genocidal practices of the Native Police on behalf of the squatter dominated Queensland Government. Feilberg was pilloried by the upright citizens of Queensland for speaking out and he was effectively forced into exile, his Aboriginal advocacy suppressed. Perhaps, instead of Rowley’s partitioned chronological thesis, we can think of the mechanics of Australian genocide as being like a giant industrial machine that takes natural rocks in one end and then, through a system of progressively graded grinding 519 surfaces, reduces what was solid and tactile to malleable and insubstantial dust, ready to be reconfigured into economic service as bricks and mortar or discarded as tailings rubbish and landfill. Part of this machine involved Christian missions, for Christianising was a potent weapon in ‘civilizing the blacks’, as Arthur was keen to promote. Britain taught captured Aboriginals to love one another while slaughtering them if they objected to their dispossession. Government policy was a key element of the Aboriginal problem and not just for Tasmania. Britain wanted to accelerate Aboriginal dispossession but did not want to antagonize the settlers by constraining their criminal behaviour. The exquisite Aboriginal problem was this: Britain wanted Aboriginal land, but the land was already owned by the Indigenous population. How was Britain to remove the Aboriginals? It was a problem that Britain solved through genocide, with each occupied territory offering its own challenges. Why wasn’t Aboriginal resistance more effective? Rowley notes there is a great difference between guerrilla warfare and organised war of the kind that requires hierarchical social structures to be mobilised. One is reactive and opportunistic to compensate for lack of numbers and weaponry; the other involves organized campaigns that serve the economic interests of the dominant group. Rowley summarizes: ‘Resistance was easily swept aside, since it did not have leaders to organize campaigns. Furthermore, the Aborigines were particularly vulnerable in that the tribal units comprised small family groups of men, women, and children, who were easily overtaken and slain by posses of mounted pursuers 1131 […] So this was war on one side, with all the suspending of morality involved in war, until the objective was gained.’ 1132 Rowley was an early observer to note the fractal-like British pattern of Aboriginal dispossession, extermination, and deportation where Tasmania became a template for other colonies. He writes: The obliteration of the Tasmanians appears spectacular partly because it is comparatively easy to think of them as a separate people. But whole populations on the mainland, of comparable size, were also disappearing. The story is also useful as indicative of the distance between proposed policies and practices and between the white governors and the Aboriginal governed. Here one may see the beginning of the policy of reserves for the unwanted Aborigines, as places where they could be held out of the way. The wide difference between pious platitudes of government proclamations and the facts resulted from the dominance of the settler economic interests, especially after the free settlers came. The demands of the whites, immersed in the 520 development of a new system of land use, and in no particular need of Aboriginal labour, meant that even the remnants should, as pests, be sent somewhere off the island or be wiped out. All these situations were to be repeated on the mainland: the resort of the government to proclamations of martial law to deal with the Aborigines who were fighting back; the demand of the settlers, who did not need their labour, for the removal of the local Aborigines; the undeclared war, never so recognised for any purposes of negotiation and settlement.1133 Rowley has little to say on Tasmanian genocide. In fact, genocide is not mentioned in his book. He briefly addresses ‘the frontier in Van Diemen’s Land’, 1134 brief because Tasmanian ethnic cleansing was so rapid, so abrupt, that his theme of ‘Aboriginal policy and practice’ barely had time to take effect, the Palawa being obliterated in little more than thirty years. Rowley writes: ‘the wide difference between pious platitudes of government proclamations and the facts resulted from dominance of the settler economic interests, especially after the free settlers came.’ 1135 The rampant spread of British settlement was brutal and unconstrained. The British Government’s priority was to transform Aboriginal land to private property as quickly as possible. Palawa guerrilla resistance was desperate and ultimately unsuccessful. Rowley picks up the story for Tasmania: ‘As the stations spread there was little or no control of the actions of the shepherds, a high proportion of whom had been brutalised by the convict system. By the time free settlers were establishing themselves, the gulf was so wide between the settlers and the Aborigines that settlers would shoot on sight.’1136 Here, Rowley is falling into the deceptive mistruths and propaganda promoted by Arthur that ne’er do wells were responsible for the violence. The Government was aware of the genocidal settler and sealer practices but did not prosecute those responsible; the British priority was to accelerate the spread of pastoralism; and in ignoring the killing, they condoned it. Why would Britain prosecute miscreants when the military, under Arthur as commander in chief, was often engaged - as part of land alienation policy - to protect and encourage settler expansionism through the use of lethal force. In Tasmania, Arthur depended on settler support for the success of his career. Arthur saw his military forces as an arm of Government that were frequently brought into play on behalf of the settlers, along with field police and mercenaries. When these were insufficient, he importuned the Secretary of State, Sir George Murray, to send more convicts whom he could arm as paramilitary against the Palawa. Murray agreed, while bemoaning that it would cause ‘an indelible stain’ on the character of the British Government. Murray was right, although his successor 521 Goderich sought to hide the Government’s involvement. Revisionist historians have been apologizing for Britain ever since. Rowley concludes his discussion of Palawa destruction rather mutely, that there was a public health policy failure but not a humanitarian failure: The habit of leaving the Aborigines out of measures to promote and safeguard public health may be justified, if only on practical grounds, so long as they are living their own separate lives in their own way. But the establishing of special institutions creates new areas of responsibility, which were to be largely disregarded for a long time, irrespective of the finances and skills available. So long as both were in short supply, the priority of such institutions was inevitably very low indeed.1137 Here, Rowley is referring to the Wybalenna institution on Flinders Island where he is generalizing the management of the detainees to the post-Lemkinian treatment of surviving Aboriginals in detention centres around Australia. It is a curiously passive conclusion that, in ignoring the subject of genocide, forgives it. Rowley concludes: Chaotic initial administration on Flinders Island seems to have left the Aborigines, especially the women, at the mercy of the guards. But these were only the circumstances making all the more inevitable the effects of the pulmonary tuberculosis which was rapidly reducing the group. The island had been selected not as a place suitable for safeguarding the lives of the Tasmanians but because it was out of the way. Flinders Island was the prototype of the multi-purposed institute – asylum, hospital, training centre, school, agricultural institution, rationing centre, pensioners’ home, prison – which was for so long to be assumed for Aborigines. 1138 Rowley’s thesis - the failure of colonial administration; and the destruction of Aboriginal society after 1856 - is demonstrably misdirected or false: the destruction of Aboriginal society began from 1788, along with the comprehensive failure of British colonial administration to accommodate humanitarian policies and proceeded in a self-similar pattern for each newly invaded area. Genocide – targeted racial destruction - was primarily an enabler of Aboriginal dispossession rather than a consequence. Dispersal, ethnic cleansing and paramilitary assaults cleared the coveted pastoral areas of Aboriginals; once removed from their homelands, Lemkinian subjugation and managed detention completed the dispossessory process. That is, genocide in its various weighted aspects became Government policy from the time of the initial British invasion. It is a subject that Rowley ignores or plays down. For Rowley, ‘obliteration’ replaces the word ‘genocide’. But Rowley’s work broke new ground in helping us expose and understand the link between Government policy and resulting agency (practice) in the destruction of Aboriginal society: if the policy was racist and inhumane, the agency was similarly destructive. 522 It is a cause-and-effect message we are still to learn, where intentionally genocidal political choices necessarily bind us to their actionable consequences in a grotesque dance of culpability. We are they. We are responsible. Tasmanian Historical Research Association (1971), Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for te Colonies on the subject of the military operations lately carried out against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land. The Tasmanian Historical Research Association compiled all British Government correspondence on its declared war with the Palawa for the period from 10th January 1828 to 19th February 1831.1139 Some of the correspondence had been edited or redacted, as Peter Chapman discovered when he was researching HRA 3, 1140 because they exposed British culpability. Before 1971, these despatches were not readily available, except for microfilm. They tell a compelling story of race murder, betrayal, and callous vindictiveness against the Palawa. They are required reading for any student of British racism where Imperial hegemony – the pursuit of territory at any cost - became more important than humanitarianism. They tell the story of Britain’s militarized assault against the Palawa under the direction of Arthur in his roles of Lieutenant-Governor and colonel, commander in chief of the British armed forces assigned to Tasmania. They reveal Arthur, not as a humanitarian but a genocidal racist who conspired with the British Government in the intentional destruction of the Palawa. David Davies (1973), The Last of the Tasmanians. Geoffrey Blainey, 1980 (, 1993, 1999), A Land Half Won. The reaction from conservative historians was not long in coming. Among their vanguard was Geoffrey Blainey1141 who, in 1993, introduced the term ‘black armband history’,1142 meaning we should not apologize for the past, a theme that was picked up in 1999 by John Howard who was Prime Minister of a right-wing conservative government at the time. In 1980, Blainey ignored any concept of Tasmanian genocide, when he wrote of Tasmania: ‘The guerrilla war went on. The wool industry in the outer districts was endangered by the attacks of the Tasmanians. In the spring of 1830 the government acted decisively. It planned the largest military operation to be seen in Australia in the 19th century. It marshalled one sixth of the men in the island in the hope of capturing all the surviving Aboriginals in eastern Tasmania and conveying them then to a secure place where they could be raised in ‘the scale o: civilization’ and rescued at last from ‘the miseries of perpetual warfare’. Gathering together about 3000 settlers, including 550 troops and 738 523 convicts, the governor posted them along a line running from Deloraine near the north coast to Campbelltown in the midlands and so to St Mary’s near the east coast.1143 This is not quite correct. It is both misleading and inaccurate. There were several military lines that commenced operations on the 7th October and finished on the 1st November 1830: one line was from the Western Tiers through to St Patrick’s Head on the east coast from which detachments advanced on the 7th October; another, headed by Captain Donaldson on the 12th October, moved from the line between Lake Echo and Sorell Lake; on the 12th October, Captain Wentworth moved from a line between the Hamilton township and the Bluff to Sorell Lake; Major Douglas’ line, on the 12 th October, was between Sorell Lake and Oyster Bay. The time-lapsed advance is shown by the field plan for the movements of the military under Arthur’s control for the period between 7th October 1830 and 1st November 1830, as it engaged in a pincer movement against the Palawa,1144 attempting to drive them to the southeast. Blainey continues his narrative: To feed this army, mounds of provisions arrived in drays and packhorses. A quartermaster’s store was set up at the town of Oatlands with a reserve of firearms, handcuffs and 30,000 cartridges. There were more handcuffs than Aboriginals at large. 1145 This is essentially correct but suggests that the operation was well-planned. It was not. It was more keystone cops than logistical. Shoes quickly wore out and no more were forthcoming. The lines were poorly coordinated and easily evaded. Supplies failed to arrive.1146 Blainey picks up his yarn: The movements of the long line of men were planned with military precision, or as much precision as rugged bush would allow. And so the line stretching for 120 miles – every man in sight of another on both sides – began to walk slowly southwards, in the hope of driving all Aboriginals into an isolated peninsula in the south east. At night the advancing line was halted, bugles were blown, supplies were drawn from the haversacks, and cooking fires and sentry fires were lit. Throughout the night the sentries marched to and fro in the hope of preventing Aboriginals from slipping past the guarded line. Bonfires were lit in dark patches so that any escaping Aboriginal might be detected. Night after night the precautions were followed; day after day the line advanced southwards, across sheep-runs, through shallow steams, and over timbered ridges and mountains. After seven weeks a frayed human net was drawn tight to reveal only two captives – a grown man and a boy of 15. In the last stage of the operation another two had been shot. The remainder had escaped.1147 Much of this is true in part, but it was almost completely ineffective in its intended purpose, to capture the surviving Palawa in a dragnet like herding game into a trap. The incompetent operation calls into question Arthur’s ability as a military commander in chief and challenges the view, put forward by AGL Shaw1148 and others, that Arthur was a humanitarian. He was demonstrably not a humanitarian although he often used words of conciliation. 524 We must judge Arthur, not by what he said, but by what he did; and we must also judge his superiors by the same measure. Blainey then continues with an opinion that he would consistently promote over the next forty years that rejected genocide in many parts of Australia, and that much of the Aboriginal destruction was caused by intertribal warfare and disease. The argument is little better than the one advanced by 19th century observers such as Charles Darwin that Aboriginals died through some mysterious agency related to their being ‘less fit’ compared with the superior British. Blainey obfuscates with an objectionable defence of Palawa extermination by denying it completely, putting their extinction down to other causes unrelated to British racial antipathy and genocide. He writes: ‘The Tasmanian remainder was now a sad remnant. In 1830 perhaps only 300 Tasmanian Aboriginals survive. Disease had killed most of them but warfare and private violence had been devastating This distinctive people had inhabited Tasmania for at least five hundred generations. Then in the space of barely one generation it had been extinguished.’1149 Blainey provides no evidence for this extraordinary conclusion, but it is a hypothesis he is eager to advance over the next forty years. It is a denialist argument, revisionist, that ignores the facts of history and led to the ‘history wars’. In Part 2, 1150we will emphatically reject Blainey’s unsupported demographic argument in its totality about the demise of the Palawa, as it relies on unverifiable opinion and, through questionable logic, absolves Britain from its role in genocide. Blainey’s ill-conceived advocacy for his contentious position gave oxygen to contrarians such as Keith Windschuttle who deny the evidence of genocide because there is little case law history. Of course not, when Britain resolved not to prosecute whites for any Aboriginal homicide through legal devices such as denying Aboriginal witness testimony, or the excuse that whites were merely protecting themselves or their property, or any number of similar stratagems including plausible deniability. It was a one-sided legal process that made a travesty of British Law. The travesty continued across Australia for more than 140 years. For the Palawa it was much swifter, less than a generation from first contact before they were exterminated by various genocidal means we examine in Part 2.1151 By the 1830s, few Palawa remained and almost all these survivors were to die in detention. This is the fact-based narrative that Blainey for the most part ignores. Indeed, he persists in his flawed reasoning. For example, Blainey proffers an upper limit Aboriginal mortality figure over the entire period of Australian racial conflict of 20,000 deaths, a figure for which he provides no 525 evidence in support, a figure that is contradicted by other historians such as Ray Evans.1152 From Blainey’s low conflict mortality figure, an estimated death count for which he does not provide sources, he is then able to speculate that tribal violence was the major cause for ‘decimating’ the overall population, along with introduced disease. But it is speculation at best. He provides no evidence for his racist conclusions. Nor has he been held to account: It is now a fashion to see the Aboriginals as traditionally living in harmony, each tribe keeping to that home territory which it had held since time immemorial. If this view is correct it virtually compounds the terror and the dislocation which the coming of the British created in the Aboriginal country, for a land of ancient peace quickly became a rolling battlefield. Now this view may be incorrect. One cannot describe traditional Aboriginal society with certainty, but the evidence of strong tribal enmities is widespread. [...] The highest estimate, so far offered, of Aboriginal deaths caused by warfare with white races during the 19th century is a grand total of 20,000 – an alarming number. To reach an equally long death toll in the 18th century, one in every 600 Aboriginals would have had to die during warfare in a typical year. Evidence I have gathered – of Aboriginal fighting in traditional times – suggests tentatively that such a death rate was not impossible. Even a death rate twice as heavy was possible.1153 In consequence, Blainey can be seen as a revisionist historian with little regard for the verifiable evidence, more concerned with speculation than fact in order to support his particular reflexive bias and populist narrative. Lyndall Ryan (1981, 1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians. Robert Hughes (1987), The Fatal Shore. Henry Reynolds (1987), The Law of the Land. Henry Reynolds (1989), Dispossession Black Australians and White Invaders. Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People. NJB Plomley (1966, 2008), Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834. 526 NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land. While researching in the Mitchell Library, Plomley 1154 discovered the Braim1155 manuscript file, which contained the works of a previously unknown writer, Jorgen Jorgenson,1156 although we know that James Bonwick borrowed from Jorgenson’s manuscript in preparing The last of the Tasmanians. James Bonwick (1869), The Last of the Tasmanians: 207 After his return from his native hunting, he (Jorgenson) prepared a record of his own experiences in the Bush, detailing circumstances connected with the ”Black War”. This manuscript he presented to Dr. Braim, afterwards the learned and much esteemed Archdeacon of Portland, in the colony of Victoria, who very generously gave it to me, in order to assist me with some materials for the present work. Plomley discovered several works by Jorgenson,1157 including a draft manuscript that Braim had requested from Jorgenson1158 in order to complete a tentative work that was never published: Sketches of Van Diemen’s Land and the Neighbouring Colonies. Plomley used these sources to write Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land (1991). Jorgenson was involved in Arthur’s ‘roving parties’ and captures the sentiment of colonial society: Nothing but absolute necessity can excuse the violation of a territory seemingly settled by the hands of the creator on some Aboriginal race, but it is a standing and unerring maxim that necessity is to all intents and purposes part and parcel of the law of nature and it cannot be supposed that providence would decree any country to the occupancy of a few savages who make no further use of it than wandering from place to place, when at the same time millions of human beings in other places are crowding upon each other without the means of subsisting.1159 This ‘law of nature’ included indiscriminate slaughter, capture and deportation under Arthur’s authoritarian and repressive regime, a regime that delivered genocide for a grateful settler society.1160 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence A History of the Flinders Island Aboriginal Settlement. Robert Hughes (1987), The Fatal Shore. The system of convict transportation from Britain to Australia has been an irresistible subject for many writers, among them the art historian and scholar Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore, which: 527 ‘follows convict transportation from the squalor of Georgian Britain and its obsessive fear of mob violence to the grim prison hulks – Noah’s Arks of smalltime criminality – that disgorged their human cargoes into the most elaborate penal system the world had ever seen. Many of those who survived the first fleets were condemned to starvation, disease and horrifying brutality, and yet within eighty years Australia became a promised land to which people have flocked since.’ 1161 Some historians have dismissed his work as too florid (historians tend to abhor adjectives), others too negative,1162 while the literary critic Clive James feels that that Hughes’ enthusiasm tapers towards the end,1163 but none have questioned his brilliant imagery that paints the landscape with an artist’s eye. This is nowhere more manifest than in his haunting depiction of Tasmania.1164 Consider his description of the entrance to the once-terrifying Port Arthur, now a languid place of decaying sandstone beauty and somnolent fading memory: Both capes are of towering basalt pipes, flutes and rods, bound like fasces into the living rock. Their crests are spired and crenelated. Seabirds wheel, thinly crying, across the black walls and the blacker shadows. The breaking swells throw up their veils. When the clouds march in from the Tasman Sea and the rainsqualls lash the prismatic stone, these cliffs can look like the adamantine gates of Hell itself. Geology had conspired with Lieutenant-Governor Arthur to give the prisoners of the crown a moral fright as their ships hauled in.1165 It is when Hughes comes to the British treatment of the Palawa1166 that we are brought to a stop as though hitting a brick wall, our emotions becoming broken shards. It is the behavioural pattern of British racism, of genocidal mistreatment, of a profound unwillingness by Britain to uphold the provisions of British Law, which all become so evident. Many of us may have heard some of the stories before but in Hughes’ hands they acquire a momentum that can overwhelm us in sheer rage at Britain’s callous indifference and lack of humanity: There may have been four thousand Aborigines in Van Diemen’s Land when the whites landed; by Arthur’s time there were considerably fewer, although it is hardly possible to guess how many. Perhaps ten blacks were killed for every white, perhaps twenty. At first the dirty little war sputtered its way around Hobart and the banks of the Derwent, as settlers in the starvation years competed against blacks for the kangaroos. Sometimes whites killed blacks for sport. In 1806 two early bushrangers, John Brown and Richard Lemon, “used to stick them, and fire at them as marks whilst alive.” Another escaped convict, James Carrott or Carrett, abducted an Aborigine’s wife near Oyster Bay, killed her husband when he came after them, cut off his head and forced her to wear it sling around her neck in a bag “as a plaything.” 1167 There were rumours that kangaroo-hunters would shoot blacks to feed their dogs. Two whites cut the cheek off an aboriginal boy and forced him to chew and swallow it. At Oatlands, north of Hobart, convict stockkeepers kept aboriginal women as sexual slaves, secured by bullock chains to their huts. On the Bass Strait coast, marauding sealers would try to buy women from the tribes, the usual offer was four or five sealskins for a woman, but if the Aborigines would not sell, they would shoot 528 the men and kidnap the women. When one of these women tried to run away from the sealers, they trussed her up, cut off her ears and some flesh from her thigh and made her eat it. At this time and more, the convict pioneer James Hobbes remarked, with some understatement, “was known by the tribes, and operated on their minds.” 1168 The pattern of violence between black and white in Van Diemen’s Land was fully established by 1815. It went on against a background of proclamations by the lieutenant-governor – Collins, Davey and Sorell all issued them – enjoining the settlers not to provoke or persecute the blacks and stressing that they had the full protection of English law. Their utterances weighed nothing against the reality of invasion. The whites were on the blacks’ land and grabbing as much of it as they could. No colonists were prepared to consider such two-legged animals as beings with prior rights. So the war of random encounter inexorably changed into one of extermination, as the settlements and the stock-pastures spread.1169 […] Arthur’s Committee for Aboriginal Affairs knew where the real blame for this ghastly situation lay, and declared that “every degree of moderation and forbearance” was due to the “ignorant, debases and unreflecting” blacks, so cruelly wronged by “miscreants who were a disgrace to our name and nation. “But on the other hand, one had to admit that “the injuries they have received, not on the actual defenders, but on a different and totally innocent class.” This reflected Arthur’s own delusion that the only people to blame for the murder and harassment of the Aborigines were escaped convicts, sealers and other colonial trash – never the respectable settlers, who “always” showed “kindness and humanity.”1170 Some of these colonial innocents aired brisk and strong views on how to handle the blacks. “They must be captured and exterminated,” opined John Sherwin, merchant, whose house on the Clyde River near Bothwell had just been burned to the ground. He said that others (not he) had proposed setting up “decoy huts, containing flour and sugar, strongly impregnated with poison.” He claimed he did not know of any atrocities whites had done to blacks, all that was exaggeration. But if they did not take steps soon, by bringing in blacktrackers and bloodhounds from Sydney and hunting the pests down, no one could live in the bush, for “the Natives wish to have their lands to themselves.” Hughes ‘epic work will be criticized and discussed for as long as Australian history exists. It is gritty, passionate and informed. Although Hughes completely fails to raise the subject of genocide and British Government culpability, I love this book: for its narrative power, for its grasp of historical theatre, and for its compelling insights into human greed and cruelty. Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania Creating an Antipodean England 529 Lyndall Ryan, (1981) 1996, 2012 Lyndall Ryan has done more than most to expose the appalling post-contact history of the Palawa at the hands of the British Government. But on the question of genocide she is reticent. One of her first books, The Aboriginal Tasmanians,1171 does not mention the subject at all. A later work, which refutes many of Windschuttle’s ill-conceived arguments of ‘nothing to see here’, is somewhat ambiguous. Ryan refers to James Boyce’ contention that the forced removal of western nations constituted an act of ethnic cleansing that was tantamount to genocide 1172 with the comment: It is impossible not to agree.1173 But we have the qualifier tantamount, not actual. And what of all other Palawa, not just those in the west? Ryan notes the oral testimony of Ida West, a descendant of mixed race Palawa, who said she was haunted by the spectre of Wybalenna, which she saw as the site of Aboriginal genocide. 1174 Still, Ryan equivocates, refusing to join with West’s assertion. Ryan quotes a 1997 address by Annette Peardon, a survivor of the Stolen Generation, in her address to the Tasmanian House of Assembly: The policy off removal of Aboriginal children from their people was born out of ignorance for the basic human rights of Aboriginal children to be raised by their people. It was a policy of genocide, make no bones about it.1175 Although Tasmania had fewer stolen Aboriginal children than in other parts of Australia, yet Ryan still sits mute on the question of genocide. She later quotes Premier Bacon: What happened at Wybalenna should never have occurred. It was the site of attempted genocide.1176 Bacon’s address was well-intentioned, but it was wide of the mark: it was not attempted genocide; the British Government was culpable of a programme of genocide over its period of occupation from 1803 to the mid-1830s and beyond, as we show in Part 2. Genocide was not restricted to Wybalenna. In ignoring the question of British genocide in Tasmania, or in not calling it out for what it is, Ryan can be criticized for passive revisionism, thereby contributing to public inertia in holding Britain accountable. It was not the failure of British conciliation policy that led to the extermination of the Palawa; but it was the predatory success of British land policy and the refusal of Britain to prosecute anyone who slaughtered an Aboriginal, it was the success of Britain’s dispossessory policy that drove the destruction and genocide of Aboriginal society. Conciliation is incompatible with dispossession unless there is accountability. Shared land use was spoken about by Britain, but was never enforced and was completely impractical under Britain’s system of property laws that conferred exclusive land use to the ‘owner’, supported by the laws of trespass and the legal right to defend one’s property to the point of justifiable homicide. 530 Ryan, through many decades, has opened an informative window onto the Tasmanian race war but, in attempting to examine the conflict from both sides, errs towards the placatory: ‘From first settlement, Aborigines exclaimed at the senseless brutality of European society, the excesses of authoritarian control, and the drive for conformity’.1177 She concludes : ‘In Aboriginal eyes the Europeans may have had superior technology, but they used this technology in a senseless obliteration of a landscape they did not understand’. 1178 With such generalizations, Ryan avoids the key question of British genocidal conduct in its expropriation of Aboriginal land. Several years ago, around mid-2010, Lyndall invited me to her home on the mid north coast of New South Wales. The purpose was to discuss a manuscript I was preparing on colonial Tasmania, including the deconstruction of genocide. Lyndall’s home was set high on a steep incline, surrounded by mature eucalypts. Inside was book lined. A large unfinished jigsaw was on the coffee table. A cat was dozing in the corner. Lyndall made us coffee. Other guests were just departing. Lyndall came straight to the point. How many Aboriginals do you believe were killed before Wybalenna? It was a loaded question, controversial, with different answers. I replied: I’m developing a massacre data base for Aboriginal killings across Australia. It already has over a thousand entries and I’ve barely begun. Initially, I used Microsoft Access as it allows data to be normalized in a relational database. But Access isn’t widely available to other historians, so I compromised by loading the data into Excel, which still allows searching and collating. I can give you a copy in due course, if you like. A few years later, I read in a newspaper and from the ABC website that Lyndall had secured a six-figure research grant to develop an Australia wide massacre database. I continued: Massacre statistics are only part of the story. Genocide is more than an absolute number of killings. Each killing can be contested, if there were no witnesses. Some historians only accept the evidence of a killing if it has been tested in court, and few such killings were ever tried. Lyndall said: Have you heard of Semelin. He is developing statistics for world-wide genocides. I’m communicating with him. My understanding of Jacques’ work was that it was in its early stages and he had a definition of genocide that was non-Lemkinian. I asked Lyndall: What is your definition of genocide? Do you know why Henry Reynolds now discounts Tasmanian genocide? Her reply intrigued me: When Henry first started to investigate Tasmanian genocide he was approached by some Tasmanian part-Aboriginals who said “Please don’t talk about Tasmanian genocide. It makes people believe we don’t exist. We were not 531 completely destroyed. We survive. We would prefer you to talk about reconciliation. This will allow our voice to be heard and let us press for land rights.” So Henry agreed. It is a common misconception that genocide means the complete extermination of a group; it does not. However, both Lyndall and Henry generally ignore the subject of genocide. I showed her the draft manuscript. I said: I found your book on The Aboriginal Tasmanians, particularly the summary on ethnography and the pastoralists, but also the Appendices for Aboriginal killings,1179 as illuminating research. Lyndall’s first book is organized around themes or perspectives: The Aboriginal Landscape, The Pastoralists 1820 – 1828, Robinson the Conciliator 1829 – 1830, and so on. I said: It would be interesting to see Tasmanian colonial history presented as phases within an occupation process. I’ve tried to use this approach in my manuscript. Lyndall scanned the document but did not like the construction. However, I was gratified to see that in 2012, she published a revised version of her work1180 that adopts a phased approach along the lines I had suggested: Invasion 1803 – 1826; War 1826 – 1831; Surrender 1829 – 1834; Incarceration 1835 – 1875. But the revision still avoided the subject of genocide, except in reference to other matters. Instead, it reintroduced a new estimate of Aborigines killed between 1823 and 1834: 878, 1181 a figure that cannot be checked because the underlying dataset was not provided, a figure that more than doubles her previous estimate, but can be dismissed by some critics as non-genocidal because a) there is no proposed evidence that the killings were driven by Government policy or b) that there was genocidal intent. That is, accountability is not sheeted home. As to the ‘Black War’, in her later 2012 book Ryan divides it into four phases: November 1823 – November 1826; December 1826 to October 1828; November 1828 to January 1832 (martial law); February 1832 to August 1834. These are Ryan’s mortality statistics for both sides of the frontier, but they ignore comorbidities such as the significant impact of female predation and kidnapping by British invaders, and the societal destruction caused by introduced disease, starvation and imposed living conditions when Aboriginals were held in captivity, both agencies being implicated in Lemkinian genocide. Phase Estimate of Aborigines killed Colonists killed Total Aboriginal: colonial death ratio Nov 1823 – Nov 1826 Dec 1826 – Oct 1828 Nov 1828 – Jan 1832 Feb 1832 – Aug 1834 Total 80 40 120 2:1 408 61 469 6:1.5 350 90 440 3.9:1 40 10 50 4:1 878 201 1079 4:1 532 Figure 170 Statistics of the Black War in the Settled Districts: 1824 - 18341182 Cultural genocide is another matter entirely, for which there is overwhelming evidence, if only demonstrated by the attempt of existing Palawa to try and reconstruct their language and identity from works by GA Robinson and others, a sad reflection on how destructive and total the British invasion of Tasmania became. The question of Tasmanian genocide will not be satisfactorily answered until we all agree on a common semantic framework. Lemkin’s UN Convention is the best we have. And death statistics can always be debated, as Windschuttle’s unhelpful contribution shows. What we can agree upon is a sum over history: we have different plausible estimates on the pre-contact Palawa population, and we have the statistics of the pure-blood Palawa population post-contact; they became zero. What happened in between can be assessed in terms of Lemkinian categorial agencies, which is the detailed subject of this book. Henry Reynolds (1999), Why Weren’t We told Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain? Keith Windschuttle (2002), Fabrication of Aboriginal History: volume 1, Van Diemen’s Land 1803 - 1847 In 2002, Keith Windschuttle published The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume 1,1183 which argued that ‘violence between whites and Aborigines in colonial Tasmania had been vastly exaggerated’.1184 With this flawed contention, Windschuttle ‘sought to rewrite one of the most troubling parts of Australian history’,1185 the focussed extermination of the Palawa between 1803 and 1833 (and beyond into the forties for the few survivors). The revisionist polemic immediately caused great divisions among those with an interest in Australian history, with opinion pitted against fact and politics challenging historicity, prejudice against verifiable evidence. One of Windschuttle’s central arguments was that Aboriginals had no concept of land as property and, therefore, Britain could legitimately claim Australia (and Tasmania) as land owned by no one. It is a ‘heroic’ assumption that Henry Reynolds rejects ‘in the face of 200 years of jurisprudence and at least 150 years of ethnography.’1186 Windschuttle’s contentious claim is based upon the assertion that the Palawa did not have a word for land. His sole reference was Ling Roth, who – in 1899 – compiled a limited retrospective vocabulary;1187 it was limited, because Britain was disinterested in ethnography. Windschuttle is committing a logical fallacy: because Ling did not note a word for ‘land’, therefore, no word existed; therefore, Aboriginals did not own any land. As Reynolds reminds us, Windschuttle seems unaware of Plomley’s extensive wordlist1188 533 that tabulates an extensive number of Palawa words relating to ‘country’ (what Aboriginals called ‘land’). 1189 Or if he is aware, he deliberately excises the evidence against his argument that there was no Aboriginal concept of land ownership. We conclude that Windschuttle deliberately misrepresented the truth or was ignorant of the truth. Both are culpable omissions. But it goes further. Windschuttle also argues that the Palawa were not fighting a war; instead, they were criminals who were disobeying British law. His extraordinary claim follows from his earlier argument that, if Aboriginals had no concept of land or property, then their insurgency against the British was not based upon territorial invasion but simple criminal misconduct, for which they brought lawful retribution upon themselves as miscreants. And because there is no body of case law that exposes white criminal conduct against the Aboriginals, therefore there was no such conduct, or it was limited to outlaws and criminals on the periphery of white colonial society. Once again, Windschuttle’s false logic is exposed, where he proceeds from a faulty premise to an erroneous conclusion. The Palawa spoke to any white who would listen about their severe grievances with the British invaders, among them Robinson who wrote in his journal on the 23rd November 1829 while on his Bruny Island mission: ‘What can be more unjust, what so inhumanly selfish, as to aim at a monopoly of their only means of subsistence, to offer a reward for the skins of kangaroos, which are slaughtered wholesale for the sake of their produce. Individuals who ought to have been actuated by more generous feelings, have encouraged this traffic and made a business of this outrageous plunder. What else than plunder! Are not these animals the exclusive property of the aborigines, and as such should they not be deemed sacred and inviolable! Certainly! But in this instance and in many others which impel mankind to the most absurd as well as unjust inconsistencies, the overwhelming love of money deluges all other considerations. As men in all stages are actuated in a greater or lesser degree by the same evil passions, let us refer this matter to ourselves. Let us suppose that we possessed a herd of cattle on which we placed our chief dependence for a support. Let the be placed before our eyes in good condition and thriving on the rich pastures with which the neighbouring land is blessed. Then let us behold a banditti of fierce and savage barbarians rush in upon our precious stock, and heedless of our cries or remonstrances slay them in open defiance, drag them to their homes and then consecrate by a public feast the mischief they had done and the public ruin they had spread amongst their adjacent enemies. Doubtless a vindictive sense of their predatory incursions would prevail, and we should be strongly urged to wreak vengeance upon such lawless aggressors. If such would be our feelings who vainly aspire to the subjection of our passions to the shrine of reason and humanity, what can or ought to be expected from the uncontrolled depravity of a savage. This is one of the manifold wrongs to which these poor creatures have been exposed, and it cannot be surprising that they should retain a strong sense of their injuries. 1190 534 One of Robinson’s strengths was his ability to engage with the Palawa and see their point of view, something generally lost with the authoritarian Arthur and a horde of settlers intent on exploitation for personal gain. Britain was aware of the lethal effect of their predatory behaviour against the Palawa; they would not be deterred; they would take the land and all its bounty for themselves. If the Palawa objected, they would be dealt with. And were. Robinson continues: ‘It is well known that it is very usual for a number of aborigines, when assembled by their fireside under the open canopy of heaven, to recount the sufferings of their ancestors, to dilate upon their present afflictions and to consult upon the best means of being released from their cruel and bloodthirsty foes. They have a tradition amongst them that white men have usurped their territory, have driven them into the forests, have killed their game and thus robbed them of their chief subsistence, have ravished their wives and daughters, have murdered and butchered their fellow-countrymen; and are wont whilst brooding over these complicated ills in the dense part of the forest, to goad each other on to acts of bloodshed and revenge for the injuries done to their ancestors and the persecutions offered to themselves through their white enemies.’1191 It was a classic positive feedback cycle: Britain continued their racial aggression, continued with accelerated land alienation and immigration, continued with violent assaults against the Palawa, continued with the one-sided extermination and depredation until the genocidal rout was completed. Marilyn Lake places this in further context: ‘[…] Windschuttle, unlike Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and many colonists, cannot bring himself to recognize that the British settlement was founded on the violent dispossession of another people. In his narrative, it is the natives who are the plunderers, thieves and intruders, not the settlers.’ 1192 She finishes her analysis: ‘By attending to the dynamic and violent nature of the colonial encounter, and the racialisation of colonial identities, we can also begin to understand the ways in which racial thinking became central to Australian identity and the national project, which themselves can only be understood in the larger imperial project.’ 1193 Lake’s observation also drives the core thesis of this book: that Imperialism and a sense of racial superiority anchored British genocide in Australia. Robert Manne concludes, in Whitewash: ‘What is even more alarming in the reception of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History is the way so many prominent Australian conservatives have been so easily misled by so ignorant, so polemical and so pitiless a book. The generation after Stanner broke the great Australian silence concerning the dispossession. It might be the task of the next generation, if the enthusiasm for Windschuttle is any guide, to prevent the arrival in its place of a great Australian indifference.’1194 535 In an age of tweets, Facebook and ‘chatting’, where opinion can masquerade as fact, our primary bulwark against faulty logic and deceptive argument is the determined marshalling of verifiable evidence to confront and break down encrusted prejudice. Even that may not be enough when secular, parochial concerns become more important than resolving injustice, inequality or misrepresentation through humanitarianism. Windschuttle’s folly was that he denies occupation by a British armed military force was an invasion for which the corollary was Aboriginal dispossession; he then pursues the illogical argument that Britain was following the lawful expropriation of land ‘owned by no one’. And if Aboriginals objected, if they resorted to insurgency, Windschuttle argues they were breaking British law, for which they deserved to be punished. But in describing such behaviour as criminality, Windschuttle does not admit that the Palawa were fighting a guerrilla war against their oppressors. For Windschuttle, the Palawa had no rights to their land, no right to resist, and could only blame themselves for their demise. Such is the distorted face of revisionism, and from such came the prolonged ‘history wars’. John Connor (2003), John Connor is a military historian who brings his particular expertise to the study of the army-led Australian frontier wars against Aboriginal society between 1788 and 1838, after which Britain left the fighting to settlers and police.1195 The last major British military campaign against Aboriginals was probably that of Major James Nunn in 1838 during which he conducted a genocidal mounted police and military (50th Regiment) operation over many weeks against the Kamilaroi on the Liverpool Plains north west of Tamworth in NSW at Waterloo Creek, when possibly hundreds of men, women and children were intentionally and indiscriminately slaughtered after a stockman, Frederick Harrington, was killed in reprisal for the abduction of Kamilaroi women, a widespread white practice that Britain systemically took no action against. Nunn was never charged; to have done so would have brought Britain into disrepute. Nunn reported to Lieutenant-Colonel Snodgrass, who was acting Governor of NSW. 1196 Snodgrass’ instructions to Nunn: You must lose no time in proceeding. You are to act according to your own judgment, and use your utmost exertion to suppress these outrages. There are a thousand Blacks there, and if they are not stopped, we may have them presently within the boundaries. 1197 Connor summarizes: Covering the first fifty years of British occupation in Australia, this book examines in detail the weapons and tactics Aboriginals, soldiers and settlers used to fight each other on the frontier. Aborigines developed a new form of warfare that differed from their traditional methods. Raiding parties took goods and foodstuffs when they were useful, and destroyed them when they were not. The British Army arrived in Australia with experience of frontier warfare in other parts of the Empire, but initially found it difficult to operate in the bush. However, once the British began using horses, they were able to track 536 and attack Aboriginal groups, and gained the advantage that would bring them victory.1198 Connor’s discussion of the Tasmanian race war is limited to the period between 1826 and 1831, the period of maximum British military engagement in Palawa suppression, although he admits: The frontier war began in earnest in Van Diemen’s Land in the mid-1820s, when the British attempted to occupy all the limited arable land on the island (almost two-thirds of Van Diemen’s Land being rugged mountains). By 1823 land grants stretched in an unbroken line across the island from north to south. Monpeliatta, a man of the Lairmairrener or Big River people, wryly commented that if Aborigines ‘left any place to go ahunting elsewhere…when they returned in the course of eight days, they found a hut erected.’ 1199 Connor seems to have chosen this period because, between 1826 and 1830 Tasmanian Aborigines, especially the Big River people, used farmhouse raids to wage an effective war against the British settlers in the midlands, between Hobart and Launceston. The east coast also saw hit and run tactics, along with the north west near the Van Diemen’s Land Company holdings. The central tiers and north east became a sanctuary of sorts for desperate survivors, but still they were pursued and were afraid to light fires for fear of being ambushed. By 1831, Britain terminated its military operations against the Palawa, with the genocidal ‘war’ effectively over; all that remained was ethnic cleansing, to round up the survivors and deport them to island detention in Bass Strait where the genocidal process continued out of public sight.1200 This is not strictly correct. Connor is focused on a particular period of British military operations against the Palawa because that is his interest, that and martial law, but the race war started episodically more than twenty years earlier against the British intruders as they began to press more aggressively into Palawa territory. The armed incursion gathered pace following an S-curve until the 1830s when the original Tasmanians finally succumbed to the colonizing onslaught, ceding their lives and hopes to an unyielding Arthur and his superiors who promised them freedom from oppression and their own land. They lied. In fact, the destruction of Palawa society began in 1803 when Britain invaded Tasmania; militarized parties acting under Governor King’s instructions moved into the north and south of the island, along with convicts and their keepers, together with a handful of settlers. King wanted to block any French interest in the area. That Tasmania was already settled was of small concern to British ambitions. The British invasive forces found grassland estates created by Aboriginal farming methods, estates ripe for British confiscation. In 1804, soldiers near Hobart massacred a number of Aboriginals who were hunting for game; no one was charged; Aboriginals never forgave or forgot the injustice.1201 In the beginning of the Tasmanian occupation process Britain operated a foraging economy, dependent on kangaroos and other game for survival. Commissariats issued 537 kangaroo meat as part of the Government ration. Tasmania became a contested space as soon as the competition for resources began for both land and game. It quickly developed into a contest for Aboriginal women. Lyndall Ryan notes: By the end of 1804 kangaroos had become the major source of fresh meat for all the colonists. For the Mouheneenner clan around Hobart and the Leterremairrener clan at Port Dalrymple, British kangaroo hunting brought complex outcomes. At first the clans sought to remove the kangaroos from the British hunters. Then they began to spear the hunters and take their dogs. After that they started to incorporate the dogs into their own economy as an item of gift and exchange. By February 1807, the gamekeepers began to kill the Mouheneenner and in reprisal the Aborigines speared several more gamekeepers. […] It is not surprising, then, that when John Oxley, the surveyor-general of New South Wales, reported on the settlements in Van Diemen’s Land two years later, he considered tat kangaroo hunting had led to a ‘considerable loss of life among the natives’, prevented the development of agriculture and encouraged bushranging.1202 As early as 1808, kangaroos near the settlements had been almost completely destroyed so hunters moved inland, followed by livestock, further encroaching on Palawa territory. A kangaroo-based economy persisted into the next decade, a period when land grants also began to accelerate under Macquarie’s patronage. Most of the fertile areas were being taken over for the exclusive use of pastoralists - free settlers – who were dependent on convict labour to manage their stock and build their pretentious Georgian residences. Aboriginal ‘trespass’ on ‘private property’ became unwelcome; indiscriminate shooting was the punishment, a practice tolerated by Government. Stockkeepers became exposed to Aboriginal hit and run raids. With their hunting and fishing grounds taken over, Aboriginals began to find their traditional food harder to obtain. See for example: Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: 109 – 125 under the subject ‘If it moves, shoot it...’ the impact of European settlement on the environment; Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians (1996): 77 ‘between August and October 1805, the commissariat received 7,740 kilograms of kangaroo meat.’; John Oxley, New South Wales surveyor general from 1812 to 1828, visited Tasmania in 1809: Upon a scarcity arising it has been the constant practice to endeavour to remedy it by receiving kangaroo into the store and issuing it nearly in the proportion 2 lbs for one Salt Beef or Pork [HRA 3/1: 575-6]; WN Hurst, A Short History of Land Settlement in Tasmania (1938): 5 ‘Governor Collins’ ambition was to encourage his settlers to grow sufficient meat and corn for his establishment, but he found it an uphill fight. The year 1807 was a year of famine, and many of his able-bodied men had to be induced to go into the bush and kill the wild game to keep way starvation.’ https://eprints.utas.edu.au/22625/1/Hurst-history-tasmania.pdf 538 In a male-skewed settler society, Palawa women became a valuable commodity. Sexual predation was condoned, if not entirely accepted. No one was ever charged. It was to prove fatal to Palawa society. From the second decade, kidnapping became a key driver for Palawa population collapse, and it continued into the decade after. Aboriginal families began to break apart; children became fewer, unlike the pre-contact Aboriginal demography. As Aboriginal dispossession (land alienation) increased, the Palawa resorted to guerrilla tactics to try and slow the process. In the third decade, they became more desperate; but Britain grew correspondingly more resolute in attempting to suppress the insurgency. Aboriginal numbers continued to drop. Introduced disease further cut through them and their society began to crumble. By the early 1830s, after a protracted British military campaign augmented by armed convicts, field police, and roving/ pursuing parties, the Palawa unwillingly agreed to progressive deportation offshore. They were blackmailed: be killed or be exiled. No treaty was ever offered to them; there was no need after Arthur gained the upper hand with his final Lemkinian solution to the Palawa problem. In summary, we can draw a direct correlation between the acreage amount of land grants by period and the escalation of Aboriginal resistance1203 for which Britain’s answer was militarized, culminating in martial law between 1828 and 1831 when killing indigenous people was made lawful. It will therefore be no surprise that Palawa dispossessory resistance became greatest under Arthur, who indiscriminately accelerated the land grants from his arrival in 1824, with Britain’s approval, in order to meet the generated demand from Britain’s policy of increased emigration. Connor accurately observes: Van Diemen’s Land saw some of the bitterest fighting of any Australian war,1204 and the largest deployment of British troops to an Australian frontier, which culminated in Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur’s ‘Black Line’ operation of 1830.1205 Connor carefully avoids using the term ‘genocide’; it does not appear in his Index; his sole reference to genocide is dismissive, where he uses Henry Reynolds’ contrarian comments to deny its actuality or relevance along the expanding Australian frontier when Government and settlers purged the land of Aboriginals and transformed it into private property, subject to British laws of ownership. As a military historian, perhaps he believes the emotionally laden word connotes onesidedness in racial conflict, reeking of dishonour, whereas his strength is in analysing war and the prosecution of armed conflict according to set rules and tactics between comparable adversaries. He writes less than objectively: Windschuttle’s argument that genocide was not committed in Van Diemen’s Land should be directed towards popular historians and journalists who hold this idea rather than those in academia who generally do not. 539 This is incorrect, unless Connor is referring to traditionalist historians such as Manning Clark, Henry Reynolds, Geoffrey Blainey and the like. Equally, there is an increasing number of recent researchers who, after carefully evaluating the evidence, conclude that the destruction of the Palawa conformed to Lemkinian genocide (Colin Tatz, Ray Gibbons, Robert Hughes, NG Butlin, Shane Breen, A. Dirk Moses, DC Watt, Tom Lawson and others). Connor’s derogation of ‘popular historians and journalists’ is shallow and misplaced. Reynolds has pointed out that claims for nineteenth-century Tasmania as an example of genocide are made out of ignorance by writers with little actual knowledge of Tasmanian history. While the British sociologist Alison Palmer contends that genocide was committed against Aborigines in Queensland in the 1800s, she is forced to concede that what she defines as ‘genocide’ was ‘piecemeal and occurred in many small and relatively isolated incidents’, was carried out ‘over a long period of time’ and without ‘an overtly defined policy’.1206 As Reynolds suggests, it is impossible to show that ‘hundreds of individuals in many parts of a large colony over a period of fifty years’ all acted with the intent to commit genocide’. Ibid: x, citing Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain?: 117. This is a reference to the Queensland genocidal race war, not that in Tasmania. Later in this book, Reynolds’ arguments against genocide are assessed and for the most part rejected. In the context of the Queensland quote, neither Reynolds nor Connor mentions the significant strategic role of DT Seymour, Queensland Police Commissioner between 1861 and 1895, who oversaw the operations of the Native (Mounted) Police in committing large scale atrocities against Aboriginals as a collection of groups across the state on behalf of the Queensland Government. Something similar happened in Tasmania, where Arthur was the genocidal architect. Contrary to Connors and Reynolds, Queensland ‘dispersal operations’ were ruthlessly carried out area by area, tribe by tribe, by hundreds of police and pastoralists for a sustained period of around fifty years precisely with the intent to exterminate Aboriginals as individual groups – in whole or in part - in a process that conforms to Lemkinian genocide. The Tasmanian genocidal process became a template for the efficient removal of Aboriginals in other Australian colonies. Britain now had a proven industrial process for intentionally processing the Native population out of their homelands: land alienation; emigration; subjugation and repression; ‘dispersal’ (extermination and indiscriminate killing); Aboriginal removal (ethnic cleansing); managed detention for the survivors; eugenics, and more. Once a targeted society is brought to its knees it becomes vulnerable to further persecution, something we still see today. Genocide is a pathological discriminatory process involving a normative behavioural disorder, perhaps not medically certifiable but criminally accountable, which Connor ignores in his preferred set piece configurations of military conflict as it presents the bloody one-sidedness of Britain’s determined invasion of Australia. It was a military-led invasion without honour, an invasion that, through an adaptive learning process, progressively deployed the patterned mechanics, the policy driven programme of feral pest eradication, of what we now call Lemkinian genocide, inter alia, the targeted destruction of a group (or a set of related groups) in whole or in part. 540 It was not possible to remove Aboriginal society from their land without bloodshed; Britain was obediently equal to the task in a hierarchical chain of command within a class bound civilization, we will argue less civilized than self-interested where exploitation was for the greater good of Empire and hegemonic reach. Connor defends Arthur’s genocidal role by asserting that ‘Arthur himself was a humane man who later wrote that he regretted that the British had not negotiated a treaty with the Aborigines when they first arrived’;1207 as we point out in Part 2, what Arthur wrote for posterity and what he actually did were often starkly different. Connor had an opportunity to deconstruct this putative Tasmanian genocidal process but, as a military scholar, chose to reject the possibility that the British Government could be deliberately capable – and culpable - of crimes against humanity. Instead, Connor takes us through the various British military operations that he justifies in the context of conflict around a contested space and concludes – regretfully - that Arthur made a strategic error in not deploying horses for his military use: A small unit of mounted troops operating in the settled districts could have sufficiently harassed the Tasmanian Aborigines to force them into negotiations and done this more effectively and with less cost than the Line operation1208 which Connor points out was both unsuccessful and expensive.1209 Connor, in citing Ryan, Plomley and Reynolds, 1210 plays down the tally of Aboriginals killed, falling into the common error that genocide is a game of absolute numbers slaughtered, and that, if those killed were enemy combatants or if the number killed was relatively low, then it could not be genocide. This is incorrect. It misunderstands the nature and purpose of Lemkinian genocide: the targeted destruction of a group, in whole or part. Connor’s analysis of the Van Diemen’s Land frontier war, because of his predilection towards apologia, because of his defence of British military operations, because he is uncritical of Arthur as Colonel Commanding and Lieutenant Governor, is therefore suspect. James Boyce (2008), Van Diemen’s Land James Boyce is an excellent writer who, in 2008, explored a landscape of ‘changing relations between bushrangers and lieutenant governors, convicts and Aborigines, and of the growth of a unique society’. He focuses ‘less on how the convict settlers of Van Diemen’s Land changed their new environment, than on how it changed them’.1211 That is the book’s weakness. He views Tasmanian colonization through the lens of the British convict system, but Palawa society is out of the field of view, becoming the collateral damage of economic settlerism. It is not until the Appendix that Boyce turns his attention as an afterthought to the subject of genocide – Towards Genocide - which he briefly examines in the context of Government ethnic cleansing policy for Aboriginals between 1827 and 1838. 1212 What Boyce means by ‘towards genocide’ is unclear. Perhaps he means that Britain’s conduct approached but never became genocide? Or perhaps he means that he was 541 unable to sustain, within the boundaries of his book, an evidence-based argument that confirmed Britain’s occupation of Tasmania was genocidal. The index does not mention genocide at all, although there is a fleeting reference to what Boyce calls ‘ethnic clearance’, for which there is a transitory and inaccurate discussion in the text: ‘government sponsored ethnic clearances conducted on the west coast after the fighting was over’.1213 In fact, the entire dispossessory process across the breadth of Tasmania between 1803 and the 1840s can be considered as Government-led ethnic cleansing with key genocidal attributes (as we will show), sometimes conducted under Martial Law. The ethnic violence did not limit itself to the final stage of the race war between 1828 and 1831 but began from 1803 with the British invasion and gathered pace as land grants and emigration increased, a process that redefined the Palawa as unwanted trespassers on ‘private property’. The destruction of the Palawa was genocidal then, as it is now. The Lemkinian framework reveals the constant categorial agencies across time. Only the terminology has changed. Once it was called extermination, as though removing a feral pest; now it is identified as targeted destruction through killing, kidnapping and so on. Mens rea applies as much today as it did then, the sense of right and wrong, of a guilty mind. But landed prosperity assuages humanitarian concerns where there are winners and losers. And if the losers cease to exist, or only survive through the effects of sexual predation and mixed-race descendants, how can we feel guilt? After all, we did not do the killing. For such reasons, how can we be accountable? Why should we say ‘sorry’? So the cycle continues. Boyce leaves us with a series of ‘ripping yarns’, popular to be sure, but leaving us wanting more nourishing food for our curiosity as to what really happened in the extended land-grab process, what the ‘other side of the frontier’ (as Henry Reynolds calls it) looked like, where the sharp sword of British genocide scythed through Palawa society with barely a twinge of Government regret. But that is almost always the nature of any process whenever there is asymmetric power between parties in some contested space and wealth – in its various forms - is the prize. The term ‘contested space’ has crept into popular historical discussion about the process of colonization. But the term encourages a neutral view that different parties merely had contrary aspirations for the use of the land, implying or imputing a disagreement at best. Therefore, the term is misleading. We are talking about a British invasion front that ignored Indigenous rights and largely continues to do so today, where the collective will of Aboriginal groups can be circumvented by mining and other companies cynically stacking the Aboriginal voting numbers through ‘bus-ins’ and other arrangements. Neutralization of the terminology in the mechanics of genocide also finds its expression in the use of the term ‘Europeans’ – favoured by university faculties – rather than the appellation British, which directly sheets home genocidal accountability without obfuscation or pretence. 542 In scientific enquiry, objectivity is paramount in any measurement; the data-point must be free of ambiguity or apprehended bias. Many ‘soft science’ historical studies have yet to learn the distinction between objectivity and inherent bias. In such a one-sided tussle, morality is optional, and humanity becomes an orphan as we will see in Part 2, with history sanitized for political and economic ends. The result of Boyce’s book is that, for the most part, we are collectively left absolved – in the past and also today - of any real accountability for the violent destruction of a race; the work becomes another form of revisionist myth-making, enjoyable but limited in its scope and a missed opportunity for adding to the fundamental deconstruction of Tasmanian formative colonial history, a history mired in blood. Bill Stanner, 2011 (1936 – 1979), After the Dreaming and Other Essays Between 1936 and 1979 the anthropologist W. E. H. (Bill) Stanner1214 became the nation’s conscience when he publicly raised the question of Aboriginal injustice and the systemic failure of Aboriginal policy by a long succession of Governments, both State and Federal, with generations of Aboriginals reduced to living in extreme poverty without access to reasonable education or health services or adequate housing.1215 His important collected essays were published in 2011 after they had been out of print for decades, following the advocacy of Robert Manne1216 to his friend, Chris Feik, of Black Inc. The collection1217 included his seminal Boyer lecture from 1968, which he called After the Dreaming, where he introduced the term: The Great Australian Silence. In his lecture, Stanner did not specifically raise the subject of Palawa extermination. Nevertheless, his Boyer reflections provide the disturbing context for that tragic Tasmanian period of genocidal racial displacement and repression between 1803 and 1843, a period that persisted in a fractal-like pattern across Australia from 1788 until the late 20th century and arguably continues today with continuing Aboriginal inequality and social disadvantage.1218 A fractal pattern is one that is self-similar at all scales. How does this relate to Australian genocide? We find that the type genocidal process operates at the local level, the district/ regional level and the Australian level, with type genocidal triggers cascading along an abstraction gradient across each level. The process levels are self-similar in that they form a nested decomposition. Each type process level has its own instantiation and shows a defined genocidal behaviour, or patterned response to some stimulus. The type behaviour can be propagated in a form of inheritance, both intra- and transgenerationally, shaped by imposed constraint rules or Government policies, for example: ‘lawfully’ alienate Aboriginal land; if they resist, ‘lawfully’ kill them. Policies give rise to triggering condition such as: [in reprisal for x] followed by categorial agency, [y] does [z] with some expected or intentional outcome, say [Aboriginals exterminated or removed within an area]. Genocidally motivated killing can be at the level of a stock keeper ‘protecting’ his sheep across a multiplicity of such instances, or a roving party – one of many - ambushing an Aboriginal group in 543 accordance with Government policy, or the Government deploying its military to enforce dispossession across some territory. Another way of viewing this: many biological structures and learned behaviours grow by modelling themselves upon themselves, a form of non-genetic templating using spatially structured contexts. ‘The role of structural inheritance in heredity should therefore depend on the extent to which variations in pre-existing structure can be transmitted from cell to cell or, in the context of inheritance across generations of multicellular organisms, the extent to which structural information contained in the gametes can affect the development of embryonic features and can be transmitted to the embryonic germ cells.’ 1219 Bill’s focus was on the structure of race relations since early settlement and how that structure forms the ‘anatomy of Australian life’, beginning with Philip’s punitive raids in 1790 against the local Aboriginals, an episode usually glossed over by many historians, but which shows Phillip as a person who is: ‘an easy victim of pique, whose nerve and judgment can both go wrong at the same time, who reacts quite disproportionally to cause, and who, having been given ample time to cool, for a second time goes well beyond the edge of intent to commit judicial murder.’ 1220 From Phillip’s time the displacive pattern of ethnic cleansing was set. Aboriginal society would never receive justice from their new British landlords. Bill reminds us that: The continent at occupation was held to be disposable because it was assumed to be “waste and desert”. The truth was that identifiable aboriginal groups held identifiable parcels of land by unbroken occupancy from a time beyond which, quite literally, “the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.”1221 He notes, with an anthropological eye, that many teaching institutions and most of the general public had intentionally forgotten the history of Aboriginal dispossession, reducing it to a ‘melancholy footnote’.1222 Pressing the point that our collective forgetting was no accident, he writes: ‘Inattention on such a scale cannot possibly be explained by absentmindedness. It is a structural matter, a view from a window which has been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the landscape. What may well have begun as a simple forgetting of other possible views turned under habit and over time into something like a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale.’1223 The Palawa disremembering, made easier by their almost total destruction, then becomes a contextual referent, a data point, in Bill’s plangent message: we no longer think about the past and how we got to where we are now; it is of little interest to us; Aboriginal society has become invisible, a forgotten race with almost no hold on our attention. He concludes his lecture on ‘the great Australian silence’, what he also termed ‘the cult of disremembering’, with: 544 ‘We have been able for so long to disremember the aborigines that we are now hard put to keep them in mind even when we most want to do so.’1224 Since Bill’s urgent call around fifty years ago for a national and structural change to Aboriginal policy, successive Governments have generally failed to act, preferring to forget the First People; many remain marginalized today, the forgotten people, faceless, without a name, to whom we mistakenly believe we owe nothing. Not even accountability. Since Bill wrote his articles there has been little change in our collective attitude to race relations; policies have hardened; incarceration is our answer to Aboriginal poverty; our humanitarian callosities have turned to stone; any small initiative such as the Uluru statement are dismissed in their entirety by Governments focussed on re-election and popular opinion. Few people are listening anymore. Few people care. The great Australian silence continues.1225 Tom Lawson (2014), The Last Man A British Genocide in Tasmania In the second decade of the second millennium, Tom Lawson argued that the British Government committed genocide in Tasmania.1226 The book was ‘controversial’, if only because various history faculties and eminent historians had rejected the possibility. As for the general Australian population, the subject appears to be of little interest. Tom’s book asserts that British history should be re-examined, using up-to-date archival material, for the policies and practices that drove the destruction of Aboriginal society with the Palawa among the first to be exterminated. Tom’s assessment: that the idea of genocide in Tasmania can be discussed glibly by modern-day apologists for empire is evidence of how little the question of colonial genocide seems to matter in Britain today. In Australia, too, scholarly debates about genocide often deliberately avoid detailed consideration of their implications for the British centre of the former Empire.1227 Tom is correct; it’s now time to dust off history and re-examine the formative events of colonial Tasmania, something that this book will attempt to do by placing the British Government’s genocidal role in centre stage rather than being dismissed as an ‘unplanned consequence’ of the British invasion. For colonial Tasmania, the economic benefits of Palawa genocide outweighed the Indigenous human cost. After all, Britain could easily wash the slaughterhouse afterwards and rewrite history. So they did. We will argue later that certain behavioural phenotypes such as obesity or racism or lack of empathy or a statistically diagnosable societal fingerprint may be rapidly inherited through a Lamarckian model (inheritance of acquired characteristics) that may not involve random WallaceDarwinian changes to the genome over millions of years or, if it does, through parts of the genome being switched on or off within a generation in response to environmental stressors. It follows that we may have collectively inherited certain behaviours from our genocidal ancestors whose conduct was moulded by societal stressors such as Imperialism, racism and rampant selfinterest. For example: we know that idiot savants are born with certain extraordinary capabilities that are neurologically ‘prewired’ and not learned; we know that genomically identical twins can develop 545 different behavioural phenotypes such as schizophrenia; we know that diet can have major heritable physiological effects across generations. The exact non-genetic mechanisms of extended heredity are still to be understood, but can involve the epigenome (DNA methylation), and RNA; heredity pathways can also be cytoplasmic, structural, somatic, symbiotic, environmental, behavioural, and cultural among various possibilities. For an overview of the inheritance of instinctive behaviour, see Beccy Cudmore, July 2017, The Evolutionary Roots of Instinct Did behaviours that seem ingrained become fixed through epigenetic mechanisms and ancestral learning? 1228 Ian McFarlane, Murray Johnson (2015), Van Diemen’s Land An Aboriginal History1229 Nicholas Clements (2015), The Black War Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania Nick Brodie (2017), The Vandemonian War The secret history of Britain’s Tasmanian invasion Each of the British points of invasion around Australia was militarized from the beginning. The same was true for Tasmania. As a cost-saving measure, Britain progressively transferred the responsibility for controlling Aboriginal resistance from the military to civilian police and armed ‘settlers’. As we have seen, much of the literature on early Tasmanian ‘colonization’ until the end of the 20th century tends to create a narrative myth that the British occupation process caused frontier collisions with the Palawa that were localised within a contested space to farmers, sealers, stock keepers and ne’er-do-wells such as outlaws, a myth that Arthur was keen to suggest to his superiors, a fiction that Arthur’s superiors in the Colonial Office and British Government were equally disposed to believe, a myth that ignored Britain’s genocidal agency. If the role of the British Government is questioned at all by many historians, it is usually in the context of failed conciliation and humanitarian policies. Nick Brodie 1230 challenges this popular myth by setting out the story of: ‘how the British truly occupied Van Diemen’s Land, deploying regimental soldiers and special forces, armed convicts and mercenaries’ where ‘in the 1820s and 1830s the British deliberately pushed the Aboriginal people out, driving them to the edge of existence’. Brodie writes: ‘Far from being localised fights between farmers and hunters of popular memory, this was a bigger war of sweeping campaigns and brutal tactics, waged by military and paramilitary forces subject to a Lieutenant Governor who was also the Colonel Commanding’. Brodie is, of course, referring to Colonel George Arthur, whom we will frequently meet in this book. Brodie continues ‘This is the story of an empire conquering an island and calling it a settlement’. 546 Brodie gives us a fresh perspective on the racist oppression that formed the backbone of Palawa conquest, driven by Britain’s territorial interests: ‘The Vandemonian War was the British Empire’s best-kept secret. Invasion was called settlement. Ethnic cleansing was called conciliation. Genocide was naturalised as extinction.’1231 But nowhere in his book does Brodie elaborate on extermination or dispossession or ethnic cleansing or genocide; they are subjects absent from the book’s index. Rather, Brodie’s theme is war, a secret war prosecuted by the British Government, a war that went beyond what historians had previously called the Black War, a war that was ‘planned and executed through extensive chains of command, leaving a rich documentary archive’.1232 Where is Brodie’s evidence that: ‘the colonial government condoned atrocities, and that it deliberately covered the truth through propaganda and obfuscation’? 1233 He discovered a manuscript in the Tasmanian Archives with the designation CSO1/1/320 (7578) labelled ‘No 7/ records relating to the Aboriginals’ that was previously unknown to most historians. It is this manuscript volume that provides such rich confirmation for Britain’s paramilitary assault against the Palawa, particularly during Arthur’s term as Commander in Chief, and forms the logical basis for Brodie’s valuable book. Elsewhere Brodie refers to this file as 7878, but this is probably a typographic error. Regarding the file provenance, Brodie notes: ‘Preparing for spring incursions into the ‘settled districts’, Colonial Secretary John Burnett acted to support the war by making it easier to document. In August 1828 he created a correspondence code for addressing issues connected with Aboriginal people, designating it 7578. This administrative decision marks the moment from which the Vandemonian War became extraordinarily well documented, and by which such documentation was preserved.’ [Ibid: 24]. In November 1828, Arthur declared martial law. Therefore, file 7578 supplements what we know of Arthur’s war from the Great Britain – House of Commons Paper 259 of 1831 (Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land) , which was censored by Lord Goderich (the Secretary of State) to remove any evidence that incriminated the British Government in culpable Aboriginal genocide. As John Connor notes, in his introduction to Tom Lawson’s book (Tom Lawson (2014), The Last Man A British Genocide in Tasmania): ‘This study, whilst obviously controversial, provides an important contribution to the current public debate that is reassessing the record of the British Empire following the recent emergence of new archival sources.’ Brodie’s archival discovery falls into this category, allowing us to see the British Government’s genocidal role more clearly than ever before. However, Brodie may be overstating the value of 7578 in providing strong evidence of Britain’s militarized role in what he calls the Vandemonian War; most of 7578 is concerned with correspondence between Arthur and his heavily armed civilian roving 547 parties, including ‘Jorgenson’s diligently recorded administration of the roving parties’.1234 What 7578 does not show in any breadth is the Colonel Commanding’s correspondence with his military commanders. Therefore, to accept Brodie’s appellation of a ‘Vandemonian War’ we must recognize the genocidal conflict as one involving civilians and the military, all of whom were under Arthur’s control, a war that was sometimes undeclared, a war that resolved itself as martial law, but a war nonetheless where the Palawa were variously painted by propagandists and selfinterested parties as enemy combatants, guerrilla insurgents and civilian criminals. Brodie concludes: ‘It would be easy to fall into the old habit of the ‘Black War’ narrative and turn a complex war into an ethno-cultural morality tale or resistance fable. A final platitude about fallen warriors, the shared experiences of war, the survival and renewal of culture and identity, or any other cliché could help conform this work to narrative convention and round it to a fitting end. But the Vandemonian War has a grimmer message more pertinent for the present day – this age of halftruths, cultural and ethnic partisanship and the intellectual vacuum left by that great postmodern conceit that all truth is relative. Unearthed after nearly two centuries of established history, the Vandemonian War allows us to see that a society can be led to do almost anything – and then come to believe it did not do it at all’.1235 Brodie’s summation is hard to argue against, although some revisionist historians will no doubt try, but in not mentioning Britain’s genocidal agency in Palawa dispossession, in his focus on a meticulously planned and secretive military and paramilitary campaign, he avoids the key structural policy element in the charged drama of brutal Palawa conquest, a picture far from the benign settler triumphalism most of us are taught to believe as Britain propagated its dispossessory process across Australia. If it was a war, as Brodie asserts, it was a one-sided war indeed where extermination was legitimized and - during Martial Law - made legal. In the first 140 years of brutal British colonization across Australia, not one white was ever prosecuted for killing an Aboriginal, apart from the perpetrators of the Myall Creek massacre in 1838. Britain co-opted civilians into its genocidal policy. During Arthur’s term of office, he provided a financial bounty to his paramilitary roving parties (sometimes with a land grant thrown in) for the capture of a living Aboriginal. But in order to capture, it was necessary to kill. Roving parties included armed convicts. Arthur provisioned all the roving parties with quantities of guns and ammunition. None were prosecuted for Aboriginal murder, not Batman, not Anstey, not Jorgenson, no one. Britain did not see killing Aboriginals as a crime. Arthur softened his bounty payment requirements in 1830, offering the reward in at least one known instance for each Aboriginal killed or captured. 548 In this instance, Arthur offered the reward to an ex-convict called Fortosa for a period of 12 months; it included a thousand acres of land, provided he ‘captured’ at least ’20 adult Natives’. The land grant increased in proportion to the number of captives over 20. The £5 bounty was for any adult Aboriginal killed or captured. Arthur offered £2 for each child. ‘The Lieut Governor has approved of the Reward of One thousand acres of Land, to Fortosa, being increased in quantity or diminished, according to the number of Natives captured shall exceed or fall short of Twenty, as, also should the party be unavoidably compelled to use violence, and loss of life ensue, that the Capture thus made, shall be admitted a claim for reward.1236’ . We do not yet have a documented tally of the total rewards paid - and who they were paid to - for the period when the bounty scheme was in operation. But the truth is harsher and far more grim: it was a genocidal war of displacement primarily driven by British land policies for accelerated settlement. During this protracted thirty-year race war that Britain’s colonial administration sought to portray as illegal Aboriginal resistance to a humanitarian and civilizing influx of a peaceable society, the pureblood Palawa were reduced from many thousand – the exact pre-contact number is unknown - to a few dozen and then none. Aboriginal rights are diminishing … If we think about it at all, we perceive the Aboriginal rights issue – wrongly in my view - as a numbers game. If Aboriginals are now only about 3% of our population, we tell ourselves: Why should they get disproportionately more aid than working mothers or gay couples or refugees or the unemployed or the poor? And why should Indigenous society own any land – now or in the past - if it was not turned to productive capitalist use? 1237 It is an ill-conceived argument, utilitarian at best and demonstrably false, which exposes our prejudices and ignores our violent history, an argument driven by an asymmetric economic justification that, in applying a financial balance sheet model to unfair advantage, ignores the rights of all parties to some shared space including those that are otherwise voiceless: the minorities, the environment, the dispossessed. … along with recognition of the crime of genocide… Genocide is an odious crime against humanity. It is now, and it was in the 19 th century when Britain invaded New Holland and its southern reaches of Tasmania. Can we judge this culpable British behaviour? We will argue, yes: in the case of Tasmania, there is evidence Imperial Britain was deeply aware that what it was doing to the indigenous Palawa population was both calamitous (an ‘indelible stain’) and wrong (morally reprehensible by the reasonable standards of any age). If we are charitable, call it a massive failure of governance. If we are more judgmental, Tasmania was an early proving ground for a continent-wide fractal-like pattern of genocide. It was a massive breakdown of humanitarian values that placed economic exploitation first. Has anything changed today? 549 Governance is the system of checks-and-balances, the framework of rules and practices by which the governing body ensures accountability, fairness and transparency in the governing body’s relationship with its stakeholders. The governance framework consists of: explicit and implicit ‘contracts’ between the governing body and the stakeholders for distribution of responsibilities, rights and rewards; procedures for balancing the interests of stakeholders according to their duties, privileges and roles; procedures for proper supervision and control of information flows between the governing body and stakeholders.1238 We have a similar failure of governance today where Government checks and balances are too often subordinated to entrenched corporate and capitalist interest. The 99% are left with a contemporary form of dispossession. Also see Karlson Hargroves, Michael Smith (2006), The Natural Advantage of Nations who argue for the integration of competitiveness with sustainability, an objective that is fast receding in only 10 years from when the book was written. Beyond the outdated inadequacies of Gross Domestic Product, we need reliable measures of wellness, of societal well-being, if only to calibrate the increasing extent of social and economic inequality and unsustainable growth at all costs. Without such measures, Aboriginal rights and welfare, even the proposed Uluru statement of 2017, are lost in a cacophony of self-interest.1239 …and the lack of governance… Governance issues were secondary for the Colonial British Government, which relied upon a network of inherited class-based privileges in the service of Empire, administrative functionaries largely drawn from the military along with an appointed cohort, all reporting back to the Colonial Office in a rigid hierarchical structure determined by wealth and power, by rigid obedience to authority. From the mid-19th century, Pax Britannica was augmented by Victoria Regis, with half the globe coloured Empire red. The rewards for a clasping army of Imperial adherents were land-based prosperity. With forcible Indigenous dispossession, the acquisition costs were negligible. It was a massive wealth transfer from Aboriginals to invader. Within the colonization process, the key stakeholders for Britain were wealthy capitalists, colonists, and large corporate entities, together with the British Government and its state sanctioned enterprises such as the East India Company and other companies under a Royal Charter. None of the takeover was possible without a strong military and determined political resolve. The rights of Indigenous stakeholders were overwhelmingly unrecognized. After all, what rights did mere fauna possess? The consequences of this British governance oversight, of Imperial hubris, of rampant exploitation, were genocidal. It was a price Britain was happy to accept. It was a price we are now happy to ignore. … and accountability In Australia (and elsewhere), Britain evaded genocidal accountability by bending the rules of humanitarian policy, by controlling the legal process, by putting economics first, by putting the demands of the colonists first, by putting expansionary colonial Imperialism first, by putting British global maritime power first. 550 Britain has never shown contrition, has never said it is sorry or regretful for its genocidal conduct, or for fomenting genocidal behaviour amongst its Australian settlers.1240 It was never sorry for the Aboriginal land carve-up, which it conducted with industrious resolve. It never sought to quell the rate of immigration, knowing the dispossessory effect. The rights of Aboriginal society were put aside for the greater good of Empire. Racism was accepted by Britain as a necessary consequence of its firmly held belief in its racial superiority. Colonization depended on the British conviction that it had a right to exploit Aboriginal land for the benefit of its territorial ambitions in the pursuit of global power. It was a small next step to justify Aboriginal extermination as a Law of Nature, as survival of the fittest. What began as class-based hereditary privilege trickled down to the rights of settler sovereignty as Britain disgorged its emigrants into expropriated Native lands. The bloody corollary to legalized Indigenous dispossession was forced Aboriginal displacement. Such were the mechanics of genocide. What have we learned? … From the 18th to well into the 19th century, Britain underwent an industrial and agricultural revolution. It was the fuel for expansionary Imperialism, profitable for capitalists, but too few home-grown jobs were required for the new, more efficient, economy. With Colonialism, Britain could transport its redundant workers and unwanted poor to the global geographic areas of labour need, with wealthy capitalists in the vanguard. British emigration became an industry.1241 The bureaucratic process of alienating Aboriginal land became an industry. Aboriginal displacement and extermination became an industry. … how the law can – or should – be impartial… It is almost always the case that in an n-party relationship the stronger or dominant party imposes the transactional rules. It was no different in Tasmania. Under British Law, sexual predation against Aboriginals was not a crime; nor unsustainable exploitation of Aboriginal food resources; nor kidnapping; nor extermination, not if it was justified as ‘self-defence’, not if it was carried out in secret, not if there were no witnesses willing to testify against the perpetrators. Introduced disease became an ‘act of God’, what we now call ‘force majeure’, a ‘chance’ occurrence, an ‘unavoidable’ accident, or conversely, biological ‘unfitness’ of the racially stereotyped victim. The frontier gender imbalance invoked the law of ‘supply and demand’. Aboriginal women became a commodity. Genocide in all its vectorial agencies became a variegated modality for British economic triumphalism. Introduced disease was not unavoidable, nor was it a chance occurrence. It was certainly not an ‘act of God’. It was driven by the circumstances of violent occupation and invasive contact. The bullet and bayonet were merely a labour-intensive coup de grâce. 551 Disease became another vectorial agency of genocide, avoidable if whites resiled from contact or provided adequate treatment. Britain never considered this possibility. A simple question is: Did the primary disease pathogens exist before the British came? The answer is generally no. Disease became a weapon of choice for Britain and its horde of settlers, requiring little effort and less concern for Indigenous wellbeing. Aboriginals could succumb to death like wheat before the wind, with Britain claiming dubious deniability of their involvement. Like many such places of British colonization and conquest, pathogens became the silent killers of Indigenous society: pneumonia, pertussis, smallpox, influenza, gonorrhoea and other STDs. The Tasmanian Palawa had little immune resistance and died in their multitudes when they were detained in cold and unhygienic conditions of close confinement and poor nutrition. It would be the same across Australia, where the genocidal process could be helped along by poisoned flour or poisoned water or infected blankets or sexually transmitted disease or sexual predation or poor nutrition, substituting bush tucker with alcohol, flour, tea, sugar and tobacco. Loss of hope would follow and is with large parts of Aboriginal society still. 1242 … could genocide happen again… When Britain invaded Australia, they carried with them white supremacist thinking that Aboriginals were a subservient inferior race who could be exploited for their labour or white sexual gratification, or alternatively, could be removed like feral pests, like vermin. Australia has still not recovered from this racist legacy. Our ‘diggers’ are a construct of contrived mateship mythology, more attractive to believe than bloody displacement of the original inhabitants on a heroic scale that we have struggled to suppress from history. For Britain, Aboriginals were part of the ecosystem, like fauna and flora, and such found species were available to exploitation or extermination by the ‘superior’ species. So that is what Britain did. … and have we changed… If the crime of genocide is usually initiated by the state, does it fall within a more general category of state criminality? Was Imperial Britain a criminal association? Kramer and others argue that, until about thirty years ago, the crimes of the rich and powerful tended to be divided into corporate crime and state crime; whereas we now recognize that the two types of crime are functionally interdependent. Kramer and his colleagues called this criminological area ‘state-corporate’ crime, where political governance entities illegally collude with parties involved in economic production and distribution for the purposes of wilful malfeasance and determined social injustice. Within this genre of criminality, they identify two sub-types: state-initiated corporate crime, when corporations employed by the government engage in deviance; and state-facilitated corporate crime, where government regulatory instruments fail to restrain deviant conduct.1243 552 But what of corporate-initiated state crimes,1244 where corporations coerce states into criminal deviancy, for example, the demands of Tasmanian settler society for their Government to declare martial law against the Palawa? And can a state be a criminal association if it colludes with business in state sponsored Aboriginal dispersal operations of the kind conducted by Arthur’s roving and pursuing parties? Today we have the unending examples of white collar corporate crime being forensically exposed by the Royal Commission into the insurance, banking and finance industry,1245 where money laundering was rife, where fees were fraudulently and systematically charged without performing any service, where the regulator (ASIC) was not kept informed of malfeasance under the Corporations Act, or if ASIC was informed, it either failed to take action or resolved to impose a limp administrative undertaking on the perpetrator to do better. An intense judicial light has been shone across the fetid underbelly of business, despite the objections from some Government quarters. Yet there is little comfort for those who have been irretrievably damaged by corporate financial misconduct. It seems the excesses of the past are still with us but are simply wearing different clothes. The rich and powerful continue to manipulate the rules of the civil code, just as for colonial Tasmania, because they are embedded in the machinery of Government through lobby groups and instruments of political influence; the poor are punished for the slightest criminal misdemeanour, among them Aboriginal society as we will discover in these pages. … or are we repeating the past… As for British colonial adventurism, we do something qualitatively similar today. Replace the words ‘colonists’ or ‘colonial Imperialism’ with ‘corporations’ or ‘neoliberal ideology’ or the ‘1%’. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.1246 Some of us argue: But things have changed. Times were different then. It is the reflexive and fallible viewpoint that we cannot judge the past. Why not? If we cannot learn from the past, how can we not repeat it? The ghosts of our history are still with us, the exploitative behaviours still lodged in our bones.1247 Aboriginal disadvantage continues, subsumed by other myths, the myth of aspirational selfhelp, the myth of trickle-down economics, perhaps the myth that we really care – about others, about other cultures, about other creatures and ecosystems. History is now against us; and history will be our judge. But with authoritarianism on the march, right wing governments can simply ignore their conflicts of interest, or empirical evidence about climate change, or regulatory constraints; they can plant ‘fake news’ and alternative ‘facts’, impose excessive electronic surveillance, introduce oppressive social controls, enforce harsh measures against refugees, ignore labour racketeering and animal cruelty, limit access to affordable health care, reduce corporate taxes in the unlikely event that large corporations pay more than the minimum, shore up political support through nepotism and cronyism, resume public land for private benefit, withdraw funding for agencies critical of Government policy, abnegate their responsibilities for the welfare of Australia’s First People, cripple regulatory compliance for public interest measures 553 such as appropriate water and land use, tolerate tax minimisation schemes such as transfer pricing and the misuse of discretionary trusts, and downplay the negative environmental impacts of corporate activity with remediation often left to the public purse. We have not changed that much. There are rules. And there are rules for bending the rules. Our mantra - we are a rules-based society – is exposed as reflexive. … according to persistent normative behavioural constraint rules… We are left to consider that human behaviour is not unpredictable, but can be the product of constraint rules within some deterministic envelope, often procedural, usually systemic, that are generally shaped by imposed (triggering) ideologies, policies and legislation, encouraged by an all too human urge to exploit vulnerabilities for personal and national advantage, rules such as ‘exterminate the brutes’, or ‘promote immigration with the lure of alienated Aboriginal land for the taking’ or ‘we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’. 1248 That is, State practices, government intentionality, can mould and direct normative group behaviour. Genocide - violent targeted displacement - can be the extreme result, a rapidly learned response, the co-determinate outcome of ‘group’ or coterie self-interest and dysfunctional Government resolve when a certain trigger presents itself that does not involve traditional warfare, like the opportunity to exploit new territory by an invasive culture as happened in Australia or the political extremism that demonises boat people with the rationale: protect our borders and keep Australia secure. Aboriginal society would render a hollow laugh. Such collective aberrant behaviour can be averted with sufficient will; the corollary: if we engage in genocide or other excessively cruel conduct, it is because we choose to, it suits us, we can be coerced, our behaviours can be subverted. This is the horrifying insight from the 1961 psychological experiment by Stanley Milgram at Yale University, which we will later explore. But even genocide is ultimately self-defeating. It has to be, when short term considerations are factored into long-term sustainability, into evolutionary survivability over the millennia and beyond. Accountability is another matter. … that continue to define a rule-based order Every proposition P (say, the need for genocide or ethnic cleansing to solve some proffered economic-social problem, for example, (P) [‘Aboriginals are an encumbrance on economic development’] and (P) [‘we have to get rid of them’] [because] (cP) [‘they are waging a guerrilla war against their dispossession’] may have its proponent or propagandist who develops a conjecture c around P (cPn or, more inclusively, the set of all cP’s around P for which cPn is an instance) that can be independent of the P value proposition or truth assertion or falsity or hypothesis.1249 In this example, P and cP are reversible, We can equally assert: 554 (P) [‘they are waging a guerrilla war against their dispossession’] therefore (cP)[‘we have to get rid of them’]. It leads to a circular argument. Although cPn is a conjecture c about P, its falsifiability is not determined by P but is merely an association of statements c and P that, taken together, may not be logically consistent and may lead us to invalid conclusions or expectations. That is, c may not follow from P, although we are encouraged to believe so. A proposition may be some proposed social disruptor such as: • • • • • [‘elect me’] with cP [‘we will bring down the price of electricity’]; or [‘we need to reduce company tax’] with cP [‘because it will lead to higher wages’]; or [‘we must have a sugar tax or tobacco tax’] creates a pejorative cP [‘nanny state’]; or [‘to combat climate change we must build more reliable base load power’] because (cP) [‘affordable and reliable power is more important than reducing carbon emissions below some modest target that will have negligible impact on global warming’]; or the compound proposition [‘we must grow the Tasmanian settler economy’] therefore [‘Aboriginal resistance to their dispossession must be destroyed] with the cP [‘because it is costing us money and they are savages’]. The cP conjecture can reframe the nature of P or dismiss the relevance of P in terms of arguing its opposite as a form of derogation (˥P is bad), say the propositions: [‘Jews are evil’] therefore [x]; or [‘blacks must be destroyed] [‘for the public good’] . The tools for cP can include prejudicial misinformation or reframing or dogmatic reinforcement of flawed logic or selective data mining or targeted censorship or propaganda. For example: • • • • • • Tasmanian settler society defended genocide under the racist cP mantra that the Palawa were ‘animals’ and ‘brutes’ and ‘savages’ who committed ‘outrages’ and should therefore be ‘exterminated’ as feral pests; Goebbels defended extermination of the Jews by painting them through a cP as public pariahs who were milking Germans of their money through usury;1250 the Obama presidential campaign was won through the critical swinging states of Ohio and Florida, where – through data mining – his team identified that the relatively small Jewish vote in a key precinct could be swayed in his favour;1251 Trump won the 2017 election with the cP ‘make America great again’ through the support and fearfulness of both the left and the right who had been affected by globalisation and the loss of manufacturing jobs; twitter feeds and other social media built support for the ‘me too’ cP movement against sexual oppression by the rich and powerful; the British Government and Lord Goderich removed any evidence of genocidal behaviour (censorship cP) against the Palawa from the Parliamentary Record of 1831; 555 • Arthur went back on his word to offer a treaty to the Palawa when he was engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing but pretended for the public record he was always open to the possibility after the Palawa had been destroyed as a race. (misinformation, misdirection cP). We have seen many apologists (or propagandists) for Lieutenant Governor Arthur, that he was an ‘humanitarian’ or he was a ‘devout Christian’,1252 Also see AGL Shaw http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/arthur-sir-george-1721 He believed that the 'heart of every man' was 'desperately wicked'; one 'must preach Christ crucified and faith in Him' as the only means of salvation, have 'always in view the nearness of Eternity' though not dwelling 'too much in Faith, setting at nought good works' for 'the latter are the result of the former'. For a contrarian view against Tasmanian genocide, see Henry Reynolds (2004), Genocide in Tasmania?: 130 [Genocide and Settler Society Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, ed A. Dirk Moses]. Arthur arrived in Tasmania in 1824 predisposed to humanitarian policies towards the Aborigines. He was an evangelical Christian. Reynolds concludes [:147] Whether Governor Arthur strayed over the unmarked border between warfare to genocide cannot be answered with any certainty. As always, it depends on what is meant by genocide. It is a conclusion whose logic we will challenge throughout this book. We will show a pattern of displacive British behaviour that was driven by Government dispossessory policy for which the melancholy outcome was rolling genocide, tribe by tribe, until all resistance was overcome across each contested area. For the Aboriginal survivors, deportation and segregation soon followed, where culture and ethnicity were sacrificed to settler sovereignty. as though the propositions excuse his genocidal behaviour, or deny it in the supposed absence of mens rea or – for that matter - any jurisprudential evidence or case law that show intentionality, but these are examples of cP without logical regard to P For example, we cannot logically assert the proposition: (P) [‘Arthur was a humanitarian’] therefore (cP) [‘he could not commit genocide’]. for which the British Government’s policy objective (intent) was clear: (P) [‘displace or remove the Palawa from Tasmania’] (cP) [‘for the greater good of Empire and the settlers’]. It may not have begun this way: ‘civilizing’ the Blacks (including the Palawa) was an early British option, partially consistent with a general British Government instruction for its newly appointed colonial Governors to ‘conciliate their affections’. Conciliation involved ‘civilizing’. By ‘civilizing’, Britain meant (at first) attempting to Christianise their new ‘subjects’ before turning them to pliant servitude; but determined Indigenous resistance to disruptive settlerism made genocide more attractive, certainly more expedient. Britain remained ambivalent about whether the members of Aboriginal society were British subjects or enemy combatants, whether they were civilians who were breaking British law or adversaries under the rules of warfare. 556 The dilemma was never satisfactorily resolved; some guerrilla fighters were hanged; others were appeased in the hope they might influence their fellows to accept British rule. But ‘British subject’ suggests ‘British civilian’ or ‘citizen’: Aboriginals were not recognized as citizens until 1967. And when their numbers were catastrophically reduced, more certain. Violent Aboriginal dispossession was never consistent with professed ‘conciliation’ following an armed invasion spearheaded by the military. Britain knew it, but the lure of rapacious hegemony and its economic benefits were too attractive to a narcissistic Empire entranced by its own image of racial superiority. Genocide was Arthur’s legacy, and no public posturing or special pleading will change a jot of it, nor will advocacy on his or Britain’s behalf rewrite the intended outcome of what was Government policy, the legalized theft of Aboriginal land. Arthur left Tasmania a wealthy man and was further rewarded with a promotion by a grateful British Government. Tasmanian genocide recapitulated… Researchers en masse have pored over Tasmania’s colonial history. Partly, this is because there is a wealth of primary sources available, official Government despatches, Executive Council minutes, private correspondence, journals, memoirs, and parliamentary papers. But the interest is also due to the bloody nature of Tasmania’s birth in 1803 as a British colony when it was part of New South Wales, and from 1825 when it became an independent colony with a legislative body under Governor Arthur’s firm control. Violent colonization became the pattern for the rest of Australia. Many have written about this, but little is (or was) done. ‘It’s in the past’, they say. Elizabeth Farrelly summarizes: The colonial drive has always been dodgy – both because it generally involves stealing other peoples’ lands and lives, and because it offers the illusion of something for nothing: free resources, costless plunder and, as UTS social scientist Dr Jeremy Walker notes, escape from the moral and environmental responsibilities of home. [...] Neither space nor rapture will save us: not heaven, not Mars, not the Starship Enterprise. The gods, one or many, have no interest in slithering us from our deeds. Earth is our refugium. Fade to black.1253 It is surprising, then, that so many informed people have come to varying conclusions on whether the British occupation process was genocidal. See, for example: • • David Davies (1973), The Last of the Tasmanians, discusses a race war, but excuses British conduct with the familiar argument that if the Home Government offered the well-worn mantra ‘conciliate the affections of the Natives’ often enough, then the violent dispossessory process involved no illwill; Henry Reynolds (1995), The Fate of a Free People does not mention genocide; 557 • • • • • • • • Henry Reynolds (1989), Dispossession Black Australians and White Invaders does not mention genocide; Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain? The question of genocide in Australia’s history discounts genocide in the context of a proponed humanitarian British Government for which racial violence was an ‘unintended consequence’ of Aboriginal dispossession and their resistance; Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines a history since 1803 does not mention genocide; Henry Reynolds (1996), Frontier Reports from the edge of white settlement does not mention genocide; Henry Reynolds (1998), This Whispering in Our Hearts does not mention genocide; Henry Reynolds (2013), Forgotten War discounts the possibility of genocide because there was no ‘defined and articulated policy of destroying the Aboriginal tribes’ [p. 138] which misstates the legal definition of Lemkinian genocide (the act of legally recognized genocide does not require a formal statement of genocidal policy by the perpetrator); Murray Johnson and Ian McFarlane (2015), Van Diemen’s Land An Aboriginal History limits the possibility of genocide to northwest Tasmania; James Boyce (2008), Van Diemen’s Land in an appendix, talks about ‘towards genocide’; Tom Lawson (2014), The Last Man A British Genocide in Tasmania admits British culpability in genocide; Nicholas Clements (2014), The Black War Fear, Sex, and Resistance in Tasmania: 56 – 58, equates Arthur’s Black War to possible genocide but then equivocates on whether genocide occurred in a Lemkinian sense. Earlier books (before Lemkinian genocide gained currency) discuss extermination, for example: Clive Turnbull (1948, reprinted 1965), Black War the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines. It is less surprising when we consider that different re-interpretations of historicity often depend upon a revised semantic meaning of apprehended genocide, while ignoring or playing down the relevance of the United Nations Lemkinian Convention. Some historians continue to press the contentious argument that colonialism, with professed but non-evident humanitarian motives, had unintended genocidal consequences and therefore could not be genocidal. This is the Henry Reynolds argument [An Indelible Stain? (2001): 49 – 66], indirectly supported by Geoffrey Blainey who downplays the Indigenous numbers killed, variously proposing without verifiable evidence that Aboriginal numbers were never very great and their deaths were mostly due to internecine conflict and introduced disease. We note that Lemkinian genocide as prescribed by the UN Convention (1948 treaty) to which Australia is a signatory is still not domestically legislated as a specific crime in Australia.1254 With such occluded revisionism, with faulty syllogism, facts can take multiple guises and historical authenticity – historicity - becomes a stranger along with the attributive truths of historically embedded, fact-based events. For the moment, we define revisionism as the self-proclaimed ‘right’ of the victor or apologist in some contested space to rewrite history, ignoring the legitimate voice of the vanquished. Sometimes revisionism can be more subtle, claiming it is defending those who were dispossessed while distorting the verifiable facts of dispossession. … and the implications for Indigenous society today For today’s Aboriginal society, self-destructive group behaviour is symptomatic of impotence in the face of systemic oppression: anger becomes directed inwards or to the immediate 558 family, sometimes against property, rarely against the machinery of the state – at least, less so recently. Any form of vented resistance often becomes criminalised. In all such cases, judicial punishment is swift and leads to high proportional rates of indigenous imprisonment. Multiculturalism can further obscure Aboriginal rights, except perhaps the ‘right’ by imposed circumstances to live in poverty and the ‘right’ to die an early death compared to the general population. Across Australia, the cycle goes on, a cycle of chronic Aboriginal disadvantage and despair. The pre-contact past has been rewritten • • • • • • • through foreign intervention, through its inexorable clamping of new rules onto an alien land, through enforced revolving 99 year pastoral leases, through its Torrens title system of land ownership, its imposing statues of explorers and governors and dignitaries,1255 its ineluctable British placenames, its hagiographic shire histories, its bombastic stories of heroic settler triumphalism, all meant to strengthen the invader’s claim to legitimacy, to a new order, an attempt to define a new reality, a grafted reality that obliterates the old. Notwithstanding the ground-breaking successful claim of Eddie Mabo in 1992 1256 that he did in fact own the land his family had held for generations (and not the Crown through the conferred entitlement of unilaterally declared British sovereignty), these introduced legal and cultural constructs and placename accretions moved Aboriginal land rights further out of reach. Aboriginal history has mostly been erased in overt revisionism by the dominant white culture. There are few commemorative plaques for the innumerable Aboriginal massacre sites across the country. It is another form of genocide, the importunate death of memory in a persecuted Indigenous society. Is it any surprise that Aboriginal leaders rail in frustration against the continuing dispossession, the dispossession of historicity, of historical truth, of memory and landscape? Myths have become the new reality. Along with fakery. And opinion masquerading as alternative ‘facts’. If a generation and a race are without hope, where are they to turn? As Australia marches into pluralism, where will that leave Aboriginal rights? Aboriginals as a group will become a decreasing minority, their social inequality addressed through limited forms of targeted, politically motivated, bureaucratic State intervention where most of the benefits devolve to middlemen, the carpet baggers, the ‘for profit’ intermediaries, the ‘outsourcing’ contractors. In such normalised financial arrangements, if social responsibility is held at arm’s length, how can Governments be held to account? That, of course, is the intent, where efficiency becomes the mantra and everyone wins except, perhaps, the people in need. 559 Notwithstanding the advocacy of spokespeople such as Stan Grant and Noel Pearson, among others, for Aboriginals to be absorbed into middle Australia, it does little to secure Aboriginal identity as the First People; it is a continuing form of cultural genocide. Identity and respect should both be achievable; they are not mutually exclusive. Inga Clendinnen reminds us that history cannot be separated from politics: The stories made from history always have political implications, but that does not constitute their authority over us. History helps us to know who we humans are, and of what we are capable. It also reminds us that, however complicated the situation, however apparently compelling the circumstances, there is always space for choice: that the individual conscience is our first, last and only refuge. The current politically motivated simplifications can only impede the development of our individual analytic capacities and a reliable sense of social responsibility.1257 But it is politics and ideology that continue to impede Aboriginal reconciliation. And the political journey can only become harder, the more our society marches into the multicultural pluralism of factions and special interests, of lobby groups, of short-term expediencies, of contracting election cycles, of economic priorities. Summarizing … In Tasmania, the disruptive pattern of dispossession was swift and ruthless, the primary phase completing in barely more than a single generation. In fact, for Britain, the elapsed period for any initial dispossessory cycle to complete was consistently about thirty years from the originating time of each beach-head invasion point around the Australian continent, as the pastoral frontier metastasized in a tsunami-like wave (or perhaps a bush fire across multiple fronts, driven by fierce winds and leaping spot-fires) that rapidly displaced (purged) one society and replaced it with another, one that was more predatory, expansionist, destructive and hegemonic. 1258 The Tasmanian Palawa moved within thirty years from free possessors of the soil to trespassers to enemy insurgents to refugees to prisoners, and, finally, to sad objects of derogation, to genocidal victims, as the last members of the race shuffled off to die in managed detention, derided, dependent on hand-outs, trustful of Government promises that were never kept. A similar process was to play out across Australia where it would take slightly longer, the suffering prolonged into the present for many of our First People. … the question of intent … As set out by the Lemkinian Convention, we will show that Britain clearly intended to destroy the Palawa as a group, in whole or part. It was more than a war of the races; it was a war of racial extermination. The British intent followed from the desire to suppress Aboriginal resistance and clear the occupied land from ‘trespass’. 560 Britain has never said: ‘Sorry’. At the time, British Government policy was that subjugated races must be taught Christianity and made useful servants of British civilization. Imperial invasion, mediated by armed force, inevitably led to Indigenous resistance. Over and over. Forming a racist pattern of colonizing oppression around the globe. … putting massacres into perspective… It does not really matter how the Palawa were exterminated or the overall numbers killed or the manner of their killing, in the unlikely circumstance that the records are available. This is the false and misdirecting (reframing) argument painted by many denialists, those who decry what they call ‘black armband history’. All that matters is that the Palawa died, and they died as a result of the British invasion and its genocidal policies, for which land expropriation and uncontrolled immigration were the key drivers. Guns and disease were enablers, along with discriminatory legislation and unequal justice. The process was efficient and lethal. … the rejection of reflexivity … Let us be very clear, in case there is any doubt or circumspection: the British Government was responsible for the destruction of Aboriginal society in Tasmania, their people, their culture. Those historians who argue that Britain tried to protect Aboriginals from the onslaught of ‘convict settlers’ are simply revising history by proponing their own version of historicity, by reflexivity, by subjective posturing, by false logic, by selective quoting of the facts. Let us also be clearer still: the genocide was in Britain’s economic and political interest. Land was at stake and the Palawa were an encumbrance, so they had to be removed. And were. It would be a similar story across the Anglo-world as Britain pushed its colonists into virgin territory with the generic mantra ‘exterminate all the brutes’.1259 But it would never be as bloody or complete as in Australia. British group behaviour embraced Aboriginal dehumanization, dispossession and destruction. It was a small extra step to racial extermination, the logic of ‘us and them’: • • • • • • • • • the rules of property; the world of fences; the laws of trespass; the de facto/ de jure concepts of sovereignty; the racial, cultural and ideological divides; the exclusion/ inclusion parsing; the demonization of otherness; the juridical enforcement of ‘ownership’; the patent bias in the rules of evidence; the ascendency of exploitation over sustainability, possession over sharing; the confected winners and losers; the legislated survival of the ‘fit’ over the ‘non-fit’; the worthy and the non-worthy; the ‘lawful’ British settlers and the ‘criminal’ Aboriginal insurgents; those with rights and those without rights; the triumphant living and the vanquished dead; 561 • • • the predators and their victims; the world of boundaries and power structures; ‘sovereign’ possession and resulting Indigenous dispossession; the clash of ideology and values, of ‘civilization’ over ‘primitive’ society. Violent racial conflict resulted, for which the Palawa were among the first to fall victim to British hubris and racism. Many of our colonial values remain with us still. Our opponent is now the Earth. … and the role of genocidal agencies … In some contested spaces such as Tasmania, Britain’s oppression was - as we will see – genocidal. In Part 2, we will show that the key dispossessory agencies of immigration and land alienation were the major and intentional co-factors in the calibrated genocidal process, where armed force and apprehended legal bias cemented the destruction of Aboriginal society and culture. As for Tasmania, so for Australia. Until well into the 20th century, Australian Governments knew how many sheep there were in the country, but not how many Aboriginals. The same was true for early Tasmania until the extermination of the Palawa was total, until they were extirpated, with only a few mixed blood survivors remaining and from which the present resilient population has grown to several thousand. … including policies for land alienation and immigration… We will show throughout this book that the alienation of land and the corresponding spread of settlement directly (and intentionally) drove Aboriginal dispossession. That is, British land and immigration policy triggered (engaged) an occupation process that, in the face of Aboriginal resistance, was actioned through genocidal force. Can we therefore quantify the amount of land grants by year and the process involved? Perhaps this will put the cold facts of Britain’s inexorable land heist on the table. For Tasmania, there exist detailed land grants for the period from 1804 until 1823, inclusive. The deeds for grants during Arthur’s term cannot be found, so we will rely on other statistical sources of information. We are particularly interested in land grants during the Governorship of Macquarie, Brisbane, Sorell, and Arthur as these are the periods when Palawa dispossession (and genocide) were to peak. Before 1825, land grants were the primary prerogative of the NSW Governor; in 1825, Tasmania was given its own legislative body allowing Arthur the discretionary responsibility for distributing land, which he used to his advantage. New South Wales Governor Tasmanian LieutenantGovernor Lachlan Macquarie 562 1 January 1810 – 30 November 1821 Thomas Brisbane William Sorell 1 December 1821 – 1 December 1825 9 April 1817 – 14 May 18241260 Ralph Darling George Arthur 19 December 1825 – 21 October 1831 14 May 1824 – 29 October 1836 Figure 171 Key Governorships and term of office: 1810 – 1831 How were land grants made? During early settlement, this was an enduring question of interest to would be emigrants. The market responded with a number of guides to acquiring land, among them: Godwin (1823), and Smith Evans (1851). See, for example: • • Godwin (1823), Godwin's Emigrant's Guide to Van Diemen's Land, More Properly Called Tasmania; H Smith Evans (1851), A Map and a Guide to all the Emigration Colonies of Great Britain and America. Eligibility for a land grant was generally determined by the amount of capital possessed by a prospective colonist and the strength of their referrals.1261 We are primarily interested in the process of granting land before 1832, after which grants were replaced by sales under the Lord Ripon land reforms. JT Bigge had the same question, when Bathurst appointed him in 1819 to investigate and make recommendations for the better government of New South Wales. Bigge asked DeputySurveyor George Evans to explain: Question: " How long have you held the situation of Deputy-Surveyor?" Answer: " About 15 years." Question: "What is the course observed by you when applications are made for grants in the country?" Answer: " A person desirous of obtaining a grant of land here applies to the Governor-in-Chief through the Lieutenant-Governor. A particular time of the year (the month of June, or as nearly as may be to it) is set apart for this purpose by the Commander-in-Chief. On these applications the Governor-in-Chief makes a list of the names of persons to whom he orders that the land should be granted and the quantity they are to have. Which is signed by him and transmitted through his secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor, who either hands over the original or a copy of it, with directions that I should proceed to mark off the quantities of land when at leisure in the situations that the persons may have chosen, provided their choice will not interfere with any government arrangement. When the quantities are measured and marked off, I make out the descriptions and boundaries, which I forward to the Surveyor-General at headquarters. From him they are sent to the Governor, who directs grants to be made out in pursuance of the description." 563 Question: " Are the grants sent down from Sydney to this place, or do they remain until application is made for them and the fees paid? " Answer: " The grants that were sent down in 1817 ·bore date September, 1813. Since. that time about 160 grants of land have remained at Sydney, and are there now." Question: " Are many applications made to you by the persons who have obtained land and have not obtained grants? " Answer: "Almost daily." Question: "I suppose that, when the land is measured and marked off, the people immediately repair to it and cultivate it? " Answer: "They do, and if I have not time always to go, they will begin to cultivate upon my promise to measure it." Question: " Do not instances occur of these lands so occupied being sold or transferred or taken in execution before the grants arrive? “ Answer: " Yes; such instances do occur, but it is at the risk of the party purchasing, for it is a well-known condition in all grants that the land shall not be sold, transferred, or alienated until after the term of five years." Question: " Does that term run, or is it supposed to run, from the period of occupation of the land or from the date of grant?" Answer: " From the date of grant." Question: " Do you think the defect of title, in cases where the grant is delayed, affects the value of lands or increases the difficulty of obtaining security upon them?" Answer: " It does not. In such cases they usually bind themselves in a penalty of double the amount secured to make over the grant when it arrives." Question: " Is the occupation of land permitted by the Lieutenant-Governor before the list containing the names and quantities of land ordered is returned by the Governorin-Chief?" Answer: " Yes; to persons of good character, and for whom he is desirous of obtaining land; he does not allow a larger extent of land to be occupied in this way than from 30 to 50 acres." Question: "Now, in case a settler arrives here from England with his family, with an order from the Colonial Office for a considerable quantity of land, is he under the necessity of personally repairing to Sydney to obtain it, and must he remain here unoccupied till the grantor's order for the grant arrives from the Commander-inChief?" Answer: "No; on delivering his letter to the Lieutenant-Governor, such a person would be allowed to go into the country to examine the different situations or to come to me to see what were to be disposed of. In case he fixed on any situation, the Lieutenant-Governor would exercise his discretion in allowing the settler to fix himself on such land as he had selected, after conferring with me." Question: "Do you know whether the Lieutenant-Governor institutes any inquiry on the spot as to the pecuniary means of settlers applying for grants of land before they obtain them? " Answer: " In one instance I know he did. I cannot say what he does in others." 1262 This is the summary of Tasmanian land grants by year, 1804 to 1823, 1263 for which we provide a more detailed analysis in Part 2. During Macquarie’s eleven-year term, the total Tasmanian land granted was about 69,228 acres; under Brisbane, between 1821 and 1823, this figure increased to 489,051 acres, about a seven-fold increase on Macquarie. From 1824 to 1836, 564 while Arthur was Governor of Tasmania, the total land grants amounted to 1,403,311.5 acres, an almost three-fold increase on Brisbane and an almost thirty-fold increase over Macquarie. Hartwell records that, prior to 1832, grants amounted to 1,974,744 acres. [RM Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850: 58, based upon the official statistics of HM Hull (1866), A Statistical Summary of Tasmania from the Year 1816 to 1865 inclusive: 4]. Therefore, grants from 1824 to 1831 are: (1,974,754 – 571,442.5) = 1,403,311.5 acres. Hartwell records that ‘The amount granted prior to 1832 is difficult to determine, as accurate statistics exist only from 1824. Frankland, the Surveyor-General, mentions in his Report (p. 76) a total alienation by grant and sale up to 31 December 1836 of 2,324,855 acres. If sales up to 1836 (267,825 acres), plus grants between 1832 and 1836 (82,276 acres), are subtracted from Frankland’s total, grants before 1832 can be reckoned at 1,974,754 acres. This total, though large, agrees with Melville (History…, pp. 150 – 1) who gives two million acres as the total alienation by 1835.[In Melville (1965), this page reference is page 129: The number of acres now located is about two million...] That is, from the time of the British invasion until Arthur’s end of term, the total acreage granted was around 1,961,591 acres, a figure that agrees closely with Hartwell and Melville. It was unsustainable, reckless, inhumane, and left no place for Palawa society to exist. Invasion led to dispossession, extermination, ethnic cleansing, genocide and deportation. The winners were British landowners. Year Number of Grants Acreage Granted Cumulative Acreage Granted 1804 4 400 400 1805 13 1,190 1,590 1806 13 863 2,453 1807 0 0 2,453 1808 1 2,000 4,453 1809 14 2,690 7,143 1810 NSW Governor 10 1,430 8,573 1811 Macquarie 0 0 8,573 1812 0 0 8,573 1813 356 33,544.5 42,117.5 1814 2 960 43,077.5 1815 2 1,370 44,447.5 1816 9 4,790 49,237.5 1817 111 17,158 66,395.5 1818 29 4,485 70,880.5 1819 6 4,400 75,280.5 63 10,090 85,370.5 116 47,180 132,550.5 0 0 132,550.5 1820 1821 1822 Brisbane 565 1823 1027 441,871 571,442.51264 Figure 172 Register of Tasmanian Land Grants: 1804 - 18231265 The British Government’s policy and process of implacable Aboriginal land dispossession drove the mechanics of Palawa genocide. … and the policies of racism … For Australia, it was the face of rampant genocidal racism, of racial oppression and segregation, of apartheid, of Government colonizing policy where Aboriginals were nonpeople, feral pests to be removed. In Tasmania, it was far worse: by the end of the 19th century, give or take a few years, the original pure-blood Palawa had ceased to exist. The apocalyptic warning of an ‘indelible stain’ was graffitied on the wall of British justice more than fifty years earlier, but the message was ignored. … which drove genocidal dispossession… To paraphrase Tolstoy, ‘every genocide is unique in its own way; but each shows a similarly unhappy pattern.’ The quote derives from Anna Karenina, where, in the opening sentence, Tolstoy writes: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ We will later see, from comparative genocide studies, that every genocide, although seemingly having different characteristics from another, shares a Lemkinian pattern to varying degrees of attribute weighting, where the attribute is a Lemkinian clause in Article 2 of the UN Convention. We will show the unique pattern of Australian genocide as it flamed across the continent before the spreading pastoral frontier. Tasmania helped establish the model, like a metastasizing cancer that shares the same genetic mutation. We will examine this apparent contradiction further, in the ‘myth of settler sovereignty’ Some historians, Inga Clendinnen among them, argue that there was only one authentic ‘genocide’: the holocaust. This is oversimplification. We will show that the characteristics of the type genocidal process are determinable within the Lemkin Convention, but that each procedural instantiation of Lemkinian genocide is determinate within a defined behavioural envelope. That is, we can view the type Lemkinian process as a normative behavioural model, where intentionality and categorial agency are embedded in the process at different levels of abstraction from type to event along a decompositional gradient. It allows us to resolve the apparent dilemma that each genocide shares a similar pattern, the Lemkinian type pattern, but each is uniquely different in its instantiation of the type process, becoming a contextual referent or use case. The pattern is defined by categorial agency, by policy driven constraint rules, whose actors are typecast by the administrative machinery of British Government resolve. 566 The Lemkinian genocidal pattern we develop for Tasmania will be scalable and will allow type instantiation for individual and collective genocidal conduct – including massacres - to verify (or disprove) their contextual agency. … through a patterned, reusable template … The nature of any pattern is that is reusable. But more importantly, it is repeatable, or reinstantiable. For normative human conduct, it is the still point, the patterned modality, of a type behavioural process such as territorial occupation and its often-genocidal instantiation. Such patterns defy apologists and those denialists represented by Windschuttle and his cohort who demand rarely available evidence of ad-hoc judicial case histories to be the only measure of State resolve, of calibrated intentionality. As TS Eliot wrote: At the still point of the turning world, Neither flesh nor fleshless There the dance lies 1266 We conclude… The focus of this document is on deconstructing the British patterns of colonizing behaviour – sociological, economic, political, cultural, ideological, psychological - in Australia and the processes that define their agency, of how and why a particular group – the British Government and a wave of British settlers - acted in certain ways, particularly in Tasmania, and the lessons we can learn, the conclusions we may draw for normative group psychopathy. We are less interested in nuanced historical interpretation: the signs and symbols of semiotics; or the cultural ciphers; or subjective reconstructions of how the actors might think and feel; or excessive narrative contextualization; or non-judgmental post-modernism where there are no accusatory truths only exculpatory observations; or modern cultural theories of post-many things that – without a frame of reference - seem to lead nowhere and lose a sense of purpose and structure, a Foucaultian universe of sand. Our purpose here is fact-based ontological deconstruction (analysis), forming an evidentiary data set that will define our sociological patterns and anchor our conclusions (synthesis). This investigative approach (analysis/ synthesis) was first proposed by Roger Bacon (1214/ 1220 – 1292) and later refined by René Descartes (1596 – 1650) as the basis for scientific method (collect data, hypothesize, then test the theory with more data). Many others contributed to this structured pursuit of knowledge: the early Greeks, the Arabs, the Chinese, the Europeans. These potentially falsifiable patterns (models) are then used to test and make predictions about time-dependent reality. … we are all past-dependent … 567 The past is never over for as long as it is insufficiently examined, for as long as it is excused from getting us to where we are now, as a Nation, as a society, and for how it might direct our future – memetically, epigenetically - should we so choose. We are all contextually dependent, creatures of our time and past; the question is: can we understand how we are shaped, or be mindfully aware of our conditioned ways of seeing, and can we adapt, or must we remain captive to behavioural modalities we dimly perceive and, according to their opacity, may seldom question. Between convergent and contingent evolution, we have a choice. Zachary Blount argues that,1267 if evolution is highly contingent, then it is inherently unrepeatable; between chance and necessity, evolutionary convergence is preeminent.1268 Within our legal system, the concept of mens rea or guilty mind subsumes our system of justice. That is, so the Law dictates, our actions are not behaviourally predetermined, and that we can exercise free will. The truth is somewhere in between. Some of our behaviours are biologically determined (convergence) for which higher brain functions (self-awareness) may operate in a controlling feedback loop, modifying a contingent reaction. What of 19th century British behaviour? British expansionary colonialism danced to racist, hegemonic ambitions where reactive vengeance often dictated policies on the ground, should Indigenous society object to the territorial occupation. If Imperial Britain was a person, we might diagnose them with a psychopathic disorder, exhibiting narcissism, manipulation, a sense of entitlement, a tendency to violence, little remorse for wrongdoing, low empathy and poor impulse control.1269 Extermination of subjugated societies was often justified as a ‘law of Nature’ where ‘inferior’ races must be removed, the weak giving way to the strong. 1270 Imperial Britain made its choice. It was not reacting to blind circumstance so much as its global colonizing ambitions. Britain chose Indigenous dispossession in the service of the greater good of Empire and its privileged classes. If genocide was required in the service of Britain’s global territorial ambitions, then it was dutifully carried out. Dieu et mon droit. British self-proclaimed superiority demanded obeisance from native populations and their enforced subjugation. Tom Lawson, when detailing the British war of genocidal attrition against the Palawa, writes that assumed superiority by one group requires a belief in the inferiority of other groups. ‘From the mid nineteenth century onwards the idea that Indigenous Tasmanians had been exterminated has underpinned a variety of articulations of British superiority’. 1271 Britain expected ‘inferior’ races to be obedient to its authority, to recognize British superiority and become pliant labour on its behalf. Imperial Britain had pretensions that it was the Orwellian master race, born to rule, and that other less advanced or less powerful races must bow to its will or be destroyed. … and our grafted society shows lingering evidence – possibly epigenetic – of past behavioural pathology … 568 Nowhere was this collective behavioural pathology more evident than in Tasmania. Britain sought to excuse Palawa extermination as in the interests of the Indigenes, where it might perversely claim its history of colonial violence as evidence of its power,1272 that it was justified in defending its territorial expropriation by force,1273 and that colonial development was the means of saving any surviving indigenous people through Christian education and Aboriginal servitude. Britain was deluding itself. Displacive colonization was a brutal means of wealth transfer and no special pleadings will change the naked Imperial intent: to exercise raw power for the economic and political advantage of Britain. The Imperial colonizing model depended on systemic theft. The Palawa were so quickly destroyed that servitude was numerically impractical although Tasmania became a dispossessory process model for other parts of Australia, with dire results for Aboriginal society: stolen wages, stolen children, stolen culture, stolen hope, stolen land, stolen lives. … that, for Tasmania, began with King’s invasion … When Governor King hurriedly despatched Lieutenant Bowen to Risdon Cove on the Derwent River in 1803, it was to counter what he mistakenly thought were Tasmanian territorial aspirations by the French. Like all such settlements, it was militarized from the beginning,1274 a chain of army outposts asserting Britain’s questionable authority, and a policy of land grants became rapidly implemented by Lieutenant Governor Collins from 1804. British civilization had arrived, with primitive thatched huts made of sawn timber and inadequate farming practices that depended on the manually wielded hoe. By contrast, the Palawa incumbents occupied grassed woodlands that reminded the newcomers of a ‘nobleman’s park in England’,1275 the product of careful firestick farming over millennia. … continued with an early foraging economy … In 1807, starvation faced the colony, only saved by predations on kangaroos, a major food source for the Palawa. The contest for resources grew. In 1808, a further 526 free settlers arrived in two waves from Norfolk Island, growing the colony to around one thousand. These new settlers spread across New Norfolk into the fertile midlands, pushing aside the Palawa. The genocidal die was cast. In 1816, the first immigrants began pouring in from England. The corn crops were abundant, and excess corn could be exported. By 1818, land grants were multiplying. During Sorell’s term from 1817 to 1824, the population almost trebled. Sheep and cattle began exponentially outnumbering the colonists. Quite often, a land grant was unnecessary for the spread of the pastoral industry; all that was required to graze livestock on Crown land was a ‘ticket of occupation’ that offered a permit for a tract of land that was described in ludicrously general terms. Aboriginals could not apply. Survey markers were optional. 569 By the 1820’s, the sheep population had swelled to around 663,000. When Arthur replaced Sorell in 1824, he alienated a further million acres before 1830, with much of the best land in the hands of a small number of people. Like today, monopolies result from competition and selective weeding in favour of the best connected, certainly not the Darwinian ‘fittest’. … was sustained by cronyism … Nepotism and cronyism became part of Government policy. In 1830, Tasmania’s white population had climbed to 20,015 with a cultivated area of only 55,976 acres. 1276 By 1831, 1,531,815 acres had been alienated, an amount that was to double in two years under Arthur’s reckless largesse.1277 In this land grab, there was no place for the Palawa. If they protested, they were either killed or removed to managed detention. … and military force… For the decade long violent territorial struggle pursued by the British military against the Palawa, JF McMahon writes: The British Army of the 1820's was not trained for counter-insurgency duties to operate in small detached parties. Their role in the campaign against the Aborigines was to aid the civil power, and tensions and inefficiencies resulted when troops were directed and commanded by civilians. The colonial garrison was commanded by an experienced soldier and administrator, Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur. He exercised a dual civil/military function ensuring any resources were integrated through an administrative system centred on his police districts. By 1830, Arthur sought a solution to the Aboriginal problem based on a dual strategy of conciliation in the tribal lands, and use of military force, to expel the natives from the settled areas. The Aborigines developed formidable skills as guerrilla fighters, and their tactics took advantage of their enemies' weapons limitations. With loss of traditional hunting grounds, the Aborigines were forced to rely on raiding settlers' huts for supplies. This generated stronger countermeasures, such as martial law in 1828 and the Black Line in 1830, which was the climax of the counter-insurgency campaign. This was a sweep and cordon operation, combining troops, and civilians who were called out under a levy en masse, under Army command. The troops, now under command of their own officers, were disciplined and efficient.1278 McMahon continues: During the 1820's, rapid pastoral expansion radiating outwards from Hobart Town and Launceston, aggravated an already unhappy relationship between whites and blacks. Tensions led to open warfare. Much has been written about the plight of the Tasmanian Aborigines in this period, but little about the history of the British Army and 570 the counter· insurgency campaign in Van Diemen's land, which is the subject of this thesis. The character, role, organization and command of the British Army in Van Diemen's land, and its relationship with the colonial inhabitants, provide a background to its tasks during the counter-insurgency campaign. As the Aboriginal threat developed, so too did the tempo of operations, with the troops increasingly aiding the civil power. Factors such as dual civil/military command, co--operation in police districts with magistrates, field police and roving patrols, also administrative matters such as discipline and re-supply are considered. A similar examination is made of their opponents. Unfortunately. the Aboriginal concept of operations, motivation to continue a desperate guerrilla campaign, and concerns such as safe areas and logistical problems, can only be assessed from European primary source material.1279 … that resolved as genocide … I have wrestled with the problem of Lemkinian genocide for some time. What defines it? How do we interpret the UN Convention? Does L. genocide have a typology? What is its causal spectrum, its DNA, its phenotype? Is it beyond analysis, beyond logic, a mere summary of what happened between one group and another that resulted in catastrophic physical and cultural destruction? Is it a reductive matter of compiling dry and often fallible statistics on death counts, when much of the originating data has been erased or never collected? Can genocide result from psychological violence or is it purely physical? Is it a legal question to be resolved through case law? Is it purely a human rights question? Can the concept of genocide be extended to other species and ecosystems? Can some writers of genocide history confuse us through a narrative interpretation that is more reflexive opinion than fact, lacking a coherent conceptual framework? Perhaps genocide should be considered as a systemic behavioural aberration that can sometimes be justified by special pleading, by the ‘greater good’ argument of economic progress? Is it an artefact of cultural myopia? Or misconceived ideology? Or power overreach? Or settler sovereignty? Or the unintended consequence of invasive colonization? Or racism? Are all genocides alike in character or does each carry a unique fingerprint? Do they all appear to bind a certain group to a common purpose of normalised violence against a targeted group? If so, what coalesces the predatory group, what are the shared behavioural constraint rules? Can genocide ever be unintentional, an ‘unintended’ consequence of a set of purposeful actions? Can genocide be possible if one group claims (or might claim) they were acting in self-defence or otherwise lawful conduct? Does genocide result from normalized behavioural dysfunction? If so, how do we measure, statistically diagnose and manage the psychopathy of a nation or a culture or a dominant group? Can genocide be justified in some circumstances? Is genocide something that can only happen elsewhere? Is it forever bound up with the holocaust? 571 … and historical amnesia … What worried me most of all: I grew up in Tasmania and was never made aware of its appalling history. I decided that a new investigative approach was necessary. My tools would be behavioural process patterns and their instantiation through categorial agencies, using Cartesian methodology and other analytical tools. Primary documents, historicity, would breathe life into normative dysfunction. Intentionality would anchor observable outcomes. The evidentiary dataset would be established through a logic sieve, a sieve firmly conceived in the irreducible legal, political, cultural, ideological and economic formalities of Lemkinian genocide. This companion paper1280 provides a detailed case for intentional Tasmanian genocide, 1281 driven by British Government’s land and immigration policies, supported by armed force and a racist criminal code. Britain has never formally been called to account. Or its administrative functionaries. Perhaps it is now time? … where the politics of dispossession was for the ‘greater good’ of Empire … Britain wanted the Australian Aboriginals’ land. So they took it. If Aboriginals resisted, or often if they did not, they were shot, poisoned, predated upon, or cleared out like vermin. In racist Australia, being Aboriginal was a crime. Until the 1960s, any scattered Aboriginal survivors endured the politics of suffering, of introduced diseases, of stolen children, of forced detention, of apartheid (what we called segregation), of harassment, of sexual predation, of victimization, of discrimination, of marginalization, of alienation and mental despair. Tasmania was a bellwether for the unremitting unfolding of this criminal 1282 process across Australia that began with extermination and continued with subjugation and repression as the invasive process spread throughout the continent. We still see the evidence today, not least in official Government reports that regularly note the systemic Aboriginal disadvantage but do little to address the fundamental lack of Aboriginal empowerment. So the cycle of suffering continues.1283 In the course of our discussion, we will examine the British Government’s intentional role in Tasmanian genocide, and the extraordinary steps it took to excise any embarrassing material from the official despatches during Arthur’s four-year military campaign against the Palawa. This whitewashing was discovered by Peter Chapman, when his team was researching inconsistencies in the British Parliamentary Papers for Volume 9, Series 3, of the Historical Records of Australia. … and enabled through a practised Imperial machine… 572 The genocidal process of Palawa displacement and dispossession was effected through multiple intersecting categorial agencies for which the relative effect – or weighting - of any particular agency is not necessarily measured in the number of pages devoted to its analysis. For example, land alienation along with unrestrained immigration were by far the greatest and most co-determinate (and strongly correlated) – agencies of Aboriginal dispossession and destruction, if we set aside the predicated extermination as a co-factor. 1284 The categorial dispossession process lends itself to succinct statistical analysis: the number of acres granted, or the number of colonists arriving, over a discrete period. With God on its side, Britain would not be deterred from the process of colonisation. In July 1828, Lieutenant-Governor Arthur reassured Secretary of State Huskisson:1285 There is nothing, I would repeat, to be apprehended from the Natives to excite your alarm, or to check immigration; the measures resorted to will, I am persuaded, be effectual, and my only hope is, that they may prove so without sacrificing the lives of these wretched ignorant beings.1286 Secretary of State Murray 1287 gave further voice to the process when he wrote to Arthur in February 1829: I am aware of the extremely difficult task of inducing ignorant beings of the description of those alluded to, to acknowledge any authority short of absolute force, particularly when possessed with the idea which they appear to entertain in regard to their own rights over the country, in comparison with those of the colonists.1288 It was an extraordinary admission made more acute because Murray was blind to the implications of what he said, or if not blind, did not recognize the genocidal consequences, preferring to believe that Britain had a sovereign right to occupy the land and therefore to treat Indigenous resistance as unlawful. In April 1829 Arthur wrote to Murray that: The finest portion of the Island has been already granted away, and the lands, remaining at the disposal of the Crown, are of course much less valuable from their remoteness from the Principal Towns.1289 On the other hand, the categorial agency of Arthur’s August 1830 proposed and soon to be realized ‘final solution’ that it appears to the Council that the time is now arrived when it has become absolutely necessary that some vigorous effort upon a more extended scale than has hitherto been practicable should be made for expelling these miserable people forthwith from the settled Districts 1290 was so clearly culpable and self-incriminating that the British Government removed it from the House of Commons publication on Van Diemen’s Land Military Operations against the 573 Aboriginals, 1831.1291 Yet it requires an extensive analysis because the circumscribed events around this agency are textual more than enumerable. … that scythed through Indigenous societies … The Tasmanian Palawa were one of the first, but they would not be the last to see the targeted destruction of their society and culture as the process of Lemkinian genocide swept across the Australian continent over the 19th century in the longest war in our history, a ‘civil’ war of oppression, dispossession and Aboriginal resistance that the Australian War Memorial defiantly refuses to acknowledge. 1292 For this reason, we will use Britain’s destruction of the Tasmanian Aboriginals as a type instantiation of violent Aboriginal dispossession and catastrophic depopulation across Australia. … with lingering evidence today … We still see the lingering evidence of this genocidal process today, with excessive rates of Aboriginal illness and incarceration, systemic early deaths, continuing racism and third world conditions for many of our First People. It happens before our eyes so routinely that for many of us, we have either become desensitised or impotent. The politics of suffering and subjugation are real, and it will continue while denialism has a voice. We are left with the unintentionally ironic words from our national anthem: ‘For We Are Young and Free’, now belatedly revised. The phrase dances lightly on the bones of a sordid and forgettable history. It is a myth building sentiment that carefully ignores our bloody invasive past as we blindly stumble ahead with the imagined heroic deeds of the Anzac defeat at Gallipoli in our thoughts, of ‘mateship’ in adversity, of ‘diggers’ locking arms in solidarity at the Eureka stockade. Because of the inconvenient truth that Gallipoli was a great defeat brought on by British High Command ineptitude, Australians have been casting around for other areas of more heroic military engagement. Kokoda, while praiseworthy, was a cowed retreat. In WW1, the 1917 middle east battle of Beersheba seems more promising, as Australian light horsemen showed magnificent courage in turning allied fortunes around. But our awe turns to sadness when we learn that the Aboriginals who gave their service - in Beersheba and other places - to a country that didn’t want them were denied plots on what had been their own land under the soldier settler scheme, were denied entry to any Returned Servicemen’s Club, and were quickly forgotten by Australia, still wrapped in a blanket of racism. The other heroes of Beersheba were the New South Wales horses, ‘walers’, who were left behind by the Australian Government as disposable, and either reallocated or sold for their meat.1293 Behind the inviting myth of triumphalism, we see a less welcoming dark shadow. Aboriginal society is not young, nor is it free. The killing times of the past cannot be airbrushed away, nor the memory of genocide. Historicity demands honesty, not whitewash. And chronic Aboriginal disadvantage will remain visible and palpable for as long as Aboriginal rights are not recognized in our Constitution, and not until there is a treaty arrangement as part reparation for what was stolen, confiscated, annexed, or expropriated at gunpoint. … through an event-based occupation process defined by British hegemonic aspirations … 574 Between 1803 and 1833, when the British exterminated or otherwise removed most of the native Palawa in Tasmania, 1294 the British Government’s evolving objectives were both political and economic as it tightened its control over the claimed area: • to block the influence of the French; • to establish a strategic and economic beachhead, at first through a carceral population and a limited number of free settler-colonists with independent capital; • to promote accelerated British immigration; • to alienate and grant increasing amounts of land to well-connected colonists and ticket-of-leave transportees, land grants being replaced by land sales from the early 30s as a consequence of Commissioner Bigge’s recommendations to Lord Bathurst and the Earl of Ripon’s (Lord Goderich) later land reforms; • to encourage economic and political self-sufficiency over time; • to impose the (one sided) rule of British law; • to ‘conciliate the affections’ of the Natives by asserting British sovereignty over Aboriginal land and disenfranchising them; • to civilize and Christianise the subordinated Palawa and attempt to incorporate them into colonial society as a lower class of indentured servants; In this pastoral-based economy, generations of British investment interests, wealthy settlers and later squatter dominated Governments sought to use underpaid or unpaid Aboriginal labour as a value aggregator, leaving us with a legacy of ‘stolen wages’ into the 20th century. We have something similar today with the gig-economy, where large companies legally sub-contract services outside Fair Work agreements and their lawful worker protections such as sick leave and superannuation. • to use racist laws and policies as a blunt instrument of oppression against the Palawa; • to destroy any Aboriginals who resisted the occupation of their homelands; • to cull or remove any Aboriginal trespassers who encroached on the rapidly expanding settled areas, with the assistance of paramilitary groups under Martial Law; and • to capture and expel Palawa survivors to imprisonment in a remote detention facility under lethal conditions. The British occupation of Tasmania was militarized from the beginning. As the colonist invasion gathered pace, Aboriginals resisted, at first tentatively, then with more desperation as they began to lose access to their traditional homelands. The growing human crisis was of Britain’s making. The British Government was unwilling to restrain the pace of colonization (and Aboriginal dispossession), preferring to believe it could ‘conciliate the affection of the Natives’ by teaching them Christianity and ‘civilizing’ them. The highly effective Palawa guerrilla war led to greater militarization: Britain deployed more troops, but it was not enough. Governor Arthur’s anxiety increased. Settlers were demanding 575 Government action, although he had authorized them to ‘oppose force by force’ in defence of life and property. Arthur’s response: • • • • • • • • to allow killing of Aboriginals without legal consequence; to augment the military with a ‘call to arms’ for all able-bodied citizens to clear the best grazing country of Aboriginals; to conscript the judiciary into his counter-insurgency efforts; to deploy civilian ‘roving’ and military ‘pursuing’ parties to roam the countryside for Aboriginal groups; to offer a bounty for every Aboriginal captured; to use convicts and field police as a paramilitary group; to proclaim martial law, where killing Aboriginals became legalised (although officially frowned upon); and to capture surviving Palawa under a ruse de guerre when they were removed to imprisonment in Bass Strait, well away from what was once their home. • … and a modern tradition of denialism for past wrongdoing … Many historians either reject the evidence for genocide or obfuscate on whether Lemkinian genocide, often redefined in their own specific terms, ever happened in colonial Van Diemen’s Land. Tasmania was called Van Diemen’s Land until 1855. It was originally named by the explorer Abel Tasman in 1642 after Anthony Van Diemen, an official in the Dutch East India Company, whose daughter Tasman unsuccessfully wanted to impress. The Aboriginal name for the Island is 'Trowunna', 'Trowenna' or 'Loetrouwitter'. Some equivocate it was an ‘unintended consequence’ of dispossession; or that it was not genocide but a ‘frontier war’; or that a few settlers, sealers and lawless bush rangers were the primary cause of the violence, with Britain exercising a ‘restraining hand’; or other contrarian pleadings that are not supported by the evidence. They are the distasteful arguments of revisionism, of denialism, of whitewash, of flawed logic disguised as pellucid reason. We will examine them closely when we analyse the political 1295 and economic uses of Tasmanian genocide and the associated policies and practices of targeted Palawa destruction that involved a militarized campaign and ethnic cleansing to achieve its bloody purpose. … which can only be corrected through identifying the patterns … In this document, above all else, we are interested to examine the pattern of indictable offences by the Imperial British Government within the UN Genocide Convention, which is retroactive in its application. Was the colonizing 19th century British Government culpable of Lemkinian genocide in Tasmania, or was it not? It is a simple question, simply stated, but the analysis is more time consuming. 576 Yet the analysis will be reusable for other contested spaces, where some driven imperative of any kind attempts to override human rights for a targeted group. In British thinking, in its class based social hierarchy, property conferred status no matter how it was acquired. In a similar way, the British expropriation of Aboriginal land immediately conferred homelessness on Aboriginal society, and the status of homelessness directly resulted in the British crime of trespass for which the usual penalty was death in extremis or displacement in default, what euphemistically became called ‘dispersal’. Tasmania was an early progenitor of the cruel process. British civilization had arrived. …. based upon primary source documents … Where possible, we will quote primary sources in their full context, rather than excise selected paragraphs and phrases from which almost any construction can be imposed, based on the particular bias of the interlocutor. Because the subject of Tasmanian genocide can be controversial, we will use the legally recognised paragraphs of Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention as a logic sieve to parse the evidence from the primary sources and develop a normalised dataset that will then test the falsifiable hypothesis of the central thesis: The politics and economics of Tasmanian genocide: the targeted destruction of the Palawa. We will set out a preliminary classification schema for Lemkinian genocide and the intersecting conceptual variants such as ethnic cleansing. This is the basis for a more formal semantic typology, which is documented elsewhere. In Tasmania (and across all Australian colonies) the typology overlays the type occupation process. We will examine the question of British genocidal intentionality, where the important political choice arose for Imperial Britain: if it knew the impending disaster its hegemonic policies were having on the Tasmanian indigenous population, why didn’t it reign in its expansionist colonising programme? In considering the answer, we reflect that just knowing something is likely to happen does not mean we will change out path if we are not motivated to do so. We have a similar conundrum today with climate change, or the mass relocation of political and economic refugees, or the displacement of other species, or the destruction of ecosystems, or the rise of trans-national corporations whose primary motivation is to be profitable. That is, British Government intentionality is directly implicated in the genocidal outcome for Tasmania. When Britain chose Aboriginal dispossession, it knowingly chose genocide and the methods of genocide as articulated by the U.N. Convention. Britain valued economic development above humanitarian concerns. We will project the present size of the Palawa population, had the British invasion not happened, which provides a more realistic scale for the genocide, planned and engineered by the machinery of the British colonising administration. 577 Finally, we delineate a model for British culpability under the UN Convention on Genocide. It leaves us with the question: have we learned anything from history? After all, Aboriginals across Australia are still among the most disadvantaged ethnic groups on Earth. … a careful assessment of the evidence … The historical evidence for intentional genocide, as presented here, is uncomplicated and relatively uncontentious because it is largely based, not just on historical recollections, but also Government despatches, official Government reports, and Government published land policies and legislation, all of which are readily available from the public record with the investment of a little time. It is a then question of how we assess the evidence – what are the facts, was there a behavioural pattern, were there official orders, what role did Imperialism play - without introducing subjective bias, the potentially reflexive bias of the interlocuter, something that the recent ‘history wars’ connote. We will address this issue in the Section: Introduction.1296 Part 2 1297 will examine the pattern of Tasmanian massacres for their defining characteristics: • • • • • Were the massacres the result of random local skirmishes (as Arthur might claim) or was the racial violence orchestrated by the British Government as part of a carefully planned and authorized process to destroy the Palawa? Were the Palawa simply criminals who were disobeying imposed British law or were they enemy insurgents who were fighting to hold onto their country? Were the massacres rare or were they ubiquitous, a necessary concomitant of the spreading British invasion front? Was genocide an ‘unplanned consequence’ of the British occupation process or was it deliberate and calibrated? Was Britain’s self-declared sovereignty over Australia legal or contrived? We will show that the genocidal violence in Tasmania (and across Australia) was planned and organized by the British Government as the necessary price for seizing the land from its owners. … consideration of the rich oral and private records … Gazetted legislation and Government correspondence do not, however, replace the abundant narrative and oral history that lies sprawling all around us, not significantly or sufficiently analyzed, not, that is, by the reasonable standards of modern historians, and where much of this history is slowly becoming entombed or crumbling away. Why? Because it is no longer being published (‘out of print’ an all too frequent phenomenon); or has not been digitized for mass online availability due to cost constraints or lack of interest; or is being held behind expensive paywalls where access is limited; There are numerous examples. Take one. In 2008, Lyndall Ryan published an article in the Journal of Genocide Research, Volume 10, Issue 4, entitled Massacre in the Black War in Tasmania 1823 – 34: a case study in the Meander River Region, June 1827: 479 – 499 https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520802447834 ; the article purchase is $42.50 USD for 24 hours access, a prohibitive amount. 578 or is held in microfilm form at state archives; or retained in dusty major libraries, where the volume is not available for public loan but must be accessed on site. Cultural amnesia is the inevitable result and a degraded and less-informed society our common loss, our contrived and imagined memories - a mythical 19th century British version of the dreamtime - the legacy for our children. I borrow this term from the excellent book by Clive James, Cultural Amnesia, W.W. Norton, New York, 2007. Much of our written history is being lost, awareness of our past progressively forgotten, slowly sliding into irrelevance as publishing runs all too rapidly expire. Even some volumes of the Historical Records of Australia, Series III, still in copyright, I had to obtain secondhand from a UK source. Remaining copies of HRA 3/7 were unforgivably pulped by the publisher, so could not be digitized. If we have not the means of remembering the past except through elongated library searches and overseas acquisitions, how can we not repeat past mistakes, our cultural history hoisted on shire subsidized hagiography. We become like goldfish, with a limited attention span and memory, destined to experience an ever present now – anterograde amnesia – where ‘now’ is the last second, or perhaps if we extend the analogy, the last hour, day, week, month, beyond which the years and decades become increasingly fuzzy. Centuries: they are lost unless we engage with history. But what history? There are many. Yet it need not be. Michel Foucault examines the role of the ‘archives’ in the Archaeology of Knowledge, where he deconstructs the ‘system of relations between the known and unknown’. But what we know, if not properly ‘remembered’, can quickly become unknown, as happens when books go out of print, or historical records become increasingly inaccessible, or we subscribe to revisionist history. This book attempts to set out a partial antidote for one elemental aspect of our formative history, what Bill Stanner called the great Australian silence. 1298 The reader will judge its success. … and the remembrance of things past … What does any of this matter? Surely, it was a long time ago? Things change? No, not really. Just as the British Government put its own slant on Tasmanian genocide, just as they redacted the official correspondence to hide their culpability, today we have ‘fake news’, ‘alternative facts’, new neologisms to define a preferred reality. Now our public utterances – by politicians and corporations – barely fake ontological principles. If we don’t deny climate science as a form of belief we proffer new forms of myth: that refugees are criminals; that Aboriginals are freeloaders on social handouts and deserve their economic marginalization; that climate change is either a hoax or an opportunity for environmental exploitation;1299 that an unequal 1% society provides for aspiration, for ‘trickle-down’ societal improvement; that economics trumps political and humanitarian concerns. 579 There is no economic evidence that ‘trickle down’ economics is effective in reducing wealth inequality; rather, it tends to exacerbate the social problem by accepting the structural disadvantage of some socioeconomic groups on low fixed incomes where rising recurrent costs continue to erode living capacity. No, we have not changed that much. This is the pity. … whether we can learn from history … My sister recently asked me: what is the coming singularity? I thought about hinge points in history. I thought about a trite answer involving Kurzweil. I thought about future history where the laws of physics may break down or find new forms, I thought about the rise of the machines and exponentially increasing artificial intelligence, about driverless cars, about autonomous agents and virtual reality. I thought about Australia’s White Australia policy, for which Alfred Deakin was the architect. Was this a type of singularity? It was certainly a hinge point, one that was to define Australia’s national character for years to come, where racism became a legalized underpinning of Australia’s Constitution. In 1901, when he was the attorney general, he proclaimed to applause: We have power to deal with people of any race within our borders, except the aboriginal inhabitants of the continent, who remain under the custody of the States. There is that single exception of a dying race; and if they be a dying race, let us hope that in their last hours they will be able to recognise not simply the justice, but the generosity of the treatment which the white race, who are dispossessing them and entering into their heritage, are according them. Deakin wrote Aboriginals out of Australian history. It took until 1967 for us to partially recover our collective morality. Have we really learned since? Modern humans have seen around 7,500 generations. Ours is the last and it is the only generation to generate waste in any concerted effort, beyond food scraps – billions of tons per year - to the unremitting disposal of unwanted goods, driven by ever shortening marketing cycles, by consumerism without consequence, by quantity over quality, by using the air and sea as a sewer. We are drowning in waste. There exist enormous spiralling plastic-filled ocean gyres that are choking out marine life in the north and south Pacific. Endless municipal garbage dumps pump out megatons of methane, when we could be recycling organics into the soil. Things are no longer built to last. It means that we can no longer last. … whether we can learn from Aboriginal society … Aboriginals had the answer: they had lived sustainably for millennia, creating garden estates through firestick farming,1300 taking what was necessary for life and no more. And then their world violently ended. 1301 Pale ghosts invaded with their strange concept that Nature could be owned, not shared. 580 See, for example, Hannah More, ‘All property is sacred, and as the laws of the land are intended to fence in that property, he who brings up his children to break down any of these fences, brings them up to certain sin and ruin’. Although More was writing about the English laws of property in 1854, her words reflect the conglomerate that comprised the Laws of England up to that time and for the century prior. Property was certainly foremost in Governor Arthur’s thinking, and his scheming with stolen Aboriginal land made him wealthy by 1836, at the end of his term as Governor of Tasmania.1302 Cook’s 1770 declaration of British sovereignty immediately alienated (or expropriated) all Aboriginal land within certain prescribed boundaries of New Holland in favour of the Crown, boundaries that Britain was to rapidly extend to the edges of the continent as its insatiable need grew to satisfy an ever-pressing horde of pastoralists with their livestock. … whether we can direct our future … This alien culture did not (and does not) understand the need for a light footprint on the Earth and easily surrenders to short-term exploitation, deriving a momentary advantage that carries either a (deferred) future cost or (more generally) a cost to other parties. It was not only Aboriginal society that suffered the feral onslaught by a determined Imperial regime; native species of plants and animals were also swept aside in the overriding interests of economic development, a process that continues today. Hinge (or flexion) points then become a metaphor for Aboriginal dispossession, for an increasingly unequal society, for a privileged 1% in the new war of the races,1303 for ecological degradation, for an unsustainable society. In effect, we are hooked on a giant Ponzi scheme, where the Earth’s future is being squandered for our short-term benefit: we are polluting the atmosphere with carbon and the oceans with plastic; fish stocks are plummeting; there is increasing loss of biodiversity; deforestation shows few signs of being checked; degraded and desiccated soils are growing; and valuable ground water is diminishing. Australia is at the vanguard of this processional morbidity. The signs are there of an Earth in crisis, but there is little evidence we are listening or noticing. The mantra remains: exploit now, pay later. The destruction of Aboriginal society should have awoken us, even partially; instead, we purge the memory of our misdeeds and ignore accountability. The collective behavioural psychopathy continues to plague us, clinging like an unwelcome shadow. We are sleepwalking to a catastrophe of our own making, our sybaritic self-indulgence masking the chancre at our core. In such a balance sheet, the poetry of Nature is lost, along with its irreplaceable value. It is why, as a rule, most civilizations don’t survive. They tend to flame and die, following a logistics curve, where they outstrip their resources and succumb to decay and death. 1304 581 …. whether we can adapt in time … In 2017, the doomsday clock moves closer to midnight; global warming accelerates; the First Nations’ Uluru declaration pleads for a roadmap, not for a symbolic change in the Constitution, but for a treaty: reform that allows us to participate fully and actively in the life of the Australian state.1305 It seems reasonable. All of it. But politics is rarely reasonable when it is subducted by economics, something the Palawa were to learn. We should learn too. • • • • • • Since federation in 1901, Australia continues to give a one-fingered salute to the formal recognition of Aboriginal society in our Constitution. We have no Charter of Rights. Environmental protection is open for barter, where land clearing is accelerating1306 along with global warming and species loss. Agricultural emissions are paradoxically off the table for Australia’s global commitment to atmospheric carbon reduction.1307 We pay polluters to reduce their emissions but have had no emissions trading scheme since 2014. We have a climate emergency, but our Government ignores the problem by pointing to token 2030 emission reduction targets that use accounting tricks that allow us to freeload on the Paris agreement. It can be no surprise that genocide and ecocide are conjoined, the result of a pathological behavioural landscape we seem determined to sustain. … whether we can take a long-term view … Just as we fought with Aboriginals for control of the land, now we are on a collision course with Nature. In Australia, the dispossessory process began with the arrival of the British where the primary measure of progress was economic and political. Corporate social licences and codes of governance are now widely ignored. The ideological mantra becomes: less corporate regulation; fewer prosecutions for corporate malfeasance; increased shareholder returns; demands for lower taxes; a press for lower wages; and greater executive bonuses. A long-term view, by comparison, would embed sustainability and equitability in our social licence. We would look to a framework that upheld our agreed values. But we have no such framework. …so, can we change? We sustain our collective destructive behaviours because we don’t – or may not - know how to change. In economic theory, we are hostage to a sunk cost fallacy,1308 payments that can never likely be recovered, a peculiar delusion that our decisions are based on a rational 582 assessment of future value when, in fact, the more we invest in something, the harder it is to walk away if the investment proves unprofitable or problematic. It is a delusion we are seemingly unable to recognize, the delusion that we may somehow still gain financially, notwithstanding the contrary evidence. It’s the gamblers’ delusion that the more we ‘invest’, the greater the likelihood that our ‘luck’ will turn. We are now on borrowed time, time borrowed from our descendants. In part, our behaviour relates to emotional experience. After all, we would not abandon our children if they disappoint us. But we also become emotionally attached to other ‘investments’, say a particular poker machine or a holiday shack or a yacht or other unsustainable acts such as: • • • • • over-exploiting degraded land; or coal mining; or using the Great Barrier Reef waters as a sewer; or clear-felling native forests; or removing Aboriginals from their land. The ultimately destructive act confers some momentary economic or other advantage that is overwhelmed by downside redemptive costs that we fail to acknowledge until they cannot easily be ignored. We take without giving and feel affronted when Nature fights back. The greater the sunk ‘investment’, the harder it becomes to cut our losses. We may have already reached a tipping point in our battle with Nature. We have invested mightily in taming the land and now the land is fighting back, along with the environment. Continuing to do the same things won’t change the result. We seem irrationally convinced we can win any transactional confrontation. We tell ourselves we have won in the past, when we wrested the country from the hands of Aboriginals. There was short-lived discomfort in managing the slaughterhouse to its procedural conclusion, but we recovered and washed the blood away. The same cannot be said for the victims: Aboriginal society; or the land. Now we find that, in seeking dominion over a contested space, it is increasingly likely the winner who loses. Our time is running out. Our adversary is now the Earth. And us. … and is our collective behaviour perfectible? Ultimately, this book is an enquiry into collective human behaviour, and whether there may still be hope – like some penitent Parsifal - for our redemption or, alternatively, whether we may yet become another failed species brought down by our insufficiency, by our inability to direct our own evolution through enlightened niche construction. What happened in Tasmania through Imperial adventurism then becomes a metaphorical cipher for our flawed society, an illustrative footnote to our defiant hubris, our incorrigible unwillingness to recognize and be accountable for the errors of the past, our intransigent short term materialism resolving as a punctuation point for a slowly forming environmental catastrophe that we can see before us but seem unable to avoid, our inability to recognize and adapt to the patterns of history. 583 Or perhaps the term cipher is misleading. Perhaps Tasmanian genocide is better considered as a use case instantiation of the type procedural execution of asymmetric power, of displacement and subjugation in the interest of unilateral advantage however that objective may be framed, of the capacity for a racist culture to destroy another in order to expropriate their land for a transactional advantage. Niche construction is two way: adaptive or destructive. Either way, if we make our bed, so must we lie in it. We have moved beyond a cold, mechanistic Darwinian/ Newtonian Universe to one that is ineffably sublime and nuanced, should we open our eyes. We must choose our future wisely. Tasmanian Genocidal Roles: Actors and Agency The jurisprudential system of almost any country – and this includes Australia - has and continues to have a focus on individual crimes against person or property. White collar and corporate crime are rarely punished. Crimes of entire societies or countries are usually above the law because they are the law. So it was for the British administration in Tasmania. The business of Palawa dispossession and extermination required an army of bureaucrats, civil servants and private citizens who, together, were responsible for the mechanics of Tasmanian genocide. Obedient to the authority of the Crown, they viewed their toil as righteous and praiseworthy; any Palawa resistance to the land heist was an ‘outrage’ punishable by destruction and death. The hypothesized genocidal patterns of Tasmanian meta-history are falsifiable, whereas an individual event can have multiple perspectives, any of which may be inconsistent with another. It gives rise to apparent type event contradictions such as invasion (from the Palawa view) to settlement (from the British view). The structural patterns of the imposed Tasmanian social complex for the period of Palawa extermination conform to a collective diagnosable spectrum disorder that reflects different levels of intentionality along an abstraction gradient. These levels range from State driven political-economic policies (including constraint rules for land and immigration), 1309 to State driven practices (including constraint rules such as the British rules of evidence and the legal right to protect one’s ‘property’), to constraint rules for individual behaviours that are defined by self-enrichment and self-preservation. The system dynamics, both behavioural and procedural, are further shaped by these constraint rules. The more detailed instances, the contextual referents, the actors and their agency, and the dynamics are statistically predictable within an intentionality envelope. For example, ‘killing members of the group’ may only have a limited effect for a single incident but, if the State condones the behaviour and thereby perpetuates it, the outcome is more conclusive, particularly if the State is actively and intentionally involved in targeted killing through its various instruments of projected power, the police, military, legislation, proclamations and judiciary. Such was the case in Tasmania. 584 We remind ourselves that the United Nations definition of genocide (genocidal process), under Article II, means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. In Tasmania, all these Lemkinian defined acts were carried out by both Government and settler society, and all were both intentional (planned) and systemic (structural): 2 (a) Killing members of the group: declarations of martial law; settlers openly spoke of extermination and a ‘war of the races’; systemic massacres; policy of ‘dispersal’; indiscriminate homicides; poisoning; imposed starvation. 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group: sexual predation; stealing children; introduction of drugs and disease; destruction of hunting equipment, dogs, totems and sacred sites; destruction of water holes and hunting grounds. 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical and mental destruction: Remnant Aboriginal populations were forcibly moved to a detention centre where they were expected to become extinct; derogation as ‘vermin’. Aboriginals could be shot as trespassers. British law was racist and did little to protect Aboriginals from abuse by settlers. No Tasmanian settler was ever convicted of Aboriginal murder or mistreatment. 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group: Women were abducted or preyed upon. Expropriation of Aboriginal food resources caused starvation. Declaration of martial law meant that Aboriginals could be shot without legal consequence. 2 (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group: There was a common practice of child abduction by pastoralists and settlers, usually for child labour. 585 Figure 173 Simplified Lemkinian genocide model. Each of these ’actionable components’ can be reduced to detailed subprocesses and repeatable activities. An ‘actionable component’ is also equivalent to some identified repeatable behaviour. Mapping of Tasmanian targeted destruction to Lemkinian genocide We are interested to map the intersection of the articles of the UN Genocide Convention, particularly the paragraphs of article 2, with the roles and agency (behavioural categories or categorial agencies or faceted classifications) of the broad executable components of the Genocide conceptual schema, as previously specified. These behavioural patterns, because they repeat, can be prescriptively modelled. Therefore, we must develop an analytical vocabulary for key terms such as Involved Party and Agency. This will allow us to understand the nature of cascading intentionality in the behavioural pattern of Tasmanian genocide, from the role of the British Government down to that of a field policeman or colonist and provide a rigorous - or as rigorous as possible - framework for the case instances. Agency is the capacity and manner in which an individual or organisation (Involved Party) may act in a given environment or social structure. Agency corresponds to an ‘object class’, or the manner in which an object such as Involved Party is implemented (instantiated) within a found environment such as the type Occupation Process. Therefore, agency is bound up with the concept of Involved Party, which was introduced earlier and cited thereafter. An Involved Party (or the Involved Party concept) represents all the participants that may have contact with the type reference model (or subject area conceptual schema) and about 586 which the model wishes to maintain information, for example, case instantiations for the occupation process. The definition and characteristics of the ‘Involved Party’ are independent of the party’s involvement (or agency) with the subject area. Types of Involved Party are individuals, organisations, functional areas, and roles. Examples (or type instances) are: British Government; Secretary of State; Governor; Land Commissioner; police; military; colonist-settlers; sealers; landowners judiciary; Executive Council; Aboriginals; Tasmanian Lieutenant-Governor. The Involved Party ‘types’ (or more strictly, ‘classes’) can form a classification taxonomy or schema, corresponding to the labels for nodes on a directed graph: for example, the class ‘British Government’ includes the role (or sub-class) of ‘Lieutenant-Governor’, which can be instantiated with the name of a particular Governor, say ‘George Arthur’. Each level of the taxonomy can be instantiated at varying more levels of nested abstraction. Involved Party types can also be sub-typed: for example, the Executive Council includes Colonial Secretary, Colonial Treasurer, Chief Justice and so on. Sub-types are instantiated with case instances such as John Pedder (in the case of the Chief Justice on the Executive council at a certain period of time). An Involved Party (object class) can have many types, as we saw, but an object such as ‘sexual predation’, although it can exist in different sub-classes (such as the occupation process, or genocide process), can have the same type (settler-colonist, or military officer, or other specific type of Involved Party). We have a conceptually similar Involved Party cohort today, drawn together by vociferous self-interest, determined to deny or delay action on climate change or species extermination or ecosystem destruction if it affects our short-term standard of living or impacts upon our GDP or questions our preferential ideology. A typology focuses on the often-dynamic type relationships between nodes, whereas a classification schema (or taxonomy in its simplest form) is based upon the properties of real objects in a static hierarchy. For this reason, typologies and taxonomies can often – and do -overlap. We will refer to our referent type models as classification schema that can be instantiated at different levels of abstraction, forming a nested decomposition. Our models can also be sub-typed within a behavioural envelope determined by imposed constraint rules (or type agencies) that modify the operation of a specific object class and are contextually dependent. A classification schema can be faceted, that is, the view or facet of the schema can reflect different behavioural criteria. Facets can apply to different types of models, including data and process models. A faceted data classification shows the uniquely peculiar data uses of a particular data view, such as: Occupation typology/ Tasmanian genocide/ Martial Law Proclamations/ ‘roving’ ‘pursuing’ parties/ extermination/ massacre events/ Involved Parties. 587 We note that these ‘views’ are procedural and are facets of the type genocidal process; they show the various categorial behaviours (facets) and how they intersect the classification schema in a patterned (or faceted) manner. We will argue that behavioural agency (or categorial behaviour) can be deterministic to some measurable degree within any system of social rules and constraints - including Government legislation, systems of criminal law, policies, proclamations, notices, and edicts - but is subject to value judgments that impose agency responsibility for any and all consequences. The argument ‘I had to kill him’ is not necessarily a reasonable moral or legal defence. But for colonial Tasmania, the defence was almost never required, being overtaken by the larger utilitarian argument ‘It was a war of the races’ or ‘I was protecting myself’ or ‘I was protecting my property’ or ‘I was using force against force, so my actions were sanctioned’. We then have to consider how the ‘war’ started, a war imposed by Britain on an increasingly desperate Aboriginal population, a war that employed the methods of Lemkinian genocide for the ‘greater good’ of Empire but justified itself as a counter-insurgency measure against Palawa ‘outrages’, when Aboriginals resisted the British occupation process of their country. This conspective analysis becomes the basis for categorial conformable mapping, to determine if Lemkinian genocide occurred in Tasmania within the balance of reasonable legal and behavioural probability. The conclusion is yes. Each point of intersection by some agency (or categorial behaviour or type sub-process) with one or more Lemkinian Articles has a variable aggregate weighting, which lends the analysis to a statistical assessment. For example, the type behaviour ‘indiscriminate killing’ may, in a specific case instance, have certain weightings of Articles 2 (a) to 2 (e) that may be different to the weightings for other instances. The type behaviour or categorical agency is therefore contextually dependent, as we would expect. That is not to say that the conformable mapping is invalid.1310 The type behaviours (or categorial agencies) are extensible. They are not meant to be exhaustive, but in their progressive application can reveal the overall genocidal picture in increasing levels of detail, like a low-resolution photograph that is successively filled out into an ultra-high definition picture, representing the cumulative view of a number of overlapping representations. Subjective weighting is on a scale: 1 to 10, where 10 is highly important in the genocidal outcome. Based on the subjective weights, we determine that all the type behaviours (agencies) had a significant effect (with high importance) on Palawa genocide at different times during the genocidal process, which overlaid the type schema for the Occupation process. The agency subjective weight (importance) together with the agency extent (the range of UN genocide articles 2(a) to 2(e) invoked by the agency; scale is 1 to 5) determines the genocidal impact of a type behaviour. Quantitative analysis: If we plot importance against extent, we find that all the genocidal type behaviours fall within the top right quadrant, that is, high genocidal impact. For example, the agency ‘British Government’ (colonizing policies) has the coordinates (10, 5) on the graph of genocidal impact, and so on for the other agencies. It begins to suggest why the British invasion of Tasmania was so destructive of the Palawa. 588 The proportional number of Palawa impacted by any one agency (including but not limited to proportional depopulation) varies according to the phase within the genocidal process over time. Roles and Agency Subjective UN Genocide Articles (type behaviour) Weighting 2 (a) 2 (b) 2 (c) 2 (d) 2 (e) British Government (politics) 10 x x x x x Economics 10 x x x x x Indiscriminate killing 10 x x x x Armed oppression 10 x x x x x Kidnapping 10 x x x x x Ecocide 8-9 x x x x Dispossession 10 x x x x Settlement 10 x x x Cultural destruction 10 x x x x x Pastoralism 10 x x x x x Immigration 10 x x x x British Law 10 x x x x x Arthur's 'final solution' 10 x x x x x Martial Law 10 x x x x Sexual predation 10 x x x x Introduced disease 9-10 x x x Friendly mission: Conciliation 9 x x x Forced detention: Wybalenna 9 x x x x x Subjugation and repression: Oyster Cove 9 x x x x x x Figure 174 Intersection of Tasmanian Roles and Agency with Lemkinian Article 2 paragraphs 1311 It is also the characteristic of any categorial behaviour that it can intersect other such behaviours in specific ways. For example,’ indiscriminate killing’ can (and usually does) intersect ‘armed oppression’, with the point of intersection defined by activities that are shared between the agencies. In a verifiable sense, this means that the agencies are codeterminate. The specific intersection is contextually dependent. An instance of the type agency ‘indiscriminate killing’ may reveal a contextually based association (shared activity) with some related instance of ‘armed oppression’. 589 Within the context of the type ‘occupation process’, Arthur proclaimed Martial Law that established and legalised death squads to pursue, capture and in many cases kill any Aboriginals who were found. The Emu Bay massacre, which we will examine later as a case study instantiation, took place within this contextualised behavioural landscape (type occupation process), including the type agencies (behavioural sub-processes) of ‘indiscriminate killing’ and ‘armed oppression’, each of which were triggered by Government policy (Martial Law). More detailed modelling can expose the nested referents.1312 We note that an instance of ‘armed oppression’ may or may not include an instance of ‘indiscriminate killing’. The point of intersection between the two categorial behaviours is where an instance of killing or murder is involved. The homicide can be judicial or extrajudicial, depending on the triggering referents. We can group these agency functions and map their group relationships in a form that can allow us to construct a layered typology. The functions subscribe to a type process flow for the Tasmanian Occupation process that overlaps the Lemkinian Genocidal process, an intentional process that was driven by British Government policy. In Australia generally (and more specifically in Tasmania), Lemkinian genocide cannot be separated from systemic racism, which was the corollary to violent British exploitation and expansionism. When a party takes something by force, the theft is more acceptable if the perpetrator can derogate the victim, or otherwise specifically target the victim as a member of some pilloried group unworthy of what was stolen from them. The result is racism, a dysfunctional behaviour that can infect an entire society, and we still see the effects today in Aboriginal disadvantage. 590 Figure 175 Agency relationships (un-normalised) and their type vectors (or vectorial associations) for Tasmanian genocide Within this associative network of type agency relationships, we note that • • • • • • • • • Government political and economic policies drive land and security policies that drive enhanced immigration that accelerates the alienation of more land that increases the rate of settlement and expanded economic development through pastoralism that increases the alienation and location of more land, that increases greater Aboriginal dispossession that increases indiscriminate killing and cultural destruction, that is enhanced through a juridical and legislative process of martial law and ethnic cleansing (‘friendly mission’) and so on. 591 The vectorial agencies are interconnected in a complex pathological system dynamic that has only one purposeful outcome: the targeted destruction of the Palawa through the policies, methods and behaviours of Lemkinian genocide. Beyond racism, vectorial agency for Lemkinian genocide embraces persistent type triggers such as strategic, legislative, administrative, operational and displacive. These type triggers can also be instantiated at multiple levels of abstraction. For example, in the context of Tasmania, the type trigger strategic (political and economic) is sub-typed as: • • • • • • block the influence of the French in Tasmania; extend sovereignty for the claimed area of East New Holland (or New South Wales) to include Tasmania; establish a beachhead settlement in Tasmania, at first with a predominantly carceral population; protect the early settlement by military and paramilitary force from Aboriginal objections to the invasion; expand the area of settlement through immigration; promote economic self-sufficiency; and so on. All other referent type triggers can be sub-typed in a similar way, each creating a typology, and each typology interconnected.1313 Strategic Uses Uses Uses Invasive Administrative Legislative/ Juridical Operational/ Displacive Coercive/ Repressive Destructive Figure 176 Vectorial associative directed graph network for level 0 (type) triggers The type triggers also exist as a coplanar associative network, with Governmental strategic policies as the root segment or agency group, corresponding to a node on a directed graph for which the categorial trigger is British Imperial intentionality to claim sovereign possession of New Holland. For any specific trigger, each level of abstraction carries its own associative network 1314 against other sub-typed referent triggers. 592 Along with behavioural constraint rules,1315 this typological network (or type trigger classification and association schema) further defines Tasmanian genocide as a complex bounded dynamical behavioural system. The sub-typing schema for any type trigger logically follows from the British Government intentionality to claim sovereign possession over an area and deny the rights of the original inhabitants to their traditional lands. Genocide was the result. Palawa lives were taken, then their culture, and finally their identity, leading to the mental and physical destruction of the targeted group. Britain employed its own system of laws to ensure that any Aboriginal resistance was deemed criminal and that crimes against Aboriginals were left unpunished. If we are to understand the Lemkinian process as it played out in Tasmania, we must understand who, how and why. This will involve an examination of roles and agency along with evidentiary arguments (what and when) that will support (or falsify) our hypothesis for Tasmanian genocide. Lemkinian behavioural schema For our analysis, each paragraph of Article 2 of the UN Convention on genocide defines a specific and actionable Lemkinian sub-process, where: 10. Any Lemkinian behaviour or agency can action one or more Lemkinian subprocesses. Example: The role of the British Government (Involved Party) through the agency (behaviour) of British Government Imperialism carried out all Lemkinian subprocesses (Article 2 paragraphs) in Tasmania. 11. Any Lemkinian sub-process can be used for one or more agencies (behaviours). Example: Article 2(a) defines a Lemkinian sub-process that can be carried out by agencies such as indiscriminate killing, or enforced detention, or the ‘friendly mission’, or sexual predation, or introduced disease. 12. Any Lemkinian sub-process can be actioned by one or more roles (Involved Parties). Example: Article 2(a) defines a Lemkinian sub-process that can be carried out by roles such as the British Government, or field police, or the military, or settlers, or sealers. 13. Any Lemkinian role (Involved Party) can have one or more agencies (behaviours). Example: The British Government (role) carried out indiscriminate killing and enforced detention (behaviours). 14. Any Lemkinian agency (behaviour) can have one or more roles (Involved Parties). Example: Indiscriminate killing (behaviour) was carried out by more than one Involved Party or Role, including paramilitary groups, settlers and the military. 15. Any role can contain one or more other roles. 593 Example: The role of the British Government contains the role of George Arthur. 16. Any Lemkinian agency (behaviour) can contain one or more other agencies (behaviours). Example: The agency (behaviour) of indiscriminate killing can contain introduced disease. 17. Any role can action one or more agencies (behaviours), where each agency can action one or more Lemkinian sub-process. Example: A settler (role) can engage in sexual predation, or indiscriminate killing, and so on, where the agency (behaviour) of indiscriminate killing invokes paragraphs 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), and 2 (d) of the Convention. Similarly, sexual predation invokes multiple Lemkinian sub-processes. Other roles show a corresponding extension, using the same logic. 18. Any sub-process can contain one or more repeatable activities1316 that can be shared by other sub-processes. Example: The sub-process ‘causing serious bodily or mental harm to the group’ can contain the activity ‘sexual predation’, which can also be shared with the subprocess ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical and mental destruction’. ‘Sexual predation’ is a repeatable activity but it can also be an agency (categorial behaviour). This is best shown through a diagram. We can see that where Lemkinian agencies (patterned behaviours) overlap, they are sharing Lemkinian sub-processes (or paragraphs of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention) or, in some cases, the repeatable activities within sub-processes. Figure 177 Lemkinian agencies (behaviours) overlap through shared Lemkinian sub-processes Where there are repeatable activities, say sexual predation, the triggering conditions will vary depending on context. Sexual predation can be an agency (behaviour) or an activity within a Lemkinian sub-process. 594 If we tag Lemkinian agency sub-processes with assigned roles, we define an accountability matrix corresponding to a process flow across Involved Party responsibilities. Together, roles and agencies form a bounded behavioural system within the meaning of Lemkinian genocide, where triggers connect any agency or sub-process with another in order to achieve some purposeful outcome. An example of such a purposeful (or intentional) outcome is the completion of Palawa ethnic cleansing (the removal of the Palawa from the island of Tasmania) through the agency of Arthur’s (Involved Party) ‘friendly mission’ (behavioural agency) by Robinson (Involved Party). The ‘friendly mission’ intersects multiple politically driven Lemkinian sub-processes, including dispossession, extermination, deportation and lethal repression. Role 1 Role 2 P4, P5 P1, P2 P2, P3 Figure 178 The relationship between roles, agencies and Lemkinian sub-processes. Legend: 1. A role is equivalent to an Involved Party. In some cases, an Involved Party can take many roles. 2. A sub-process is equivalent to a Lemkinian paragraph within Article 2 of the Convention. 3. Each rectangle represents a specific agency comprising one or more sub-processes. 4. pn is sub-process n (paragraph n) within Lemkinian Article 2. 5. Agencies can interact in a behavioural flow that corresponds to a bounded process flow. 6. The boundary condition for a Lemkinian sub-process is determined by Government policies and intentionality. 7. In the diagram, we see that Lemkinian sub-processes can be reused by different agencies. For this example, P2 is shared between two agencies. 8. The Lemkinian Convention specifies five ‘sub-processes’ or paragraphs for Article 2, any of which can overlap through reusable shared activities within a sub-process. That is, reusable Lemkinian activities (say ‘kill Aboriginals’) can be repeated in different 595 Lemkinian sub-processes and each instance becomes a contextual referent for that sub-process. Another way to understand the relationship between categorial agencies and Lemkinian subprocesses is by examining their intersections. For example, following the invasion and colonization of Tasmania, the prescribed agencies of pastoralism and immigration share a common type sub-procedural link in articles 2 (b), (c) and (d) of the United Nations Genocide Convention. The instantiation of that common link is a contextual referent that depends on the circumstances of associated events. The axes are ‘Time’ and ‘Involved Party’ bands. We have examined the pattern of Australian mass killing, using summary information from the destruction of the Palawa. We have determined that the pattern and its mechanics conform to Lemkinian genocide.1317 Agency 1 Agency 2 Agency n Figure 179 Categorial agencies intersect at shared Lemkinian sub-processes In some cases, we will simplify the analysis by equating a role with agency, unless otherwise stated. For example, the behaviour (agency) of Imperialism is logically equivalent to the role of the British Government (Involved Party). Each categorial agency had an economic and political momentum that was incompatible with a continuing Palawa (or - across the continent - Indigenous) presence. Britain would not resile. Nor its later vassal states. The die was cast for the Australian Indigenous population. They would go the way of the Palawa, subject to Lemkinian displacement through a practised formula. History would not judge because it was blind to the past, having been written by the invader. The collectively shared mantra would be economic development, no matter the humanitarian and environmental cost, and this, we will argue, became the basis for our emergent values, of self-interest, of greed, of cold economic determinism. It also became the seed for ecocide. Lemkinian Genocide articles and mapping to the conceptual schema for the Tasmanian ‘Type’ Occupation Process Each Lemkinian paragraph of Article 2 in the United Nations Genocide Convention intersects, in specific ways, the components of the conceptual schema for the generalised Occupation 596 Process. The pattern of intersections reflects the characteristic circumstances of Britain’s invasion of Tasmania. Tasmania was different from other invasion fronts in Australia. Britain obliterated the Palawa presence within a generation. So the Tasmanian genocidal difference is reflected in the speed of Aboriginal dispossession, which meant that the end stage Lemkinian process, including repression and subjugation, barely had time to take effect, unlike the rest of the continent. For Tasmania, in the 1830s, the juridical process that transformed settler sovereignty from de facto to de jure had just begun. Child kidnapping was yet to morph into eugenics and the ‘stolen generation’ that entailed the forcible breaking up of families in other states and a system of racially oppressive apartheid, where Aboriginals were forced to live separate lives. The succession of land and immigration legislation that tightened its legal grip on Aboriginal land would only arrive as Tasmania became self-governing from 1856. By this time, the pureblood Palawa were almost no more. Within Lemkinian Terminology, ‘killing members of the group’ can be direct or indirect. It does not matter how an Aboriginal person died, from disease, or poisoning, or wounds inflicted, only that they died because of the British occupation of Tasmania (or elsewhere in the continent). Nor can we equivocate, as Reynolds does, that the continental wide ‘group’ does not exist in Australia because there were multiple ‘groups’ involving different languages and territories. Group: set of people or things (Macquarie). With more mathematically rigorous logic, the type process of Australian genocide is a generator set, whose operations can generate a larger set of genocide objects. This larger set defines a manifold or Lie Group, which is basic to our understanding of symmetry. In our case, the type occupation process is a manifold of all possible genocidal instances, conforming to a pattern of Lemkinian genocide. Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain?: 20, 119 – 121. Reynolds argues: The paradox is that the smaller the group to be considered, the greater the likelihood that genocide did actually take place, that many – and sometimes most – members of local groups were killed by settlers or by Aboriginal troopers or trackers and that there was an intention to do so. Reynolds then concludes: Considered in this way, genocide would be judged to be more common but less momentous, in that the numbers involved in each incident would be quite small and the perpetrators may have had no idea that their local adversaries represented a distinct group. [p.120]. This is like arguing that the Jews were multiple groups, with different language and cultural backgrounds, and therefore the extermination by the Nazi administrative machinery was less momentous. No, the ‘group’ is the set of Aboriginal people who came into conflict with the invading British no matter where the point of the invasion originated. Across Australia, there were multiple invasion fronts, as armed British occupation metastasised across the country, the invaders also behaving as a ‘group’, responding to the British Government’s territorial aspirations, directions and policies. 597 Article 2 (a) mapping Figure 180 Article 2(a) ‘Killing members of the group’ as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process Article 2 (b) mapping 598 Article 2(b) 'Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process 599 Article 2 (c) mapping Figure 181 Article 2(c) 'Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process 600 Article 2 (d) mapping Figure 182 Article 2(d) 'Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process 601 Article 2 (e) mapping Figure 183 Article 2(e) 'Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process The role of ecocide, resource loss and starvation in Tasmanian genocide Was Australian ecocide a facet of genocide? We consider the use case of Tasmania and the role of environmental dispossession in the Lemkinian displacement of the Palawa. 1318 The destruction of Tasmanian Aboriginal society was in direct proportion to the degree of colonists’ encroachment on Aboriginal homelands. Tribal group structures began to dissolve, along with cultural identity, as Palawa dispossession increased. It happened quickly. Dispossession became absolute within a generation. Loss of habitat, loss of resources, loss of country invited a desperate resistance. The numbers deployed against them were too great. At the final accounting, after 1830, Arthur and Britain could contemplate their victory in human and economic terms. They had won. But at what cost. The cost was genocide. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through its practice of expropriating Aboriginal food resources, Britain is culpable under the following articles: 602 2 (a) Killing members of the group 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group Ecocide Ecocide is a relatively new term in the lexicon of our evolving language, but in the early invasion of Tasmania between 1803 and 1833 was simply the unsustainable exploitation of Nature’s resources for personal gain. It means, destruction of the natural environment. 1319 In Tasmania’s early foraging economy, competition for food and imposed starvation became a weapon against Aboriginals, the cause of further genocidal depopulation. The colonial historian, Borwick, writes of this: One great source of mischief was the liberty given to the prisoners, about the year 1806, to disperse themselves in search of kangaroos, during the season of famine. We can readily imagine the effect of letting loose in the Bush a number of reckless bad men, who had been previously subjected to the rigour of prison discipline. At first kindly treated by the dark men of the forest, they repaid their hospitality by frightful deeds of violence and wrong. Shrieks of terrified and outraged innocence rose with the groans of slaughtered guardians, in the hitherto peaceful vales of Tasmania. One wonders not at te quotation of the Rev. John West, from the Derwent Star newspaper of 1810: ‘The Natives, who have been rendered desperate by the cruelties they have experienced from our people, have now begun to distress us by attacking our cattle’. One extract from the Star of the same year, 1810, painfully illustrates the subject: ‘The unfortunate man, Russell, is a striking instance of Divine agency, which has overtaken him at last, and punished him by the hands of those very people who have suffered so much from him; he being known to have exercised his barbarous disposition in murdering or torturing any who unfortunately came within his reach.’ The indignation of honest old Governor Davey was strongly excited, when in 1813 he penned these words: ‘That he could not have believed that British subjects would have so ignominiously stained the honour of their country and themselves, as to have acted in the manner they did towards the Aborigines.’ Governor Arthur was much shocked at the barbarity of his people, and unable to prevent the evil. Immediately after his arrival in the colony, a tribe applied to him for protection, and it was readily granted. All that personal attention and kindness could do was done to retain them near Hobart Town, and to secure them from insult and injury. They settled at Kangaroo Point, a tongue of land separated from the town by the broad estuary of the Derwent. There they stayed quietly and happily for a couple of years, when a savage murder was committed by some of their white neighbors, and the camp broke up immediately for the haunts of the wilderness.1320 Of course, the one course of action that a succession of Tasmanian Governors could have taken was to stop the uncontrolled spread of settlement, to stop the excessive exploitation 603 of kangaroos, and to punish any white who was guilty of sexual predation and willful murder. That Britain did none of this made the eventual unfolding genocide inevitable. Resource loss By 1824, with Arthur’s arrival, Aboriginal resistance was becoming more desperate. Melville writes: In this year the aborigines of the Island began to annoy the settlers to a degree that required some active measures of the Government to allay the outraged feelings of this ill-fated race of human beings. 1321 These poor bewildered creatures had been treated worse than were any of the American tribes by the Spaniards. Easy, quiet, good-natured, and well-disposed towards the white population, they could no longer brook the treatment they received from the invaders of their country. Their hunting grounds were taken from them, and they themselves were driven like trespassers from the favorite spots for which their ancestors had bled, and had claimed the conquest. The various tribes which formerly were at war with each other, about this time seemed to forget their private differences, and their great aim was to protect themselves from slaughter, and to be revenged! The stock-keepers may be considered as the destroyers of nearly the whole of the aborigines – the proper, the legitimate owners of the soil; these miscreants so imposed upon their docility, that at length they thought little or nothing of destroying the men for the sake of carrying to their huts the females of the tribes; and, if it were possible in a work like this to record but a tithe of the murders committed on these poor harmless creatures, it would make the reader’s blood run cold at the bare recital. In self-defence were these poor harmless creatures driven to desperate means, their fine kangaroo grounds were taken from them, and thus they were in want of their customary food; and when every other means of obtaining a livelihood was debarred to them, necessity compelled them to seek food of their despoilers. Colonel Arthur pitied them – he no doubt was made fully acquainted with the aggressions of the civilized portion of the population; and much to his credit he caused a General Government Order1322 to be issued, commanding that the aborigines should be protected, and that outrages against these much injured people should be punished as if perpetrated against the white population; unfortunately the order could not have the effect anticipated by the Lieutenant Governor, for the evil was far too rooted, and it was “war to the knife”.1323 Some historians, including Geoffrey Blainey, argue that internecine ‘war’ was the major cause of Aboriginal depopulation, an argument that ignores: a) a relatively stable Palawa population over millennia b) most conflict was of a ritualistic nature with few deaths c) as armed settlers began expropriating Aboriginal territory and decimating the local tribes, the survivors were pushed into the territory of neighbouring tribes that may have caused some friction. The evidence is that inter-tribal disagreement was not the major cause of depopulation, but violent conflict with the British, miscegenation and the effect of introduced disease. 604 The nature of the Aboriginal collective epidemiological process gradually changed from respiratory pathology (resulting from British contact in the early stage of invasive occupation) to respiratory viruses and bacterial infections, nutritional inadequacy and bacterial dysentery (resulting from imposed living conditions in late stage Lemkinian genocide). By 1830, under Arthur’s authority, Britain had alienated all the prime grazing land. It had been taken over by sheep and cattle, with armed stock-keepers on constant watch. In many areas claimed by the British, Aboriginals were desperately short of traditional game, their usual sources no longer available, with once plentiful kangaroos now becoming scarce.1324 Settlers, police and military, who saw the gun as a form of ‘conciliation’, constantly harassed Aboriginals as trespassers, an outcome defined by the British laws of property. Aboriginals responded as best they could in defense of their homelands, their numbers always dwindling through the unceasing conflict, where Imperial authority was judge and jury. The law was no protection for the Palawa, who had no rights to land or life. Increasingly, as their food resources dwindled, they became dependent on grudging handouts around the towns and settlements. Sometimes, they projected their anger through spearing the encroaching livestock. Charity was in short supply. Determined resistance against the invading settlers had not worked. The British Government would not change course in its genocidal process. Aboriginal numbers were rapidly falling. Capitulation and detention became the answer. With Robinson’s ‘friendly mission’, resignation and despair set in. The problem of resource loss for the Palawa was real enough, but it was yet another issue that Arthur and Britain chose to ignore. On 19th March 1830, the Report of the Aborigines’ Committee found; it would be proper that the Government should cooperate by renewing, and with augmented strictness, the prohibition to destroy Kangaroos, by hunting, shooting, or other means, within the limits prescribed to the Natives. So great is the injustice of this proceeding on the part of the Whites, and so apparent the injury suffered by the Natives through the destruction of this their principal source of sustenance, that the Committee would deem it expedient, if other modes of prevention fail, to make this a legal offence to be visited with severe penalties. 1325 In November 1830, Sir George Murray, in a response to Arthur’s voluminous dispatch No. 19, dated 15 April, 1830, 1326 denies that the scarcity of kangaroos is causing much of the violence. For Murray to admit to this reality would call into question Britain’s land and immigration policies. From his armchair over 17,000 kms distant he writes: I cannot, however, refrain from adverting especially to the measure proposed by the Committee, of prohibiting the Settlers from destroying the Kangaroos by hunting or shooting them within the limits prescribed by the Natives, in order that this grievance may be immediately removed, although I am happy to find that no Injury has been 605 sustained on this head, in consequence of there appearing to be no real scarcity of these animals in the Districts which these People most frequent.1327 Nature was never on Britain’s balance sheet. For Palawa society, it was front and centre. This is the partial story of British ecocide and resource depletion as it unfolded in Tasmania, destroying one way of life while introducing another much poorer version of sheep and open pasture. The ecological destruction did not stop at Aboriginal food sources. There were no laws against such unsustainable exploitation,1328 or accountability for driving species to the brink, then or now. Nor was there any real concern for the welfare of the Indigenous people who depended upon the wild game and certain types of seafood for survival. Kangaroos Macropods were a primary source of Aboriginal food and clothing, along with other native animals such as possums. Certain species, including Forester kangaroos and emus, preferred to live on the open grasslands created by Aboriginal firestick farming. After the asymmetric contest for land, food resources became the line of competition between Aboriginals and the British invaders. Lyndall Ryan writes of the primitive British foraging economy in the early settlement: The best kangaroo hunting grounds were at Risdon, Pittwater, and Browns River at the Derwent and the west bank of the River Tamar at Port Dalrymple. A dozen kangaroos a week was considered a good catch. In the fifteen months between the end of August 1804 and October 1805 at the Derwent, over two hundred kangaroos and five emus were killed by the convict servants of one civil officer alone, and between August and October 1805, the commissariat received 7,740 kilograms of kangaroo meat. Between 1804 and 1808 kangaroo became the major source of fresh meat for the Europeans. In response to this invasion of their hunting grounds, the Aborigines at first avoided the hunters, then tried to take the kangaroos the hunters had caught. Then the Aborigines killed the hunters’ dogs. Finally they took the dogs as payment and found them important and useful assets to their own society. The first European was killed by the Aborigines in 1807. By 1808 conflict between Aborigines and Europeans over kangaroo had so intensified that twenty Europeans and a hundred Aborigines probably lost their lives. Kangaroo hunting became a lucrative business for the civil and military officers, bringing more profitable returns than agriculture. It also led to a healthy European population, for the only deaths during this period were from misadventure or old age. But by the end of 1808 kangaroos had become a scarce commodity. The kangaroo hunters had to move further from settlements to find kangaroos, which created carriage and storage problems, so that the slowly increasing European population could no longer be guaranteed fresh meat from this source. More importantly, kangaroo hunting encouraged convicts to forsake farming for bush ranging.1329 606 Noel Butlin, the eminent economic historian, identified the genocidal consequences of resource loss. He writes: Killing and resource loss were, however, often intimately related, sometimes as two sides of the same penny. Aboriginals were often killed to obtain their resources. Sometimes they were killed during efforts to limit their access to their resources. On other occasions they were killed judicially, having committed ‘offences’ in efforts to protect such access. Resource taking did not necessarily depend on violent killing. Sometimes Aborigines were simply forced off their lands and may have ended up in colliding with other tribes. Quite often, remnant Aborigines were employed on colonial properties, but under conditions that limited their access to former resources. In the latter case, the outcome to colonists appeared inexplicable – Aborigines simply died. […] So far as Van Diemen’s Land is concerned, there is little point in making complex modeling efforts. The dominant colonial attempts to withdraw resources and to kill Aborigines were concentrated within one decade after 1820. By the beginning of the 1830s very few Aborigines remained. There can be little doubt that combined and integrated efforts at resource removal and killing dominated the destruction of the Van Diemen’s Land Aborigines.1330 Louisa Meredith also notes the disappearance of the kangaroo around her home at Swanport on the east coast in 1852: I commence with the largest, the Great or Forest Kangaroo (Macropus giganteus), the “Forester” of the colonists, which I have not yet seen in its wild state. Many years ago they were very numerous, and might constantly be observed feeding in the day-time on the open country in groups of from five to twenty.1331 As the kangaroo food resource became depleted, only a few years after first settlement, the effect was extreme for Aboriginal society, who began to challenge the occupiers for their destructive foraging habits. Oxley1332 describes the kangaroo crisis for the Palawa best, by exposing the economics: Upon a scarcity arising it has been the constant practice to endeavour to remedy it by receiving kangaroo into the store and issuing it nearly in the proportion 2 lbs for one Salt Beef or Pork; by this method the evil was increased for not only double expence was incurred by the Crown, but all the labourers who might have been usefully employed in tilling the Ground were now sent out to hunt by their employers who found it infinitely more beneficial to their interests to receive One shilling per pound for the Game they procured than to wait for the distant contingency of a plentiful harvest … It would have been well for the Colony if the evil arising from receiving kangaroo into the Store had terminated with the necessity that had induced it; but that was not the case. Men who had been used to the rambling unsettled life of a Hunter could never 607 be brought to endure the labour requisite to raise grain. No sooner was that Scarcity of Meat removed by Fresh Supplies than those men betook themselves to the woods living upon the Game they afforded, and receiving occasional supplies of dry provisions and ammunition from their friends in Town … It was for a length of time supposed they would become tired of the wandering dangerous life they lead. And would voluntarily return to their labour; but those expectations were in vain … some of them have forced the native women after murdering their protectors to live with them and have families.1333 When settlers destroyed or expropriated the Aboriginal food sources, starvation and destitution followed for the Palawa. Until the 1830s, the Tasmanian settlement was close to a foraging economy, with settlers competing against the Palawa for wild game and other food resources. Angasi oyster The Aboriginals of the Great Oyster Bay tribe (Paredarerme) had lived semi-permanently and sustainably in the area of Oyster Bay on the East coast for tens of millennia, where there was a ready supply of food. When the British fishermen moved into the area, they wasted no time in harvesting the native Angasi oyster as Tasmania’s first shellfish export industry. The period of greatest exploitation was between 1860 and 1870 after the Palawa had been mostly destroyed, when the British shucked, pickled and shipped back to England over 90,000 tons and 22 million of the indigenous oysters, and the supply quickly collapsed through over-exploitation in a mere decade, the oyster beds stripped bare. The oyster shells also provided lime for building mortar. While Britain saw natural resources with covetous eyes, the Aboriginals saw an enlightened coexistence with Nature, where time was measured in millennia, not a person’s lifetime. Only one view was sustainable, and that view was prosecuted with weaponry. For Britain, sustainability was measured in the proclivity to violence, in how to make opposition succumb through force, in extracting the maximum value from a resource as quickly as possible. For as long as Nature was reduced to a form of property, we live with the results today.1334 Black swans (Cygnus atratus) had used the important breeding ground at Moulting Lagoon near Oyster Bay since time immemorial, with Aboriginals making sustainable use of their eggs and meat. With the arrival of British pastoralists from the early 1820s, the swan population was almost wiped out by 1840, with eggs, meat and down being sent to the colony in Hobart. Fortunately, they are now a protected species and numbers are slowly recovering in the sanctuary of the Lagoon, eponymously called Moulting Lagoon, which looks across to the indescribably beautiful Freycinet Peninsula. In 1839, Louisa Meredith wrote that in eponymous Great Swanport, where she lived: the swans were nearly all gone and we rarely see more than a few wild ducks or teal in a season, although formerly every lagoon teemed with them, and with 608 legions of bald coot, but the latter are now so rare, that I have not yet seen one.1335 The absence of swans is unsurprising. Meredith writes: The general custom was, to take the birds in large quantities in the moulting season, when they are most easily captured and extremely fat; they were then confined in pens, without any food, to linger miserably for a time, till ready to die of starvation, because, whilst they are fat, the down can neither be so well stripped off nor so effectually prepared. Troops of people make a trade in the eggs, taking them in immense quantities from all the known haunts of the swans, so as very nearly to exterminate them; and, in proof of this, I had been above two years at Swan Port before, in any of my numerous rides or drives, my desire to see a wild black swan was gratified, though, formerly, thousands frequented every lagoon.1336 Southern Right whales (Eubalaena australis) can weigh between 47 and 80 tonnes, making them just ‘right’ for shore-based whalers. Whaling began in 1804. Britain gave little thought to sustainability, only profit. Collins wrote enthusiastically to the Colonial Office: THE River Derwent is most advantageously situated for the Establishment and carrying on of a South Sea Whale Fishery, for which Purpose it is requisite there should be a resident Agent the works and People that are necessary, and have the direction of the Ships and Vessels employed; the following is a Plan I conceive most eligible, and as it is attended with a certainty of success, less risque is run than in the Pursuit of a Fishery immediately directed from England. Two or three Ships, not exceeding 250 Tons each, should be fitted out with every Article that has been found necessary for the pursuit of a South Sea Sperma Whale Fishery; and as it is intended these vessels should continue and be employed in the Country, solely for the purpose of fishing and bringing their Cargoes to the Factory in the Derwent, they should be supplied with all Stores and Provisions necessary for three or four Years, h as many Staves and Hoops as would set up Casks to contain 800 Tons of Oil, with forty or fifty Try-Pots and other materials necessary to produce it in a pure state; the following extra Artificers should be sent out for the Shore Service, with every material for the use of their respective employments, Vizt., 3 Carpenters, 2 Blacksmiths, and 2 Coopers. As every Person employed in such a of the Fishery, it would be necessary for these points to be settled previous to the Ships leaving England; as such People may have to continue some years in the Country, a different Establishment than the common one may be found necessary. I would also recommend that every Material except wood should be sent out for the purpose of building a Schooner of 60 or 70 Tons, to be employed in landing People in different Islands, for the purposes of Sealing, and killing the Sea Elephant for its valuable Oil. Ships fitted out in the above manner, and intended to put Whale Fishing Ground, so as to be there the first of the Season, which commences in 609 December and continues till April; by the time of their return everything might be got ready at the Factory the Black Whale Fishery, which commences here early in July and continues till September. Storm Bay, Storm Bay Passage, Frederick Henry Bay, and the River Derwent abound with Black Whale, or Right Fish, during these Months, and, by having the means, Oil enough may be procured on the Spot to freight home a dozen Ships yearly. I point out this as one of the great advantages that a concern fixed here would derive, as every opportunity might be taken of killing Black Whales, having frequently seen them out of the regular season in considerable numbers. During the Months of great Numbers of them in the Shoal parts of the River Derwent, and I have seen 50 or 60 Fish at a time from the present Settlement. Independent of the great profits that may accrue by means of the abovementioned Plan, there is a second opening that will prove highly advantageous to a concern that speculates this way. The Ships fitted out for this expedition should be supplied with those European Articles that will sell to advantage in this Country, of which I have herewith annexed a List. As Ships must be employed between this and England, to carry Home the produce of the- Fishery, everything might be sent in them (on advice from the Agent) that may tend to the good of the Concern, and there is no doubt but that two, if not three, Ships may be kept constantly going. The River Derwent is as particularly well adapted for the purposes of Ships, or carrying on a Fishery, as the Greenland or any other London Dock. It produces plenty of fine Timber for all purposes of Building, and good Spars to answer for Masts and Yards, etc., and on application a sufficient Quantity of Land may be obtained for producing such supplies as all people employed in this Country must stand in need of.1337 Between 1828 and 1838, Tasmanian whalers killed around 3,000 southern right baleen whales, without any regard to sustainability. The once pristine waters of toponymic Wine Glass Bay, a perfect arc of white sand near Cape Tourville on the Freycinet Peninsula, were blood red.1338 The port of Hobart thrived with whale and related commerce. By 1838, the whale population collapsed. It is beginning to recover slowly, with an estimated total population in 2008 of about 10,000. Although Aboriginals did not use whales as a resource, the example is further evidence of the British destructive behaviour that faced Palawa society, which eventually resulted in their extinction as a pure race. Tasmanian fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus) are mostly located on the islands of Bass Strait, where they were hunted by sealers from the late 1790s. By the early 1800s, seals did not exist on the Tasmanian mainland. Small populations continued on remote islands, including those in Bass Strait. The sealers also predated on Aboriginal women, 1339 and it is from this descendant population that almost all mixed-race Tasmanian Aboriginals now originate, the unique Palawa full blood race having been forced into extinction by 1905. 610 The expropriation and destruction of traditional Aboriginal food sources and the competition for land created a crisis that could only be resolved by conflict. For Aboriginals, starvation and death were the alternative to resistance, but their numbers were too few and spears were no match for guns. The British saw the ecosystem as a resource that they could exploit to exhaustion. Aboriginals had lived sustainably with the environment for millennia. The British won the conflict, but in destroying the Palawa, they lost their integrity and any claim to a superior culture. Aboriginal starvation In December 1830, the Hobart Town Courier chronicled the role of starvation in exacerbating Aboriginal resistance to the British occupation of their tribal grounds. In the process, they write vehemently of the need for a final solution, something to which Arthur was soon to accede in order to placate public feeling and maintain his authority and civil order. Arthur went further. In order to complete a concerted push of ethnic cleansing, he obtained the support of his superiors in arming convicts.1340 If there was ever doubt about the outcome, the die was now cast for the remaining Palawa. In the article, the Courier presented the fanciful notion that ‘Blacks’ could be captured without bloodshed. They were being disingenuous. In answer to the question so frequently put to us, ‘what is now to be done with the blacks? We should try every method that presents itself, until one succeeds. Send numerous roving parties with skilful and expert leaders to guard and protect certain districts – to station as many outposts as possible on the plan we have recommended, and to let them be visited occasionally by proper persons entrusted with the duty, to see that they are constantly at their post, - above all, to let every one be well armed and constantly prepared for them – round certain huts to erect such a sort of log fence or stockade as will enable the inmates to see before the blacks can come close upon them unawares – to train dogs to give the alarm, and to track and pursue them into their haunts – to attempt if possible some method of rapidly communicating information when they appear, either by messengers or signals, so that the surrounding parties may act in unison – to shackle or chain those who are caught, and compel them to lead the parties to the haunts of their tribe, and above all, to continue applying the mind and attention to the sad but imperiously important subject until the grand object is accomplished. As to the strict security of those who may be already in custody, or may afterwards be caught, we trust we have already said enough to supersede the necessity of again urging so essential a point. We are not yet aware of what immediate steps the Government are about to take to put an end to their atrocities, nor perhaps would it be proper for us to divulge them if we did, seeing the certainty of white men being amongst them who might gain information of the plans, and so take measures with the Blacks to frustrate them. We are, however, aware that the Executive is much engaged with the subject, and in the meantime we would urge the adoption, in part at least, of the method we recommended only two months ago, namely, that of stationing parties, sufficiently 611 strong, of 4 or 5 each, in such remote stock huts as the Blacks are likely to attack, and by two of the men on their approach seeming to run from it and to leave it defenceless, while two or three remain behind in ambush within, ready to inclose and secure them the moment they got inside. In this way we think many might be taken, and although entirely a matter of accident, great care and circumspection will be necessary – especially not to allow it ever to appear to the Blacks that more than 1 or 2 at most inhabit the hut. This also shews that in the matter of publishing rewards the Executive will have much to consider, because where so much depends on chance and situation, no one can tell who may succeed, and he may have as much merit who remains vigilant at his duty and never has an opportunity to capture a single Black, as he whom fortune may throw many into his hands. Nothing we conceive will tend so much eventually to lead the Blacks into the hands of the parties as driving them to seek the means of support from stock-huts. They are already in many parts it is well-known quite disappointed of their usual supply in this respect. The extension of the settled districts upon their usual hunting grounds has either driven them entirely from them or removed the kangaroo. If it is true that white men be among them, and they should eventually acquire a taste for mutton or beef, they would easily have it in their power to provide themselves. A Black native would hide behind a tree or a stone in the usual tract of cattle, and transfix one with the greatest ease, and certainly whenever he liked. But we have never yet heard that they had at any time been known to eat the flesh of either sheep or cattle. No doubt the flavour of both is to them strange and disagreeable, and eating all their animal food as they do in a half raw state must add to their disrelish of it in this respect. The quantity that they devour also is so enormously great, that the difficulty of finding it must gradually become almost insurmountable, unless they rob the huts, or have recourse to such change of food. It would therefore we think be a good plan, as we formerly hinted, to place a depot of bread, flour, potatoes, sugar, and so forth, of which they are known to be fond, in some hut on a hill or other place where they would be seen by the neighboring parties, would be a very feasible experiment, and not at all unlikely to succeed.1341 Among the other beneficial results of the late campaign, may be mentioned what we consider one of no small importance, namely, the strong and convincing proof it affords of the progress of reform in the prisoner class, and the order and discipline to which they are now reduced, both in the employment of government and with the settlers. This has been evinced in the strongest light by their conduct in the field on the late occasion. In no one instance that we know did they take advantage of their situation, though armed with guns and with opportunity had they been so disposed to misconduct themselves.1342 We must leave the last grittily honest word to George Robinson. Although he has been criticised by some historians as ‘self-serving’ (presumably because he sought remuneration for his Aboriginal work) and despite being misused by Arthur in his ‘friendly mission’ of ‘conciliation’, Robinson did more to document the process of Palawa genocide than almost any other person. His reports of atrocities were ignored. Arthur did nothing to uphold the law against 612 Aboriginal murder. Britain did not insist. No one was listening. The Government and upstanding settler society wanted the Palawa gone. The targeted process continued. In Arthur’s final solution from 1828 to 1832, murder was legalised. Robinson could only watch the genocide in despair, although it was a process in which he was a willing participant, a process of Lemkinian ethnic cleansing, a ‘friendly mission’, nevertheless a mission without which we would know considerably less of Palawa culture, so quickly were they destroyed.1343 In tracing causes to their primary source an indubitable fact presents itself which occurred upon the first colonisation of this dependency, the circumstances of which are too well known to be adverted to. It is very certain that the natives to this hour foster in their minds a remembrance of this wanton massacre of their fellow beings, and are anxious to atone for this aggression by the blood of their enemies. This amongst many other similar disgraceful transactions must necessarily tend to engender and promote that bloodthirsty temper amongst the aborigines which we cannot say has unjustifiably led to such pernicious results. It must also be considered that this colony has imported the joint depravity of the three united kingdoms, men in whom the common feelings of humanity are deadened and the voice of reason suppressed by the machinations of sin. What can be expected from such characters but a continuation of sin, an utter callousness of the dictates of Christianity. Yet how many of these wretched beings have been and still are employed in the remote parts of the interior as shepherds to the resident settlers! These are the sort of men who have ravished the wives and daughters of these unbefriended people, and when provoked by resistance have massacred them with impunity and set up their children as targets to shoot at. Some have even been so barbarous as to cut off the ears and noses of their murdered victims, which with horrid complacency they have exhibited to their depraved associates, and even gloried in their diabolical achievement. This is a notorious fact: Mr D recollects the circumstances of a man receiving corporal punishment for carrying the ears and noses of those whom he had slain in his pack and afterwards exhibited them as trophies. What can be more unjust, what so inhumanly selfish, as to aim at a monopoly of their only means of subsistence, to offer a reward for the skins of kangaroos, which are slaughtered wholesale for the sake of their produce. Individuals who ought to have been actuated by more generous feelings, have encouraged this traffic and made a business of this outrageous plunder. What else than plunder! Are not these animals the exclusive property of the aborigines, and as such should they not be deemed sacred and inviolable? Certainly! But in this instance and in many others which impel mankind to the most absurd as well as unjust inconsistencies, the overwhelming love of money deluges all other considerations. As men in all stages are actuated in a greater or lesser degree by the same evil passions, let us refer this matter to ourselves. Let us suppose that we possessed a herd of cattle on which we placed our chief dependence for a support. Let them be placed before our eyes in good condition and thriving on the rich pasture with which the neighboring land is blessed. Then let us behold a banditti of fierce and savage barbarians rush in upon our precious stock, and heedless of our cries or remonstrances slay them in open defiance, drag them to our homes and then consecrate by a public feast the mischief they had done and the public ruin they had spread amongst their 613 adjacent enemies. Doubtless a vindictive sense of their predatory incursions would prevail, and we should be strongly urged to wreak our vengeance upon such lawless aggressors. If such would be our feelings who vainly aspire to the subjection of our passions to the shrine of reason and humanity, what can or ought to be expected from the uncontrolled depravity of a savage. This is one of the manifold wrongs to which these poor creatures have been exposed, and it cannot be surprising that they should retain a strong sense of their injuries. It is well known that it is very usual for a number of aborigines, when assembled by their fireside under the open canopy of heaven, to recount the sufferings of their ancestors, to dilate upon their present affliction and to consult upon the best means of being released from their cruel and bloodthirsty foe. They have a tradition amongst them that white men have usurped their territory, have driven them into the forests, have killed their game and thus robbed them of their chief subsistence, have ravished their wives and daughters, have murdered and butchered their fellow-countrymen; and are wont whilst brooding over these complicated ills in the dense part of the forest, to goad each other on to acts of bloodshed and revenge for the injuries done to their ancestors and the persecutions offered to themselves through their white enemies. 1344 Summary and Conclusion British ecocide in Tasmania was a potent Lemkinian agency in Palawa rapid destruction. When any group is cut off from its food supply, it begins to starve. We may suffer the same consequence as Australia continues to dry, water becomes scarcer, firestorms erupt, and crops begin to falter. We can see it coming, the catastrophe. But our mantra remains, show us the money or she’ll be right or if you have a go, you’ll get a go, all variations on the gospel of self-interest that has led to our present predicament. We appear unable to change our destructive behaviours, not even to save ourselves. It is a crisis of resolve. Individually we feel powerless, collectively we have other priorities, economic development, internal and border security, and an international rule-based order that depends on trade arrangements and security treaties. We are ill-equipped for the existential challenge of planetary ecocide. We could learn, if we chose, from what happened to the Palawa. But we are blind and deaf, almost catatonic, while our politicians continue to mislead us with their fairy tales of unending prosperity where there are few losers in economic development, where any criticism of our humanitarian or environmental behaviour from any quarter is rejected on the basis of nationalism and ugly self-determination, where taking action on climate change is someone else’s problem, where the catastrophic effects of climate change are brushed aside ‘now is not the time talk about how climate change is directly accelerating drought and catastrophic fire storms’,1345 where greed is good according to the gospel of prosperity theology and neoliberal ideology. Meanwhile the silent majority (or the ‘quiet Australians’) have begun to despair at the lack of coherent climate change policy, being assailed by deceptive political argument that attempts to misdirect us. ‘We will meet our Paris 2030 emissions target in a canter.’1346 Not true, as we will show. Yet our politicians continue to lie to us, using false logic that misrepresents the 614 verifiable facts, arguments that are intended to persuade rather than reveal the truth or urge a call to action. One logical form of the argument by misdirection goes: In the middle of an event induced by [x], now is not the time to talk about [x]. It is an argument that allows indefinite deferral of any critical analysis of the issue, a policy of laissez-faire. For example, in the middle of yet another mass shooting in America, politicians and the gun lobby (National Rifle Association) will generally respond with the formulaic press release, ‘Now is not the time to talk about gun control. Guns don’t kill people, People kill people’. The argument is ill-conceived, as it does not allow timely root-cause analysis of the issue with a rigorous determination of associated prioritised action (agency) and begs the question, ‘If not now, when?’ An important reason for political delay on an issue is that actions usually have financial (fiscal) and social costs, so a delayed action defers the cost. In Australia, we can substitute for [x]: climate change. An evidence-based logical expression of the argument that removes the time-delay between issue and action is: In the middle of an event induced by [x] is exactly the time to talk about [x], particularly when we are facing the ongoing catastrophic effects of [x] and we need to act decisively, if belatedly. It brings forward the costs of action at some political pain but reduces the expected long-term costs that otherwise are transferred to later generations. A frequent variation of this logical misdirection is reframing, that is: it’s not about a, it’s about b. For example, ‘It’s not about climate change, it’s about Greenies obstructing preventative burning’. Or ‘it’s not about taking action now on climate change but taking action later.’ No. a is about a. A large part of our critical thinking dilemma on some profound issues is that cause and effect do not always happen closely together and are statistically related over time. That is, an extended expression of [x] may involve conditional dependency, where [x]: b  a. For example, climate change (a) increases the risk of affects catastrophic fires (b) and makes them more likely. For stochastic models it is possible to construct the likelihood L (D | p) which is simply the probability that the model with parameters p generates the observed data D. Humans are often poor at evaluating time-delayed causal effects where mathematical modelling is involved. If there is an evidence-based link between, say, climate change and catastrophic fires, or smoking and lung cancer, denialists can always question the link because scientific hypotheses are not based on certainties, only strong probabilities, such as: the sun will probably rise tomorrow, based upon past evidence, but an assertion that we cannot make with absolute certainty. 615 Going further, it is almost impossible to directly link (say) an instance of lung cancer with a lifetime of smoking rather than smog or some other cause; all we can do is show the likelihood of a link, based upon a statistical analysis. In time, our investigative tools may allow an individual’s cellular pathology to be associated with a specific carcinogen, or the circumstances of a firestorm to be deconstructed by complex stochastic causal analysis. But not yet. The required computing power is immense and our algorithms inadequate. The impending danger for humanity is that we may defer action on climate change until it is too late for effective action because the climate has reached an irrecoverable tipping point where our comfortable heuristic rules break down, and from which there’s no going back. Catastrophe (or chaos) theory describes the punctuated evolution of forms in nature, including ‘boom-bust’ cycles, where gradually changing forces produce sudden effects. That is, there are discontinuous transitions between the states of a system. See for example: René Thom (1972) Structural Stability and Morphogenesis. Thom’s mathematical theory is limited to systems with a small (<=5) number of variables. Analytical complexity increases exponentially with the number of variables. Climate scientists predict that the duration and intensity of weather-related events (droughts, fires, floods, cyclones) will tend to increase over time, exacerbated by global warming due to rising greenhouse gas emissions.1347 This human-caused climate change will impact on where we live (rising sea levels), food production, cost of living, loss of life, city viability, species extinction, degraded biodiversity, climate refugees, and territorial conflict. In geological terms, the more damaging ecological effects will play out almost instantaneously, within a century, and continue for millennia until some new form of stability is reached, possibly with fewer humans, where remnant pockets of our species may survive in engineered enclaves, either on Earth or possibly off-world. Humanity has never encountered such a potentially catastrophic situation before – apart from the occasional short-term disruption by war, famine, pogroms, and the like - and is ill equipped for resolute action well beyond the scale of Roosevelt’s New Deal or NASA’s manned space programme to put a person on the moon or the 1948 Marshall Plan to aid European recovery after WWII or America’s Manhattan Project. As a global community, we may have to spend trillions. But the costs of inaction are likely to be considerably more, as we will see in the next Chapter. Global warming is that serious. Dithering is not an option. Nor is political inertia. Or economic priorities. Only we can save ourselves. Not God. Not Mammon. Us. It is a subject that we’ll now examine. Grief does not operate in tidy grids. Nor does collapse, either population, or ecological. We may ascribe an S—curve for part of the phenomena. That is, dN/ dt = r N, or the rate of change of some variable N depends on the value of N at time t. If R is negative, we have collapse. But r can be multifactorial, say the effect of resource loss, killing, and kidnapping. The Palawa were victims of a state-sponsored dispossessory process that rewarded the offenders; they suffered sexual predation, ethnic cleansing, catastrophically falling births, introduced disease, and deportation at the hands of their oppressors. For the Palawa, they were hounded from their land, subject to the loss of their women, exposed to starvation and psychological trauma, and preyed upon by armed militia. Where were they to go? The 616 population collapse was sudden, perhaps thirty years. Yet they survive through miscegenation. That is, there was a negative s-curve, followed by one that was modestly positive as it sought an accommodation within its found environment among its persecutors. It is the nature of collapse of any type that it arrives suddenly. For example, the long-term survival of the Great Barrier Reef, in whole or part, may have reached a tipping point. We will know it is serious when our Government does not want to discuss the subject. But the world is watching. We destroyed the Reef beyond the point of recovery within a few decades through ocean acidification, agricultural runoff, warming seas and human induced crown of thorns starfish invasions. Jared Diamond is an expositor of the pattered mechanics of collapse and cites many examples, often resource dependent, that is, through the agency of some external shock. However, Diamond downplays that for those societies which collapse (Mayan, Roman and so on), there remained a residual population that persisted. That is, the societal structure (organization) broke down, but the group behavioural dynamics continued in another form. It is rare for a society to completely disappear, and so it was for the Palawa when they were almost destroyed as a cultural and ethnic group, their DNA surviving through miscegenation. Others are more optimistic than Diamond,1348 preferring a death and renewal model over collapse, an endless cycle of regeneration. The regenerative model depends on the concept of reaching a stable new normal, say a new climate equilibrium that is reached with global warming. But if we continue to pump out greenhouse gases, there is no equilibrium, merely more existential carnage until we are no longer able to move the environmental parameters to our economic advantage. Whether such a climate catastrophe might benefit some future lifeform – in the same way that the extinction of the dinosaurs some 66mya gave rise to mammals – is speculative at best. Theoretical ecology models the complex dynamics of ecological systems including human populations to account for observable phenomena, such as the effect of global warming, limits to growth and the interaction of predator/prey populations. However, when a tipping point is reached, the models tend to fail.1349 For the Palawa, their collapse was both inevitable and final, inexorably pursued to cultural and physical extinction by an invasive power, although their DNA survives in mixed-race offspring. The memetic survival of their culture is another matter. Without the storytellers there is no one to transmit the story. Reading the journals of their nemesis GA Robinson is a poor substitute. 617 Detailed modelling of the Tasmanian dispossessory process Understanding the origin of ‘otherness’ is fundamental to peeling back the operants (roles and agencies) for normative psychosocial dysfunction. It opens the subjective door to liminality, the dynamic border between ‘us’ and ‘them’. We will analyse the concept of a border in Lemkinian space and establish a framework for modelling that space. The concept of a border in Lemkinian space The Lemkinian dispossessory space as a dynamic type construct Britain’s dispossessory process (repeatable type process) in Tasmania (and other Australian locations) required Actors and agency: who (instance of type roles) did what (State-sponsored type actions) under what assumptions (type policies) of an invasive power (Imperial Britain) with what objectives (type outcomes). We recall that types can be instantiated with a potential multiplicity of conforming events. We reprise the hypothesis that we introduced in Introduction:1350 If the vector force (or vectorial agency) of expansionary Imperialism is represented as a field D, then we can say that D is a source that gives rise to a positive displacive flux into (and out of) a (contested) space V at a geographic boundary S. This is conceptually equivalent to Maxwell’s first field equation, which is based on Gauss’s Law: where, in our two-dimensional representation, the divergence of the invasive field D flowing from the ‘volume’ (in our limiting case, this is an area) V at some boundary point on S is proportional to the force inside the ‘volume’. So the strength of the originating expansionary (colonizing) force determines the disruptive effect at some geographic boundary (Vs). We can now test this hypothesis that the rate of displacive colonizing expansion (ρv) is a function of the rate of immigration (I). That is: dρv / dt = ƒ (dI/ dt) in a pull-through process dynamic controlled by Government policy. We find that ρv is the nett total of the free male immigrant population by any one year between 1824 and 1831 (not the nett number arriving in any one year),1351 or: ρv = I1 + I2 + ... +In = 1Σ x ( Ix) , where x = 1, 2, 3,.. n from year 1 to year n, and where the available grant data begins from year 1824 and ends at 1831, and that the rate of change of the nett total free male immigrant population by year (dρv / dt) strongly correlates (0.98) with the rate of change of 618 the cumulative land grants of all sizes as at any year (dG)/ dt), for the period from 1824 to 1831. 1352 That is: we postulate the falsifiable hypothesis that the displacive expansionary pressure of policy-driven immigration (ρv) as a function of the rate of land grants (G) is given by: dρv / dt = ϕ (dG)/ dt) in some explicit cause-effect formalism, which may or may not be true (based on a possible causal association with correlation 0.5 to 1.0) but is not refuted through a zero or weakly negative correlation. Similarly, we can say dρv / dt = ⨍ (dI)/ dt) and therefore ϕ (dG)/ dt) = ƒ (dI)/ dt) The strong bivariate positive correlation (> 0.9) rules out the negative conclusion (which can only follow from a zero or negative correlation).1353 Therefore, we have shown that a causal relationship between the two variables is not ruled out, although it is not confirmed either. We recall that correlation, of itself, is not causation, but if there is no correlation, then causation is completely precluded. If I and G are strongly correlated, this does not necessarily mean that they are functionally related such that I = ϕ (G), where the dependent variable I can be determined from the calculation of the functional expression of the independent variable G. Instead, we will show that, in the general case, the relationship between I and G is recursive within some deterministic envelope1354 where ⨍ (I) = ϕ (G) at some point or line or surface of intersection. There is no independent variable in this relationship, which suggests that G cannot be determined from some value of I. But if we establish a mapping between I and G, where I and G are each experimentally (empirically) determined to follow some pattern, say linear over time, then G t can be looked up for the time where t equals tn, corresponding to the value of It at that same time.1355 The mapping formalism for the dependent variables I and G is given by: It → Gt for t = t1, t2, ..tn and Gt → It for t = t1, t2, ..tn which is simplified as I ↔ G or a recursive functional relationship over time t. That is, we can develop a table of empirical values for each dependent variable I and G, where the quantitative values of I and G are determined at some known point in time across a common time range. Time becomes the shared independent variable. 619 We can normalize I and G using the common base line scalar measurement of time. If we look up the value of one dependent variable at time tn then we determine the value of the other variable at the same point in time. These empirical tables are set out in the appended table and are the basis for our regression analysis. In the case where the functional expression of each dependent variable is linear over time,1356 we can write: y = ⨍ (It) = a + mt and z = ϕ (Gt) = b + nt for t = t1, t2, .. tn where dy/ dt = m and dz/ dt = n The extent to which m and n correspond is a measure of the degree of correlation between the variables I and G. More precisely, if I changes in a certain quantitative manner (measured by change in magnitude or ΔI) over a fixed time period and G also changes in a similar scalar pattern, then, in a measurable sense, we can say the dependent variables I and G are ‘entangled’ 1357 or positively correlated on a scale from zero to one.1358 Based on the strongly positive correlation evidence of this bivariate regression analysis (see the appended table), we can postulate that there is indeed a possible causal association between the expansionary pressure of an increasing free male immigrant population (I) and the rate of Government land alienation by way of grants up to 1831 inclusive (G) which had the determinable outcome (or effect) of targeted genocide. It is this causal relationship we will now investigate. Correlation (covariance) and codetermination (causal association) We will show that these correlated variables I and G, as we have now defined them, are the aggregate cause, arguably the primary cause, of systemic Palawa genocide, something we will now assess as a working hypothesis. We will represent this strongly coupled pair of variables as the mechanism I ↔ G which has multiple levels of decomposition, each level having a trigger association. That is, there can be layered and nested causes of Aboriginal extermination and human rights abuses within a deterministic behavioural envelope defined by Government policy for which colonising displacement is a key factor that brought other associated factors into play, for example, the deployment of the military and police, the one-sided use of British law, the expropriation of Aboriginal resources, and the Government encouragement of paramilitary ‘settlers’ to exercise ‘self-defence’ measures. These systemic variables I and G can be discretely modelled at the event instantiation layer and have a system-wide cause-effect through British defined colonial administrative procedures along an abstraction gradient.1359 620 Commented [rg1]: The Imperial system of colonial administration can therefore be mapped against a multi-level process model, comprising different levels of sub-processes and activities with their hierarchy of associated triggers. These multiple levels of process abstraction are based on the principles, policies, and practices of the Imperial British Government as it extended its violent expropriatory reach globally. The lowest level of this process hierarchy is instantiated by an ‘event’ whose trigger is the physical implementation of Government policy, say the decision to alienate more land in a particular surveyed area in a particular year in order to satisfy specific settler demand. We have modelled this multi-level Occupation process in Part 1 of Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide and shown its overlap with Lemkinian genocide, each of which can be represented as a defined set of process objects (within set theory).1360 In Tasmania, Palawa dispossession was intentional and the conditional originating trigger was Britain’s unilateral act of claiming sovereignty. This intentional act set up a causal chain. Land was intentionally expropriated for new grantees through an intentional alienation process that was ‘legalized’ by the intentional earlier act of claiming sovereignty. Britain continued with its ‘legal’ process of colonization. It developed an intentional and carefully encouraged programme of immigration. As land was intentionally and ‘legally’ transformed into ‘private property’, Britain’s laws of property prevailed, including the laws of trespass. If displaced Aboriginals protested their dispossession, they could ‘legally’ be removed, a euphemism for the all too often intentional process of large-scale extermination, using military and paramilitary forces. There was nothing unintended about these cascading and derivative Lemkinian consequences. They began when Britain intentionally invaded Tasmania. Therefore, the resulting genocide was avoidable, if Britain had withdrawn from its intentional process for confiscating Aboriginal land. The corollary is that Britain intended its programme of racially targeted genocide through its unwavering policies for colonization and violent racial subjugation where Indigenous resistance was not tolerated by the invading power. We conclude that genocide was no unintended consequence of measured Government policy implementation, as some researchers unconvincingly argue, but was a direct and intended outcome for which some regret was officially expressed at the time by Arthur, Murray, Pedder and others, as though to absolve the conscience of a murderous regime while congratulating themselves on creating an unencumbered area, free of Aboriginals. 621 Correlation is not causation – but it is an indicator In the general case, in order to prove causation between two strongly correlated ‘random’ variables and their effect, we usually need a randomised experiment. We need to make random any possible factor that could be associated with the outcome (such as a pattern of Aboriginal dispossession involving genocidal displacement), and thereby cause - or contribute to - the effect. Randomised controlled trials are the most rigorous way of determining whether a causeeffect relation exists between the variables and their outcome. In our specific case, the variables I and G under consideration are not random. We have shown they are strongly correlated, and we also know that they are systemically associated through a feedback process determined by Government policy, through a colonizing model that established normative genocidal behaviour within an intentionality envelope defined by the British Government and its immigration and land alienation policies, enforced by military resolve and a heavily armed frontier. Formally, the system model for British Imperial colonization is equivalent to a directed graph, which we summarized in the appended table, where I and G are system components that map to equivalent sub-processes within the Occupation process. Dispossessory graph structure for the I ↔ G sub-process The directed graph structure for the Aboriginal dispossession process is simplified as a layered model that incorporates a differential calculus, a process algebra comprising a dynamic set of relationships, in particular the relationship between (I) and (G) - and their various timedependent states - for effecting Native dispossession in Tasmania (and elsewhere in Australia). 622 Figure 184 Summary system model for Britain's Occupation Process. The variables ‘land alienation’ (G) and ‘immigration’ (I) map bi-directionally from the dynamic behaviour of the system model for the Occupation Process to equivalent sub-processes in the process model for the Occupation Process, where the procedural (causal) triggers for each sub-process originate in Government policy.1361 That is, the cause-effect chain between Land Alienation (Grants), Immigration, and their aggregate effect in Aboriginal dispossession and destruction, is established through Government procedural intentionality. In this instance, correlation is indeed causation. 623 Figure 185 The recursive cause-effect process model for Land Alienation and Immigration within the Occupation Process.1362 It is this powerful displacive economic mechanism (I ↔ G) 1363 that, in the hands of the British colonizing administration, its armed forces and paramilitary white civilians, scythed so efficiently through Aboriginal Australia to remake the historical landscape and, within little more than a generation, purged each ancient society it encountered across the metastasizing pastoral frontier. No less was the destruction of the Palawa. We can say that I ↔ G is functionally equivalent to the Lemkinian genocidal process L. That is: L = Ω (│Is . Gs │) < Lc , where the dimensionless product │Is . Gs│ represents a statespace within the m-dimensional manifold L 1364 for s = t1, t2,...tn and cardinality n. 1365 Lc is the limiting value of L for which the genocidal process is greater than 95% complete in an area at time tc . Lc is therefore the measure of the British Government’s constraint rules that gave shape to the genocidal process.1366 From the appended table, we empirically derive the value Lc = 8.216 x 109 1367 which represents the Tasmanian value of Lc at the end of 1831 (Tc), when more than 95% of the 624 Palawa had been ethnically cleansed from Tasmania as a consequence of British land and immigration policies. It had taken less than a generation, less than 30 years. Also, from Figure 140, we note that: Ω (│Is . Gs │) = ers , where t = (│Is . Gs │) for s = t1, t2, ... tn and r is a depopulation variable. We can now rewrite the genocidal process L as: L = ers < Lc where t = (│Is . Gs│) for s = t1, t2, ... tn and Lc is the genocidal constraint limit at time Tc. We hypothesize that the type-genocidal experience for Tasmania can be extrapolated to Australia. That is: 1. From every point of beachhead settlement across Australia, the process of colonization sterilized or depopulated an ‘area’ from Aboriginals within about 30 years of initial armed invasion, following the genocidal example of Tasmania – roving death squads, ethnic cleansing, sexual predation, introduced disease - with the survivors suffering deportation, racially based apartheid, ongoing repression. The targeted ill-treatment continues today with disproportionate rates of incarceration and excessive social marginalization used as blunt coercive control instruments. 2. The Tasmanian genocidal model is self-similar at different scales across Australia between 1788 and 1928, deriving from shared, state-sponsored motivations, with a differential geometry, not fractal, but fractal-like, following a decompositional model based on category theory. 3. That the empirical values of L and Lc for any ‘area’ will define a comparative genocidal fingerprint across all ‘areas’ of Australia. 4. We noted earlier that Ray Evans calculated for Queensland, from 1862 the settler frontier spread at the rate of 200 miles (320 kms per year).1368 It is unclear if Evans is specifying this estimate as originating from Brisbane outwards. However, it should be possible to examine each invasion cell or ‘area’ independently, with regard to the time taken for full occupation and complete Aboriginal displacement within an ‘area’. 5. We can divide Australia into ‘areas’ of say 100 x 100 kms (10,000 square kms),1369 and determine the replicable process of invasive displacement for the area. 6. We can nominate a preliminary table of ‘areas’, or points of invasion, including: • • • • • • • • Tasmania (including north and south invasion points) Melbourne Gippsland Western Victoria Adelaide Perth Port Hedland Derby and the Kimberley 625 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Darwin and Arnhem Land Alice Springs Brisbane Darling Downs Maryborough/ Gympie/ Mary Valley Sunshine Coast Rockhampton Mackay Townsville Cooktown/ Laura Charleville Channel Country Sydney Hawkesbury Southern Highlands Liverpool Plains Bourke New England Clarence/ Richmond 7. We may consider the Lemkinian invasion of an ‘area’ complete when 95% of the Indigenous population has been removed. This defines Lc. 8. We can develop a value for L and Lc for each area over time, based upon Is and Gs, and determine any pattern. 9. We can develop a value for Tc for each invasion area. Tc is the time in years for Lc to be reached for any area. 10. We can develop a statistical summation of Aboriginal depopulation within a designated ‘area’ over a specified period of time to show the evolution of the categorial agency, say demographic characteristics. 11. We can correlate these depopulation statistics (where available) with L, over a specified period of time. 12. We can extend this Lemkinian-type model to Australian ecocide in the modern era. The investigative work for the Australia wide hypothesis will build upon the arguments in this book and will form Deconstructing Australian Genocide (unpublished). The study will further develop a massacre database, where reliable data exists on Aboriginal deaths in an area. In Tasmania, the deterministic behavioural envelope of the product │ (Is . Gs) │ is set or constrained by Government policies, as we saw in Introduction and elsewhere,1370 which means that L is an outcome of Government resolve. If we define Lc as the Lemkinian genocidal constraint boundary for an area when more than 95% of the Indigenous population has been removed then Lc is driven primarily by an 626 economic supply/ demand limit that is enforced by legislation, proclamations and ancillary Government might – military and paramilitary - against any Indigenous resistance. Other Tasmanian subordinate constraint factors include a tempering market mechanism for the allocation of confiscated Aboriginal land as supply faltered, with much of the best land already alienated away by 1831 . If either I or G is decreasing over time, we would expect to see some levelling of the colonization process represented by │ (Is . Gs) │→ L where the limit of L is Lc at time Tc; but if both I and G are increasing then our expectation is an increase in Aboriginal dispossession up to some limit defined by the availability of remaining expropriated Aboriginal land, perhaps an exponential increase described by a positive (recursive) feedback process. The appended table to this chapter shows that the increase in │ (Is . Gs) │up to 1832 is exponential, where the limit of L as time t tends to Tc is Lc : Limit L t → Tc = Lc , and Tc is the year when more than 95% of Aboriginals have been removed from an area. However, based on the evidentiary data sets,1371 the increases in I and G appear to be linear over time up to 1831, suggesting a more or less orderly controlling hand by the British Government, still recursive between I and G, but modified by the Palawa insurgency and the momentary tapering demand for agricultural produce. We note that the cumulative land granted was linearly increasing at a faster rate than that of free male immigration, suggesting that the size of grants was disproportionate to the number of arriving immigrants. But the displacing effect on the Palawa was far from orderly, an effect barely recognized by Britain who had other priorities, more economic than humanitarian, with colonial financial self-security a looming necessity as the British treasury leaked blood. The dispossessory Lemkinian limit Lc is defined by geographical boundaries and colonist population size that, in an island, are quickly reached in terms of G. This effect is what we see in the records of Tasmanian land exploitation, where Aboriginal land is rapidly turned into private British property within a generation. Britain allowed the Palawa no legal redress for the expropriation of their land. British law, self-interested, prevailed over Indigenous rights. And British law still offers no apology for its human rights abuses against indigenous societies in Australia. After 1831, in Tasmania other market mechanisms began to prevail, where Indigenous insurgency was taken out of the econometric equation because Palawa opposition to the confiscation of their land had been suppressed. 627 The patterned colonization process metastasized to other parts of Australia until all Aboriginal land had been taken over through the legalized strictures of British law, which also allowed the use of asymmetric lethal might – both military and paramilitary - to enforce Aboriginal dispossession. Unequal British justice made it so. The genocidal outcome was inevitable and deliberate. Land was the prize. Today, it is control of the biosphere. Both are driven by an exploitative modality that places economic and ideological (political) priorities – the pursuit of power - above humanitarian and environmental concerns. It is why societies rise and fall. This time, humanity may not survive, or be unfit to survive, with Nature our final judge. Conclusion By 1831, there remained only a handful of Palawa Aboriginal survivors, a mere two hundred or so, whom Britain began progressively deporting to a detention facility at Wybalenna where the imposed conditions continued to cause extremely large proportional population loss, leading to their eventual extinction as a unique race although a relatively few mixed-race descendants proudly maintain their resilience today. On 24th May 1833, Arthur was able to write self-approvingly to the Archbishop of Dublin: Hence from Hobart to George-town, the country is remarkable for quietness, order, and security of property. The former which contains about ten thousand inhabitants, is as free from rioting and burglaries as any town of a similar extent in England.1372 During his long term of office from 1824 to 1836, Arthur became wealthy, a wealthy landowner and mortgagee with many questionable land dealings that we examine elsewhere. Arthur had achieved another version of the English countryside, a transplanted society that was grown in the blood and trauma of its displaced genocidal victims, the Palawa. The question is: Have our normative behaviours changed since then? Traditional economic theory says that as supply (land alienation) increases, then demand (immigration) decreases, until an equilibrium point is reached when the commodity price (for land) balances the quantity (acreage) available. For early colonial Tasmania, until 1832, this formula did not and could not apply. Nepotism and political influence distorted the market, where for the first thirty years or so of ‘settlement’, land was almost always granted, not sold. Grants were a powerful tool for Governors to curry favours among the colonists, along with the allocation of convict labour. In the period to 1836, Government authoritarianism was rampant. High level official corruption was generally ignored. Some transgressions, on the other hand, resulted in removal from office. For example, Sir John Franklin,1373 Tasmanian Governor from 1837 to 1843, was censured and recalled by Britain after a complaint against him by John Montagu, the Tasmanian colonial secretary, and a crony of Arthur’s. 628 Franklin suspended Montagu for insolence. Montagu appealed and won, based on the false argument that Franklin was unduly influenced by his wife. Yet Arthur was promoted by Britain after he left Tasmania. From the early 1820s, as demand for land increased (through accelerated immigration) then supply (Government land alienation and grants) increased in proportion and was only constrained by the amount of commercially useful land still available in a small island. By 1831, almost all the best agricultural land had been granted away to capitalists, people with money and influence, and to a small number of other colonists including ex-servicemen. Almost free convict labour oiled the process of transforming confiscated land into privatized wealth. Through the period to 1832, the demand for land was never limited by Government immigration policy, which was ever increasing the number of immigrants and transportees. The British Government’s immigration and transportation policies meant there was no practical brake on colonists’ demand, not until there was less new land to alienate. It was a land rush. Aboriginals could not apply. Nor would any Palawa insurgency be tolerated, not by the Government, not by upstanding colonists. By 1831 only a few hundred Palawa survived. In less than 30 years, Aboriginal depopulation was well over 95%. In 1832, following the Ripon land regulations, the granting of land transformed into the sale and lease of available land (including that which was already privately held) in a commercial trading system for which the Government benefited in each transaction and has done so since. It was a new era driven by the market, from which the Palawa presence had been erased. Today, we do much the same: the legitimate interests of the biosphere are generally written out of our transactions, for which short term profit and loss are the dominant measures. In the 1830s, Aboriginal people in Tasmania had nowhere to go. Their opposition was spent, their numbers few. Dispossessed and broken, they could only rely on British Government mercy. None was forthcoming. Arthur was not about to offer the Palawa survivors of his harsh genocidal policies either a treaty or territory. He had won. His final solution? Deportation to a detention centre in Bass Strait, where they were out of sight and could easily be forgotten by their tormentors, to die in captivity. So they did. Colonists went on with the business of making money, Aboriginals no longer of any concern. 629 In a tight real estate environment with good pastoral properties at a premium, the value of such property inexorably increased. Capitalism held sway, with landed gentry forming the bedrock of a stratified society where the original owners were quickly forgotten, abnegated, removed from collective memory for fear that past bloody practices might reproach the genteel newcomers. It remains so today, with a checkerboard English-like countryside and bucolic tea-rooms providing little or no evidence of an ancient, obliterated culture. For a modern digitally oriented economy, the new capitalists stake out virtual spaces in a neo ‘land rush’ that they can attempt to monopolise by becoming first entrants, or marketplace disruptors, deploying communication hubs that mediate supply and demand, extracting a transaction fee for each small arrangement conducted within their pegged ‘domain’. These companies owe little to national borders and are generally governed by the familiar pursuit of self-interest, differing only in modality; for colonial Tasmania, a physical presence – especially in virgin territory - determined profitability, whereas an electronic presence may be sufficient today. But similar exploitative behaviours persist, as before. We are not all that different from our predecessors. Those patterned, collectively dysfunctional, colonial behaviours are now reinforced, tempered by moral ambiguity. There are still winners and losers. The winners control access to information. The losers, just as they were for Tasmanian Aboriginals, are those who have nothing with which to bargain because that right has been taken from them. With multi-national corporations, the primary goal is to maximize profit by paying the least amount of tax possible, by growing sales and market size compared to their competitors, by regularly returning shareholder dividends. Corporate behaviour might be considered sociopathic if considered in an individual, the raw pursuit of power in a ‘Darwinian’ struggle for pre-eminence that has more to do with collective greed than any blind biological imperative, where altruism and fair play count for little on a balance sheet, and where ethical behaviour is generally an afterthought in corporate public relations material. Our normative exploitative behaviours have hardly altered since the policies of Imperial Britain held political and commercial sway across the globe. Today, the only real constraint on dispossessory corporate or State behaviour is that the Earth now fights back; in colonial Australia, when confronted by Britain Inc., the insurgency was carried by dispossessed Indigenous societies. There are persistent type restrictions on our biological trajectory. Economic considerations continue to outweigh environmental and humanitarian concerns, just as before. Protection of the environment tends to remain an afterthought; just as Aboriginal rights were barely considered in times past while the land and its resources were being hurriedly transformed into private property. We can decide to direct our behavioural (and evolutionary) future, or leave things as they are: self-destructive, unsustainable, acquisitive. Our normalized motivations remain primal: fear and greed. 630 Aboriginal society had much to teach us; we did not listen. And, in not listening, we failed to learn and adapt. In consequence, we are quickly becoming a failed species, irrelevant to the Earth’s future. Findings and conclusion We find the hypothesis to be true, that there is a strong correlation between the displacive pressure caused by the arrival of immigrants (the nett total free male population I in any year between 1824 and 1831 inclusive) and the demand for land to be alienated (measured by the cumulative acreage granted G, commencing from 1824 up to the year in question), when the militarized war against the Palawa reached its peak between 1828 and 1832 under Arthur’s authoritarian and often duplicitous regime. We have further shown, through logical process model decomposition, the nature of the functional (systemic) basis for a causal link between immigration and land alienation within the formal Occupation process that was driven by the colonizing objectives of the British Government. Therefore, we conclude – if there was any doubt before - that Aboriginals were removed or killed for their land 1374 in a Lemkinian genocidal process driven by unrestricted British immigration that required more and more land to be made available, preferably unencumbered with any Aboriginal presence. The two behavioural agencies – immigration and land alienation - are covariant (statistically they are strongly correlated, as we might expect) and co-determinate (with a systemic and procedural causal relationship through policy-driven triggers and well-practised administrative processes), as shown by the directed graph for the Occupation Process.1375 Furthermore, the bivariate sub-process, involving an increasing number of immigrants and the accelerating rate of land alienation, was intentional and Government-led, for which the dispossessory consequences were also intended as part of the Occupation Process. When there is a planned process by some group, say the efficient administration of colonial occupation policy in Tasmania by an arm of Government, the means may be disputed in the apparent confusion of human activity (and some researchers do just that in a plaintive pleading for exculpation, for ‘unintended’ consequences by a proffered benign regime), unless we step back to see the colonizing behavioural patterns and their associated Government policies, the systemic ordered (directed) triggering conditions, the planned outcomes. Those racist Government policies did not allow for the land to be shared, or some land to be set aside for exclusive Aboriginal use (a form of property recognition through a treaty arrangement), or for the rate of displacive colonization to be restricted in any way, or for the rate of land privatisation to be limited for the general good, including the best interests of Aboriginals. 631 Apartheid and detention centres became the solution to dispossession, first for the remnant Palawa, and then for surviving Aboriginals across Australia. In the 21st century, our First People are still being mistreated as a group. There could only be one outcome to this murderous 19th century grab for land in Tasmania: the complete removal of the Palawa from their country through generally overt Governmentled violence, through Lemkinian genocide, through a transformative firestorm of ethnic cleansing, through deportation. Such Aboriginal-owned country was coveted by incoming colonists and large landowners who wanted to extend their property holdings in the service of building greater private wealth; and prized by Government for increased economic development and self-sufficiency as an outreach of Empire. So it was forcibly taken. Similar motivations drive us today, with the environment now the adversary. Finally, we conclude that our hypothesis is proven: the co-determinate agencies of immigration and land alienation drove and accelerated Palawa genocide in all its Lemkinian aspects, satisfying Articles 2 (a) to 2 (e). Britain deployed this same disruptive and displacive mechanism (I ↔ G) with lethal effect across Australia, dispossessing and destroying Indigenous society through the formal policybased instruments of Imperial administrative power and the calibrated use of ancillary armed force in the brutal colonizing process that became genocidal in occupied territories such as Tasmania. If annual Closing the Gap and IPCC Global Warming reports are a guide,1376 the Lemkiniantype process continues. 632 Dispossessory Tables Statistical Account of Van Diemen’s Land: Population statistics, 1816 – 1823 1377 Free Male Female Convicts Children Total Free 1816 380 225 427 1032 1817 342 195 334 871 1818 541 223 395 1819 829 288 1820 1,009 1821 Male Female Total Comments Population1378 Children 334 75 20 1,461 First emigrant ship arrives 1,159 1779 239 63 3,420 344 1,461 2,666 263 21 4,,411 510 897 2,416 2,585 370 29 5,400 1,379 497 947 2823 2783 221 1822 1,561 732 495 2,788 4,495 287 114 1823 1,996 947 1,576 4,519 4,858 432 204 5,827 Cornwall only 10,009 Figure 186 Van Diemen's Land Population Statistics: 1816 - 1823 633 Population statistics 1824 – 1833 1379 Free Males Females Convicts Sub-Total Males Females Military Sub-Total Males Females 1824 3,781 2,248 6,029 5,467 471 5,938 266 70 1825 4,297 2,462 6,759 6,244 601 6,845 438 150 1826 4,810 2,600 7,410 6,051 711 6,762 640 180 1827 5,613 2,910 8,523 6,373 887 7260 800 250 1828 6,419 3,056 9,465 6,724 725 7,449 904 300 1829 6,929 3,492 10,421 7,334 1,150 8,484 880 230 1830 8,351 4623 12,974 8,877 1,318 10,195 880 230 1831 8,392 4,952 13,344 10,391 1,627 12,018 1,032 246 1832 9,202 5,865 15,067 11,062 1644 12,706 905 225 1833 11,020 7,194 18,214 13,126 1,864 14,990 877 247 Figure 187 Van Diemen's Land Population Statistics: 1824 - 1833 634 Land in Cultivation (acres) 1380 Wheat Barley Peas (beans) Potatoes Total 1816 964 44 5 41 1817 2,767 138 94 107 1818 5,049 214 149 268 5,680 1819 7,292 316 263 459 8,330 1820 2,982 115 18 63 1821 12,967 786 472 717 Comments Buckinghamshire only Cornwall only 14,940 1822 No return 1823 No return Figure 188 Van Diemen's Land Area in Cultivation: 1816 - 1823 635 Statistical Summary: 1816 – 1833 1381 Population Males Females Crown Land Sales and Rental Children Total Acres sold Revenue Comments Acres in cultivation 1816 1,461 1817 3,114 3,196 3,240 56,798 8,330 462 458 1,054 1818 2,320 1819 3,495 4,411 1820 3,594 5,400 3,178 1821 4,162 7,400 14,940 1822 6,056 7,684 No return 1823 6,850 10,009 No return Bigge arrived 1824 9,514 6,789 12,303 No return 1825 10,979 3,213 14,192 No return 1826 11,501 3,491 14,992 1827 12,786 4,047 14,833 1828 14,047 4,081 18,128 49,424 2,418 34,033 1829 15143 4872 20015 20870 5845 38801 1830 18108 6171 24279 3160 55976 1831 19815 6825 26640 31698 2088 54219 1832 21169 7734 28903 74495 13246 56626 1833 25023 9305 34328 17350 7138 61399 No return 24,746 Figure 189 Van Diemen’s Land Population and Land Alienation (Sales and Rental): 1816 - 1833 636 Land Grants: 1824 – 1833 1382 Land grants were up to 2,560 acres, depending on the grantee’s capital and influence. Grants obtained through a Royal Charter, such as that for the Van Diemen’s Land Company, were considerably greater in size by a factor of 100 or more, when aggregated as a whole; these large grants are not included in Hull’s statistics. Year Net revenue Land Grants Totals (£) < 100 No. 100 – 500 Acreage No. > 500 Acreage No. No. of grants Acreage Acreage 1824 18 1,030 11 2,470 43 39,920 72 43,420 1825 92 4,295 103 17,444 84 90,200 279 111,939 1826 15 695 54 12,175 40 47,400 109 60,270 1827 52482 6 214 18 4,400 59 72,572 83 77,186 1828 67489 15 537 34 9,860 141 154,380 190 164,777 1829 64164 8 210 58 15,900 149 191,510 215 207,620 1830 87943 5 185 66 14,680 85 93,144 156 108,009 1831 98549 7 330 73 20,787 158 184,690 238 205,807 1832 119064 2 42 8 2,600 25 30,600 35 33,242 1833 124027 7 2,020 17 21,480 24 23,500 Figure 190 Land Grants, Van Diemen’s land, 1824 - 1833 637 Land Grants: 1824 – 1833 1383 No. Land Grants (1824 – 1833) and percentage of Total < 100 acres 168 % of Total 100 - 500 11.9 % of Total 432 >500 30.7 % of Total 808 57.4 Total Number of Grants1384 1,408 Figure 191 Number of land grants (by size) and percentage of total number of grants: 1824 – 1833 Size of Land Grants (1824 – 1833) and percentage of Total < 100 acres 7538 % of Total < 1% (avg. 44.9 acres per grant) 100 - 500 % of Total 102,236 9.8% (avg. 236.7 acres per grant) >500 934716 % of Total 89.5% Total Acreage of Grants1385 1,044,490 (avg. 1156.8 acres per grant) Figure 192 Land grants (by size) and percentage of total acreage granted: 1824 – 1833 638 Land grants: 1824 – 1833 1386 Figure 193 Percentage of land grants (by number of grantees, and by size of grant): 1824 - 1833 639 Land Revenue 1387 From Hull’s table we see that, between 1828 and 1833 (and probably before although there are no reliable statistics), there were a negligible number of land sales, compared with the total size of acreage granted. After 1831, as the system of grants was replaced by sales and leases, Government revenue became increasingly dependent on the turnover of existing land and the release for sale of alienated land. # Lots # Acres Sale Amount (£) 1828 42 49,425 13,798 1829 23 20,870 727 1831 33 31,658 10,417 1832 79 75,495 44,931 1833 28 17,239 4,818 205 194,687 74,691 1830 Totals Figure 194 Land Revenue: 1828 – 1833 640 Graph comparing the total free male population by year and the amount of land grants each year, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive. The Ripon land legislation of 1831 meant that land grants were phased out. We see from the graph the rapid falling away of acreage granted in 1832 and beyond. Year 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833 Total Total Acreage Free Granted Males by Year 3781 4342.0 4297 11193.9 4810 6027.0 5613 7718.6 6419 16477.7 6929 20762.0 8351 10800.9 8392 20580.7 9202 3324.2 11020 2350.0 25000 20000 15000 10000 Total Free Males Total Acreage Granted by Year 5000 0 Figure 195 Total Free male population by year and total acreage granted by year (10s of acres): 1824 - 1833 641 Correlation between arriving free immigrants and the amount of annual land grants: 1824 - 1833 We find that there is a negative correlation (-0.048) between the Total Population of Free Males by Year from 1824 and the Acreage Granted by Year between 1824 and 1833. . Pearson Product Moment Correlation - Ungrouped Data Statistic Variable X Variable Y Mean 6881.4 103577 Biased Variance 4936205.04 4266110835 Biased Standard 2221.75719645509 Deviation 65315.4716357465 Covariance -7661125.22222222 Correlation -0.0475140890938832 Determination 0.00225758866242147 T-Test -0.134542094566491 p-value (2 sided) 0.896297259586525 p-value (1 sided) 0.448148629793262 95% CI of Correlation [-0.657471396209524, 0.600063791776394] Degrees of Freedom 8 Number of Observations 10 Figure 196 Bivariate analysis of the Total Number of Free Males by year and the Acreage Granted by year, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive 1388 642 Graph comparing the total free male population by year and the amount of land grants less than 500 acres each year, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive. Year 1824 (1) 1825 (2) 1826 (3) 1827 (4) 1828 (5) 1829 (6) 1830 (7) 1831 (8) 1832 (9) 1833 (10) 3781 4297 4810 5613 6419 6929 8351 8392 9202 Total Acreage Granted (< 500) 3500 21,733 12870 4614 10397 16110 14865 21117 2642 11020 2020 Total Free Males Total free males v total acreage granted: 1824 - 1833 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 0 1824 1825 1826 1827 Total Free Males 1828 1829 1830 1831 Total Acreage Granted 1832 1833 (< 500) Figure 197 Total Free Male Population by year and Total Acreage Granted by year < 500 acres: 1824 - 1833 643 Correlation between arriving immigrants and the amount of annual land grants less than 500acres: 1824 – 18331389 We find there is a low correlation between the Total Free Male immigrant population (excluding the military) and the Total Acreage Granted by year for areas less than 500 acres, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive. Pearson Product Moment Correlation - Ungrouped Data Statistic Variable X Variable Y Mean 6881.4 8815.6733 Biased Variance 4936205.04 46760159.799996 Biased Standard 2221.75719645509 Deviation Covariance 2308480.24831111 Correlation 0.136752124992713 Determination 0.0187011436900227 T-Test 0.390461690947743 6838.14008338496 p-value (2 sided) 0.706386592281243 p-value (1 sided) 0.353193296140621 95% CI of Correlation [-0.539310263875031, 0.705622406625378] Degrees of Freedom 8 Number of Observations 10 Figure 198 Bivariate analysis of the Total Number of Free Males by year and the Acreage Granted by year < 500 acres, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive 644 Graph comparing the total free male population by year and the cumulative amount of land grants less than 500 acres by year (measured in tens), between 1824 and 1833 inclusive. Year 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833 Total Free Males 3781 4297 4810 5613 6419 6929 8351 8392 9202 11020 Cumulative Acreage Granted (< 500) ('0) 350.0 2523.3 3810.3 4271.7 5311.4 6922.4 8408.9 10520.6 10784.8 10986.8 Total free male population v cumulative acreage granted (<500acres): 1824 - 1833 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 1824 1825 1826 1827 Total Free Males 1828 1829 1830 1831 Cumulative Acreage Granted 1832 1833 (< 500) ('0) Figure 199 Total Free male population by year and cumulative total acreage granted by year < 500 acres: 1824 – 1833 645 Correlation between the total population of free male immigrants and the cumulative amount of annual land grants less than 500acres: 1824 – 1833 We find there is a strong correlation (0.961) between the (X) Total Free Male immigrant population (excluding the military) and the (Y) Cumulative Total Acreage Granted for areas less than 500 acres, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive. Pearson Product Moment Correlation - Ungrouped Data Statistic Variable X Variable Y Mean 6881.4 63890.2 Biased Variance 4936205.04 1256044848.36 Biased Standard Deviation 2221.75719645509 35440.7230225344 Covariance 84115104.2444444 Correlation 0.961429244095864 Determination 0.924346191402744 T-Test 9.88659908731888 p-value (2 sided) 9.24200172735131e-06 p-value (1 sided) 4.62100086367566e-06 95% CI of Correlation [0.840733544064084, 0.991101210065277] Degrees of Freedom 8 Number of 10 Observations Figure 200 Bivariate analysis of the Total Number of Free Males by year and the Cumulative Acreage Granted by year < 500 acres, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive 646 QQplots of the variables: (x) Number of Free Males by Year (y) Cumulative amount of annual land grants less than 500acres: 1824 – 1833 Figure 201 Bivariate analysis (QQPlots) of the Total Number of Free Males by year and the Cumulative Acreage Granted by year < 500 acres , between 1824 and 1833 inclusive 647 Graph comparing the total free male population by year and the amount of land grants less than 500 acres each year, between 1824 and 1831 inclusive. We note that the amount of acreage granted in 1832 and 1833 fell away for reasons we have investigated separately. If we remove this atypical data from our trend analysis, we derive a result consistent with a linear trend that is only limited by the finite amount of land available to alienate. Year 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 Total Free Males Cumulative Acreage Granted (< 500) ('0) 3781 4297 4810 5613 6419 6929 8351 8392 350.0 2523.3 3810.3 4271.7 5311.4 6922.4 8408.9 10520.6 Total free male population v cumulative acreage granted (<500acres): 1824 - 1831 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 1824 1825 1826 Total Free Males 1827 1828 1829 Cumulative Acreage Granted 1830 1831 (< 500) ('0) Figure 202 Total Free male population by year and cumulative total acreage granted by year < 500 acres: 1824 – 1831 648 Correlation between the total population of free male immigrants and the cumulative amount of annual land grants less than 500 acres: 1824 – 1831 We find, by excluding the atypical years 1832 and 1833, there is an even stronger correlation (0.973) between the (X) Total Free Male immigrant population (excluding the military) and the (Y) Cumulative Total Acreage Granted for areas less than 500 acres, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive. Pearson Product Moment Correlation - Ungrouped Data Statistic Variable X Variable Y Mean 6074 52648.25 Biased Variance 2704212.25 937893836.4375 Biased Standard Deviation 1644.4489198512 30625.052431587 7 8 Covariance 56018534.4285714 Correlation 0.973290684554625 Determination 0.947294756640811 T-Test 10.3846360500409 p-value (2 sided) 4.66861005760577e-05 p-value (1 sided) 2.33430502880288e-05 95% CI of Correlation [0.8550664382561, 0.99532106863472] Degrees of Freedom 6 Number of Observations 8 Figure 203 Bivariate analysis of the Total Number of Free Males by year and the Cumulative Acreage Granted by year < 500 acres, between 1824 and 1831 inclusive 649 Relationship between the total population of free male immigrants and the cumulative amount of annual land grants greater than 500 acres: 1824 – 1831 Year 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 Total Free Males 3781 4297 4810 5613 6419 6929 8351 8392 Cumulative Acreage granted by year > 500 acres (100s) 399.2 9419.2 9893.2 17150.4 18694.2 20,609.30 21540.74 23387.64 Total free males v cumulative acreage granted > 500: 1824 - 1831 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 0 1824 1825 Total Free Males 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 Cumulative Acreage granted by year > 500 acres (100s) Figure 204 Total free male population by year and the cumulative acreage granted by year (> 500 acres) 650 Correlation between the total population of free male immigrants by year and the cumulative amount of land grants by year > 500 acres: 1824 – 1831 We find, by excluding the atypical years 1832 and 1833, there is a strong correlation (0.92) between the (X) Cumulative Total Free Male immigrant population (excluding the military) and the (Y) Cumulative Total Acreage Granted for areas less than 500 acres, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive. Pearson Product Moment Correlation - Ungrouped Data Statistic Variable X Variable Y Mean 6074 15136.735 Biased Variance 2704212.25 54140986.080675 Biased Standard Deviation 1644.4489198512 7358.0558628400 7 6 Covariance 12752377.4 Correlation 0.922180089745932 Determinatio 0.850416117923816 n T-Test 5.84048572171648 p-value (2 sided) 0.00111048723056019 p-value (1 sided) 0.000555243615280094 95% CI of Correlation [0.621156812440048, 0.986069927351897] Degrees of Freedom 6 Number of 8 Observations Figure 205 Bivariate analysis of the Cumulative Total Population of free male immigrants by year and the Cumulative Land Grants > 500 acres by year 651 Graph comparing the total free male population by year and the cumulative amount of land grants by year, from 1824 to 1831 inclusive.1390 Year 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 Total Free Males 3781 4297 4810 5613 6419 6929 8351 8392 Cumulative Acreage Granted (100s) 434.2 1553.59 2156.29 2928.15 4575.92 6652.12 7732.21 9790.28 Total free male population v cumul acreage granted ('00): 1824 - 1831 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 1824 1825 1826 Total Free Males 1827 1828 1829 Cumulative Acreage Granted 1830 1831 (100s) Figure 206 Total Free male population by year and cumulative acreage granted by year from 1824 – 1831 652 Correlation between the total population of free male immigrants by year and the cumulative amount of annual land grants by year from 1824 to 1831 We find there is a strong correlation (0.98) between the (X) Cumulative Total Free Male immigrant population (excluding the military) and the (Y) Cumulative Total Acreage Granted, between 1824 and 1831 inclusive. Pearson Product Moment Correlation - Ungrouped Data Statistic Variable X Variable Y Mean 6074 4477.845 Biased Variance 2704212.25 9530431.508225 Biased Standard Deviation 1644.44891985127 3087.13969690797 Covariance 5676369.78142857 Correlation 0.978367600483518 Determination 0.957203161675876 T-Test 11.5843546385192 p-value (2 sided) 2.48989579394133e-05 p-value (1 sided) 1.24494789697067e-05 95% CI of Correlation [0.881263269647187, 0.996218466365236] Degrees of Freedom 6 Number of Observations 8 Figure 207 Bivariate analysis of the Total Number of Free Males by year and the Cumulative Acreage Granted by year, between 1824 and 1831 inclusive 653 How unequal was the land grant system between 1824 and 1831? By year, the mean percentage number of grants compared with the total number of free males is about 2.5%. That is, there was considerable inequality, with the wealthiest capitalists or those with the most Government influence securing by far the greatest proportion of land grants. We see from the graph that the total number of free males in any year is approximately co-linear with the number of land grants. Those aspirational emigrants who did not receive a land grant were induced to work for capitalists who did have land, or they were pressed to find other means of employment. After 1831, the sale of land helped subsidize assisted immigration for disaffected people with limited capital, those who had been displaced by British agricultural reform. Year 1824 (1) 1825 (2) 1826 (3) 1827 (4) 1828 (5) 1829 (6) 1830 (7) 1831 (8) Total Free Males (100s) 37.81 42.97 48.10 56.13 64.19 69.29 83.51 83.92 Number of Grants 72 279 109 83 190 215 156 238 % Number of Grants to Total Free Male Population 1.9 6.49 2.27 1.48 2.96 3.1 1.87 2.83 Total free males v Number of grants: 1824 - 1831 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 1824 1825 Total Free Males 1826 1827 Number of Grants 1828 1829 1830 1831 Linear (Number of Grants) Figure 208 Relationship between the Number of Grants (by Year) and the Total Number of Free males (by Year, measured in 100’s) 654 Relationship between the number of grants of land (> 500 acres) by year, and the total acreage granted (> 500 acres) by year, from 1824 to 1831 When we graph the number of grants (> 500 acres) with the total acreage granted (> 500 acres) by year, from 1824 to 1831 inclusive we find a strong correlation, which suggests that the individual grants were of a similar size. However, the grants are non-linear over time. Year 1824 (1) 1825 (2) 1826 (3) 1827 (4) 1828 (5) 1829 (6) 1830 (7) 1831 (8) No. of grants 72 279 109 83 190 215 156 238 Acreage Granted > 500 (1000s) 43.42 111.94 60.27 77.19 164.78 207.62 108.01 205.81 Number of grants > 500 acres v acreage granted: 1824 - 1831 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 1824 1825 1826 No. of grants 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 Acreage Granted > 500 (1000s) Figure 209 Relationship between the number of grants of land over 500 acres, and the total acreage granted over 500 acres. 655 Correlation between the grants over 500 acres by year and the total acreage granted (over 500 acres) by year, from 1824 to 1831 inclusive The bivariate correlation is not strong (0.74). The correlation regression is non-linear, with some data outliers in 1825 and 1830. Pearson Product Moment Correlation - Ungrouped Data Statistic Variable X Variable Y Mean 167.75 122.38 Biased Variance 4997.4375 3559.26785 Biased Standard Deviation 70.6925561852 59.659599814279 166 7 Covariance 3554.08285714286 Correlation 0.737363404821668 Determination 0.543704790770203 T-Test 2.67383282499873 p-value (2 sided) 0.0368377823285445 p-value (1 sided) 0.0184188911642723 95% CI of Correlation [0.0680484563142994, 0.94895782112486] Degrees of Freedom 6 Number of 8 Observations Figure 210 Bivariate analysis of the Total Number of Grants (>500 acres) by year, and the Total Acreage Granted (>500 acres) by year, between 1824 and 1831 inclusive 656 Graph comparing the total free male population by year and the cumulative amount of land grants by year < 100 acres, from 1824 to 1831 inclusive Year 1824 1) 1825 (2) 1826 (3) 1827 (4) 1828 (5) 1829 (6) 1830 (7) 1831 (8) Total Free Males 3781 4297 4810 5613 6419 6929 8351 8392 Cumulative Acreage granted by year < 100 acres 1030 5325 6020 6234 6771 6981 7166 7496 Total free males v cumul acreage garneted < 100 acres: 1824 - 1831 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1824 1825 1826 Total Free Males 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 Cumulative Acreage granted by year < 100 acres Figure 211 Total Free male population by year and cumulative acreage granted by year < 500 acres, from 1824 – 1831 657 Correlation between the grants less than 100 acres by year and the total free male population by year, from 1824 to 1831 inclusive The bivariate correlation is moderately strong (0.77). Pearson Product Moment Correlation - Ungrouped Data Statistic Variable X Variable Y Mean 6074 5877.875 Biased Variance 2704212.25 3780842.359375 Biased Standard 1644.44891985127 1944.43882891054 Deviation Covariance 2812855.85714286 Correlation 0.769734332284826 Determination 0.592490942297968 T-Test 2.95357395568847 p-value (2 sided) 0.0254944818831396 p-value (1 sided) 0.0127472409415698 95% CI of Correlation [0.142183042376355, 0.955910786614766] Degrees of Freedom 6 Number of 8 Observations Figure 212 Bivariate analysis of the Cumulative acreage granted (< 100 acres) by year and the Total free male population by year, between 1824 and 1831 inclusive Graph comparing the arriving free male population by year and the total amount of land grants by year, from 1825 to 1831 inclusive 658 Hull gives population and land grant statistics from 1824 to 1833.1391 We derive the number of free male arrivals by year, beginning with 1825. 1831 arrivals are minimal, for unknown reasons. If we remove the statistics for 1831, the data set becomes unreliable as a regression. However, there appears to be little correlation of annual immigration numbers and the total size of land grants, suggesting an overriding lag effect. We note that, in 1818, the size of the free male population was already 2,320, growing to 10,979 in 1825, and to 19,815 by 1831. 1392 Year 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 Total Number of acreage arriving granted immigrants (1000s) 516 513 803 806 510 1422 41 111.9 60.3 77.2 164.8 207.6 108 205.8 Annual free male immigrants v total land grants: 1825 - 1831 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 1825 1826 1827 Number of arriving immigrants 1828 1829 1830 1831 Total acreage granted (1000s) Figure 213 Arriving free male population by year and total acreage granted by year < 500 acres, from 1824 – 1831 Size of free male population: 1818 – 1831 Between 1818 and 1831, the free male cumulative population growth was generally linear, reflecting the British Government’s consistent emigration policy.1393 659 Year 1818 (1) 1819 (2) 1820 (3) 1821 (4) 1822 (5) 1823 (6) 1824 (7) 1825 (8) 1826 (9) 1827 (10) 1828 (11) 1829 (12) 1830 (13) 1831 (14) Free Male Population 2320 3495 3590 4162 6056 6850 9514 10979 11501 12786 14047 15143 18108 19815 Free Male Immigrant Population 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 0 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 Figure 214 Growth of free male population, 1818 – 1831 660 Graph of L from 1824 to 1831 Year 1824 (1) 1825 (2) 1826 (3) 1827 (4) 1828 (5) 1829 (6) 1830 (7) 1831 (8) Total Cumulative Free Acreage Males Granted (A) (B) 3,781 43,420 4,297 155,359 4,810 215,629 5,613 292,815 6,419 457,592 6,929 665,212 8,351 773,221 8,392 979,028 L = (A x B) millions Graph of L: 1824 - 1831 log L ln L 10 9 164 668 1,037 1,644 2,937 4,609 6,457 8,216 2.2 2.8 3 3.2 3.5 3.7 3.8 3.9 5.1 6.5 6.9 7.4 8 8.4 8.8 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1824 1825 1826 1827 log L 1828 1829 1830 1831 ln L Figure 215 Graph of L from 1824 to 1831 661 The role of settlement in Tasmanian genocide In 1788, Britain unilaterally deemed that all Aboriginal land belonged to the Crown. There only remained the business of carving it up for settlement, according to Britain’s system of land and property laws. Within the context of British settlement policy, we will examine: the calibrated phases of British colonization; the role of Secretary of State Bathurst; the summary roles of settlement and pastoralism; the process of land grants up to 1831; the emerging conflict over land; the guides for immigrants seeking landed wealth; and the summary roles of Imperialism and colonization. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through its settlement policies, Britain is culpable of genocide under the following articles: 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group Procedural phases of the British occupation process The business of turning land into property required policies, tenacity and zeal, where Aboriginal rights were rarely, if ever, considered. It was a feeding frenzy, where Britain collaborated with colonists. The prize was land, far more land than the average Englishman could ever dream of owning in Britain. And Aboriginals were in the way. Where the British saw a benign ‘settlement’ process, the Palawa saw often violent occupation through a pattern of sustained oppression that is difficult to ignore but has rarely been acknowledged, not by the reasonable standards of a contemporaneous professed civil society. The pattern defines the occupation process, which overlaps that of genocide, the common actionable components being mass killing and calibrated societal destruction. 1394 This is a summary model of the invasive British occupation and settlement process that was to repeat across Australia,1395 and we will see the living process played out across the chronological presentation of the British roles and agencies that collectively shaped Tasmania, finishing in a subjugation phase, which we continue to live through right now, where increasing Aboriginal disadvantage across the continent should be a measure of our national dishonour and humiliation: Occupation Protection Consolidation Repression Subjugation Figure 216 Summary phases of the British occupation and settlement process 662 Occupation: First, Aboriginals were removed from prime pastoral lands; beachhead settlements metastasized; squatters assumed de facto sovereignty. In Tasmania, occupation began from 1803 and continued for as long as the Government alienated more land. However, the peak period of alienation was during Arthur’s term, through the 1820s until 1831 inclusive. Protection: If Aboriginals resisted the occupation process, they were killed; military (up to 1838) and police were used to protect occupied land; squatters were encouraged to arm themselves, with few questions asked, if they took the law into their own hands. Aboriginals were driven off their homelands, but they had nowhere to go. In Tasmania, this phase was completed by around 1832, after a four year period of Martial Law. Consolidation: Laws were introduced to make dispossession legal (land legislation, Aboriginal Acts). In 1826, Arthur introduced Tasmanian regulations to register title deeds. Sale of alienated land commenced from 1832. Repression: When Aboriginals became homeless, they were progressively forced into detention centres and their children taken away; Aboriginal culture was deliberately eroded; eugenics was used in a laboured attempt to erase the Aboriginal traits; then they were forcibly assimilated; wages were ‘managed’ or stolen. In Tasmania, the peak period of ethnic cleansing (but not extermination) took place during Arthur’s ‘friendly mission’ between 1829 and 1834. Extermination began in 1804 and continued through martial law, between 1828 and 1832, after which few Palawa survivors remained, less than around 3% of the originating population before the British invasion. Subjugation: Many Aboriginals, particularly those in remote areas, now live in third world conditions, under the beneficent eye of Government. Preventable disease rages. Suicide is high. Harsh policing is used as a social weapon. Hope is a luxury. When some Aboriginals wanted to return to remote areas they once called home, and because the land had no commercial purpose (for a time), they were allowed to move,1396 with the Commonwealth providing rudimentary services that, even these, the Commonwealth now plans to withhold, once again to force them to move back to cities. 663 But where? And why? And for how long can this cruel, genocidal process continue, where the conditions for Aboriginals to support some less than normal life are further squeezed by Government? In Tasmania, the subjugation phase began from around 1832, when the first detainees were relocated to islands in Bass Strait, and continued to 1847, when the few dispirited survivors were relocated from Flinders Island to a disused penal settlement at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart, where they continued to linger in unhealthy conditions until the last inmate died in the mid-1870s. At first, settler sovereignty was de facto, or presumed by right of occupation and a legal transactional arrangement through Government grant process with a nominal quit rent, a process that often spoke of nepotism and corrupt payments to any officials involved from the Surveyor General’s department. As land became property, it became subject to British laws of property, able to be bought and sold. Slowly, through a juridical process, de facto sovereignty became de jure. The rights of Palawa were simply discounted, or if acknowledged at all, were just ignored. Initially, with so much country available, the system of Government grants was open to corruption. Arthur used land grants as a system of patronage and nepotism, for authoritarian social control. Immigrants with capital were awarded convict labour on assignment. Some grantees sold their land before the grant was confirmed. Land title deeds were meant to be registered, but sometimes the grantee or subsequent buyer did not bother. Some settlers considered that a verbal permission from the Governor to build a house was equivalent to a grant or lease. Through poor regulation, land was often sold twice or sold while under mortgage. Was Tasmanian colonization benign? Some historians would have us think so. Colonization requires Government planning and resolve. Governments are comprised of people. Can we detect the hand of British individuals in the calibrated process of Indigenous dispossession? Yes. Consider the agency of Henry Bathurst, for example. Secretary of State Bathurst Henry Bathurst (1762 – 1834) , the third Earl Bathurst, was secretary of state for the colonies from 1812 to 1827, in Lord Liverpool’s ministry. He had a succession of senior Government appointments. By 1817, he was becoming worried that ‘transportation to New South Wales was becoming neither an object of Apprehension … nor the means of Reformation’, and that the colony was becoming too ‘expensive’. 1397 In part1398 to address a chaotic land regulation environment, in 1820 he decided to appoint JT Bigge as a Commissioner to enquire into ‘the governance, commerce and general practices of the colony, which included looking at the granting of Crown Land and the buying and selling of this land and by whom’.1399 This investigation was unprecedented for the newly minted colony as it presaged a change of administrative direction for the Home Government. New South Wales henceforth had to pay its way and homeland dissidents should be made to fear the cost of crime, in reality the cost of poverty, by making the prospect of transportation a significant and fearful deterrent. 664 Britain wanted to make its impoverished and possibly rebellious underclass afraid of transgression against their privileged masters and the laws of property. Britain wanted to avoid a home-grown revolution of the kind they had just seen in America and France. Bathurst’s instructions to Bigge included a direction to ‘inquire into, and report upon, the actual and probable revenues of the colony; whether they may be looked to hereafter as affording the means of defraying some part of the heavy expenditure annually incurred on account of New South Wales; and whether they are in any, and in what, cases susceptible of increase without prejudice to the prosperity and welfare of the settlements.’ Bathurst was talking about setting an appropriate price for the sale of ‘Crown’ land. Bigge completed his enquiry between 1821 and 1823 and produced three reports for Bathurst.1400 In his third and final report on the state of agriculture and trade in New South Wales,1401 he provided Bathurst with an answer to Britain’s revenue problem, by including a section with recommendations on the sale of ‘Crown’ land. Bigge reported that ‘it was proposed that for persons who brought out real capitals amounting to £500, there should be granted 500 acres; £750, 640; £1,000, 800; £1,500, 1,000; £1,700, 1,280; £2,000, 1,500; £2,500, 1,760; and £3,000, 2,000 acres.’ He then recommended that: ‘The proposal therefore for the sale of land, contiguous to grants made upon real capital, is one which will be very beneficial to settlers and will also be productive of revenue to the crown. In favourable situations, I should recommend that the additional quantity of land should be sold for ten shillings an acre; in those less favorable and more remote, for five shillings. With a view to afford encouragement to the purchasers of contiguous lands, I concur in the suggestion made by Mr. Oxley that a deposit of 10 per cent. should be paid upon the purchase being agreed upon, and that the remainder should be paid by instalments every six months, until the whole was paid. A failure in the payment of one or more instalments should not deprive the purchaser of his right, provided the whole arrears were made good with interest at the period the last payment became due; but a failure in the ultimate payment should subject the purchaser to the loss of antecedent deposits, and of all right to the land’. Bathurst enthusiastically supported the recommendations and asked Macquarie’s successor, Brisbane, to implement the recommendations without delay for the colony of New South Wales, which (until 1825) included Tasmania under the administration of a LieutenantGovernor, who reported to the Governor of New South Wales along with the Colonial Office. In 1827, Arthur attempted to introduce some further efficiency into the registration of land title deeds, so that it was unnecessary to examine the complete chain of prior title deeds from the original grant, which could comprise a search of up to twenty years prior. The 1827 Registration of Deeds Act 1402 also sought to impose a penalty of £100 for every instance when the land was incorrectly registered by neglect or omission. In addition, Arthur made it a felony to destroy, counterfeit or embezzle any registry entry.1403 It was not enough. 665 The system of beneficent and potentially corrupt grants was the root cause of the land allocation and regulation problem. In 1832, after Bigge’s earlier recommendations, the system of land grants was replaced in Tasmania by their sale. Transacting land deals became a major Government business, with the realized revenue contributing to the Treasury’s balance. Settlement and pastoralism The agencies of settlement and pastoralism were closely aligned. With settlement came the need to put land to productive use. The economic activity of pastoralism was the mainstay of the early Tasmanian colony. It drove often violent Palawa dispossession. As the revenue from sheep and cattle farming increased, so did the number of immigrant settler-colonists, which in turn fueled the demand for more ‘Crown’ land to be alienated for sale. It was an exponential ‘feed forward’ process that the Aboriginals could not win. The settler encroachment on Aboriginal land peaked during Arthur’s term, exacerbated by his quite intentional land and immigration policies and his refusal to recognize any legal arrangement of Aboriginal land rights that might offer a treaty or ongoing tenure. Nor did Britain allow the Palawa to own land of any kind by prior right of occupation. The process of land acquisition only began to lose heat and momentum when almost all the available pastoral land had been turned into property of some form. But the compulsion towards attaining landed wealth would continue to define settler society for the next century and beyond. In 1852, the historian John West had little to say on Aboriginal rights, although he did note: The advances towards the final extinction of the natives, have been more rapid than expected; but the certainty of that event was never the subject of doubt. 1404 West summarized the prospective settler behavior: The dignity and independence based on landed wealth, is ever the chief allurement of the emigrant. Whatever his rank, he dreams of the day when he shall dwell in a mansion planned by himself; survey a wide and verdant landscape called after his name; and sit beneath the vineyard his own hands planted.1405 The process of Tasmanian land grants before and during Arthur’s term Before 1821, land grants were relatively few, compared with what came after. They totalled a mere 633 grants comprising about 132,000 acres, or an average of about 200 acres each. In 1804, the first four grants were 100 acres each, located on a branch of the Derwent River in southern Tasmania.1406 666 Acres Granted by year in Tasmania (1804 - 1823) 700000 600000 500000 400000 300000 200000 100000 1822 1823 1820 1821 1819 1817 1818 1816 1814 1815 1813 1811 1812 1809 1810 1808 1806 1807 1805 1804 0 Figure 217 Cumulative land grants in Tasmania (1804 - 1823)1407 Year Acres Number of grants 1804 400 4 1805 1,590 13 1806) 2,453 13 1807 2,453 0 1808 4,453 1 1809 7,143 14 1810 8,573 10 1811 8,573 0 1812 8,573 0 1813 42,118 356 1814 43,078 2 1815 44,448 2 1816 49,238 9 1817 66,396 111 1818 70,881 29 1819 75,281 6 1820 85,371 63 116 1821 132,551 1822 132,551 0 1823 574,422 1,027 Figure 218 Cumulative land grants in Tasmania (1804 - 1823) From 1821, Britain was encouraging free settlers with capital to apply for land grants, which also allowed them assigned convict labour, a valuable enticement. They arrived in the colony with letters of recommendation and presented themselves to the Governor, when they could expect a grant up to 1,000 or 2,000 acres, depending on their capital. Most grants were much smaller. In Van Diemen’s Land, 433,988 acres were granted in 1823 alone, at an average of 420 acres. By 1824, at the end of Governor Sorell’s term, around 524,000 acres had been granted. 667 Arthur then followed with a further 979,000 acres between 1824 and 1831. By year, these grants were 43,000 acres in 1824, 112,000 acres in 1825, 60,000 acres in 1826, 77,000 acres in 1827, 165,000 acres in 1828, 208,000 acres in 1829,1408 108,000 acres in 1830, and 206,000 acres in 1831. These grants were made in the prime pastoral area through the midlands and along parts of the east coast near Oyster Bay. By the mid-twenties, the properties gradually coalesced to be called the ‘settled districts’. Under tightening British land policy, the ‘settled districts’ became an exclusion zone for the Palawa.1409 These grants did not include those made to private companies such as the Van Diemen’s Land Company, which had the direct backing of the British Government through a Royal Charter. Nor did Britain consider the rights of Aboriginals when making these grants. Van Diemen’s Land Company The VDL Company was formed in 1824 to provide wool to Britain. The Company wanted 500,000 acres but was initially only granted half this amount. Sorell suggested an area in the north-west, near Cape Grim. Figure 219. Sketch map showing the Aboriginal population distribution around Tasmania at the time of early British settlement. 1410 By 1827, the company’s grant comprised 100,000 acres at Cape Grim, 26,725 acres on nearby islands, 20,000 acres at Circular Head, 150,000 acres at Surrey Hills, 10,000 acres at Hampshire Hills, 10,000 acres at Middlesex Plains and 50,000 acres along Emu Bay Road or nearly 367,000 acres. 1411 Aboriginal trespass was unwelcome. 668 Emerging conflict over land The immanent – that is, emergent - problem was that Aboriginals occupied the same land around Tasmania, through the midlands and along the coastline, which was also coveted by pastoralists for their sheep and other livestock. Conflict was inevitable, without some form of conciliatory gesture involving a treaty and reciprocal rights. Britain did not see the need. Genocide was the result. Britain was not interested in Aboriginal culture. But it was interested in land. Between 1803 and 1823, much of the midlands had already been claimed as property in some form or other, by way of sovereign possession and grants. Figure 220. Location of land grants to 1823 1412 From 1823, Arthur was to triple this ‘settled’ area by 1831, until all the best pastoral land was taken – whether owned, rented or occupied - excluding Aboriginals from their ancient places or, if they returned, to be treated as trespassers and possibly shot without legal consequence. In the pattern of increasing land allocation by Arthur, we see a small dip in 1830, but it then recovered the following year. The only citizens that Arthur did not allow to own land were the Aboriginals. This would also be the pattern across Australia. It was the primary trigger for genocide. 669 We can go further, that genocide had a political and economic use: to remove the Aboriginal encumbrance on ‘Crown’ land and private property; and to improve the value of property. As Governments became increasingly dependent on revenue from land to grow their economies, Aboriginals were in the way. Figure 221. VDL Acreage granted by year, from 1824 to 1831, excluding VDL Co. grants of 367,000 acres and grants to other companies such as Cressy Between 1824 and 1831, the rate of Tasmanian land alienation directly correlates with the rate of population increase, as we would expect. In this critical period for the future of the Palawa, the cumulative acreage allocated to pastoralists (excluding British grants to private companies) almost tripled from 567,000 to 1.5 million acres. In the same period, the number of free settlers grew from 6,029 to 15,067 people.1413 In 1829, Arthur unapologetically wrote that ‘the finest portion of the Island has already been granted away’: The number of persons who have emigrated to the Colony during the Year 1828, was not very considerable compared with former years, and the quantity of land granted was but little more than 200,000 Acres. Of this quantity upwards of 50,000 Acres have been sold at an average of 58d ¾ per acre, and a considerable proportion has been given as Grants, in extension, subject to immediate Quit Rent. The finest portion of the Island has been already granted away, and the lands, remaining at the disposal of the Crown, are of course much less valuable from their remoteness from the Principal Towns.1414 Melville writes about what he describes as the ‘unfair’ process of granting land under Arthur’s administrative incumbency.1415 He neglects to highlight that the people most disadvantaged were the Palawa, who saw the land of their ancestors being given away without compensation or redress. 670 There can be no doubt but that the plan, according to which land has hitherto been located, has been exceedingly unfair and injurious, and under such a system, it cannot be wondered that the most extraordinary instances have occurred of oppression and injustice. When land was first given to the free emigrant, it has already been observed, very considerable stimulus was held out, rations and workmen being allowed the new settler, in proportion to the number of his family, and the quantity of acres given to him. But even in these times, when land was not of much value, the grossest jobbing prevailed – and so it has continued ever since, only varying according to new promulgated regulations. In former times, the free settler, on landing, called upon the Surveyor General, and a map was immediately laid before him – but that was all! – for as to any further information being afforded, that depended upon other circumstances. If the new comer had no friend to show him how to proceed, he would immediately go in search of land in the interior – he would return to the Survey-office, with the knowledge of perhaps a dozen spots suitable to his fancy; the first he would be told had already been taken – the second was a township reserve – the third a private reserve; and so on; in fact, the whole number of selected places, he would find either reserved or located, although no mark whatsoever, to that effect, might appear on the charts. After much waste of time, and very considerable expense and inconvenience, the new settler would by chance fix upon some distant spot, which being so remote, was totally valueless in the estimation of the Surveyor-General, and this land the settler was allowed to possess. If, however, a settler arrived who had a friend to counsel him, the business was soon settled, and a hogshead of wine, a piano-forte, or a harp, or such like present, would point out on the chart in the Survey-Office, the most desirable land in the Colony. In former times, the free emigrants brought with them orders to locate land, but in later years this was not necessary, for a Land Board was appointed to fix the rate of quit-rents, and to examine the amount of capital the fresh settlers might bring with them; and the Local Government had the authority to give away the land in proportion to the capital introduced. Here also fraud was most common; the capitalist entitled to a large grant, would often find an almost beggar that came out with him in the same ship, receive a like quantity adjoining him. It was a common practice for individuals to borrow sums of money, and to shew the bank receipts to the commissioners – and when the location order was issued, they money, of course, was returned to the lender. The favouritism too, practise, will scarcely be believed by any individuals not fully aware of the true circumstances of the Colony – some friends of those in power would have large grants given them, besides suburban, and township allotments in numbers, in every township in the Colony, if they so pleased to have them! Government officers, without bringing with them one farthing of capital, have had the most extensive gifts of land; whilst the industrious capitalist, the real settler, has ha his time and money frittered away with the difficulties and negligence he has had to combat with at the Survey-Office. 671 The land patronage, too, has been so disgracefully made use of, that the Government officers and friends of those in authority or favour, have had large additional grants for “improvements made,” when the applicants for such additions have not even seen the land first given to them, nor cultivated an inch thereof, or expended thereon one farthing. Whilst land of the finest description and the most valuable, has been squandered on men holding Government situations, who were necessarily prevented from residing thereon, or improving the same, every obstacle has been thrown in the way of the capitalist, who unfortunately has had no friend at the Colonial Court. Bandied about from one office to another, if a fortunate settler obtained the number of acres his property entitled him to, he would at length proceed in search of land, and after the shuffling of the Survey Department, and much labour and expense, would have the spot marked out on the chart as his own.1416 Melville’s tirade at the poor treatment of the immigrant ‘capitalists’ who wished to obtain a free grant of land for a quit-rent fee is not supported by the evidence. In fact, emigration from Britain was a booming business, and would continue so until the early 1860s. Guides for immigrants As the rush for land continued, guides for British immigrants became popular. Palawa land rights were either dismissed or ignored. Britain’s punishment for any Palawa objection to their genocidal dispossession was brutal and emphatic. Some writers have extolled the strength of Aboriginal resistance and pointed to Arthur’s harried response, culminating in his levée en masse. But Palawa resistance had reached sheer desperation, with their numbers steadily being reduced. By 1828, constantly harried by armed settlers and roving/ pursuing parties, the remaining Palawa had lost hope of humane treatment or a treaty. They reluctantly accepted Arthur’s false promises of sanctuary on their own land. By 1834, they had been forcibly exiled, to die in captivity, leaving settlerism to pursue its economic ends. In 1836, James Ross1417 advises: Should the emigrant on his arrival, agreeably to the views of the Government, proceed to the interior in search of a piece of crown land suitable for his farm, and should he be so fortunate as, after much expense of time, fatigue and money, to discover such a spot, his next step is to apply to the Surveyor General, giving that officer as good a description of it as he can, in order that it may be inserted among the lots to be put up for sale at the next auction. Three or four months at the least must elapse before this can take place, and when the sale does come on, the inexperienced emigrant, who has already incurred so much expense and trouble, finds that he has no better chance of obtaining the land than any other individual who happens to attend the sale, and who, from various circumstances of contiguity to older farms or otherwise, is enabled to bid a higher price. Disappointed, 672 he turns away with disgust, and I do not know a single instance of a new settler purchasing crown land to occupy as a farm after his arrival. His only alternative is then to hire a farm, if such be in the market, and instead of going on his own property, as, after quitting his native home, and undertaking so long a voyage to a new country, he had a right to expect, he must become the tenant or, as it were, the vassal of another. 1418 Some of Ross’s advice was echoed by Burn:1419 For some time the system of granting and selling crown-lands were in simultaneous operation in Van Diemen’s Land. It was then a matter of some difficulty to ascertain where it might be advisable for an emigrant to pitch his tent; settlers already established, affected to claim a right over a scope of territory far exceeding the extent of their locations, having hopes of acquiring certain portions by purchase – certain others by additional grant, in consideration of improvements effected upon the original. With such ideas floating through their brains, they were not only unwilling to show, but prone to mislead the new-comer with regard to unlocated lands, inasmuch as if they were devoid of personal hope of further aggrandisement, many were looking out for the arrival of friends from England, for whom they strove to keep back favourable sections. Such was the case in Tasmania, and there can be little doubt that a similar sort of feeling yet prevails there and elsewhere. A few shillings judiciously laid out, will procure from some of the clerks in the survey office, a copy of the chart with the located and unlocated territory distinctly marked. With this in hand, the emigrant should visit the district the district in which it may be his wish to reside, and, by every species of inquiry and examination, make himself perfectly conversant with the various features, qualities, and characteristics of his contemplated possession.1420 The rise of settler sovereignty from de facto to de jure As the amount of land for settlement increased, the Palawa were progressively pushed to the margins, while the ‘unlocated’ lands suitable for grazing and agriculture steadily diminished in size. The ‘settled districts’ would not tolerate trespassers Eventually, the Palawa had nowhere to go. Arthur’s final solution to their disposition was the answer, given an enthusiastic endorsement by the British Foreign Office. Aboriginals became refugees and then detainees, in a process of ethnic cleansing. Their numbers dropped further. Britain’s economic priorities had won, although genocide was the price. A similar commercial transaction was to be conducted across the Australian continent, the barter now having an acceptable Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss account. Britain found that the price was fair. After all, who could judge them? Where was the penalty? 673 Britain marched into its Imperium with head erect, ready to colour the globe red. After its setback in the Americas, it had to. National pride depended on it. So did a society beset with class hierarchy. We now know it in its logical extension as racism, for which ethnic destruction was the key enabler, and economic hegemony was the seductive prize. Family fortunes were created through the misery of pernicious exploitation and the often-violent subordination of other races. As for the settlers, they pursued their economic activities with defensive zeal, maintaining that Aboriginals had no right to the land and expressing angry indignation when the Palawa resisted. The wife of one settler represents this halcyon view of settler innocence and amicability, where the Palawa simply melted away without conflict, or if conflict ensued, decrying the ‘outrages’ of the ‘blacks’. The plain relation of easily-proved matters of fact may tend to dissipate erroneous ideas as to the original enmity between the settlers and the aborigines, who for some years after the colonization of the island lived peaceably together, the natives visiting the houses and stations of the colonists in the same amicable manner as the blacks in New South Wales do now – coming and going as it pleased them – “camping” near to the homes of white people, with the free consent of the latter – receiving presents of food and other things, and not manifesting any jealous or angry feelings. In considering this subject it should also be borne in mind who and what the early “settlers” were. They were neither pirates nor robbers, as were many of the early dwellers in and usurpers of new countries in days of yore; but British farmers and country gentlemen, not usually considered a desperately ferocious and blood-thirsty class, nor by any means disposed to commence hostilities against quiet unoffending people, such as the Tasmanian aborigines originally appeared; but purposing to till their ground and feed their sheep without injury or molestation to the natives, both parties being at that time so few in number, that the quantity of land occupied by the English, and partially thinned of the wild animals useful to the blacks, was comparatively speaking so small, as not to be felt by them as a deprivation, even had they gained rather than lost by the change, in the food given them by settlers.1421 We should put Louisa Meredith’s apologia in context. Her father-in-law was George Meredith, who acquired property at Swansea in 1821, Redbanks, which had been constantly under attack by Mairremmener bands who saw the armed encroachment on their land around Oyster Bay as an assault on their sovereignty and survival. George, who was always ready to chase a quick profit, was also involved in sealing and shore-based whaling at what is now called Wineglass Bay. He was fiercely antagonistic towards the local Aboriginals, and engaged in many punitive expeditions, which the Palawa reciprocated. In 1831, he implemented a Freycinet ‘line campaign’1422 that was as unsuccessful as those earlier human lines (Black Line campaign) commanded by Arthur. His elaborate headstone monument at Swansea, in the Old Saints’ church ground, is a metaphor for ‘settler’ triumphalism and belies his ruthless history towards Aboriginals. 674 Like so many of his kind, he is now venerated. Victors write history. Figure 222 George Meredith's elaborate headstone monument at Swansea 1423 In his journal entry of 9th May 1836, Robinson records a different view of the Meredith dynasty to that of his daughter-in-law. Robinson goes further, by also implicating George senior and other members of his family in the ethnic violence at Oyster Bay. Proctor informed me that the New Holland women was brought to the islands by George Meredith, that Munro has one, Baily has one and the other sealer the last. George Meredith was speared by the natives on the coast of New Holland, no doubt in retaliation for the injuries he had done them. This was a just retribution. Many aggressions had been committed by the Merediths on the natives at Oyster Bay.1424 There were many settlers like Meredith. Robinson would know. He encountered some of them in his ‘friendly mission’ from 1829 to 1834, where he wrote of the extermination but could do little about it (even if he had been so inclined) under Arthur’s four-year period of martial law between 1828 and 1832, when the killing of Aboriginals was made legal. 675 Before 1828, Britain simply ignored the killings for fear – if they cared at all - that any punishment might upset the colonists and their loyalty to Britain. Conclusion Arthur did not stop the process of granting Tasmanian Crown land to settler-colonists until 1832, by which time ‘the finest portion of the Island has been already granted away’ and Aboriginal resistance had been almost completely overcome. A strategy of ethnic cleansing was now being pursued by his administration, with the support of his superiors.1425 Nevertheless, Bigge’s Commission of Enquiry would be a significant turning point for land tenure and management across Australia. Land would henceforth become property, subject to the evolving British laws of property. The Tasmanian Treasury balance would grow and its terms of trade with Britain would begin an upward trajectory, with the annual wool clip realizing a significant proportional amount. What is most significant in Commissioner Bigge’s terms of reference is what Bathurst did not want investigated. He did not ask Bigge to investigate the dire predicament of Aboriginals. Indeed, Aboriginals received no mention at all among Bathurst’s concerns and unsurprisingly were not considered in the enquiry or its recommendations. We can conclude this was because Britain was untroubled about the evident pattern of Aboriginal ethnic cleansing originating from armed British colonisation; Britain’s metastasizing settlement policies encouraged it. The removal and extermination of Aboriginals was quite intentional, a direct result of violent pastoral expansion associated with the squatting, granting (and later selling) of so-called ‘Crown’ land. Aboriginals had no value in the business of forcible occupation. And if they could be removed entirely, ‘unencumbered’ land values went up, an attractive incentive for land speculators and the sturdy pastoralists who followed in their wake.1426 Britain had no intention of stopping, redirecting, or slowing down the rate of land claims in New South Wales, which at that time extended over much of the eastern continent. Nor was it disposed to protect the rights of Aboriginals to their own or allocated land. Britain’s increasing preoccupation was with revenue and trade, making NSW a sufficient deterrent for the fractious and dissident British under-class, and ensuring the Colony was more financially self-sufficient. Britain had an opportunity with Commissioner Bigge’s enquiry to pull back from its murderous Aboriginal policies. They chose not to resile from the ethnic cleansing process. But the real consequence of Bigge’s recommendations on the aggressive sale of ‘Crown’ land meant the die was irrevocably cast for Aboriginals. The terrible carnage accelerated. The genocidal policies adopted in Tasmania would be pursued elsewhere in Australia. Britain was unmoved, because the revenue from land sales meant the colony of New South Wales (which included Tasmania until 1825) was no longer such a drain on the Exchequer’s purse. Commercial imperatives outweighed crimes against humanity. 676 Therefore Britain, through its quite intentional and considered land policies, can be held wholly accountable for the associated slaughter, a process in which they lent their military and administrative support, until the cost of policing and defence was transferred to the colonies from about 1838, all the while under the watchful eye of the Foreign (or Colonial) Office. There is no question about the intent with Britain’s policy on the sale of land appropriated from the Aboriginals; the intent was perfectly clear; Britain was intent on alienating and selling what they called ‘Crown’ land, and were not concerned about the human consequences, about the forced and usually violent displacement of the original inhabitants. There was no room for Aboriginals in Britain’s land policy, not as owners, not as trespassers, so they were removed. We conclude that, through the agency of accelerated settlement in Tasmania, borne aloft by British Government emigration and land alienation policies, the categorial behaviour conforms to Lemkinian genocide among its measured attributes. 677 The role of the British Government in Tasmanian genocide For too long, we have focused on other genocidal circumstances, the otherness of elsewhere - Germany, Cambodia, Ukraine, Turkey - leaving Imperial Britain to hide in the shadows of history.1427 Under the UN Convention on genocide, Article 2, the British Government intended to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palawa ethnic group in Tasmania. The evidence is in the voluminous despatches supporting Arthur’s policies, partially summarised in this document, together with Britain’s documented conduct from the 1803 invasion until Arthur’s appointment in 1824, as we will examine, and then until 1833, when Aboriginals were being ethnically cleansed, and then forcibly detained until 1847 when the Wybalenna survivors were brought back to Tasmania, and then until 1876 when Trucanini died at Hobart in the care of Mrs. Dandridge and only Fannie Smith remained, perhaps the last full blood, although there remains some uncertainty.1428 We will use the numbered clauses of Article 2 as a logical sieve to parse the British Government’s hypothesized genocidal behaviour, which we will then test for falsifiability. Our conclusions will be retroactive, but this is not precluded by the UN Convention, although prosecution is more difficult, given the legal rules of evidence. But it will allow us to demand accountability. It will force us not to turn away from Britain’s culpable behaviour, assessed against the specific indictable terms of the Lemkinian Convention. Unless there be doubt, any military-backed colonizing invasion needs its functionaries, its Governors, its armed forces. Tasmania was an example of this dispossessory process, of the forced displacement of an Indigenous population. Military people knew the importance of a chain of command, of obedience to orders, of adherence to authority, of rigid discipline. Military Governors could ease the path of colonization. Aboriginals became a casualty of war, a genocidal war. The Imperial slaughterhouse saw to that. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through its Imperial colonising policies in Tasmania, Britain is culpable of genocide under the following articles: 2 (a) 2 (b) 2 (c) 2 (d) 2 (e) Killing members of the group Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group Intentionality and the British Chain of Command Many researchers have looked for evidence of Tasmanian genocide in mostly random, often poorly documented killings. It is a type of misdirection, where an inebriated person is looking 678 for his car keys beneath a lamp post rather than where they were dropped because the light is better ‘over there’. Genocide almost always begins with some power structure – it certainly did for Tasmania - so that is where we will begin. We are particularly interested in the question of intentionality - the involved party structure, the people, the processes and the intended outcomes - for the Imperial colonization and administration of Tasmania from 1803 (when it was first invaded) to 1847 (when George Grey authorized the relocation of the Wybalenna detainees to a derelict unwanted penal settlement at Oyster Cove). Ultimately, history is about people and the conforming intentions of people to State policies, the shape of civil society and its defining instruments of power. British colonial intentionality is a Janus-faced behavior that derives from the State (‘intentionalism’) and is fanned by the colonist-settlers (‘functionalism’). The behavioural dance of State and Citizen are co-determinate, the dancing partners responding to the aspirational tune of money, of property, of land and resources, of exploitation, a grotesque dance of opportunism, the often racist distribution of resources, and the exercise of asymmetrical power. To understand and ascribe genocidal accountability, we must understand the Imperial power structures and motivations, we must know the people and their agency, and we must know how they are involved as individuals and as groups in some patterned outcome. Many of them have escaped scrutiny. It is rare to see this roll call of ‘persons of interest’ for their association with Tasmanian culpable homicide, unless individually honored on a map or public building as eponymously named places, where the Aboriginal provenance is lost in a process that causes almost as much cultural destruction as physical extermination. It is the assumed right of the invader to transplant its culture and obliterate what went before. We need only look at any Tasmanian atlas: Hobart, Launceston, Mount Wellington, Deloraine, Devonport, Port Arthur, Macquarie Harbour, Port Davey, Derby, Longford, Sorell, Latrobe, Stanley and so on. Aboriginal place names are notable in their paucity. If Britain was not reclaiming a little England from a foreign land, it was busily exterminating the vermin. We deny our true history in the act of renaming and thereby create another myth. Indeed, there are eminent Australian revisionist historians who obdurately deny genocide. With denial comes a whitewash of accountability and an affirmation of the supremacy of Imperial civilization as it bulldozed its way over subjugated races. Within Tasmanian historical research, we have the usual suspects paraded before us - Arthur, Murray, Goderich, Hay, Stephen – as they appear in despatches, a sanitized version of brutal history, a transactional record of something that happened, the patterns of [somethings] inscrutably fading into myth. The chain of accountability, the web of intentionality, can disappear into the darkness of history. For Imperial Britain, Empire was a big place and Tasmania was relatively small. But when we understand the pattern of the genocidal process in Tasmania, it becomes a fractal element in a much larger process of self-similar elements, all playing out in the British Imperium of violent colonization, all managed by the administrative machinery of Britain Inc. The British roles, people and period of incumbency are represented in this roll call of infamy. We bring them back to life where they can be subject to our renewed scrutiny. 679 British Sovereigns and Privy Council (1750 – 1870) For the extended period when all power devolved from the Monarch, British sovereigns did not rule alone; they were supported by a Privy Council with roots into Government. A privy (or secret) council was a committee of the sovereign’s closest advisors on state affairs, usually drawn from the aristocracy. Sovereign Royal Members of Privy Council1429 George III (1760–1820) 1760 Prince Edward, Duke of York and Albany (1739–1767) (KG 1752)1430 Total Creations: 345 1764 Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh (1743–1805) (KG 1762) 1766 Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn (1745– 1790) (KG 1767) 1783 George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales (1762–1830) (KG 1765) 1787 Prince Frederick, Duke of York (1763–1827) (KG 1771) 1789 Prince William, Duke of Clarence (1765–1837) (KG 1782) 1799 Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (1767–1820) (KG 1786) 1799 Prince Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale (1771–1851) (KG 1786 1802 Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge (1774–1850) (KG 1786) 1804 Price Augustus, Duke of Sussex (1773–1843) (KG 1786) 1806 Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh (1776–1834) (KG 1794) George IV (1820 – 1830) Total Creations: 61 William IV (1830 – 1837) Total creations: 88 Victoria (1837 – 1901) Total Creations: 583 1840 Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819–1861) (KG 1839) 1856 Prince George, Duke of Cambridge (1819–1904) (KG 1835) 1863 Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1841–1910) (KG 1858) 1866 Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (1844–1900) (KG 1863) 1871 Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (1850– 1942) (KG 1867) 1874 Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany (1853–1884) (KG 1869) 1894 Prince George, Duke of York (1865–1936) (KG 1889) 680 1894 Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein (1831–1917) (KG 1866) 1894 Prince Henry of Battenberg (1858–1896) (KG 1885) Figure 223 British Sovereigns: 1750 - 1870 Privy Counsellor (1750 – 1870) Appointed Became senior Died Wills Hill, 1st Marquess of Downshire 1754 1792 1793 Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford 1755 1793 1803 George Townshend, 1st Marquess Townshend 1760 1803 1807 George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough 1762 1807 1817 Lord Charles Spencer 1763 1817 1820 Henry Carteret, 1st Baron Carteret 1770 1820 1826 Lord Robert Spencer 1782 1826 1831 Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby 1783 1831 1834 John Villiers, 3rd Earl of Clarendon 1787 1834 1838 Alleyne FitzHerbert, 1st Baron St Helens 1787 1838 1839 Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth 1789 1839 1844 Dudley Ryder, 1st Earl of Harrowby 1790 1844 1847 Prince Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale 1799 1847 1851 Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne 1806 1851 1863 Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston 1809 1863 1865 Robert Jocelyn, 3rd Earl of Roden 1812 1865 1870 Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe 1820 1870 1880 George Chichester, 3rd Marquess of Donegall 1830 1880 1883 Robert Grosvenor, 1st Baron Ebury 1830 1883 1893 Henry Grey, 3rd Earl Grey 1835 1893 1894 William Ewart Gladstone 1841 1894 1898 Spencer Horatio Walpole (jointly) 1852 1898 1898 John Manners, 7th Duke of Rutland (jointly until 1898) 1852 1898 1906 John Spencer, 5th Earl Spencer (jointly) 1859 1906 1910 Henry Reynolds-Moreton, 3rd Earl of Ducie (jointly until 1910) 1859 1906 1921 681 Figure 224 Privy Counsellors: 1750 - 1870 British Prime Ministers (1803 – 1847) People make human history, giving it shape and purpose. There are many types of human history – political, social, economic, and so on. We are interested in Imperialism, the history of British colonization practices over a certain timeframe. During the period of colonial expansionist Imperialism from (say) 1750 to 1850, Britain was administered through a chain of command power structure we will call Britain Inc., the dutybound members constantly changing according to political fortunes and alliances, with a collective class-ridden backbone moulded from the clay of inherited privilege, a conga line of culpability. Financial and political reward was the driver for Involved Parties; accountability was another matter; but when the excesses of the British Imperium washed through the system, the damage for targeted groups became mere collateral. What focused British attention was transactional advantage, economic and political, where the human cost was off balance sheet, in particular the destructive consequences for Indigenous society. In Australia, the oppressive purpose of Britain Inc. always remained the same, the violent transformation of Aboriginal land into British property. We are particularly interested in who were the Prime Ministers (and other high level administrative functionaries, some elected, some appointed) for the period of Tasmanian genocide from 1803 to 1847, and what were their actions in restraining, or contributing to, the genocidal outcome. Until now, they – the puppet-masters - have tended to escape the accusatory gaze of history, our attention drawn to symptoms such as the detailing of massacres, like a child’s eyes being fixed on the movements of a rattle without understanding the mind behind the cause of their distraction. The people of Britain Inc. changed, as we will see, but the administrative roles remained much the same, all in the service of Empire and its global aspirations. We will immediately notice that the names are mostly drawn from Britain’s privileged class, representing a coterie of selfinterest. For Britain’s global ambitions, it needed its dependable apparatchiks, people who would not question, people who would obey. The British self-appointed and hereditary ruling class was ready-made for this purpose In the mid-1700s, Britain had a prison problem. The gaols and barges were overflowing with prisoners, victims of industrialization, the ‘closure of the commons’ by landed gentry, and the growth of urbanization. Poverty was rife. Starvation was real. The possibility of civil insurrection was constant. Crimes against property were treated harshly, with hanging or long terms of imprisonment the punishment. Political resistance was not tolerated. Poverty became a crime. The assizes were a growth industry, churning through the unfortunate souls presenting themselves before what was called British justice. After the fall of its North American colonies to the revolution, Britain looked for alternatives. It could have chosen to change its behaviours; instead it looked for new territories to subjugate and exploit. Following Cook’s voyage along the eastern coast of New Holland in 1770, New South Wales was chosen as a carceral destination.1431 On 6th December 1785, the Government of William Pitt ‘the Younger’, son of the Earl of Chatham, raised Orders in Council through permanent 682 Under-Secretary Nepean1432 in the Home Office for the establishment of a penal colony in New Holland.1433 Prime Minister From To Monarch 14 October 1768 28 January 1770 George III (1760 – 1820) Frederick North, Lord North 28 January 1770 22 March 1782 Charles WatsonWentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham 27 March 1782 1 July 1782 William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne 4 July 1782 2 April 1783 William CavendishBentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland 2 April 1783 19 December 1783 William Pitt ‘the Younger’ 19 December 1783 14 March 1801 Henry Addington 17 March 1801 10 May 1804 William Pitt ‘the Younger’ 10 May 1804 23 January 1806 William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville 11 February 1806 31 March 1807 William CavendishBentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland 31 March 1807 4 October 1809 Spencer Perceval, KC 4 October 1809 11 May 1812 8 June 1812 9 April 1827 10 April 1827 8 August 1827 31 August 1827 21 January 1828 Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington 22 January 1828 16 November 1830 Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey 22 November 1830 9 July 1834 William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne 16 July 1834 14 November 1834 Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington 14 November 1834 10 December 1834 Sir Robert Peel, Bt 10 December 1834 8 April 1835 Augustus Fitzroy, 3 Duke of Grafton rd Robert Jenkinson, 2 Earl of Liverpool nd George Canning, FRS Frederick Robinson, 1 Viscount Goderich st William IV (1830 – 1837) 683 William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne 18 April 1835 30 August 1841 Sir Robert Peel, Bt 30 August 1841 29 June 1846 Lord John Russell 30 June 1846 21 February 1852 Victoria (1837 – 1901) Figure 225 British Prime Ministers (1803 - 1847) Secretaries of State (1803 – 1847) As Britain’s colonial empire continued to expand, it needed careful administration with a Secretary and Under-Secretary managing a large staff. The Secretary was an elected political appointee with a cabinet level position. Between 1768 and 1782, the administrative duty for colonial affairs rested with the Colonial Office but was taken over by the Home Office from 1782 to 1794. With more neighborhood wars looming, the War Office took charge from 1794 to 1801. From 1801 until 1854, the British Government responsibility for the colony of Tasmania rested with the War and Colonial Office under a Secretary of State (the role expanded to include responsibility for war, depending on whom Britain was fighting at the time), a cabinet level position, supported by an permanent administrative Under-Secretary and another nonpermanent Under-Secretary who was a junior political appointee. Collectively, it was called the Foreign Office. Its responsibility was to manage Britain’s colonial empire on behalf of the Government. During Arthur’s term, he was successively reporting to Earl Bathurst, Viscount Goderich, Huskisson, Murray, Viscount Goderich, the Earl of Derby (Stanley), Baron Spring-Rice, The Duke of Wellington, the Earl of Aberdeen and Lord Glenelg. With many of them, there was considerable correspondence, although some had their attentions elsewhere, with war often the reason. None of these functionaries objected to Aboriginal dispossession or genocide although Murray offered a vague regret at the ‘indelible stain’ on Britain for causing Aboriginal extinction, while participating in the process. But they overwhelmingly supported their Tasmanian administrators in the occupation process, including the use of armed force if the ‘savages’ resisted. Tasmania was a small place, one of many colonies in the British Empire. What mattered to Britain was land, emigration, trade, and property. What mattered was the glory of Empire, which Brantlinger called ‘the rule of darkness’, 1434 an edifice tottering on a monstrous rotting base of inherited privilege, racism and exploitation. Aboriginals were a nuisance to be swatted away, if they resisted their dispossession, and absorbed into servitude if they didn’t. Occasionally, some Government apparatchik might express mild concern about the violence and ongoing deaths, but none took any effective preventative action, not until Grey ordered Denison to remove the few Palawa survivors from Flinder’s Island to Oyster Cove in 1847, perhaps to deflect criticism at home for the appalling treatment of the few remaining Wybalenna detainees who had written a letter of complaint to Queen Victoria, although it is doubtful she ever saw her ‘subjects’’ plea.1435 But it was too late. Secretary of State for War and the Colonies From To Ministry 684 Lord Hobart 17 March 1801 12 May 1804 Henry Addington The Earl Camden 14 May 1804 10 July 1805 William Pitt the Younger Viscount Castlereagh 10 July 1805 5 February 1806 William Pitt the Younger William Windham 5 February 1806 25 March 1807 Lord Grenville Viscount Castlereagh 25 March 1807 1 November 1809 The Duke of Portland The Earl of Liverpool 1 November 1809 11 June 1812 Spencer Perceval Henry Bathurst (3 Earl Bathurst) 11 June 1812 30 April 1827 The Earl of Liverpool The Viscount Goderich 30 April 1827 3 September 1827 George Canning William Huskisson 3 September 1827 30 May 1828 Viscount Goderich Sir George Murray 30 May 1828 22 November 1830 Duke of Wellington The Viscount Goderich 22 November 1830 3 April 1833 Earl Grey Hon. Edward Stanley (14th Earl of Derby) 3 April 1833 5 June 1834 Earl Grey Thomas Spring Rice (1st Baron) 5 June 1834 14 November 1834 Viscount Melbourne The Duke of Wellington 17 November 1834 9 December 1834 Duke of Wellington The Earl of Aberdeen 20 December 1834 8 April 1835 Sir Robert Peel The Lord Glenelg 18 April 1835 20 February 1839 Viscount Melbourne The Marquess of Normanby 20 February 1839 30 August 1839 The Viscount Melbourne Lord John Russell 30 August 1839 30 August 1841 The Viscount Melbourne Lord Stanley (later Earl of Derby) William Gladstone 3 September 1841 23 December 1845 Sir Robert Peel 23 December 1845 27 June 1846 Sir Robert Peel The Earl Grey 6 July 1846 21 February 1852 Lord John Russell rd Figure 226. Secretaries of State for War and the Colonies (1803 - 1847) British Under-Secretaries of State for the Colonies (1803 – 1847) Between 1824 and 1836, the period of Arthur’s term in Tasmania, there was a succession of incumbent political figures, Under-Secretaries, through whom Arthur reported to the Secretary of State.1436 During this time, there was one colonial affairs permanent undersecretary in the British Government administration who had a relatively constant role. Robert Hay was permanent under-secretary from 1825 to 1836, reporting to the successive Secretaries of State. 1437 685 Hay’s successor, James Stephen arrived relatively late in the targeted destruction of the Palawa. His role was more focused on the administrative tidying up of the Tasmanian crime scene, which included approving the costs for maintaining the Wybalenna detention facility. However, Stephen was deeply aware from despatches between Gipps and Russell and Stanley and Glenelg1438 that Aboriginals were now being exterminated across the continent, but he believed they were doomed to be destroyed in a similar pattern to what took place in Tasmania.1439 Yet he did nothing. Nor did his superiors. The intentional British process of violently disruptive colonization continued with the British Government’s full knowledge of the genocidal consequences. For Britain, Aboriginals were a lower order of conquered humanity whose fate was to be cast aside by a superior culture. On 7th April 1841, Lord Russell wrote about this genocidal process to Governor Gipps, including a commissioned report from Captain Grey, which said: This principle was that, although the Natives should, as far as European property and European subjects were concerned, be made amenable to British Laws, yet, so long as they only exercised their own customs upon themselves and not too immediately in the presence of Europeans, they should be allowed to do so with impunity. The plea generally set up in defence of this principal is that the natives of this Country are a conquered people, and that it is an act of generosity to allow them the full power of exercising their own laws upon themselves; but this plea would appear to be inadmissible for, in the first place, savage and traditional customs should not be confounded with a regular code of laws; and secondly, when Great Britain ensures to a conquered country the privilege of preserving its own laws, all persons in this territory became amenable to the same laws, and proper persons are selected by the Government to watch over their due and equitable administration; nothing of this kind either exists, or can exist with regard to the customs of the Natives of Australia; between these two cases then, there is no apparent apology [...].1440 Grey is here assuming that Australia had become British Government property by right of ‘conquest’ and that the entire Aboriginal society across Australia was already ‘conquered’ when in fact the war was still to be fought across the frontiers of the continent for the next 80 years. However, for Britain (and Russell and Gipps), it was an acceptable myth, made more believable by the self-proclaimed right of sovereign possession. In the act of planting a flag at a place few Australians have ever seen, at the northern point of what was then called New Holland, Britain presumed to claim a continent, or at least the eastern littoral coastline between two latitudes. The longitude negotiations would come later. Henry Reynolds dismisses any British Government genocidal intentionality, although he admits that Britain was aware of the process underway: If governments are the main agents of genocide – either by intent or inability to prevent it happening – then James Stephen provided us with a form of confession. He clearly felt, however, that the moral responsibility lay with the ‘squatters of bad 686 character’, over whom the law had little power, rather than the imperial government that had set the whole process in motion. 1441 No, this is not what Stephen ‘clearly felt’, as he also received a stream of updates through the Secretary of State on British military assaults against Aboriginal groups, and the military and police were hardly ‘squatters of bad character’, as much as we may think otherwise. Stephen was aware that British expansionist policy was driving the territorial conflict with Aboriginals. Where armed pastoralists went, the military, magistrates and field police followed.1442 Reynolds then disputes whether it was genocide: But was there ever enough evidence to give substance to Stephen’s confession and to conclude that genocide was perpetrated in New South Wales in the late 1830s and early 1840s? 1443 Reynolds concludes there was not enough evidence, legal or otherwise, which is the Windschuttle position. I disagree. The fractal-like pattern1444 of genocide that we saw in Tasmania was to repeat for all Australian colonies, only varying in intensity according to the local conditions, as we will examine.1445 Charles Darwin, in his 1871 book, The Descent of Man, wrote further about this cultural displacement process when he noted the rapid extinction of different human races (where we use the British destruction of the Palawa as an example). Earlier in his book, he asks: Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct? 1446 Darwin argues ‘yes’, suggesting some law of nature rather than racist and naked herd violence. Darwin went further, to relegate different ‘races of man’ to a hierarchy of subspecies.1447 Darwin writes dispassionately of the high resulting mortality, when Aboriginals were ‘banished’ to detention on Flinder’s Island: Dr Story remarks that death followed the attempts to civilise the natives. ‘If left to themselves to roam as they were wont and undisturbed, they would have reared more children, and there would have been less mortality.’ Another careful observer of the natives, Mr Davis, remarks, ‘The births have been few and the deaths numerous. This may have been in great measure owing to their change of living and food; but more so to their banishment from the mainland of Van Diemen’s Land, and consequent depression of spirits.’ 1448 Here Darwin is referring to the end-stage Lemkinian process, when Aboriginals were being forcibly detained at Wybalenna. Ann Curthoys refers to this loss of hope, when she writes: She (Mary Bennett) recounted how a Mr Gardiner, who had lived for a long time on Flinders Island while the Aboriginal station was there, had told her father how ‘old men and women and children were seen in the early morning to ascend Mount Arthur (!) and perch themselves upon the top and wait until the sun lifted the mists from the peaceful ocean, and when the blue mountains of their native land became visible they would raise their swarthy attenuated arms, and with tears rolling down their cheeks, exclaim, ‘Country belonging to me!’ 1449 687 If genocidal agency rested with Britain’s Foreign Office, also called the Colonial Office, we must carefully note the British Government’s administrative roles and incumbency during Arthur’s term. Also supporting the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies was the junior ministerial position of Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies.1450 Among these, Horace Twiss was a frequent correspondent with Arthur (along with Hay and Murray) during the peak killing period of Martial Law from 1828 to 1830, when Arthur was cajoling British Government support for his actions.1451 There is no evidence from these despatches that any of these junior political appointees (or Hay) gave any thought or raised any concern at the desperate situation of the Palawa, who became expendable fodder for Britain’s commercial aspirations. Almost all their letters (except, occasionally, for those of the Secretaries of State, including Murray and Goderich) were mundanely administrative, referring to land grants, convict matters, expenditure and revenue, military disposition, and emigration. Aboriginals were mostly mentioned in the negative: their ‘outrages’ on ‘settled’ areas, and the ‘collisions’ with ‘settlers’. Under-Secretary From To John Sullivan 1801 1804 Edward Cooke 1804 1806 Sir George Shee, Bt and Sir James Cockburn, Bt 1806 1807 Edward Cooke and Charles Stewart 1807 1809 Frederick Robinson and Charles Jenkinson 1809 1809 Charles Jenkinson and Henry Bunbury 1809 1810 Henry Bunbury and Robert Peel 1810 1812 Henry Bunbury and Henry Goulburn 1812 1816 Henry Goulburn 1816 1821 R. W. Horton 1821 1827 688 Edward Stanley 1827 1828 Lord Francis Leveson-Gower 1828 1828 Horace Twiss 1828 1830 Viscount Howick 1830 1834 Sir John Shaw-Lefevre 1834 1834 Sir George Grey, Bt. 1834 1834 John Stuart-Wortley 1834 1835 William Gladstone 1835 1835 Sir George Grey, Bt. 1835 1839 Henry Labouchere 1839 1839 Robert Smith 1839 1841 George Hope 1841 1846 Lord Lyttelton 1846 1846 Benjamin Hawes 1846 1851 Permanent Under-Secretary From To Sir Robert Hay 1825 1836 Sir James Stephen 1836 1847 Figure 227 UnderSecretaries of State for War and the Colonies (1804 - 1851) Figure 228 Permanent Under-Secretaries of State for the Colonies (1825 - 1847) Murray, for his part, would not stop the process of colonization; nor would his Government. Emigration brought Britain more wealth. Cashed-up British emigrants needed land, which generated revenue (particularly after the Ripon regulations of 1831). Revenue made the Australian colonies more self-sufficient. Wool could be shipped back to feed the British woollen mills. The mercantile trade was controlled by Britain. In the global game of chess, Britain saw itself as a winner: the influence of the French was blocked; and Britain had a pliant and increasingly profitable set of Australian colonies, with any Indigenous resistance violently suppressed. Aboriginals had nothing with which to bargain after they had been dispossessed. Except, possibly, the use of their women, who were usually taken for ‘free’. The rest could lawfully be removed as trespassers, with the gun a useful persuader and conciliator. Dead Aboriginals caused no trouble. British Home Secretaries (1803 – 1847) The Home Secretary was (and is) responsible for British internal affairs, including emigration, citizenship, policing and national security. In the 19th century, transportation was a Home Office priority along with ‘sedition’ and ‘treason’ as the fractious under-class became more vocal. There was close liaison through the Cabinet with the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. The process of colonization, together with expenditure and revenue, was also a priority. As the Empire expanded and emigration increased, so did the prospects of profitable 689 bilateral mercantile trade upon which the capitalist fortunes of many illustrious British families depended. During Arthur’s term there was a succession of eminent Home Secretaries, including Robert Peel, Viscount Melbourne and the Duke of Wellington, some of whom went on to becoming Prime Minister. Home Secretary From To Ministry Lord Pelham 30 July 1801 17 August 1803 Henry Addington Charles Philip Yorke 17 August 1803 12 May 1804 Henry Addington The Lord Hawkesbury 12 May 1804 5 February 1806 William Pitt the Younger The Earl Spencer 5 February 1806 25 March 1807 Lord Grenville The Lord Hawkesbury (Earl of Liverpool from 1808) 25 March 1807 1 November 1809 The Duke of Portland Richard Ryder 1 November 1809 8 June 1812 Spencer Perceval The Viscount Sidmouth 11 June 1812 17 January 1822 Lord Liverpool Robert Peel 17 January 1822 10 April 1827 Lord Liverpool Wiliam Sturges Bourne 30 April 1827 16 July 1827 George Canning The Marquess of Lansdowne 16 July 1827 22 January 1828 The Viscount Goderich Robert Peel 26 January 1828 22 November 1830 The Duke of Wellington The Viscount Melbourne 22 November 1830 16 July 1834 Earl Grey Viscount Duncannon 19 July 1834 15 November 1834 The Viscount Melbourne The Duke of Wellington 15 November 1834 15 December 1834 The Duke of Wellington Henry Goulburn 15 December 1834 18 April 1835 Sir Robert Peel Lord John Russell 18 April 1835 30 August 1839 The Viscount Melbourne The Marquess of Normanby 30 August 1839 30 August 1841 The Viscount Melbourne Sir James Graham, Bt 6 September 1841 30 June 1846 Sir Robert Peel Sir George Grey, Bt 8 July 1846 23 February 1852 Lord John Russell Figure 229 British Home Secretaries (1803 – 1847) Not Bathurst, or Stephen (the under-secretary), or Murray (the British Secretary of State), 1452 or the Grey or Wellington Governments, or Arthur (the colonial Governor) or Goderich1453 or Glenelg1454 did anything to prevent the terrible human carnage in Tasmania. 690 Genocide was overwhelmingly caused by Britain’s intentional (and economically driven) land and immigration policies that allowed accelerated alienation and allocation of pastoral land, at first by grants and then, late during Arthur’s term (from 1831), by sale. Subsidised immigration increased, leaving Aboriginals to fight or take flight. But fight how? The numbers and firearms weighed against them made eventual defeat certain. The law did not protect them. And if they fled, where were they to go on an island? The conditions of life became almost impossible for them. Even when they moved to the mountainous areas of the central plateau, they were pursued like vermin and hunted down, which we will shortly see. New South Wales (Australian) Governors (1803 – 1847) For a time, Britain designated New South Wales as the principal Australian colony, for which they appointed a Governor. Other Australian colonies such as Tasmania were subordinated to New South Wales. In 1825, Tasmania was given limited self-government through its own Legislative Council. During Lieutenant-Governor Arthur’s term, he deferred in seniority to Darling, then Bourke. In 1826, Arthur was quick to adopt Darling’s instruction from Lord Bathurst (the Secretary of State) that, if Aboriginals resisted their dispossession, ‘force could be used against force’. 1455 As conflict intensified, a rattled and beleaguered Arthur quickly hardened this dictum into a declaration of martial law, after gaining the support of the British Government for a full military offensive against the desperate Palawa. Britain would defend settler sovereignty with force. If the Palawa would not accede to their ‘conquest’ by a superior race, force would prevail. From To Monarch Captain Philip King RN 28 September 1800 12 August 1806 George III Captain William Bligh RN 13 August 1806 26 January 1808 Major-General Lachlan Macquarie CB 1 January 1810 1 December 1821 Major-General Sir Thomas Brisbane 1 December 1821 1 December 1825 (1760 – 1820) George IV (1820 – 1830) Bt, GCH, GCB. Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Darling GCH 19 December 1825 21 October 1831 Major-General Sir Richard Bourke KCB 3 December 1831 5 December 1837 Major Sir George Gipps 24 February 1838 11 July 1846 William IV (1830 – 1837) Victoria (1837 – 1901) Lieutenant Colonel Sir Charles Fitzroy KCH, KCB 3 August 1846 28 January 1855 Figure 230 New South Wales Governors (1803 - 1847) 691 Tasmanian Lieutenant-Governors and Commandants (1803 – 1847) We should note that this list of senior British Government administrative officials in Tasmania were all military officers, befitting their role as head of a military invasion. This was the nature of the early colonization process. Britain used an armed fist to secure its takeover of an occupied territory. With territorial expropriation, force was often necessary when the original inhabitants inevitably resisted. From To List of Commandants (in the south at Hobart Town) Lieutenant Edward Lord March 1810 July 1810 Captain John Murray 1810 1812 Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Geils 1812 1813 List of Commandants (in the north at Port Dalrymple) Colonel William Paterson 1804 1808 Captain John Brabyn 1808 1810 Major George Gordon 1810 1812 Captain John Ritchie 1812 1812 Colonel David Collins1456 1804 1810 Colonel Thomas Davey 4 February 1813 9 March 1817 Colonel William Sorell 9 March 1817 14 May 1824 Colonel Sir George Arthur KCH 14 May 1824 29 October 1836 Captain Sir John Franklin KCH 5 January 1837 21 August 1843 Sir John Eardley-Wilmot, Bt 21 August 1843 13 October 1846 Sir William Denison KCB 25 January 1847 8 January 1855 Sir Henry Young1457 January 1855 10 December 1861 List of Lieutenant-Governors Figure 231 Tasmanian Lieutenant-Governors and Commandants (1803 - 1855) Tasmanian Colonial Secretaries (1813 – 1873)1458 692 The Colonial Secretary was the representative of the British Colonial Office and was usually appointed from Britain. After Tasmania became self-governing in 1856, the role of Colonial Secretary was often taken up by the Premier. We chose the period to 1873 as this includes the final years of the Aboriginal detention centre at Oyster Cove that saw the demise of almost all the Palawa who survived the Wybalenna death camp at Flinders Island. From To Thomas Lascelles April 1813 16 November 1816 William Alexander 12 April 1817 17 January 1818 Samuel Hood 17 January 1818 30 June 1818 Henry Robinson 1 July 1818 14 May 1824 John Montagu 14 May 1824 22 April 1826 William Hamilton 22 April 1826 9 December 1826 John Burnett 9 December 1826 8 August 1834 John Montagu 8 August 1834 1 February 1842 George Boyes (acting) 2 February 1842 20 April 1843 James Bicheno 20 April 1843 25 February 1851 Peter Fraser 1 March 1851 5 April 1852 Henry Chapman 5 April 1852 1 November 1852 William Champ 1 November 1852 1 November 1856 unknown 1856 November 1862 Frederick Innes 1 November 1862 20 January 1863 unknown January 1863 November 1866 Richard Dry 24 November 1866 1 August 1869 unknown August 1869 November 1872 James Scott 4 November 1872 4 August 1873 Secretary Colonial Secretary Figure 232 Colonial Secretaries of Tasmania (1826 – 1873) Members of the Executive Council of Tasmania 1825 – 1856 In the 18th and 19th centuries, the British monarch was gradually shifting power to elected members of Parliament. The Executive Council in colonial Australia became a body presided over by the Governor to give legal effect to decisions of the legislative body. 693 In July 1825, Earl Bathurst wrote to Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur enclosing an Orderin-Council dated 14 June 1825 'constituting and erecting' VDL a separate colony. This order provided for the first ever use of an Executive Council in any English Colony and, therefore, VDL's Executive Council was Australia's first to be created. NSW Governor Ralph Darling left Hobart for Sydney in December 1825 and had to repeat the formal process of establishment there. The notional membership of the Executive and Legislative Councils were practically identical, hence the term 'twin councils'.1459 But not all members of the Legislative Council were part of Arthur’s executive group, which usually comprised the Chief Justice, the Colonial Treasurer, the Colonial Secretary and others as needed to give ‘advice’ and support to Arthur’s executive decisions as Governor on behalf of the Crown. The Colonial Secretary inter alia had the role as Clerk of Councils. John Pedder was a member of the Executive Council from 1825 to 1836, when Arthur solicited its support in advising him to take progressively harsher actions against the Aboriginals, including an extended period of Martial Law from 1828 to 1832. The period from 1825 to 1836 saw the genocidal destruction of the Palawa, the removal of survivors to Wybalenna detention and the subsequent high rate of deaths in custody from the imposed conditions of imprisonment. Members of the Legislative Council of Tasmania 1825 - 18561460 Tasmania separated from New South Wales in 1825 and became a self-administering colony through a Legislative Council, reporting to the Tasmanian Governor and the British Government. In 1856, Tasmania was granted constitutional self-government by Britain. Between 1825 and 1851, all MLCs were appointed through the British Government. Between 1851 and 1856, one third of the Council was appointed, the remainder elected. From 1856, Tasmania had a fully elected bicameral government, after Britain passed the Constitutions Act (UK) 1850. The early Legislative Council operated through one of the most turbulent periods in Tasmania’s history, where it (with the Executive Council) oversaw the genocidal destruction of the Indigenous population from 1825 to 1847. During this time, there was no one on either Council who was appointed to represent Palawa rights. Pedder was the most sympathetic to their mistreatment, but was easily overruled by the majority of Members, with Arthur having a decisive vote. The appointed members of the Tasmanian Legislative Council were heavily weighted towards magistrates and pastoralists: those who owned land as property; and those charged with the responsibility, under British Law, of protecting it. In this closed arrangement, the rights of Aboriginals were marginalized and easily suppressed. Role 1825 - 1826 John Pedder1461 William Hamilton1462 Adolarius Humphrey1463 Chief Justice Acting Colonial Secretary, pastoralist Chief Police Magistrate 694 Edward Curr1464 Edward 1827 John Pedder John Burnett1466 VDLC manager, magistrate Magistrate, pastoralist Chief Justice Colonial Secretary, sheriff Adolarius Humphrey Chief Police Magistrate, pastoralist, coroner, police superintendent, mineralogist William Hamilton Police magistrate, bank manager, pastoralist Thomas Anstey1467 Police magistrate, pastoralist Thomas 1828 Abbott1465 Archer1468 Magistrate, coroner, commissary, pastoralist John Pedder Chief Justice John Burnett Colonial Secretary Adolarius Humphrey Chief Police Magistrate William Hamilton Thomas Anstey Thomas Archer 18301469 John Pedder Chief Justice John Burnett Colonial Secretary Algernon Montagu1470 Attorney-General, lawyer, land owner Jocelyn Thomas1471 Colonial Treasurer, landowner, magistrate Rev. William Bedford1472 Senior Chaplain Rolla O’Ferrall Collector of Customs William Hamilton Thomas Anstey Thomas Archer Edward Abbott1473 Soldier, public servant, magistrate, landowner. John Kerr James Cox James Gordon Richard Willis 695 1833 John Pedder Chief Justice John Burnett Colonial Secretary Edward John Macdowell1474 Montagu1475 William Bedford Acting Attorney-General, barrister Acting Colonial Treasurer, landowner Senior Chaplain Thomas Anstey Thomas Archer John Kerr James Cox James Gordon Richard Willis Captain Charles Swanston Charles McLachlan 1834 - 1836 John Pedder Chief Justice John Montagu Colonial Treasurer Alfred Stephen1476 Attorney-General, chief justice, legislator John Gregory1477 Colonial Treasurer Rev. Philip Palmer Senior Chaplain William Proctor Acting Collector of Customs Thomas Anstey, Thomas Archer, John Kerr, Richard Willis, Captain Charles Swanston, Charles McLachlan, Matthew Forster, Walter Bethune 1837 - 1838 John Pedder Chief Justice John Montagu Colonial Treasurer Alfred Stephen Attorney-General John Gregory Colonial Treasurer W. Hutchins Archdeacon George Barnes Collector of Customs Matthew Forster, Thomas Anstey, Thomas Archer, John Kerr, Captain Charles Swanston, 696 Charles McLachlan, William Ashburner, William Lawrence Figure 233 Members of the Legislative Council of Tasmania 1825 – 1856 Tasmanian Premiers (1856 – 1876)1478 From To William Champ 1 November 1856 26 February 1857 Thomas Gregson 26 February 1857 25 April 1857 William Weston 25 April 1857 12 May 1857 Sir Francis Smith 12 May 1857 1 November 1860 William Weston 1 November 1860 2 August 1861 Thomas Chapman 2 August 1861 20 January 1863 James Whyte 20 January 1863 24 November 1866 Sir Richard Dry 24 November 1866 1 August 1869 Sir James Wilson 4 August 1869 4 November 1872 Frederick Innes 4 November 1872 4 August 1873 A Kinnerley 4 August 1873 20 July 1876 Figure 234 Tasmanian Premiers (1856 – 1876) 1823 NSW: Commissioner Bigge’s Report on the Sale of ‘Crown’ Land 1479 Bigge’s report, commissioned by Bathurst, was a turning point in Australian history. Before 1823, land was granted to settlers through an inefficient process, prone to nepotism, which saw uncontrolled squatting by settlers trying to bypass the official system of land allocation. After 1823, the Government and its colonies could sell ‘Crown’ land as an important source of revenue. Brisbane was the first to start the practice. Arthur delayed for as long as he could, eventually acceding in 1832. Nepotism had been useful to him, parcelling out land grants and creating favours which he could call in. Over the next ten years after Bigge’s report was issued, the various Australian colonies began to implement the new policy for the sale of land. Government land surveys became an industry. It was a watershed decision for the Aboriginal inhabitants who, if they were dispossessed before, now became trespassers (according to the British laws of property) and then refugees (without a place to live). Britain’s juridical noose slowly began to tighten around Aboriginal necks as settler sovereignty moved from de facto to de jure. 697 Bathurst and Bigge: a turning point in Aboriginal land allocation Henry Bathurst (1762 – 1834), the third Earl Bathurst, was secretary of state for the colonies from 1812 to 1827, in Lord Liverpool’s ministry. He had a succession of senior Government appointments. By 1817, he was becoming worried that ‘transportation to New South Wales was becoming neither an object of Apprehension … nor the means of Reformation’, and that the colony was becoming too ‘expensive’. 1480 He decided to appoint J.T. Bigge as a Commissioner to investigate and make recommendations. This investigation was unprecedented for the newly minted colony, as it presaged a change of administrative direction for the Home Government. New South Wales henceforth had to pay its way and homeland dissidents should be made to fear the cost of crime, in reality the cost of poverty, by making the prospect of transportation a significant and fearful deterrent. Britain wanted to make its impoverished and possibly rebellious underclass afraid of transgression against their privileged masters and the laws of property. Britain wanted to avoid a home-grown revolution of the kind they had just seen in America and France. by Henry Meyer (after T. Phillips), 1810? National Library of Australia, nla.pic-an9288625 Figure 235 Henry Bathurst (1762 – 1834) On 5th January 1819, Bathurst commissioned Bigge to: repair to Our said Settlements in Our said Territory in New South Wales, and by these Presents do give you full power and Authority to examine into all the Laws Regulations and Usages of the Settlements in the said Territory and its Dependencies, and into every other Matter or Thing in any way connected with the Administration of the Civil Government, the Superintendence and Reform of the Convicts, the State of the Judicial, 698 Civil and Ecclesiastical Establishments, Revenues, Trade and internal Resources thereof, and to report to Us the Information What is most significant in Bigge’s terms of reference is what Bathurst did not want investigated. He did not ask Bigge to investigate the dire predicament of Aboriginals. Indeed Aboriginals received little mention at all among Bathurst’s concerns, and (unsurprisingly) were not considered in the enquiry or its recommendations, although Bigge did reassure Bathurst that Palawa resistance would be minimal: The native black inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land are distinguished from those in New South Wales, by their aversion to intercourse with the Europeans, and by the spirit of hostility and revenge that they still cherish for an act of unjustifiable violence formerly committed upon them.1481 They are rarely seen in Hobart Town, or in the vicinity of the settlements; but a few of the children have been adopted and treated with kindness by the settlers. [..] From the accounts of persons who have visited the interior of Van Diemen’s Land, there is no reason to presume that the black natives are numerous, or that they will oppose any serious resistance to the extension of the future settlements.1482 How wrong Bigge was. We can conclude that Britain was untroubled about the evident pattern of Aboriginal ethnic cleansing originating from armed British colonisation; indeed, Britain’s metastasizing ‘settlement’ (or invasion) policy demanded it. The removal and extermination of Aboriginals was economically intentional, a direct result of violent pastoral expansion associated with the squatting, granting (and later selling) of socalled ‘Crown’ land. Aboriginals had no value in the business of forcible occupation. And if they could be removed entirely, unencumbered land values went up, an attractive incentive for land speculators and the sturdy pastoralists who followed in their wake. In the early 1820s, Britain had no intention of stopping, redirecting, or slowing down the rate of land grants in New South Wales, which at that time extended over much of the eastern continent and into Tasmania. Nor was it disposed to protect the rights of Aboriginals to their own or allocated land. Britain’s increasing preoccupation was with revenue and trade, while making NSW a sufficient carceral deterrent for the fractious and dissident British under-class, and ensuring the Colony was more financially self-sufficient. If humanitarian concerns were barely visible, what did concern Britain was colonial economic growth. There was no place for Aboriginals in this balance sheet of assets and liabilities. ‘Crown’ land was a valuable resource that Britain could transform into a revenue stream for colonial development. Aboriginal rights and welfare were not even subrogated off balance sheet as a hidden cost. Arthur assured the Colonial Office that the expense of ‘conciliation’ would be minimal. He was wrong, as the abortive ‘black line’ was to show. The Palawa refused to recognise they were beaten, and their guerrilla war became more desperate with their rapidly diminishing numbers. There would be a final act to play out in this Lemkinian drama, an act of tired resignation when they submitted to island detention, an act where they lost the will to go on. Bathurst’s instructions to Bigge included a direction to: 699 ‘inquire into, and report upon, the actual and probable revenues of the colony; whether they may be looked to hereafter as affording the means of defraying some part of the heavy expenditure annually incurred on account of New South Wales; and whether they are in any, and in what, cases susceptible of increase without prejudice to the prosperity and welfare of the settlements.’ Bathurst was talking about setting an appropriate price for the sale of ‘Crown’ land. n.d. State Library of Queensland, 78178 J.T. Bigge, 1819, by Thomas Uwins Watercolour portrait P2/2901483 Figure 236 John Bigge (1780 – 1843) Bigge completed his enquiry between 1821 and 1823 and produced three reports for Bathurst. In his third and final report on The state of agriculture and trade in New South Wales, he provided Bathurst with an answer to Britain’s revenue problem, by including a section with recommendations on the sale of ‘Crown’ land. Bigge reported that ‘it was proposed that for persons who brought out real capitals amounting to £500, there should be granted 500 acres; £750, 640; £1,000, 800; £1,500, 1,000; £1,700, 1,280; £2,000, 1,500; £2,500, 1,760; and £3,000, 2,000 acres.’ He then recommended that: The proposal therefore for the sale of land, contiguous to grants made upon real capital, is one which will be very beneficial to settlers and will also be productive of revenue to the crown. In favourable situations, I should recommend that the additional quantity of land should be sold for ten shillings an acre; in those less favorable and more remote, for five shillings. With a view to afford encouragement to the purchasers of contiguous lands, I concur in the suggestion made by Mr. Oxley that a deposit of 10 per cent. should be paid upon 700 the purchase being agreed upon, and that the remainder should be paid by instalments every six months, until the whole was paid. A failure in the payment of one or more instalments should not deprive the purchaser of his right, provided the whole arrears were made good with interest at the period the last payment became due; but a failure in the ultimate payment should subject the purchaser to the loss of antecedent deposits, and of all right to the land. Bathurst enthusiastically supported the recommendations and asked Macquarie’s successor, Brisbane,1484 to implement the recommendations without delay. In 1824, Brisbane obliged and ‘began selling crown lands at 5s. an acre’. His reason: ‘While the system of free grants exists, there is little chance of extensive improvement taking place generally in the colony, as the improver of land can never enter into the market in competition with the individual who gets his land for nothing’.1485 Arthur postponed the sale of land until 1831; the granting of land had allowed him to implement a system based upon official ‘favours’, a system open to corruption and nepotism, but a system that suited his autocratic style of administration where he needed friends around him who were prepared to support his policies. Britain had an opportunity with Bigge’s enquiry to pull back from its murderous Aboriginal policies. They chose not to resile from the ethnic cleansing process. But the real consequence of Bigge’s recommendations on the aggressive sale of ‘Crown’ land meant the die was irrevocably cast for Aboriginals across the continent. The terrible Indigenous carnage accelerated. Britain was unmoved, because the revenue from land sales meant the colony of New South Wales was no longer a drain on the Exchequer’s purse. Commercial imperatives outweighed crimes against humanity. Therefore, Britain, through its intentional and considered land policies, was wholly responsible for the associated slaughter, a process in which they lent their military and administrative support, until the cost of policing and defence was transferred to the colonies from about 1838, all the while under the watchful eye of the Colonial Office. There is no question about the intent of Britain’s policy on the sale of land appropriated from the Aboriginals; the intent was perfectly clear. Britain was intent on selling what they called ‘Crown’ land, and were not concerned about the human consequences, about the forced and usually violent displacement of the original inhabitants. There was no room for Aboriginals in Britain’s land policy, so they were removed. The question that was never properly considered: where were they to go? Arthur’s eventual solution was a combination of extermination and ethnic cleansing. Other Australian colonies were to follow the same path. Tasmania was slower in implementing Britain’s new policy for the sale of ‘Crown’ land than New South Wales, from whom it gained independence in 1825. Arthur favoured the granting 701 of land, as it afforded him discretionary power in administering the colony, which had shown an increasingly healthy balance sheet since his arrival. He delayed land sales until 1831. It was a terminal decision for the Palawa in a process that began in 1821 when the British Government began opening up the land to free settlers with adequate capital, first by grant, then by sale. Intentionality and Tasmanian Genocide It is generally the case that Governments are responsible for genocide. They have the resources and the motivations. Governments are creatures of planning, of intentionality, of resolve subordinated to political will. In 1825, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Earl Bathurst1486 wrote to Governor Darling1487 making the British policy on any Aboriginal resistance very clear: In reference to the discussions, which have recently taken place in the Colony respecting the manner in which the Native Inhabitants are to be treated when making hostile incursions for the purpose of Plunder, you will understand it to be your duty, when such disturbances cannot be prevented or allayed by less vigorous measures, to oppose force by force, and to repel such Aggressions in the same manner, as if they proceeded from subjects of any accredited State.1488 The message from Britain was unambiguous. From this point, settlers knew the Tasmanian Government was unlikely to punish them for mass killings or any other form of mass violence. The order from Bathurst officially rendered an Aboriginal life as worthless. Britain could take Aboriginal land and Aboriginals were expected to accede without protest or they could legally be killed. Nevertheless, they continued to resist their occupation. They had little choice. By 1826, hysteria was rising in the ‘settled districts’. Settlers demanded nothing less than complete control of the land. They wanted Aboriginal trespass criminalised. Arthur had to contain public anger, or his Governorship was threatened, along with its lucrative benefits. A local newspaper captured the public mood, exhorting the Government to urgent action. The Colonial Times declaimed: In conducting a Journal, which is understood to express the general sentiments and wishes of the people, and in some instances, to regulate and lead them, we are occasionally obliged to present those subjects to the attention of our Readers, which the pressing necessity of the case requires, although they may be attended with painful results. It was this feeling which induced us to devote our space in the last two numbers, to the construction and operation of the Council, to the exclusion of our leading article, in continuation upon the political economy of this Government; and it is with the same feeling, that we now beg most earnestly, to draw the attention of all to the present situation of those poor, wretched but infatuated savages, the Aborigines of this Island. In devoting a few observations to the cause of humanity - in tracing the dangers to which the Settler must be exposed and in pointing out a remedy if possible we are not only doing our duty, as Christians, but as Men; and if we offer any observations which are entitled to weight, it is also the duty, as we are sure it will be the inclination, of Government, to act upon them. 702 It would be worse than useless, to shew how different things might have been - it is enough to state things as they are; and we find by everyday's experience, that the natives are no longer afraid of a white man, that they know, how a gun is fired off, it is useless. From attacking stock-keepers, they now attack huts, and in many instances, the fight has lasted for hours, until by dint of numbers, they have compelled the whites to retreat. They have tasted the sweets of civilized life, but they have no inclination for the labour of it. They have ceased to fear, and learn to abhor. They look upon the white men, as robbing them of their land, depriving them of their subsistence, and in too many instances, violating their persons. To discuss a question of this nature, it is necessary to look at naked truths. It is too late to discuss the question, whether they might not have been civilized - they have unfortunately seen nothing but pernicious examples. What intercourse has taken produced only hatred, and revenge, and nothing but a removal, can protect us from incursions, similar to the Caffres in Africa, or the back-woodmen, in North America. We deeply deplore the situation of the Settlers. With no remunerating price for their produce, they have just immerged from the perils of the bush-rangers, which affected their property, and they are now exposed to the attack of these natives, who aim at their lives. We make no pompous display of Philanthropy – we say unequivocally, SELF DEFENCE IS THE FIRST LAW OF NATURE. THE GOVERNMENT MUST REMOVE THE NATIVES – IF NOT, THEY WILL BE HUNTED DOWN LIKE WILD BEASTS, AND DESTROYED.1489 The inflammatory editorial reflected the agitation of the settlers, who saw their property values affected, along with their income, and their lives or those of their employees at potential risk. Arthur was deeply aware of the public concern and was prepared to act against the Aboriginals with force, without regard for their welfare, if it would restore confidence in his administration. He had failed to prosecute any settler atrocities before. He would now go further, and soon make Aboriginal extermination legal through a declaration of martial law. The role of the British Government in Tasmanian genocide went beyond land and immigration policies to declarations of martial law and the use of the military and heavily armed settlers to enforce the occupation process and quash resistance. Once again, we turn to Robinson for an insight into the war for the land: Their warfare is that of a predatory nature. If their mode of warfare was open combat, then indeed the armed parties would perchance have an opportunity of meeting with the foe, and even in this respect if they possessed the same kind of weapons and had acquired their use, I question whether they would not prove more destructive to the whites than they can at present imagine, for those of the natives who have learnt the use of firearms are excellent shots – they have excellent sight. They do not suppose they can extirpate the white inhabitants. They entertain no such idea. No! They are actuated solely by revenge, revenge to the whites for the dire enormities that had been perpetrated upon their progenitors. They bear a deadly animosity to the white inhabitant on this account, and there is scarcely one among them but what has some monstrous cruelty to relate which had been committed upon some of their kindred or 703 nation or people, in proof of which the following circumstances are addressed and which may suffice at the present to substantiate the fact. LACKLAY a native of Port Sorell, related the following cruelty which he had witnessed, and his testimony was borne out by TUNERMINERWAITE. He stated that a soldier stole upon some natives unperceived and shot a woman. The white savage then took out his knife and cut her throat and cut open her belly and then burnt her in a fire. LACKLAY further stated that on another occasion some soldiers stole upon the natives at their encampment and fired upon them and shot one man and one woman; and an helpless infant belonging to the murdered woman they also killed, by beating it on the head with a stick. He mentioned another circumstance where a black man in endeavouring to escape from a white ruffian who was armed, run into a lagoon and tried to conceal himself by only letting his head above water. He was however discovered by the white man, who shot him in the water. He then dragged him out half dead and having cut a stick, sharpened it to a point and jabbed it into his body repeatedly.1490 The genocidal war continued until Britain overcame all Aboriginal resistance. Aboriginals were killed by the ones and twos, by families, then tribes, until there were no more than scattered survivors, despairingly eager to take up Arthur’s promise for a treaty and a safe haven from persecution, a treaty that never came, only relocation to a detention facility on Flinders’ Island where their numbers dropped alarmingly from the imposed conditions. Finally, they were moved to a derelict penal settlement at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart, looking across to North Bruny Island. It was end-stage Lemkinian genocide. The shaping of Tasmanian history through Government redaction and continuing racism Historical authenticity consists, in its simplest form, of an event and the perception of that event. An actual event is empirical, that is, it is accurately described by the evidentiary instantiation of metadata: who, what, when and so on. The manner and circumstances in which such an event is perceived is open to inaccuracy, revisionism, denialism, emendation and in some cases outright misrepresentation, either officially or unofficially, and the related set of processional (and procedural) events is often lost by the methods of traditional investigative history, the patterns of history receding into impenetrability, forensic techniques falling short of Cartesian rigour. More correctly, as we outlined earlier, any event or set of events, at some prescribed scale of observation, will comprise some part of a bounded and conformable process that can exist at different levels of abstraction. To illustrate the point, a singular event of culpable murder can be prosecuted through a prescribed court process, where the simple act of presenting evidence, a step in the prosecutorial process for obtaining a legal result – conviction or acquittal - can itself follow some legal procedure. Murder under a civil and criminal code may exist as a multiplicity of like events that can be abrogated by a larger event such as a declaration of Martial Law, which in turn results in an identifiable process involving 704 operational planning and procedural rules that collectively have the objective of achieving some particular purpose, in Tasmania’s case, the defeat of Aboriginal insurgency against their dispossession. Tasmanian Martial Law is also encapsulated by the larger political-economic process of British colonization, based upon the Government’s declaration of sovereignty over some territory, in this case Tasmania. The apparent complexity can be mapped discretely, as we have shown, the patterns being revealed as through a resolving microscope at different focal lengths. Consider that the related events surrounding Armenian genocide seem clear enough, but Turkey has one view that does not correspond with that of many key genocide scholars, although all parties are looking at much the same set of generally verifiable event based facts. There are many other examples where the roles of national entities as perpetrators of violence against Indigenous groups have been – or have been attempted to be - sanitised by the usurping power: the murderous invasion by the Portuguese and Spanish in South America; the British and French destruction of native Indian societies in North America; the Dutch, Belgian, British and French militaristic forays in Africa, and so on. Australia was not alone in carrying the world’s burden of dysfunctional colonialism, but it retains uniquely identifiable characteristics – the one-sided use of the military, the racist perversion of the law, the myth of sovereignty and settler supremacy, the role of colonizing greed and self-interest, the enforced dispossession, the legalized extermination, the harsh and racially discriminatory application of Government land and emigration policy, the early use of apartheid principles and brutalising detention centres - that carry the indelible imprint of genocide, where Tasmania is a pertinent and poignant case instance. The historical redaction problem persists in various forms. Today, for example, if an interested person wants to investigate some particular issue through the unfortunately named Freedom Of Information process, there may be a substantial fee (to deter researchers) only to find, often enough, that any relevant documents are heavily redacted, another form of excision (or censorship masquerading as ‘openness’), or that the information was never collected in the first place, causing the request to be ‘denied’. But the shaping of history is more complex than simple redaction. Aboriginal mistreatment continues across Australia, a symptom of persistent racism where the process of ‘crime’ and ‘punishment’ is itself heavily ‘redacted’, that is, showing exclusionary bias in favour of the oppressor where the law is far from objective and unable to deal with the ongoing social problems except through forced detention and further brutalisation of the targeted group. There may be some hope that the public will at last begin to hold Governments to account. We had the July 2016 furore where Australia’s national broadcaster revealed, with shocking video footage, that the Northern Territory Government was systemically torturing and abusing Aboriginal children in detention, a practice that the Territory’s Chief Minister, Adam Giles, defended.1491 The footage quickly spread around the world. The public demanded more and the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, hastily announced a Royal Commission with restrictive terms of reference that will do little to address the excessive rates of Aboriginal incarceration across Australia for which the causes are well known (racism, targeted policing,1492 poverty, marginalisation) but remain intractable for as long as there is a lack of political will to address them.1493 705 Something similar seems to have occurred with Tasmanian genocide: if the facts were unpalatable or embarrassing, then – in some cases - there was the official temptation to change, select or delete the facts. There is evidence that the British Government and Arthur, along with his Executive Council, were involved in this attempt to rewrite Tasmanian history surrounding Britain’s (and Arthur’s) military campaign against the Palawa, but some researchers have also contributed to a false or inaccurate perception by selectively admitting only those facts that support their argument and reinterpreting others in a manner suggesting apprehended bias. We discussed this apparent ‘whitewashing’ of certain uncomfortable Tasmanian history in the Introduction, where it is far too common to adduce from carefully selected evidence a flawed and often predetermined conclusion based upon economic determinism, a quasi-Darwinian process that ignores inconvenient evidence such as racial persecution and genocide. In history, ethics is often what the involved party can get away with, whether the party is a nation, or company or individual. ‘Getting away with something’ immediately suggests that the party has some ethical measure that it has chosen to ignore. This was the case with Britain and its role in Tasmania, where Britain refused to acknowledge that Aboriginals had any land rights but had no policy of what to do with Palawa trespassers on their own land. The result was genocide. All Britain could do was pursue an exculpatory process, to try and hide the blood and bury the bodies, to tamper with the evidence should anyone investigate, to attempt a rewriting of history where the Palawa had no voice. Britain almost succeeded. For ‘black armband’ revisionists, Britain’s colonial role in the Antipodes remains exemplary, a tale of overcoming obstacles in a ‘harsh’ land where Aboriginals were an adversary, along with the climate and the ‘tyranny of distance’. British redaction of Tasmanian genocide Peter Chapman, the insightful editor of the estimable ninth volume of the third series in Historical Records of Australia,1494 discovered the extraordinary use of exculpatory and partisan editing by the Arthur’s Council and the British Government, before it published the Parliamentary Papers for the House Of Commons in September 1831 that covered Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land. Peter’s findings deserve to be more well known, where ‘such excision or editing out of passages could entirely change the political impact of a despatch’.1495 The deliberate and careful Government editing of key despatches substantially altered historicity and absolved many of the important circumstances of Britain’s targeted war against the Palawa. It edited out certain references that the British Government may have been culpable. It removed some embarrassing admissions that Britain, far from exercising a retraining hand on some ‘settlers’, was actively engaged in promoting the war. 706 It also removed any disagreements between Arthur and Murray, which at one point saw Arthur’s insubordination, and the British Government excisions effectively exonerated Arthur’s Executive Council (and itself) from unedifying wrongdoing in the whole disgraceful affair of Aboriginal extermination. In quietly supporting Arthur, Britain also sided with the ‘settlers’ that they should not be punished for homicidal acts against the Palawa, contrary to the loose compendium of uncodified (and often arbitrary) British laws and edicts that promoted equal justice for all ‘citizens’ except the Indigenous population. In so doing, Britain reinforced the ‘settler’ belief that the law was for their protection, not their punishment, if they were acting in ‘self-defence’ or in defence of their ‘property’. It opened a wide door to the acceptable murder of Aboriginals, a door that many pastoralists and colonial governments kept ajar for as long as the urgent firestorm of dispossession flamed across the Australian continent, purging one society, and replacing it with another. On the one hand, Britain was trying to distance itself from Bathurst’s 1825 instruction to ‘oppose force with force’ because it had seen the terrible consequences. On the other hand, Britain circumspectly ignored any Tasmanian colonists’ transgression of the law, a quasi-legal position made easier with the progressive Palawa surrender from 1830. Judicial punishment was to invite colonists’ unrest. And Britain was keen to continue the process of invasive colonisation though an aggressive emigration programme. So, the genocide in Tasmania was quietly ignored, as it would be for other Australian colonies, while Britain’s role in the bloody process was made more acceptable by removing or amending any unpleasant or incriminating material in the House of Commons (and other) official records.1496 When we read the emendations, the intent of the Government’s editing of official despatches was to influence the parliamentary and public’s perception of Tasmanian history, in particular the genocidal role of Arthur and the British Government in its war against the original inhabitants. The editing, which is primarily made up of careful excisions, clearly point to mens rea on the part of the Arthur, his Executive Council, and the British Government, that they were deeply aware of the destruction of Tasmanian Aboriginal society, of Britain’s genocidal role, and were anxious to sanitise their involvement for the House of Commons record. With the primary documents heavily edited in key points, it became a history invented by Britain, a preferred history by Arthur, a received history that still influences many people today. Like Turkey’s, it was another form of attempted mythmaking by the responsible Government. Peter Chapman writes: As noted in the text and commentary, from time to time the Colonial Office ‘edited out’ sensitive or controversial material from some of Lieutenant-Governor Arthur’s despatches. This occurs not infrequently in his reports detailing the crisis with the 707 Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: see particularly pp. 164, 167 – 8, notes 141, 509;1497 HRA, III, VIII, notes 255 – 6; and notes 173, 182, 553, 555 in this volume. In the first example referred to here (p. 164) there is in the margin explicit reference to ‘leaving out passage crossed’ and on p. 167 the embarrassing fact of the ‘inadequate’ nature of Arthur’s ‘military strength’ and the possibility that ‘the disposable force of the Empire’ may not allow reinforcement of it are edited out. Similarly on pp. 589 and p. 590, the Colonial Office has edited out the text which refers to the potentially damaging fact that Arthur had ‘deferred’ carrying into effect the Secretary of State’s instruction to prosecute settlers criminally responsible for the death of Aborigines, because this might drive the settlers to ‘absolute despair’ or even cause them to ‘abandon their farms altogether’. Again, in minutes of the Executive Council on pp. 613 and 614 extensive reference to the Secretary of State’s instructions to the effect that ‘every person instrumental in the death of a Native should be brought before a Court’ is edited out, as of course is the Council’s opinion that ‘to act upon the Instructions which His Excellency has received would at the present juncture be exceedingly impolitic’. Such editing could of course moderate the reaction of British politicians and other concerned parties who were eventually to be confronted in September 1831 by that notable publication printed for the House of Commons: Van Diemen’s Land: Copies of All Correspondence between Lieutenant Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies on the Subject of the Military Operations Lately Carried out against the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land, London, September 1831. For a representation of how such excision or editing out of passages could entirely change the political impact of a despatch, two sets of samples are presented below. They are taken from Arthur’s despatch of 1 November 1828 advising of his declaration of martial law, together with an enclosed minute from the Executive Council on the same subject. The first part of each sample (A1 and B1) show the despatch and minutes after they have been edited for publication. The second parts of the samples include the Colonial Office advice concerning excision of passages, showing the original despatch (A2) and minutes (B2), with the passages to be excised printed in bold.1498 The comparison of the two sets of documents1499 demonstrate an intention to imply (at least) that Arthur took the decision to declare martial law solely on the advice of the Executive Council and with no reference to the July 1825 advice, indeed direction, of the Secretary of State. Whenever the Native inhabitants should make hostile incursions for the purpose of plunder when such disturbances could not be prevented or allayed by less rigorous measures, to oppose force by force and to repel such aggressions in the same manner, as if they proceeded from subjects of an accredited state. This clearly gives the impression that it was the colonial rather than the Imperial government which had sanctioned this radical initiative. A full analysis of the editing of the documents of the Parliamentary publication and its reception in the United 708 Kingdom will be given in our following volume X, for the year 1831, where it will take its chronological place in the narrative. This will also include Chief Justice Pedder’s call for a treaty (recorded in the minutes of the Executive Council, 23 February 1831), discussed in the introduction to this volume. The original despatch and enclosure may be found in CO 280/17, following p. 381, PRO reel 240. The edited version printed for the House of Commons is now readily available in Military Operations (a reprint of the edited despatches printed for the British House of Commons in 1831), pp. 9 – 11. Full copy of the documents may also be found in our Historical Records of Australia, series III, vol. VII, pp. 625 – 30.1500 Extracts of the two complete samples provided by Peter Chapman are shown here, with the text that was edited out in the published report shown in bold. Sample A: [...] After the most anxious deliberation on two successive days, the Members of the Council concurred in recommending, as the only means of affording to the King’s subjects protection against the atrocities of the Aborigines, that they should be declared under martial law; [ - and as from Earl Bathurst’s Dispatch to General Darling, dated 14th July 1825 (Copy of which His Excellency left here for my guidance) it appeared to be the intention of His Majesty’s Government, that the alternative of force should be resorted to in repelling such hostile incursions as the Natives have lately made,] I have felt myself called upon to issue a Proclamation of Martial Law against them, copy of which I have the honour to enclose. 1501 SAMPLE B: [..] The great difficulty of apprehending them, or identifying the perpetrators of a felony or a murder, added to the increased cunning of the natives, occasioned impediments to the ordinary modes of enforcing the law, which the magistrates and peace officers were unable to counteract, even with every assistance afforded by the military in aid of the civil power. The Lieutenant Governor laid before, and read to the Council, an extract of a despatch from Earl Bathurst, when Secretary of State, to Lieutenant-General Darling, dated 14th July 1825, No. 6 desiring him to understand it to be his duty, whenever the Native inhabitants should make hostile incursions for the purpose of plunder when such disturbances could not be prevented or allayed by less rigorous measures, to oppose force by force and to repel such aggressions in the same manner, as if they proceeded from subjects of an accredited state. There was also laid before and read to the Council a Dispatch from the Right Honorable William Huskisson, his Majesty’s Secretary of State for Colonies, to Lieutenant Governor Arthur, dated 6th May 1828 No. 30 1502 approving a scheme suggested by His Excellency in January last, for confining the Natives to certain limits of the Colony, with a view of affording greater security to the distant settlers. Henry Glover Esqre., the Police Magistrate at Richmond, attended the Council and pointed out the impossibility of proceeding to apprehend the Natives, with any prospect of success, after the Commission of a crime amenable to the Law of the Realm.1503 709 We will set out more examples (in chronological order) as further compelling and sobering evidence of the quite deliberate nature of the censorship that was intended to absolve Britain from indictable wrongdoing by a form of redaction. Peter Chapman was probably the first to identify the proposed emendations, and we will use his references as a guide. The text in bold red was marked for exclusion from - although sometimes left in - the record of Van Diemen’s Land Military Operations for Britain’s House of Commons publication. SAMPLE C: On the 5th July 1828, Arthur advised Secretary Huskisson that the Aboriginals were a continuing problem for the colonists, but he reassured the Colonial Office that Palawa resistance would not check British emigration. Arthur’s problems with the Indigenous people were about to become worse, a result of British policy. The text in red bold was marked to be removed by the British Government before the despatch was published by the House of Commons. However, it was not excised or censored. Leaving the text in the official record exposed Britain’s colonising policy to culpable criticism, as it admits that emigration was the root cause of the genocidal conflict. More emigrants needed more land. Aboriginals were in the way, so they were ‘removed’. That is, Britain was determined to press ahead with increasing its rate of emigration, knowing the genocidal consequences, that Aboriginal lives would be ‘sacrificed’ – as Arthur suggested - to Britain’s expansionary territorial interests. The same obdurate Government policy was to cause Aboriginal depopulation across Australia, a rolling genocidal process of dispossession and displacement as the pastoral frontier advanced. Chapman notes the verbal confusion in the despatch as a possible reason for emendation, that Arthur is contradicting himself, because of the incongruity of ‘multifarious and extensive’ [...] ’incursions of the aborigines’ and the assertion ‘there is nothing [...] to be apprehended from the Natives, to excite your alarm, or to check emigration’. What Arthur is highlighting to Huskisson is a developing military emergency, with the Aboriginal insurgency becoming more acute, caused by British emigration. However, Arthur is prepared to sacrifice Aboriginal lives to maintain the rate of emigration. Britain has no objection to this policy and supports it through further troop deployments, until it becomes concerned at the burgeoning expense. With the British Government not prepared to concede any Aboriginal rights to their land, the conflict became more brutal, descending into genocide. When we consider the autocratic class-based structure of British crime and punishment, and the economic advantages of a carceral population to a colonist society, it was the transportees’ captors who may have borne the greater guilt, an Imperial excrescence that formed the body politic and would brook no Indigenous opposition to the militarized invasion and a self-proclaimed right of sovereignty. Sir, With reference to the Despatch which I addressed to you on the 17 th April last, I have the honor to acquaint you, that in furtherance of the Proclamation1504 which 710 accompanied it, military parties have been sent to the frontiers, with orders to prevent the Aborigines from approaching the settled districts; and I am happy to state that the native people, except in two or three instances, when they were immediately driven back, have not since shown themselves in any force, nor committed any violence; this, however, may, in some measure, be accounted for by their custom of resorting to the coast in the winter season. I take this occasion of submitting for your deliberation copy of a communication addressed to me by General Darling, with my reply, by which you will perceive His Excellency has most considerately suspended acting upon the Instructions from England, for the removal of part of the 40th Regiment, in anticipation of the arrival of some Corps in succession. The detail of duty – in protecting the public property generally from the depredation of the prisoners, and the services required from the Military at the Penal Settlements, and in other parts of the Territory in Chain-gangs are kept at hard labour, together with the additional anxious and distressing service of checking the incursions of the aborigines – is so multifarious and extensive that it is absolutely impossible to withdraw a single soldier with safety from the Colony. There is nothing, I would repeat, to be apprehended from the Natives to excite your alarm, or to check emigration; the measures resorted to will., I am persuaded, be effectual, and my only hope is, that they may prove so without sacrificing the lives of these wretched ignorant beings. 1505 . SAMPLE D: On the 15th April 1830, after Arthur had and his Executive Council had read the Report of the Aborigines’ Committee (19th March 1830), Arthur wrote to Murray with the embarrassing admission that his military strength was insufficient to meet the Palawa guerrilla resistance, an admission that Britain quickly censored. Arthur goes on to request two thousand convicts whom he could arm as a paramilitary force, together with a request for the redeployment of a detachment of the 63rd Regiment from the Swan River in Western Australia. Murray approves the extra convicts but not the additional military. The pieces were now in play for Arthur’s final solution. The Military strength under my command is, I submit, inadequate to the protection of the Colony – two Regiments are certainly now required, but if the disposable force of the Empire will not at present allow of such an augmentation I hope you will permit me to request – [...] at once two thousand convicts1506 SAMPLE E: On 27th August 1830, Arthur’s Executive Council met to receive progress reports from the military leaders (Major Douglas, Captain Vicary) and the Oatlands Police Magistrate (Anstey) for the ongoing operations against the Palawa insurgency. But there was another matter that Arthur also wanted addressed. In particular, Arthur had been thrown into consternation by Sir George Murray’s explicit instruction to report on the murder of an Aboriginal woman at Emu Bay in August 1829 and explain why he had not prosecuted the offender, an employee of the Van Diemen’s Land Company. 711 Arthur needed to find a way out of this dilemma of his own making, where he had intentionally failed to uphold the law, in order to protect his position as Governor from settler unrest with his administration. He needed to protect his career as much as protect the settlers; the two were co-determinate. His solution, for which he co-opted the Council, was some vigorous effort upon a more extended scale than has hitherto been practicable should be made for expelling these miserable people from the settled Districts. That is, a racial purge or ethnic cleansing. Britain made no objection to this policy and therefore must bear responsibility for the process and the intended outcome. Council members present at the meeting were Arthur, Pedder (the Chief Justice), the Colonial Secretary and Jocelyn Thomas (the Colonial Treasurer). The edited text by the British Government is shown in red bold. The Council was, in effect, an official rubber stamp for Arthur to claim Executive support to the Colonial Office for his plans, as the only Council member with any real authority or expertise was Pedder. [...] The Lieutenant Governor stated that feeling extreme anxiety, from the state of alarm in which the Settlers were thrown, and the great responsibility he should incur in consequence of instructions he had lately received from the Secretary of State, if further offensive measures were resorted to against the Natives, 1507 he had assembled the Aborigines’ Committee, and referred to them the reports received during the week. Read the Report of the Committee who stated they were unwillingly compelled to conclude, after mature deliberation, that the whole of the Aborigines who had lately appeared in and near the settled Districts, with only two exceptions, were actuated by the love of plunder, joined with the most rancorous animosity, and that therefore it had become essentially necessary to adopt the most vigorous measures, and to repel the Aborigines from the settled Districts by every means that could be devised, both on the part of the Government, and the Community as all efforts to conciliate the hostile Tribes proved quite ineffectual. Read Sir George Murrays despatch containing the instructions before alluded to, in which, after referring to a letter from the Under Secretary of State which called for a report of the circumstances of a murder alleged to have been perpetrated upon a Native by one of the people of the Van Diemens Land Company, and requiring His Excellency further to report what steps he had taken for bringing to trial the persons implicated in that affair, Sir George Murray called His Excellency’s attention to the importance of convincing upon every class and description of Settlers a course of conciliation, and of making it distinctly understood that every person instrumental in the death of a Native should be brought before a Court of Justice, in order that all persons might be made duly aware of the serious consequences which would result to those who should be prosecuted, unless they should be enabled to prove that it was either in self-defence, or in the protection of their property that they caused the Native’s death.1508 Under these circumstances the Lieutenant-Governor requested the advice of the Council as to the measures it would be desirable to adopt, to afford further 712 protection to the Settlers, and their opinion as to the promulgation of Sir George Murray’s Instructions.1509 The Council, after fully deliberating upon the subject, is of opinion that to act upon the Instructions which His Excellency has received would at the present juncture be exceedingly impolitic, and would lead to the most unhappy results.1510 [...] Formerly their attacks were confined to the remote huts of Stock-keepers and Sawyers, but now, when they have ventured to carry them into the heart of the settled Districts it appears to the Council that if the Settlers should be told that they are to be made liable to a criminal prosecution in any case in which they cause the death of a Native & to be executed as Murderers, unless they can prove with that strictness which a Court of Law requires that such death was occasioned by necessity in self defence, they will be driven to absolute despair. Great numbers of them, the them, the Council is persuaded, must either abandon their farms altogether, or they must suspend for an indefinite time all their labours & occupations, and with their families and servants keep a continual watch under Arms round their Dwellings. In either case their ruin is inevitable.1511 [..] In such a state of things, so far from acting upon the instructions of the Right Honble. Secretary of State1512 it appears to the Council that the time is now arrived when it has become absolutely necessary that some vigorous effort upon a more extended scale than has hitherto been practicable should be made for expelling these miserable people from the settled Districts. SAMPLE F: On the 20th November 1830, Arthur wrote a long despatch to Murray (not realizing he would be replaced by Goderich only two days later) that he had deferred carrying out Murray’s instructions of the 15th April ‘enjoining me to apprise all classes of persons that any who should have been instrumental to the death of a Native should be brought before a Court of Justice , arrived at a moment when the most unhappy results could not have failed my carrying it into effect’. 1513 Murray was concerned that Arthur had not prosecuted the Van Diemen’s Land employees who carried out the murder of an Aboriginal woman at Emu Bay in August 1829 (see the earlier case study). Arthur was able to evade punishing the individuals by intentionally misinforming Murray of the circumstances. Fortunately for Arthur, Murray did not pursue the matter, as he was replaced by Goderich in November 1830. Goderich and his successors took a broader view of the racial conflict and were more interested in economic growth than human rights abuses or upholding the rule of law. Britain had sailed into new waters, where pragmatism trumped principle. The destruction of Aboriginal society would now progress unchecked across all Australian colonies. There was a momentary hiatus in 1838, when Gipps prosecuted those responsible for the blatant Myall Creek massacre, but the colonists’ backlash was so severe that chastened colonial Governments ignored the perpetrators of subsequent ethnic cleansing and in many cases were the primary participants, particularly after 1838, when Britain withdrew its military and left the process (and expense) of counter-insurgency operations to civilian authorities who favoured flying detachments of mounted police, a process that continued to drive massacres at least up to 1928 in 713 a prolonged campaign of Aboriginal displacement by an invasive pastoral economy whose rule of law came from the gun. Arthur justified his insubordination by claiming it was a decision of his Executive Council, who: were of opinion that if the Settlers should be told that they were to be made liable to a criminal prosecution in any case in which they might cause the death of a Native, and to be executed as Murderers unless they could prove with that strictness which a Court of Law requires that such a death was occasioned by necessity in self-defence, they would be driven to absolute despair; - that great numbers of them must either abandon their farms altogether, or suspend for an indefinite period all their labours and occupations, and with their families and servants, keep a continual watch under arms round their dwellings; and that, in either case, their ruin was inevitable. Fully concurring in the opinion of the Council, I have felt myself imperiously called upon by overruling necessity to defer carrying into effect the instructions which I had the honor to receive from you, and, rather, to act upon the advice of the Council by calling on the settlers to unite with the Government in a vigorous effort, upon an extended scale, to endeavour to surround and capture the Natives, or expel them from the settled districts. [...].1514 Arthur’s specious argument is conflating the situation. It is an argument less about concern for the ‘inevitable ruin’ and ‘absolute despair’ of the colonists and more to do with protecting his career, which was undoubtedly under threat if he should uphold British Law as he had been instructed. At this critical point, Arthur could have pulled back from the final phase of extermination and ethnic cleansing, where ‘it has become absolutely necessary that some vigorous effort upon a more extended scale than has hitherto been practicable should be made for expelling these miserable people forthwith from the settled Districts’,1515 but chose not to. With Goderich’s appointment as Secretary of State in November 1830, Britain also lost any real interest in Aboriginal welfare. A healthy colonial economy became Britain’s focus. The devastating 1837 Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (British Settlements) into the destruction of Indigenous societies barely caused Britain to break step in its process of violent colonization. The ‘tyranny of distance’ Among historians, Geoffrey Blainey was one of the first to remind us, in his evocative 2001 The Tyranny of Distance that, when Britain first invaded New Holland: The coloured population which inhabited Australia before the white conquest was relatively sparse and was made sparser by the guns and disease which they carried.1516 The assertion can be criticized on many levels. For a start, ‘white’ is a euphemism for British. And to claim that the Aboriginal population was ‘sparse’ is to discount that the initial numbers of British arrivals in 1788 were immeasurably sparser, but the British Government’s emigration plans were to change this dramatically. Blainey’s argument against British ethnic cleansing, which he elaborates upon in this and other published documents, depends on his falsifiable claim that the Aboriginal population across Australia was minimal or ‘sparse’ and thinly spread and therefore the numbers of those 714 killed was relatively small, resulting from isolated frontier conflicts and not a determined and genocidal race war. He further argues (or offers an opinion) that most Aboriginal deaths arose from famine and inter-tribal conflict, discounting the effect of a militarized invasion: My present view is that research will reveal that the Aborigines’ traditional way of life was more perilous than we have long assumed. Moreover, the loss of life through famine – even if a grave famine arrived only twice in a millennium – must have been prodigious. Whether the intense rivalry, hostility and periodical warfare between many of the tribes is linked to these famines I do not know: probably it is not closely related.1517 Blainey’s statement (in ‘Tyranny’) is also time dependent, in that it refers to a situation at a point in time, but ignores the processes that might have seen a small originating Aboriginal population of around 1 million (although Blainey would claim a much lower number, perhaps no more than 300,000) grow to something like that of New Guinea over the next two hundred years, if Aboriginal society had not been cauterised from the first British invasion, with the military protecting the early metastasizing beach head settlements until 1838. In fact, Blainey argues against the possibility of a growing Aboriginal population, by asserting without evidence a declining demography over the millennium prior to 1788. Peter Chapman also comments on the ‘tyranny of distance’, where official despatches might take up to eight months to get a response, and that, in a fast-developing Tasmanian crisis of Arthur’s making in 1830, he had to make tactical decisions about the Aboriginal insurgency that ‘technically’ amounted to insubordination, although I am not sure that Chapman is correct on this. Arthur knowingly and willfully committed insubordination. He engaged the support of his Executive Committee to support his insubordination. He refused to prosecute the Emu Bay perpetrator, because it might antagonise the settlers and jeopardise the legitimacy of his administration as measured by the support of his constituency, a constituency that excluded (in real terms) Aboriginals. That is, Chapman is defending Arthur. But the commendable defence ignores that Arthur was primarily acting out of self-interest. He was being challenged by the ‘settlers’ to take more urgent action against the Palawa. He was becoming anxious about his career, if ‘settler’ unrest should continue. He therefore chose not to uphold the law, if it meant prosecuting a settler for killing an Aboriginal, because the colonists would almost certainly object. Arthur’s problem was: how to disobey Murray’s instruction to charge the Emu Bay murderers? He decided to engage the support of multiple parties – colonists, Executive Council, military, Aborigines’ Committee – to make himself a small target and justify his insubordination. Fortunately for Arthur, Murray was about to be replaced by Goderich, who did not share Murray’s qualms about Aboriginal justice. 715 Conclusion The measure of any society is its ability to learn positively from the past. The overwhelming historical evidence is that Imperial Britain failed to adapt its brutal, discriminatory, antihumanitarian behaviour in Tasmania. It did not believe it had to. Profitable colonization was the primary and perhaps only yardstick. The primitive beast that was racist British society believed its superiority was determined by imposed Indigenous inferiority. An expansionist British Empire invaded Tasmania without any plan for Aboriginal rights or welfare. The armed occupation was genocidal from the outset, with the British Government’s administrative machinery setting out the policies and procedures for sovereign possession. It dispossessed and displaced the Indigenous population, leaving them insurgents, victims, trespassers, refugees, and finally, deportees and detainees. The process was intentional and calibrated. If Aboriginals resisted, they could legally be killed, and were, by the tens, by the hundreds, with no accountability necessary.1518 If Aboriginals trespassed on a settler’s property, they could be exterminated. There were no questions asked. During the entire genocidal process, no white person was ever charged with apprehended violence against an Aboriginal, apart from one small and blatant exception that received a mild punishment. British law failed the Palawa; it was merely an instrument for the usurping power to assert British superiority. ‘Might is right’ never held truer, but it was to the shame of Britain, an ‘indelible stain’. The British rules of evidence precluded Aboriginal witness testimony. Because there were so few white woman, Aboriginal females became a valued commodity. Sexual predation and kidnapping were common, accepted, and never criminalised. There were no prosecutions, but many official platitudes. To clamp down on the practice was to invite a settler backlash against the authority of the British Government and its colonising administration. 1519 During the period of martial law from 1828 to 1832, ‘roving parties’ and heavily armed military detachments roamed the island, looking for signs of Aboriginal groups, and killing them if they tried to evade capture.1520 No white person was ever convicted of culpable homicide, although the perpetrators of the 1829 Emu Bay massacre came close. In this killing period, conditions of life became almost impossible for the Palawa, who had become fugitives in their own land. Palawa children were kidnapped for their labour.1521 Britain did not prevent it, or charge those responsible. When Palawa children were orphaned, sometimes they were fortunate to be taken into white care, but this was rare and came at a price, where their cultural identity was lost. The less fortunate orphans were placed in an orphan school, which was little more than a child labour camp. The process of genocide was inexorable and implacable, orchestrated by the Colonial and Home Governments, and continued until the Palawa no longer existed. Their languages are now lost, mere fragments remaining. Arthur and Britain were not interested in preserving cultures, or their precious records of existence, their placename nomenclature, their art, their customs, and traditions. 716 In destroying the race, Arthur destroyed their cultural memories. Within thirty years, over 95% of the Palawa had been obliterated, many of them under Arthur’s administration. The settlers cheered their removal, even Charles Darwin. For the rest of Australia, the destruction of Aboriginal society would take longer, about 140 years, in a rolling process of extermination using the lessons of Tasmania where there is no clearer case of genocide and for which the British Government was the primary agency. Britain has never admitted culpable liability.1522 We conclude that, through the agency (role) of the British Government and its Tasmanian representatives, the categorial behaviour conforms to Lemkinian genocide under Articles 2 (a) to 2 (e). Therefore, the hypothesis is confirmed. 717 The role of cultural destruction in Tasmanian genocide Britain saw little value in Palawa culture, which (as we see from colonial despatches) it perceived as primitive and debased. Imperial Britain affirmed its superiority through imposing inferiority on others. The sooner Aboriginals could be remade as indentured labour that was subservient to British civilization and practices, the quicker they could be imbued with Christian ideals and absorbed into a class-based culture. The more rapidly they could be made to disappear as a distinct cultural and ethnic group, the faster their resistance could be overcome to the colonization process. Britain could then get on with the business of economic development from unencumbered and expropriated Aboriginal land. But the Palawa people did not follow the script for acquiescent subjugation. They fought back. In resisting, their culture was destroyed, and soon, their identity. It took no more than a generation.1523 Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through its culturally destructive policies, Britain is culpable of genocide under the following articles: 2 (a) Killing members of the group 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group 2 (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group Lyndall Ryan provides us with a map, based on the work of Norman Tindale and Rhys Jones, of the geographic distribution of the various Tasmanian Aboriginal groups at around the time of first British contact, together with their Anglicized naming.1524 With these groups came an ancient cultural history. By naming these groups we give them identity of sorts, an identity conferred through British eyes but an identity nonetheless, something that British genocide comprehensively managed to destroy. Each group was bound by language, cultural tradition, and the territory it owned. Movement across other territories was negotiated between groups. Lands were carefully managed through firestick farming. The ecology was husbanded, the use of resources sustainable. Britain did not recognize Aboriginal land ownership before Tasmania was occupied and did not allow it afterwards. As Britain began the process of destroying Palawa society to further their economic interests, we are left with large gaps in our understanding. What were the territories called? Certainly not ‘north’ or ‘big river’. Or the tribes? Or the language groups? Or the language etymology? What was the Aboriginal placename nomenclature? We will never know. All we have is 718 fragmentary evidence. Imperial Britain was not interested in ethnography, but the allure of landed property obtained through the ‘sovereign right’ of dispossession and armed force, for which Colonel Arthur was the master practitioner. Most of the Tasmanian placenames are now anglicized, the cultural traditions lost. The death of a person to a murderous act is one thing, but the death of culture is far more encompassing, the societal damage more lethal. It is as though we can envisage an aleph algebra of death on an increasing cardinality (scale) of magnitude. Figure 237 Distribution of Tasmanian Aboriginal groups (pre-invasion)1525 George Robinson has been criticized by many historians for seeking payment in carrying out Arthur‘s ‘friendly mission’ of ethnic cleansing. But without Robinson’s comprehensive journals, accidentally discovered in England just before WWII, 1526 we would know far less about Palawa language and culture. The British genocide in Tasmania physically destroyed the Palawa, but also came close to eradicating the memory of their manners and customs, of what made them a unique race. 1527 The death of a race is one thing, but the death of cultural memory is much more. It is a death twice over. 719 Although Robinson’s work was monumentally invaluable, Rhys Jones offers a caution: he points to the severely limited ethnographical recovery, and the consequent irredeemable cultural loss: We must be careful, however, to remember that the society that Robinson observed had been seriously dislocated and was probably on the verge of collapse even on the west coast. 1528 We are left with a forlorn and culpable record of what was, a vibrant and ancient culture whose record goes back at least 30,000 years. Today, those who claim part Palawa descendancy struggle to reclaim fragments of their culture and heritage from the writings of George Robinson and others. It was completely avoidable, if Britain had been more compassionate and less inclined to selfenrichmen, if they had been interested in understanding other cultures and races rather than subjugating them. Would we be any different today? Figure 238 Tasmanian Aboriginal Groups (names and geographical disposition pre-invasion)1529 If Aboriginal ethnic cleansing was objectively evil, it was also the ultimate violent death, because it involved the calculated killing of racial memory, beyond violent massacres, the often-irretrievable loss of long-held traditions and the customs and culture of clans and tribes, the senseless destruction of totems and paintings and petroglyphs, of villages and cultural artefacts, of hunting equipment, of moieties and kinship. 720 For death can be relative, on a sliding scale, with an extreme limit of absolute death, the death of race. Tasmania would not be alone in the invasive carnage. Aboriginal societies across Australia would soon suffer in the bloody British colonizing onslaught. Take some examples. Is the death of reason (dementia or other psychosis), on some scale, better or worse than the death of a soul? Or the death of love: can it compare with the death of a loved one? If I die, and am remembered fondly by my friends and family, is that a different death to that where I leave my friends and family and their memory of me dies? Or if I die and am hated, in memory, to die in perpetuity, like some Sisyphus doomed to a repeated death, how much more a death is that to the gentle death of a fulfilled life? Or if I am brain dead, the preferred state for an organ transplant, so that my liver, lungs and heart can be removed from my still living body, am I less dead because I can no longer think, but my body still functions? Or when I dream, when I am ‘dead to the world’, is death measured by the degree to which I am less conscious – can I be partly dead? Or if I die, and also my family and tribe, and there is no one to mourn for me or remember, is that far worse than if a single child is murdered? For many Tasmanian Aboriginals, their death was almost absolute, because much of their ‘dreamtime’ was lost forever, along with those who could remember the stories of place and time. That was the egregious extent of the British Government’s crime against humanity, of genocide, of willful physical and cultural destruction. While alive, Palawa were valued as enslaved labour and sexual objects. When dead, Palawa body parts became valued beyond their living bodies, the subject of junk science such as phrenology that was meant to show a hierarchy of races within the questionable Darwinian universe. This document presents an ecosystem of ideas, of analytical history, where the groundcover of myth rises to the defining organic structures of our imposed culture, where a garden of introduced constructs – juridical, political and economic - attempt to find their space in an ideological landscape, some thriving, some to die, where Aboriginal society was displaced by feral invasion along with poorly sustainable farming practices, where the process of dispossession continues in the full attention of our imposed values, where we aspire to repeat past mistakes of unsustainable land management methods and cultural myopia, where the environment is now our enemy, along with refugees, where energy and climate security are becoming more unattainable each year. That is our tragedy. Materialism is a small and transient comfort for an ongoing failure of policy. Did Tasmanian Aboriginals have fixed dwellings and aquaculture and managed estates? Many post-contact writers and pastoralists say ‘no’, pointing to a nomadic lifestyle. But recent archaeological evidence says they are wrong. The truth is that British dispossessory practices were so brutally disruptive that much of Aboriginal society and achievement – millennia of 721 sustainability - was swept away from each invasive area in a few tens of years. ‘The only interest of the settler was to hold onto the land they had taken.‘1530 There was little British interest in the anthropology and archaeology of what was quickly obliterated. We now have few records of Palawa existence. We know, from Jorgenson’s observations on 29 March 1827 to the northwest, in the area of Temma near the Pieman River: We observed a very compact native hut far different (as are all huts in this quarter) from those seen to the eastward. It was a complete piece of Gothic Architecture, in the shape of a dome, and presenting all the first rudiments of that science. It was made to contain 12 to 14 people with ease. The entrance was small and not above 2 feet high. The wood used for the principal supports had been steamed and bent by fire. The huts as well as baskets and other things produced by the western natives evince great ingenuity, and the nature of the country compels them to build compact dwellings to shelter them against bleak winds blowing over a large tract of open country, not well supplied with fuel, and of piercing chilliness’.1531 Conclusion The destruction of Palawa society by Britain began an individual at a time, commencing at the hands of the military in 1804, and culminating within thirty years in the genocidal death of Palawa culture and society. At the hands of a soldier, sealer or colonist, the murder of one Palawa family member, a husband or child or father, would erode a family. As the uncontrolled killing continued, groups of families were affected, then traditional ways of life.1532 The practice of kidnapping children1533 and sexually predating on women1534 meant that, as the settler invasion accelerated in the 1820s, the displacing pressure on tribal groups became extreme.1535 Hunted and harried by armed parties, unable to find temporary rest around a remote campfire for fear that they would be surrounded and ambushed at dawn,1536 forced into resistance through hit and run guerrilla raids, they fought back against the invasion, at first to stop the violent encroachment on their land, then to preserve their food supplies, and finally for desperate self-protection.1537 Their number continued to fall, while the number of settlers grew, all brought to Tasmania by the possibility of landed wealth, something not possible in a tired and over-used Britain. 1538 Sadly, the British Government had little interest in preserving the history of the races they subjugated. Their primary focus seems to have been comparative anatomy, to confirm their theory of a hierarchy of races, a flawed and essentially racist theory given later support by Darwinism that was discredited with Lévi-Strauss’ post-structuralism. Britain’s culturally destructive policies in Tasmania were both intentional and unintentional, the result of both random and deliberate acts, the casual predation of a colonist or the purposeful and orchestrated act of an armed party responding to Government policy under martial law. 722 As the murders increased, cultural life became unsustainable. Aboriginal tools and totems were destroyed. The targeted violence cumulatively resulted in the death of Palawa custom and tradition, the loss of language, the eradication of culture and collective memory, the genocidal destruction of racial identity. Disambiguated from revisionism, the primary historical record is quite clear. As is the result today, where the old languages and tribal groups no longer exist, or exist only in fragmentary form. Britain therefore stands condemned for its genocidal agency of cultural destruction but remains unaccountable and unapologetic. 723 The role of pastoralism in Tasmanian genocide When the British began occupying the best pastoral land, their livestock followed. The expansionary colonial invasion was fed by Britain’s emigration policies. Until 1832, grants of land were made by the Colonial Office or the Tasmanian Governor without regard to Aboriginal ownership, nor at any time after as alienated land was instead offered for sale by the Government, replacing the system of grants as a result of the transformative Bigge enquiry initiated by Bathurst. In the British Government’s eyes, the Palawa owned nothing, nor did they have any recognized land rights, because they did not practice ‘settled’ ways of life. It was a great land hijack. Aboriginals could not apply. As a ‘debased’ ‘abject’ inferior culture, their fate was to be taught Christianity and the ways of a superior culture, perhaps to become indentured servants to their self-appointed masters. If they resisted, they would be exterminated, either within or outside the law. It made no difference. The British Government tolerated these indiscretions if they were not too blatant, and even then, prosecution was extremely unlikely. British law, with regard to the Palawa, was the law of the bush. Britain accorded little value to a sustainable culture and careful and management practices. Land was to be exploited. Until it had all been turned into some form of property under the rules of British Law. The settler tsunami pushed the Tasmanian pastoral frontier to all available reached of the island within thirty years, leaving the Aboriginals nowhere to go. Arthur’s solution, supported by the British Government, was ethnic cleansing and imprisonment in island detention for any survivors. Arthur’s hands were clean, from the point of view of his superiors and the grateful colonists. They could all now prosper without the inconvenience of Indigenous encumbered land. How else could economic development and bilateral mercantile trade continue to promote the interests of Empire? For the Palawa, it was quite different. They sought justice, but it never came. British justice was one-eyed. Juridical racism was a virtue. The genocidal pattern would repeat across the continent, the practised methods of extirpation becoming more effective over the ensuing century. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through its Tasmanian pastoralism policies, Britain is culpable of genocide under the following articles: 724 2 (a) Killing members of the group 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group 2 (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group The ‘return of muster’ data only account for the period from 1817 to 1819, but the trend is clear. As sheep and cattle numbers grew between 1817 and 1823, they drove off traditional sources of Aboriginal food, leaving the Palawa with the options to plunder or perish. The value of a head of livestock was worth more to Imperial Britain than an Aboriginal life. The punishment could be severe if a sheep was killed, or a cow. Armed parties would gather to inflict indiscriminate murder of any local tribe. Britain ignored the practice of harsh reprisals, or, at least, condoned them. They had to. The field police and military were frequently involved in their assigned duty to protect the ‘settled areas’ from Aboriginal trespass. Growth in livestock population 1817 - 1819 y = 79964e0.2504x R² = 0.9895 sheep cattle Expon. (sheep) 1817 1818 1819 sheep 104,326 127,883 172,128 cattle 11,116 15,356 23,124 Figure 239. Return of muster 1817 - 18191539 Pastoralists continued their push for complete control of the land over the interests of Aboriginal people. Shared or usufructuary use was never considered. At first, sheep were valued as meat. 725 In 1819, the number of sheep was around 172,000. This figure grew almost fourfold in the next ten years to approximately 637,000, causing sustained pressure on the viability of Aboriginal society. In the early twenties, sheep stealing was rampant. Arthur quickly stamped out the practice by hanging the culprits, something he was not prepared to carry out for those settlers who murdered an Aboriginal. In 1830, nearly a million pounds of wool were shipped to Britain.1540 Figure 240 Exponential growth in Tasmanian sheep numbers from 1828 to 1847 From the 1820s, British woollen mills provided the impetus for better quality fleece from Tasmania, free of soil and other dirt. Washing became important, along with improved animal husbandry. The British textile industry began to grow, demanding an increase in the number of sheep. The value of the Tasmanian annual wool clip showed a small rise from 1828 (ca. £22,000) to 1833 (ca. £63,000) and then began a significant rise to £143,000 in 1835 and over £220,000 by 18401541 that seems to correlate with the final removal of Aboriginals from the pastoral districts to Wybalenna. 726 Figure 241 Annual Tasmanian Wool production by value (1828 - 1847)1542 In the Historical Records of Australia, Peter Chapman puts the economic results of pastoralism in quantifiable relief: By 1829, 637,141 sheep were depastured in Tasmania double the number in 1827 (316, 276) producing 925,329 lbs of wool at a average price of 9 ¼d per lb, realising £35,760. By 1838 the sheep population was to rise to 1,214,485, production to 3,261,900 lbs, and value of production to £171,599. 1543 Protecting this emerging pastoral industry was important to developing the colony’s balance of payments. For Britain, economic priorities resolved as a law-and-order problem, where settlers’ rights held sway. Britain never charged any white person for killing offences on Aboriginal people or predatory British behaviour of any kind. The British laws of property were sacrosanct, as was the occupier’s right to treat the Palawa as sub-human, where the invader assumed the superior right at gunpoint. An Aboriginal life had little value, not unless Britain could commodify, exploit, or turn it into some form of human traffic. Britain was determined to ensure that Aboriginal resistance did not threaten its growing pastoral economy. In March 1828, the ethnic violence was increasing. Pastoralism and the settlers would give no quarter. The Aboriginals simply wanted the invaders gone from their country. The Hobart-Town Courier hove into the fray: UPPER CLYDE, March 10, 1828.-On Friday last, Mr. Russell’s hut, at the Regent Plains, was robbed of every article, including two muskets, by the blacks. The men unfortunately were absent at the time, and on their return discovered what had happened. The stock-keepers finding it would be unsafe to remain without fire arms, immediately made off for Dennis town. On Sunday one of them was sent back on 727 horseback, and on his arrival at the farm discovered the hut in the possession of the natives, who immediately gave him pursuit, and he in consequence came down again to the Clyde to give the information. A military party was despatched on Monday along with Mr. Russell's men, but it is very doubtful whether they will get up in time to prevent the blacks destroying the buildings, which are numerous and substantial; the barn is shingled, and well filled with oats. The blacks who are supposed to have murdered Mr. Franks' man, are gone to Abyssinia, and from the want of military Mr. Curtin has not been able to send in pursuit of them, having been obliged to take off his sentry to send all the men he could spare to other quarters. Our magistrate too has had about an acre of his potatoes taken out of the ground by the blacks, a few days ago, although the field it very near his house, which is a great loss where there are many pigs kept. GREEN PONDS, March 10.- The natives have lately became so dreadfully bold and daring, that unless some decisive step be immediately adopted for the protection of the interior, the sound of murder will ever and anon be ringing in our ear. Many and desperate have been their attacks during the summer, which have never been recorded in your columns. A short time ago a man belonging to Messrs. J. and C. Franks, encountered a party, when a black more courageous than the rest, rushed in and seized his musket. It appeared quite doubtful for some time who would pain the mastery. Had nothing more fatal than this occurred I should not trouble you with the account, as the man, after boldly defending himself with his back against a tree, for upwards of an hour, escaped unhurt ; not so with the unfortunate man whose death I am now about to relate. On Tuesday last Mr. John Franks and his stock keeper, left the lakes, both mounted, with number of fat steers and sheep for the Cross Marsh Market. Mr. Franks was on first with the cattle, when about five miles from Capt. Wood's he observed a large party of blacks, eight or ten behind him, forming a line across the road to prevent his retreat; each of them had his spear uplifted, and a small bundle of spears in his left hand. Mr. F. turned his horse and faced them, when they all as if actuated by the same spring, dropped on one knee, still holding the spear in a threatening attitude over their heads. It appeared to him that they intended to let him pass unmolested, but it is quite clear that they were only gaining a little time, and endeavouring to divert his attention until they had completely surrounded him, and thus make their work more sure; however, he again began driving his cattle, and the moment he cracked his whip, the blacks instantaneously rose with the same precision with which they had dropped, and commenced running towards him in the most exact order. Mr. F. at this instant could not help admiring their discipline, not even yet aware of the imminent danger that threatened him. On looking round they again stopped, to use his own words, " in the most beautiful style." It now appeared evident to him that they must have some hidden design for this conduct, and on examining each side of the road he perceived they were gathering round from all quarters. 728 This was the critical moment - one more and he would have added to the number of those already sent into eternity by this blood-thirsty race, for on his right hand within, thirty yards stood a fellow in the very act of delivering a spear, which was already quivering in the air; the spurs were instantly applied and, most providentially, the rider saved. In consequence of the thickness of the scrub, the exact movements of the natives could not be observed, but it is supposed there were many more close by the one seen by Mr. F. who imagines several spears were then thrown, as the cattle made a rush at the time he galloped off; in all probability some of them were speared, (some have been since seen speared,) as was the case with some of the sheep that were afterwards found. His horse received a spear in the thigh ten feet in length, which brought his hind quarters to the ground. Mr. F. now gave up all hopes of escape, but fortunately the horse recovered, and after two or three more falls of the same nature the spear fell from him, he arrived safe at Capt. Wood's, who with Mr. Russel most humanely rendered every assistance, providing both for men and horses, and kindly taking charge of the wounded animal, at whose stable he has since remained. He is much injured, but it is likely he will recover. Mr. F. accompanied by Mr. Russel, directly set off to protect the man who was bringing down the sheep, and who had been left a long distance from the blacks, but, melancholy to relate, the work of death had been completed before they arrived at the fatal spot. The horse was found scarcely able to move, having been speared in numerous places: the poor beast died a few hours after. The force with which these weapons are thrown appears almost incredible. One spear penetrated the flap of the saddle, and entered above four inches into the body of the horse. The man not being immediately found, they entertained a slight hope that he had escaped on foot, until a dog barking about three hundred yards distant, led them to a creek, where they found the body of the poor creature most dreadfully lacerated. Eight spears had entered the breast, the head was literally beaten to pieces, the flesh of the upper lip entirely knocked off, and in every respect presenting a most appalling spectacle. I fear you will think me exceedingly prolix, but the subject being of so momentous a nature, must plead my excuse. I really cannot fully express my feelings upon this occasion. When we reflect that a fellow creature has lost his life, whilst engaged in his master's service, that in the morning he was in perfect health, and a few hours after we behold him a cold and lifeless corpse, thrown across a horse’s back, covered with blood ; it certainly calls loudly on those witnessing such sights to state every particular connected with so dreadful an occurrence.1544 The Hobart Town Courier, in that same March issue, then editorialised a solution: We had proposed to ourselves to enlarge in this day’s journal on the distressing subject of the blacks, but a press of temporary matter obliges us to postpone our observations till next week. Meanwhile, we would briefly disclose our plan for effectively removing this serious drawback on the progress of the colony, for it is remarkable that while our friends and correspondents call out loudly that something must be done, no one takes any active 729 steps towards it. But we must one and all, people as well as government, set our shoulders to the wheel, else the aid of Hercules will never come. The case is this – the black natives are actuated with a determined hostility to every white in the island – their thirst for blood is evidently to be satiated only by extermination, - their cunning is excessive, - it is utterly impossible to apprehend or identify the aggressors, and, according to the existing law, the presence of the police or military can avail but little. To meet these evils we propose, that government should appoint committees, and the settlers themselves should instantly assemble, to devise the best plan: - ours is this, instantly to procure ten or a dozen of the best Sydney native blacks, who shall guide as many parties in Van Diemen’s land, so as to apprehend and conduct these hostile tribes to Hobart town, to be placed in security on board ship, and removed to one of the islands in Bass’s Strait. This would be accomplished at no very great expense. Furneaux’s island would supply more means of nourishment for them than any part of Van Diemen’s land, and a small military post, with a lecturer or missionary, might not only gradually civilize, but convert them to Christianity. 1545 Arthur became alarmed. He realised he had to act. Settlers’ rights overruled those of Aboriginals. British economic priorities demanded the suppression of Indigenous resistance. His career was in potential jeopardy. On the 19th April, he issued another Proclamation to effect ‘the retirement or expulsion of the Aborigines from the settled Districts of this Territory’. 1546 The edict was unsuccessful. On 1st November 1828, six months after the newspaper editorial, he proclaimed martial law. The legalised indiscriminate killing years began, although it had been legal to ‘use force against force’ since Darling’s instruction in 1805. In 1829, Arthur engaged Robinson to ‘conciliate’ the Palawa with a ‘friendly mission’ whose purpose was to remove as many Aboriginals as possible to an Island in Bass Strait. Between September 1829 and October 1831, a total of twelve ‘Sydney blacks’ were brought in and employed to assist ‘roving parties’ in tracking and locating desperate Palawa groups.1547 In March 1830, Arthur formed an Aborigines’ Committee. The newspapers were placated. The final solution began. When we look back, it is impossible not to conclude that the genocidal behaviour of the British Government was almost inevitable, where Arthur was Britain’s (and the settlers’) dutiful instrument. The brutal outcome found seed in British colonising policies and these would continue for other Australian colonies with a similar result. The obdurate British Government was ‘not for 730 turning’. Imperialism was a cause that pushed for superiority by subjugating other societies and races. Without a census, we surmise that an unknown number of Palawa died within little more than a generation. Some historians have attempted to calculate the total death count, 1548 based on a careful analysis of each known massacre event,1549 but the exercise is relatively pointless, leading us to a logical cul-de-sac where the direct evidence is easily challenged in the absence of a court case, and the contextual chain of intentionality and accountability is lost. It is more meaningful to consider the outcome, for which there is little dispute from any quarter. Within thirty years, more than 95% of Palawa society was destroyed through British agency. Towards the end stage Lemkinian process, during the period of Arthur’s martial law, with starvation pressing, and constant murderous harrying by armed ‘roving’ parties, tribes were often forced to trade their women for food, or camp near a rare friendly settler for more security. Sex bought a measure of ‘friendship’ and protection, perhaps barter. But there was a fearful cost on generational viability except as mixed blood descendants, mostly unwanted by both races. The rapid ethnic cleansing outcome, calamitous for the indigenous population, universally cheered by the whites, was the ‘disappearance’ of nearly all the full blood Palawa by 1847, when a handful of survivors were removed from detention at Wybalenna and taken to Oyster Cove south of Hobart, under the instruction of George Grey to Governor Denison. As we will repeatedly confirm, it really does not matter how the Palawa died. They died because of the British invasion. The great advantage of a final Aboriginal solution: pastoralism prospered. Hugh Hull1550 writes of this in the 1850s: Wool is largely exported to Great Britain; the quantity varies from 4,000,000 to 500,000,000 pounds, worth from £400,000 to £500,000 a year in the London market. The number of sheep in Tasmania may be stated at 1,000,000. The annual clip of wool is therefore from two and three quarter pounds from each sheep. On some sheepfarms, where care is taken, the increase sometimes reaches ninety-seven percent, and I have known it 102 percent; while on bad or over-stocked runs the increase has been known as low as five percent. [...] Cattle to the number of 80,000 are depastured in Tasmania, more especially in the rich agricultural lands of Westbury and Deloraine, where one family, the Messrs. Field, possess 10,000 head. This family annually supply the market with a thousand fat 731 beasts, for which they obtain from £12 to £16 a head. Beasts are fattened in grass paddocks up to 1400 lbs weight. Nearly two million acres of land are rented from the crown by sheep and cattle holders for depasturing their flocks and herds, the average rental being one pound for every hundred acres, paid yearly in advance. The crown thus receives an annual income of nearly £30,000, and the land is greatly improved by cattle and sheep fed upon it. [...] The richest settlers are those whose attention has been turned to sheep farming, and some of the flocks are very large, such as would astonish an English farmer – Mr William Clarke has a flock of 40,000; Mr G.C. Clark, 50,000; Mr O’Connor, 60,000; Mr Allison about 70,000. 1551 The graziers prospered. The Palawa lost. And so the sorry genocidal episode came to a fitful end. There was no official enquiry. No one was found accountable. No one really cared. What was important was profit and economic growth. The pure blood Palawa became no more. Other Aboriginal groups around Australia were to follow and for the same cause: the violent spread of settler society, pushed forward by an expansionist British Government. Can we say we have changed today? Or that we would have behaved differently? Is the past measurably another country? As a transplanted society, we appear to have changed little. Our values have become more self-centred even while exploitation continues in many forms, all disguised as progress. It is exploitation without consequence, But there are always consequences. Conclusion The rise of pastoralism (categorial behaviour) in Tasmania drove Palawa society to the margins. If Aboriginals should trespass on expropriated land, especially under martial law, they could legally be shot.1552 If they resisted the occupation process, they could legally be shot.1553 Under constant harassment by legalised roving and pursuing death squads in the late 1820s, they suffered severe bodily and mental harm,1554 desperate for protection from any quarter. Their conditions of life became unbearable.1555 As families were destroyed, as their menfolk and tribal leaders were killed, as their women and children were kidnapped, their culture began to break down.1556 Constant sexual predation introduced diseases such as gonorrhoea, reducing the levels of fertility and the long-term viability of the race.1557 Captivity and crowded conditions made them susceptible to respiratory and other diseases, against which they had little immunity.1558 Pastoralism engendered a Lemkinian genocidal process, the targeted destruction of the Palawa. At the time, it was simply called ‘a war of the races’ or ‘extermination’ or ‘extirpation’. 732 It was a war that Arthur was not prepared to lose, or his superiors. Economic development depended on the outcome. We conclude that, through the categorial agency of pastoralism, Britain is culpable of Lemkinian genocide and therefore the hypothesis is confirmed. 733 The role of immigration in Tasmanian genocide While recognising the effect of his land policies on Aboriginal survivability, Arthur accelerated the rate of immigration and land alienation, supported by Britain. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through its immigration policies, Britain is culpable of genocide under the following articles: 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group In 1827, when Britain was attempting to reign in Tasmanian expenditure and hasten economic development, Arthur wrote to Goderich, the Secretary of State, on how the use of assigned convicts would in some measure operate as an allurement to draw respectable Settlers to the colony and thus open out fresh Channels for the employment of the Convicts.1559 In 5th Jul 1828 Arthur reassured Huskisson, Goderich’s successor: There is nothing, I would repeat, to be apprehended from the Natives to excite your alarm, or to check emigration; the measures resorted to will, I am persuaded, be effectual, and my only hope is, that they may prove so without sacrificing the lives of these wretched ignorant beings. 1560 Between 1824 and 1832, the total white population almost tripled, with the overall male to female ratio about 3 to 1. The Aboriginal population counts in this originating table were showing as negligible. The British had no real interest in Aboriginal statistics. There are a small number of military personnel and their families that are counted separately within the total.1561 734 Figure 242. Total Van Diemen's Population (1824 - 1832), showing almost a tripling over 9 years together with an exponential trend line As the immigrant population increased, so did the demand for land, showing an almost exact correlation, as we will soon examine. The effect of immigration on the Aboriginal population was catastrophic. They lost their land, their culture and their purpose as a people. Although they fought against the invasion, they could not resist the amount of armed force raised against them, a group comprised of settler-colonists, the military and field police. The numbers opposing them were too great. British law was against them. The British Government opposed them. They became trespassers in their own land. Britain would continue with its emigration policies regardless of the Aboriginal impact. It was a deliberate choice, an intentional choice, a choice for which Britain has never been held to account. Unknown to the Palawa, their future was being decided by Government bureaucrats in London and administered through a chain of command structure that made the demise of the Palawa calibrated, according to their rate of dispossession, through land grants, through subsidised immigration, though the conciliatory force of the gun. 735 Figure 243. Van Diemen's Land population from 18041562 Noel Butlin examines the role of immigration when forming the colony of Tasmania. Like any wave of immigration to a new and ‘unpopulated’ country, those who were earliest had the best prospects of locating desirable land for exploitation. Until 1832, land was allocated through a system that was heavily subsidised through land grants and the use of unpaid convict labour. Settlers with capital were welcome, just as they are today. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Britain had a large number of displaced military personnel who could be induced, through subsidies, to emigrate to Australia. Butlin notes that the 1828 Census shows the high proportion of this category of free and assisted immigrants. The shipping arrivals for military personnel and their families are gross figures. 736 Year Gross Military Arrivals 1829 (1) 339 1830 (2) 934 1831 (3) 1290 1832 (4) 1457 1833 (5) 2427 1834 (6) 2668 1835 (7) 3139 1836 (8) 3675 1837 (9) 4066 1838 (10) 4424 1839 (11) 4765 1840 (12) 5058 1841 (13) 5647 1842 (14) 7355 1843 (15) 8385 1844 (16) 9961 1845 (17) 11631 1846 (18) 13266 1847 (19) 13751 1848 (20) 14736 1849 (21) 15187 1850 (22) 15425 Figure 244 Cumulative Tasmanian Military Arrivals (Gross) 1829 - 18501563 In a despatch dated October 826, Lord Bathurst gave the policy further force when he instructed Governor Darling (to whom Arthur reported) that: His Majesty’s Government having deemed it advisable to encourage Officers of the Army, and more especially those on half pay, to become settlers in the Colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, by holding out to them, in consideration of their Services, advantages superior to those enjoyed by ordinary Settlers. [...] The sums, which these Officers will respectively obtain for their Commissions, will it is conceived furnish Capital sufficient, after defraying all necessary expenses connected with the conveyance to the Colony of themselves and their families, to place them on a par with the Settlers, who are required, by the terms of their agreement with the Govern’t, to possess funds to the amount of 500 Sterling. It will be observed by the enclosed paper that the distinction, which is to be made in favour of the new Class of Settlers, consists in a remission of Quit Rent, either wholly or in part, according to the length of his Military Services [...] 1564 737 Year Net Immigration 1821 (1) 110 1822 (2) 655 1823 (3) 938 1824 (4) 1468 1825 (5) 2071 1826 (6) 2476 1827 (7) 3166 1828 (8) 3931 1829 (9) 4205 1830 (10) 5052 1831 (11) 5953 1832 (12) 7978 1833 (13) 10563 1834 (14) 11799 1835 (15) 13014 1836 (16) 13526 1837 (17) 14550 1838 (18) 15587 1839 (19) 16387 1840 (20) 17297 1841 (21) 18442 1842 (22) 20277 1843 (23) 21943 1844 (24) 22797 1845 (25) 23150 1846 (26) 23845 1847 (27) 24769 1848 (28) 25866 1849 (29) 27449 1850 (30) 29223 Figure 245 Net Tasmanian Immigration (1821 - 1850)1565 With the rate of settlement inexorably increasing, Britain did not allow the Palawa a future. Without land rights, without the right to life or the right to enjoy their families and culture, oppressed and harried by military and paramilitary parties (sealers and settlers) who were acting extrajudicially and later with the force of British law, treated as vermin to be shot on sight, unceasingly tormented, eventually, within a generation the Palawa became refugees, then detainees, and finally ghosts. In a form of bizarre remembrance, if they were remembered at all, their bodies were boiled down and their bones put on public display, to be gawked at by their oppressors. 738 Their culture was lost, along with those who could honour their memory. It was the final death. Conclusion Britain was determined to continue with its invasive immigration policies, its brutal dispossessory process, knowing the disastrous and disruptive effect it would have on Palawa society.1566 The lure of cheap land up to 1832 (and subsidized immigration thereafter) increased the rate of settlement which then increased the demand for more land to be alienated. Aboriginals were dispossessed in proportion to the rate of settlement. If they did not leave, or if they resisted, the sharp edge of genocide became a procedural Government modality. It was a simple formula, a clearly understood correlation. Britain would not resile, not until the invasive process was complete. There existed a naive British Government ‘conciliatory’ belief that Aboriginals could be absorbed into a superior British way of life, first by Christianising them, then by employing them as a lower class of indentured servants. Or perhaps it was a lacuna. Britain had not considered that Aboriginals might resist the occupation process, that they might resist the takeover of their country by a ‘superior’ race, that they might fight the loss of their rights to any land. The aggressive growth in immigrants between 1820 and 1830, the failure of shared land use and the cold execution of racist British laws could only have one result for the Indigenous population. In the 1820s, when Britain was actively encouraging immigration to Tasmania, Bathurst and Arthur did not ask the question: as a result of our immigration policies, where are the Palawa to go? We must conclude that Britain simply did not care. As a result of violent and displacive British immigration policies, the Palawa were marginalised; they were violently pushed further and further to areas of land that were unwanted by settler-colonists for their flocks and herds; 1567 they became refugees with nowhere to call home. Within little more than thirty years, they had lost access to the lands of their ancestors, and they had lost access to their home. Aboriginal family groups and tribes were torn apart. 1568 Traditional culture was destroyed. How could groups carry on their ancient ways of life when they were being pursued by death squads. 1569 Births plummeted further.1570 Despair set in.1571 It was a Lemkinian process, cruel and extreme. 739 The co-determinate roles of immigration and land alienation in Tasmanian genocide We have touched earlier on the algebra of death, but it is worth revisiting as it goes to the heart of Lemkinian genocide. How many times can a person die? Once? What if your family was also destroyed, leaving no one to remember you? Is that a death twice over, the death of memory? What if your mother, the land, was confiscated from you and handed to a horde of colonists, is that another form of death? And if your culture was destroyed and your traditions, what then? And if your children and women were abducted, would you die again, the death of hope? And if you were forced into detention, without any future, with despair eating through your bones, would you embrace death as an end to corrosive suffering? Is genocide more than an act of mass killing, of the proportional numbers killed in some targeted group, beyond a point when we can pretend to claim detached objectivity. Lemkin certainly thought so. Until our persistent group behaviours change, until we modify our belief that we cannot judge the past by the standards of the present, can we claim we are so different from our predecessors? Extermination has the maleficent purpose that, without a voice with which to protest, the dead have no claim on the living. Or do they? Are the rights of the dead made forfeit through their destruction? Or is a truly just society able to judge itself? Aboriginal people remain disadvantaged today, and for much the same policy-shaped behaviours and economic reasons as professed by colonial Australia. Racism, a sense of racial superiority, of profound trans-generational marginalization, of chronic imposed disadvantage, of an ongoing failure to recognize Aboriginal rights through a treaty arrangement, of a Rubicon stricture that Aboriginals ‘did nothing with the land, so it was perfectly reasonable to remove them’, still leads our society to criminalise systemic Aboriginal poverty by incarcerating them in disproportionately large numbers. No, we are still the aggressors and Aboriginals are still being victimised for the act of their existence. 1572 There was a fundamental difference in cultural values between the British and the Palawa. The British Government claimed that it was reasonable and lawful to confiscate the land, because the Palawa had not settled and farmed it for economic use. But why is an unfenced grazing area with a rudimentary log hut and a makeshift frontier abattoir of greater value than caring sustainably for the land and its creatures over millennia? This was the exquisite dilemma that has still not been adequately addressed by our own society today, the difference between short-term exploitation and long-term conservation. 740 It is usually resolved as a zero-sum game where any commercial gain is at a proportionally equivalent cost to the environment. It is an attractive balance for any investor because the costs do not necessarily have to be accounted for on any balance sheet; they can be deferred, perhaps indefinitely, or transferred as a social cost for later generations. Proper recognition for the original inhabitants of Australia and their rights still have some way to go while the subject remains burdened by the baggage and legal assaults of racial antagonism for which our police force and criminal justice system are the vanguards, the shock troops, just as they were in times past, to reinforce the laws of property and the lawful theft of an ancient Indigenous heritage, the confiscation of place and time. With no proper redress, nor offer of a belated treaty, even pity becomes optional. The meaning of racially targeted dispossession What does Palawa (and Aboriginal) dispossession really mean? If we talk about it at all, it is often glibly, where we may vaguely recognize that Aboriginal land was confiscated, often at the point of a gun, through a ‘mysterious’ process for which no one was specifically accountable, not Britain, not the pastoralist. But what was the dispossession process? How did it operate? Was there virgin land, unoccupied, which a hardworking settler could claim without opposition, where Aboriginals drifted away from the colonists, ethereal, like ghosts? It is an inviting myth: settler triumphalism. But it is far from the reality. There was little triumphal about it. Consider Tasmania. While clearly recognising the effect of his land policies on Tasmanian Aboriginal survivability, Arthur feverishly accelerated the rate of immigration and land alienation during his term of office, supported by the British Government. Until 1832, cheap land fuelled the immigration process. Land grants by officialdom – the Colonial Office, the Governor - oiled early economic development. It was just business. Aboriginals were simply pushed aside as feral pests. If they resisted their dispossession, they were exterminated like lambs in an Imperial slaughterhouse. There was profit in such mass killing. It left unencumbered land. Property values increased. British economic priorities left no place in its colonial balance sheet for the cost of Indigenous human misery. A whole new economy and transplanted culture was built upon the dispossession and slaughter of Aboriginals. Civilization had arrived. 741 From 1831, the few survivors of this declared war of extermination were relocated to a detention facility on Flinders Island, out of sight by the ‘settlers’, and allowed to ‘pine’ and die from treatable conditions. We can therefore readily hypothesize that immigration and land alienation are codeterminate, in a positive feedback system. More immigrants demand more land, encouraging a pull-through effect where ever more immigrants are encouraged to try their luck. But would our assumption be correct? Can the possible correlation be tested through regression analysis? Can a strong correlation be supported further by a systemically based causal relationship? Co-determinacy and correlation: land and immigration We have previously shown that the vectorial agencies of immigration and land confiscation were each genocidal in their effect. Can we also show that these agencies are co-determinate? That is, are they correlated? And if strongly correlated, are they also causally related? It is a contention that continues to be ignored or strongly resisted by many researchers, including Henry Reynolds,1573 who prefer to suggest that Aboriginal extermination was the unintended consequence of a humanitarian British Government engaged in peaceful settlement. Expressed another way, we have shown elsewhere that the individual agencies of immigration and land alienation drove Aboriginal genocide. If these agencies are also co-determinate (or self-reinforcing through a feedback process), we begin to see why the Palawa suffered such catastrophic population loss (within thirty years) and that this genocidal impact was therefore intentional and calibrated by Britain, who chose to ignore the human consequences of its predatory policies. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, enabled by its co-determinate immigration and land alienation policies, Britain is culpable of genocide through violent displacive expansionism and cultural disruption under the following articles: 2 (a) Killing members of the group 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group 2 (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group 742 Dispossessory synopsis: the effect of immigration and land confiscation The British model for Australian colonization was brutal and exploitative. The policy-driven process depended upon territorial annexation, land alienation, rapid immigration (as required by Government policy) and the efficient transfer of confiscated Aboriginal land into private ownership. If the Indigenous population did not accept their conferred role of providing sufficient cheap labour for their new masters, then immigration and transportation was accelerated. Labour was cheap, especially assigned convict labour. Capital and its potential for wealth creation was at the beating bloody heart of the British Imperium. But this engine for colonial commerce depended, from the first militarized invasion and early unsteady settlement, on the ready and constant supply of land, low-cost land that had minimal acquisition constraints, either legal or financial. The procedural purpose of disruptive colonization was to achieve the economic advantage of the usurping power; the tactical method was displacive, using violence if necessary. Fairness was not a factor. Racial inequality was built into the process, a fundamental variable in the equation of Imperial conquest over Indigenous societies, including the Tasmanian Palawa. It was asset stripping and wealth transfer on an industrial scale, where Aboriginals were transformed from landowners into trespassers, then refugees, and finally, detainees. This capitalist system succeeded in its practised exploitation because the State was able, through force, to seize land and resource assets from the Indigenous owners without compensation or legal redress and generate, through the machinery of Government, their violent displacement. Britain did not tolerate any Aboriginal resistance to the dispossession process and criminalised any reactive insurgency, no less so in Tasmania. Extermination, ethnic cleansing, kidnapping, sexual predation, stolen children, cultural and social destruction, psychological damage, dramatically falling birth rates, introduced disease, and mass killing (all being characteristics of Lemkinian genocide) were procedural concomitants of the legalised land heist by a tsunami of ‘settlers’ responding to racist British Government policies. The historian, John West, was a firsthand observer of this collective mercenary motivation in Tasmania: The dignity and independence based on landed wealth, is ever the chief allurement of the emigrant. Whatever his rank, he dreams of the day when he shall dwell in a mansion planned by himself; survey a wide and verdant landscape called after his name; and sir beneath the vineyard his own hands planted. To this common ambition the crown directed its appeals: acres, by hundreds and thousands, were offered for acceptance.1574 743 As we saw earlier,1575 the prescribed role of the Actor in a genocidal conflict is usually determined by the structure and functions of the State, which can and does determine how the Actor will behave. Britain’s role – that of colonizing power – reinforced its normative dysfunctional behaviour and led directly to rolling Lemkinian genocide for which Tasmania is a case study. In The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land,1576 Hartwell writes that ‘land was the basis of the colony’s wealth’ 1577 and elaborates: The economics of colonization can be embodied in the words ‘cheap land’, for the economic attraction of colonies lies in the abundance of cheap natural resources and the ease of their appropriation. It is this inducement that attracts labour and capital.1578 Hartwell is correct, although he fails to follow his logic to its human consequences. Aboriginal land, through British confiscation, carried no legally recognized and indemnifiable sunk cost for its original owners (at least, not by the British Government) and that the Imperial business model fundamentally depended on this forcible exploitative transfer of indigenous assets by the State for little (or minimal) material cost to the incoming immigrantcapitalist.1579 Hartwell then quotes Bowman: Economic gain is the most general motive of the pioneer – cheap land with high native fertility, low taxes, and an environment that makes the best use of the family unit.1580 In this otherwise compelling book, Hartwell barely mentions Aboriginal dispossession, passing over the intense period of murderous guerrilla war and the imposed strictures of martial law with the words: The history of colonization is often the history of the ‘clash of cultures’, but in Van Diemen’s Land the indigenous culture was too weak to cause serious conflict. Within thirty years the British were in possession of an empty island. The colonization of Van Diemen’s Land was ‘classic colonization’, the movement of British people into empty lands and their attempts to reproduce the old society in a new environment.1581 Although the debate happened after his time, in the late 20th century, Hartwell’s unfortunate use of the phrases ‘empty lands’ and ‘empty island’ connote and perpetrate the fallacy of ‘terra nullius’. There is no evidence that the term was ever used by Colonial Britain who generally preferred the formal statements ‘took possession’ or ‘declared sovereignty’ over some antipodean territory along with the procedural exhortation for its appointed Governors to ‘conciliate the affections of the Natives’, a sentiment that was honoured in the breach. 1582 Hartwell denies there was a ‘clash of cultures’ and further asserts that ‘the indigenous culture was too weak to cause serious conflict’. This assertion ignores or plays down the desperate guerrilla war waged by the Palawa for as long as they had a few able-bodied men to fight against their dispossession, a war of 744 resistance that so irked Arthur, he declared martial law with Britain’s official support. A Government does not declare such a state of emergency unless the insurgency against the occupation process is effective. Finally, Hartwell confuses process with consequence: the ‘empty lands’ he fleetingly mentions were a consequence of systemic ethnic cleansing and genocide by Britain. The Palawa were disinclined to become cheap labour for their new colonial landlords. Hartwell describes the process of Aboriginal dispossession in a few paragraphs: Van Diemen’s Land had no exploitable native labour. The few and unfortunate Tasmanian blacks were quite unable to withstand the impact of western civilization, and, bewildered and degraded by their new contacts, were ruthlessly annihilated.1583 By the time of the ‘black war’ of 1830, only a few survived. In one generation the native races of Van Diemen’s Land had disappeared. But labour, no less than capital, was necessary to develop the colony, and, fortunately for its economy, transportation provided compulsory immigration of 60,000 convicts between 1817 and 1850. Voluntary immigration in the same period amounted to only 20,000. Convicts came from no volition of their own, but free immigrants were motivated, after comparing existing opportunities in Great Britain with those reputedly prevailing in Van Diemen’s Land, by a desire to improve their economic status. Capitalists came to benefit from the higher profit yields of the new country; workers came for constant employment at reasonable wages; each came with the hope of the pioneer, to better himself. 1584 Hartwell is disingenuous with his Aboriginal population numbers although he is correct that the Palawa were ‘ruthlessly annihilated’. They were annihilated for their land, as they would be across Australia. They were annihilated until their numbers did indeed become ‘few’. We examine the catastrophic decline in Palawa population numbers elsewhere, and in more detail.1585 For the moment, we give Hull’s figures, with all their uncertainty. In 1816, he estimates the numbers at 7000, in 1823 at 340, in 1830 dropping to 190, and in 1840 at 49.1586 Hartwell continues with his discussion of the land exploitation process, focussing on the system of beneficial land grants to wealthy capitalist émigrés from Britain, particularly by a beneficent Arthur from 1824 to 1836, something that Melville also exposes: The alienation of land is the first stage of exploitation; the methods of alienation help to determine the nature of this exploitation. Once land is alienated, the character and pace of its settlement and use is dependent largely on the amounts of labour and capital that can be used on the land, and on the availability of its products in either an internal or external market. Van Diemen’s Land initially had plenty of land which was easy to acquire, but her development suffered from the relatively more attractive conditions in the mainland states. 745 By 1832 a large proportion of the best land had been given away, and by 1850 most of it had passed into private hands. The basic factor in considering land settlement in Tasmania is that large granting in the ‘twenties placed the island in an unfavourable position compared with New South Wales. The colony did not have the land resources that could support a generous granting system, much less the land squandering of Arthur. Thus, after 1830, alienation was small compared with the huge extension of settlement that occurred on the other eastern states. Land was alienated in Van Diemen’s Land in three ways: by grant, by sale, and by lease, methods dominant respectively in the three decades before 1850. The Ripon regulations in 1831, and the 1843 leasing regulation, mark the important chronological divisions in the history of land regulation and settlement in Van Diemen’s Land between 1820 and 1850. Before 1831 there was a mixed system of granting, selling, and leasing, which led to confusion, because of the rapidity of alienation and the inadequacies of the survey department; to waste, because occupation proceeded far too rapidly for development, which was dependent also on imports of capital and labour; and to monopoly, because the system made easy the acquisition of large estates. After 1831 land was sold, not given away, but the new regulations failed before they went into operation; they were sabotaged by Arthur, who saw in them a threat to the convict system, and who proceeded to defeat their aims by the huge alienation of 1831. Hartwell then draws our attention to the rather obvious ‘link’ between Government policies for land and those for immigration. He is correct that increased land alienation was intended to drive expanded immigration and vice versa, a falsifiable hypothesis that we will shortly test. That is, the process of colonization has a determinable shape or architecture, with repeatable parts or sub-processes for which the key structural and systemic mechanism is immigration with associated land alienation. What is also clear: Britain did not consider the rights of the Palawa in this ethnically disruptive land grab and was bemused when Aboriginal society did not welcome the possibility that, with some training, they could become malleable labour for their capitalist masters. Hartwell continues: The sale of land was never great.1587 This meant that the desired link between land and immigration was threatened, because the land fund was always too small to support extensive pauper immigration, and the discontinuance of granting destroyed one of the main incentives for capitalist immigration. 1588 746 When the Aboriginal insurgency gathered momentum, Britain’s response was militarized, based upon ideological cretinism, showing a paucity of thought that we might consider deranged or criminal if exhibited by an individual. Who among us would consider it fair or reasonable to forcibly evict a family from their house or dwelling or land without any form of compensation? Or to exterminate those who did not comply with their eviction? Imperial humanitarian concerns were outweighed by economic considerations, a point we have pressed before: The further extensive alienation of land in this period occurred in the ‘forties with the leasing of waste land permissible under the regulations of 1843 and 1847. By 1850 over four million acres were held under freehold or lease by private individuals.1589 Hartwell determines that in the 1848 census one occupational group contains ‘landed proprietors, merchants, bankers and professional persons’ arranged according to district. By subtracting from the total in this group, the numbers from Hobart and Launceston, which contained most of the professional men, a rough estimate of the numbers of landed proprietors can be obtained; and this figure, divided into the alienated land, gives an average holding of about 3500 acres, an extraordinary figure for a small island such as Tasmania. This land was held by comparatively few people, for although Hobart and Launceston had fringes of small farms, the average size of holdings in Van Diemen’s Land was always large. In 1825 Arthur complained that most of the alienated land was ‘in the hands of a few individuals’, and by 1835 Melville protested that ‘those 20,000 acre gentry’ were acquiring too much land. 1590 Hull provides us with a small insight into the murky land dealings of one of these ‘gentry’, Edward Lord, who was among the first colonists to arrive in Tasmania in his role as a military officer under Collins. In the statistics for 1809, 1591 Hull writes: The records of the colony for this year are all lost, with the exception of one Garrison Order Book. In 1835 the compiler (Hull) being a witness in a case between the Land Commissioners, heard Mr. M. (was once a Convict Clerk in the Secretary’s office) give the following evidence. “That he was aware that on the night of Governor Collins’ death, 24 th March, 1810, Mr. ___ and ___ (names given by Mr. M.) went over to Government House, and in the Governor’s Office, for purposes best known to themselves, destroyed all the Official Documents by fire” 1592 Hull then identifies, in careful handwriting, that ‘M.’ is Maum and the two people responsible for the document destruction are Edward Lord (who became a major landowner) and Dr. Hood. They were never charged. 747 Hartwell gives a précis of the landholder-based economy in Tasmania a few years after the Palawa had been removed: The census figures for 1842 and 1848 show a decline in the number of landholders, and an average size of estates in the latter year of over 3000 acres. Important, and bitterly attacked, was the growth of the large absentee holder whose existence was concealed by the banks, particularly the Derwent. This bank, financed by English and Indian capitalists, was ‘a most influential establishment, which ... held nearly three fourths of the mortgages in the colony.’ 1593 Landowners borrowed either initially to buy a holding or livestock, or later to maintain estates in times of depression and to improve them in times of boom. With every recession there was a calling in of mortgages, and a change of ownership, which resulted in larger holdings in Tasmania and in further growth of absenteeism.1594 Little has changed today in the capitalist system we have inherited, but the growth in social inequality grows ever larger and will remain so for as long as the rate of return to owning capital exceeds the rate of economic growth, deepening the inequality between the owners of capital, and the rest. When labour is also undervalued – or in the case of the Palawa, simply withheld through an adversarial objection to being dispossessed – it is easy to see how desperate their circumstances became and how quickly, trapped within the geographic boundaries of a small area of mountainous country in the Southern Ocean, where there was no respite from the gargantuan land grabs by capitalist oppressors and death was the usual solution for a problem of feral trespass on ‘private property’. Thomas Piketty, in one of the most important books on economics of the last few years, reminds us that rising inequality is a natural tendency of the capitalist system: In traditional societies, the basis of social inequality and most common cause of rebellion was the conflict of interest between landlord and peasant, between those who owned land and those who cultivated it with their labour, those who received land rents and those who paid them. The Industrial Revolution exacerbated the conflict between capital and labour, perhaps because production became more capital intensive than in the past (making use of machinery and exploiting natural resources more than ever before) and perhaps, too, because hopes for a more equitable distribution of income and a more democratic social order were dashed.1595 Hartwell indirectly brings us back to the story of Palawa dispossession and how little Britain considered their plight against the priority of economic expansionism, based upon the rising value of expropriated land. By 1833, the few unwanted Palawa survivors had been physically removed to a detention centre at Wybalenna, a solution with which we would still be familiar, given recent political circumstances in Australia. However, the role of land as property would continue and remains the bedrock of our capitalist economy today. Hartwell then summarizes: 748 The value of land increased gradually, and fluctuated with the periodic bursts of land speculation, which occurred on a smaller scale than on the mainland. While land was free and plentiful, there was no sale of it, but after 1820, when population was of sufficient density to make valuable the land closer to the centres of activity, it found a ready market. With further settlement, land values began to reflect differences in fertility and improvement, and with the introduction of land sales at varying upset prices, values were further increased. It is impossible to give an accurate account of land values over the period, but whereas land exchanged in 1820 at from five shillings to seven shillings and sixpence an acre, in 1850 improved pasture land sold at thirty to forty shillings an acre, and agricultural land at about four pounds an acre.1596 Period Prior to 1832 Grants1597 Sales1598 Leases1599 Total Alienation 1,974,754 101,992 ~ 200,000 ~ 2,276,746 1832 – 1838 148,938 207,532 ~ 200,000 ~ 556,470 1838 – 1843 32,783 306,023 ~ 200,000 ~ 538,806 24,060 ~ 1,500,000 ~ 1,524,060 639,607 ~ 1,500,000 ~ 4,396,082 1843 - 1849 Totals 2,156,475 Figure 246 Land Alienation up to 1850 (acres)1600 Hartwell clarifies these figures, which we will subsequently tabulate in more detail. He writes of the amount granted prior to 1832 (which is of key interest in our study of Palawa dispossession) and periods thereafter to 1850, where a frenzy of land speculation continued: The amount granted prior to 1832 is difficult to determine, as accurate statistics exist only from 1824. Frankland, the Surveyor-General, mentions in his report 1601 a total alienation by grant and sale up to 31 December 1836 of 2,324,855 acres. If sales up to 1836 (267,825 acres), plus grants between 1832 and 1836 (82,276 acres) are subtracted from Frankland’s total, grants before 1832 can be reckoned at 1,974,754 acres. This total, although large, agrees with Melville 1602 who gives two million acres as the total alienation by 1835, and Denison, 1603 who declares that ‘upwards of two million acres of land’ had been granted before 1847. 749 On the other hand, Prinsep1604says the total alienation in 1830 was 1,323,553 acres, and W. R. Allison 1605 finds that total grants up to 1847 were 1,512,016 acres. However, neither Prinsep or Allison would have had the information available to them that Frankland, the Surveyor-General, and Denison, the Lieutenant-Governor, would have had. Roberts is confused on the subject, giving conflicting figures for land alienation prior to land sales: 1,531,825 acres; 1606 1,874,345 acres; 1607 and 1,493,459 acres.1608 Frankland provides further detail on the system of land grants and their ongoing sale:1609 ...supposing the grant to be five hundred acres, at the established value of 5s per acre, the individual will not be allowed to sell it until he shall be reported to have expended £25 upon it.1610 Frankland tells us that the ‘Amount of Sales of Crown Lands up to 31 December 1836 for Country Lots was £120,712 at an amount per acre of 8s 8d.’ and that the ‘Total quantity of land alienated from the Crown by Grant and Sale up to 31 December 1836, excluding township allotments was 2,324,855 acres. 1611 1828 Lands granted (acres)1612 214,862 Lands sold (acres)1613 1829 240,655 20,870 1830 107,369 missing 1831 543,477 31,640 1832 28,772 75,495 1833 25,180 17,239 49,424 Figure 247 Acreage granted and sold: 1828 - 1833 From the table, we see that the acreage granted from 1832 fell away dramatically, to be replaced with land sales, reflecting a deliberate shift in British Government policy that Arthur tried, for a time, to resist because it eroded his power base, his ability to reward cronies for their support. Peter Chapman writes that the 1831 Ripon regulation, promoted by E.G. Wakefield, abolished free land grants and established a system of assisted free emigration, to be funded by Crown land sales aimed at relieving social stress in England’ (referring to the ‘agricultural rioters’).... to dissolve the land-grant based convict assignment system that Arthur had developed with the particular aims of both reforming convicts and, collaterally, developing the economy. 1614 750 Through this pre-1832 system, Arthur made himself an ‘architect of social control’ where he ‘exercised colonial patronage verging on nepotism’. 1615 Male convicts 1824 No data 1825 686 1826 403 1827 843 1828 1009 1829 1122 1830 1723 1831 1879 Total 5763 Figure 248 Male convicts arriving: 1825 - 18311616 Chapman gives a further breakdown on assigned convict numbers and land grants from 1824 to 1831, showing how Arthur’s grantee system heavily depended upon assigned convict labour. A total of 6,499 convicts were assigned to grantees between 1826 and 1830. Land grants (acres) Assigned convict labour 1824 524,000 under Sorell 1824 43,000 under Arthur 1825 112,000 1826 60,000 1021 1827 77,000 1232 1828 165,000 1065 1829 208,000 1502 1830 108,000 1679 1831 206,000 Figure 249 Arthur’s land grant system of patronage required assigned convict labour 1617 For Britain, the peak period of the Aboriginal insurgency crisis caused by Arthur was from 10th January 1828 until 1831, when Aboriginal deportations began to Flinders Island. 751 This period was also when Aboriginal numbers had been reduced to no more than a few hundred desperate survivors who were fighting an extremely effective guerrilla war against Arthur’s administration Dispossessory preamble: the functional process of violent colonization In the first twenty years of Tasmanian settlement, the numbers involved in the initial British invasion were small compared with those of the Palawa, but military protection allowed the beach-head settlements in the north and south to expand rapidly. In August 1804, the population numbered 433, and increased to 1,062 by March 1810. 1618 Lieutenant John Bowen arrived at Risdon Cove at Van Diemen’s Land on 12th September 1803 with instructions from Governor King to establish a settlement. He had a party of over one hundred persons,1619 including two settlers (J. Mountgarett and Thomas Wilson with families of four); the surgeon; the storekeeper; lieutenant Moore and twenty-two men of the New South Wales corps, with three women and one child; about sixtysix male and female convicts; an overseer from Grose farm; one man and two women (unclassed); and Meehan. 1620 Meanwhile, David Collins had been commissioned to establish a new settlement on Port Phillip Bay in Victoria. The ships Calcutta and Ocean set out from Yarmouth on 27th April 1803 with ‘a military guard of three officers and forty-seven non-commissioned officers, accompanied by twelve wives and children; a civil staff of twelve with four wives and children; twenty-two settlers with twenty-seven wives and children; a missionary and his wife; three hundred and seven convicts with thirty wives and children; a total of four hundred and sixty-seven persons’1621. The Calcutta set anchor at Port Phillip Bay on the 15th October, with the Ocean not far behind. Governor King ‘was not convinced of the truth of Baudin’s denial’,1622 that the French had no aspirations for Tasmania. He gave Collins permission to move from Port Phillip Bay to Tasmania and a choice: either the Derwent or Port Dalrymple on the Tamar. Collins chose the Derwent. On the 15th February 1804, Lieutenant-Governor David Collins arrived on the ship ‘Ocean’ at Risdon Cove with a detachment of 259 people,1623 but immediately decided to relocate the settlement about 8kms further up the Derwent River, at Sullivan’s Cove, where Hobart now stands. A further detachment docked on 25th June, comprising: 18 civil staff, 48 military, 281 convicts and 13 settlers. 1624 The settlement at Risdon Cove had now grown to 433 people. Obdurate Britain was ‘not for turning’, to quote Thatcher in a later context. 1625 752 With the outbreak of war with France, Lord Hobart instructed Governor King, in a despatch dated 24th May 1804, to form an additional settlement at Port Dalrymple. In 1808, the Northern Tasmanian settlement ‘was two hundred and seventy-seven, amongst whom there were sixty military, one hundred women and children, and seventy-four male convicts’.1626 The eminent historian Frederick Watson writes: ‘In 1804, the total population in the colony was 433; in March, 1810, 1,062.’ 1627 An increasing rush of free British immigrants began arriving in Tasmania each year, most of them to ‘seek their fortune’ through the lure of what Hartwell calls ‘cheap land’. The cheapest land was that which was granted, subject to the grantee meeting the Government requirements for people of capital, and a nominal (mostly ignored) quit-rent payment. The colonist’ numbers grew substantially from 1816, their thrust into confiscated Aboriginal territory protected by the thinly spread military. What began as a trickle became an inundation, a tsunami of avarice, creating an inexorable pressure for more land to be alienated, a pressure that the British Government was happy to accommodate: more land allocated, more immigration encouraged, more land demanded. Increasingly, with a relatively limited military force at its disposal, armed self-defence became Government policy. Britain encouraged settlers to apply the ‘law of the bush’, the lawful protection of privatised ‘property’ by lethal force, where frontier colonists were judge and jury. What began as a war of the races, caused by the theft of Palawa land and resources, transformed into a war of extermination, caused by colonist’ fear and greed. There could only be one outcome, an outcome that was to repeat across the continent, with massive cultural and social displacement of the rapidly diminishing Indigenous population. Land grant inequality How unequal was the system of land grants that was in place until 1831 inclusive? By year, the mean percentage number of grants compared with the total number of free males over the period from 1824 to 1831 is about 2.5%. 1628 That is, there was considerable inequality, with the wealthiest capitalists or those with the most Government influence securing by far the greatest proportion of land grants by area. We see from the graphs (Figures 113, 104, 105) that the total number of free males in any year is approximately co-linear (> 0.96 correlation) with the number of land grants. Those aspirational emigrants who did not receive a land grant (and assigned convict labour) were induced to work for capitalists who did have land, or they were pressed to find other means of employment. 753 After 1831, the sale of land helped subsidize assisted immigration for disaffected people with limited capital, those who had been displaced by British agricultural reform. This was a Government policy to limit the spread of agricultural riots in Britain. Little has changed in Australia today, with the wealthiest 1% in 2015 earning $227,534 per annum,1629 and having 18% of the wealth,1630 and where the inequality has been steadily climbing. It seems to be a feature of a capitalist economy. Frankland, the Government Surveyor-General during most of Arthur’s term, describes the greed-driven process of land distribution by grant to incoming British colonists and capitalists: Until the year 1828, the Crown had not disposed of any land in the colony by sale.1631 Frankland records the procedure of land grants, based on the amount of capital and the degree of influence with the Colonial Office: 1828 – 1832: Newly arrived emigrants receiving grants in proportion to their imported capital; the older settlers obtaining additional locations on the grounds of agricultural improvements, effected on former grants,1632 In such dry commercial transactions was the extermination of a race made possible. Modelling key elements (agencies) of the dispossessory process - preliminary We will assume that free male immigrants were driving the major demand for land grants, not convicts and not the military. We note that some land grants were to absentee grantees, but these would have required local workers to manage their properties and a system of assigned convicts to provide some of the labour. The question is: if our regression model is to map the reality of rapid Tasmanian colonization, how do we define the key variables, which are Immigration (I), and Acreage Granted (G)? We will resolve these questions by allowing the model to define I and G as an outcome of regression analysis, where the strength of a correlation determines the definitional ‘best fit’ for a variable. Hartwell makes the reasonable argument that cheap land, particularly land grants before 1832, drove more immigration that, in turn, accelerated further land alienation. Intuitively, we may suppose that land alienation in any year correlates with the number of immigrants arriving in that year. However, it is not that simple. How do we define ‘immigrant’? Does it include women and children? Or transportees? Or soldiers and their families? Does the term ‘immigrant’ change its meaning and characteristic over time? Would subsidized immigrants, immigrants without capital, contribute to land alienation? Perhaps the pressure for cheap land correlates with (and is possibly a function of) the nett cumulative total free male immigrant population as at any year, not the nett number arriving in some year? 754 Restated, can we define I with two discrete possibilities, which we resolve through our regression model, either of which we can further define as the nett tally of free male immigrants over some period, those old enough to enter into a legal contract (that is, ‘adults’), but not women, not children, generally not convicts, and generally not soldiers (who had full-time military employment). Such eligible immigrants formed a potential grantee pool, provided they had sufficient capital and were reasonably well-connected with those in authority, officials or recognized gentry who could vouch for their character. We define: (1) Nett 1633 Total free male immigration in any year: I = Ix , where x = 1824, 1825,..,1831 or (2) Nett Cumulative free male immigration by any year: I = I1 + I2 + ... +In = 1Σ x ( Ix) , where x = 1, 2, 3,.. n from year 1 to year n, and where the available grant data begins from year 1824 and ends at 1831. To determine the correlation (if any) between the variables - immigrants (I), and grants, by acreage (G) - how should we define grants? Should we consider the pressure for land alienation is limited to total acreage grants in any year, or should grants be considered as the cumulative acreage amount over several years, allowing for a lag effect between supply and demand? Is the land grant correlation between the overall acreage granted over some period or does the correlation depend on a particular acreage size? We know that wealthy capitalists were favoured with grants over 500 acres, so we might expect an overall correlation bias towards larger grants. As for I, there are two discrete possibilities for G, either of which may show a skew towards a particular grant size in the range: <100 acres, 100 – 500 acres, or > 500 acres. That is, grants in general may be defined as: (1) Total grants (by acreage) in any year: G = Gx , where x = 1824, 1825,..,1831 or (2) Cumulative grants (by acreage) by any year: G = G1 + G2 + ... +Gn = 1Σ x ( Gx) , where x = 1, 2, 3,.. n from year 1 to year n, and where the available and reliable grant data begins from year 1824 and ends at 1831. We can test these definitional possibilities for ‘immigration amount’ and ‘grant amount’ through regression analysis, to determine how we should statistically assess the immigrant 755 population and the associated demand for land, where the demand is satisfied through a supply process that includes a formal Government bureaucratic procedure for surveying, alienation, application review, granting, and settling the terms of contract. Aboriginals were ineligible to apply for or own land. Regression analysis – findings We refer to figures 111 to 139. 1. We find that there is a slightly negative correlation (-0.05) 1634 between the Total Population of Free Males by Year from 1824 and the Acreage Granted by Year between 1824 and 1833.1635 The question is: why? 2. We know that large land grants over 500 acres were skewed towards a small number of wealthy capitalists1636 and speculative companies such as the Van Diemen’s land Company who could influence the British Government to their cause. 3. Could there be a correlation between: the number of arriving immigrants, measured by the total population of free males in any year; and the amount of land alienation, measured by grants (not sales or leases) in that same year? When we derive the number of free male immigrants by year from Hull’s statistics and compare with the total amount of land grants by year from 1825 to 1831, the data set and its graphical plot are unreliable, suggesting that amounts by year are an insufficient indicator of the relationship between I and G.1637 4. The mean percentage number of grants was less than 2.5% of the population in any one year between 1824 and 1831. If we assume for the moment that any grantee did not receive multiple grants, then over 89% of the total acreage granted between 1824 and 1833 went to about 57% of the grantees, for grants over 500 acres. 57% of the grants were for 500 acres or more. Less than 1% of the total acreage granted was for grants less than 100 acres. 1638 That is, there was considerable inequality, with the wealthiest capitalists or those with the most Government influence securing by far the greatest proportion of land grants. We see from the graph1639 that the cumulative total number of free males in any year is approximately co-linear with the number of land grants in that year. Those aspirational emigrants who did not receive a land grant were induced to work for capitalists who did have land, or they were pressed to find other means of employment. After 1831, the sale of land helped subsidize assisted immigration for disaffected people with limited capital, those who had been displaced by British agricultural reform. 5. We begin to see, with such generous grants, especially to a privileged few, how the British Government was able to give away confiscated Aboriginal land so rapidly. Grants were usually restricted to capitalists, some of them absentee. The only group excluded from this generosity were the Aboriginals whose land it was. Without a place and country to call their own, the Palawa became homeless, little more than feral pests to be exterminated from ‘private property’. 6. We know from Hull the breakdown of land grants according to the acreage size: < 100; 100 – 500; > 500.1640 However, we find that there is almost no correlation (0.14) 756 between the total population of free immigrant males in any year and the amount of acreage less than 500 acres granted in that year, between 1824 and 1833.1641 7. Perhaps there is a lag effect, something we can further test through our regression model. The free male population that exists in any year may take time to apply for, and possibly obtain, a small grant less than 500 acres. Perhaps there is a correlation between the total free male colonist population at the end of some year and the cumulative grants of less than 500 acres in the period from 1824 up to that year? 8. When we repeat the correlation regression between the Total Free Male Immigrant Population 1642 by year against the Cumulative Acreage Granted by year (less than 500 acres) between 1824 and 1833, we find a strong correlation (0.961), 1643 which becomes stronger (0.973)1644 when we remove the aberrant (meaning atypical) data for 1832 and 1833.1645 We conclude from this correlation that members of the total cumulative free male population continued to apply for a land grant year by year, at least, those who did not already have a letter of approval from the colonial office or some notable authority, a valuable letter which ensured the greater likelihood of their grant in due course. 9. We find, by excluding the atypical years 1832 and 1833, there is a strong correlation (0.92) between (X) Total Free Male immigrant population (excluding the military) and (Y) Cumulative Total Acreage Granted for areas less than 500 acres, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive.1646 10. We find there is a strong correlation (0.98) between (X) Total Free Male immigrant population (excluding the military in any year, and (Y) Cumulative Total Acreage Granted, up to any year from 1824 to 1831 inclusive.1647 When there is strong correlation (0.97) for grants < 500 acres, and a strong correlation (0.92) for grants > 500 acres, we would expect a strong correlation overall (0.98). What we do not necessarily expect: there was no significant correlative skew towards a particular grant size. This is because a consistent correlation (> 0.92) across different bands does not suggest there is no skew or bias. For bias in the allocation of land grants, we must go to an analysis of the total acreage granted, according to whether it was over 500 acres or less. Figure 99 shows that 89% of the total acreage granted between 1824 and 1831 was for grants greater than 500 acres. 11. When we compare the number of land grants > 500 acres by year, between 1824 and 1831, with the total acreage granted (for grants > 500 acres) by year, between 1824 and 1831, we find a reasonably strong correlation (0.74), as we would expect.1648 Summary cross-reference of regression findings We summarize the results of our regression analysis. Regression Variable Correlation Source Reference Comments 757 X Y Total population of Total acreage free male granted by year, immigrants by year, 1824 - 1833 (Y1) 1824 - 1833 (X1) -0.048 Figure 102 101, No correlation 103, No correlation X1 Y1 < 500 acres 0.14 Figure 104 X1 Cumulative acreage granted by year (Y2): Y2 < 500 acres 0.96 Figure 105, Strong 106, 107 correlation X1, 1824 - 1831 Cumulative acreage granted by year, Y2 < 500 acres, 1824 – 1831 (Y3) 0.97 Figure 109 X1, 1824 - 1831 Y2 > 500 acres, 1824 – 1831 0.92 Figure 111 110, Strong correlation X1 Cumulative acreage granted by year, 1824 – 1831 0.98 Figure 113 112, Strong correlation Number of land Total acreage grants > 500 acres, granted (>500 by year, 1824 - 1831 acres) by year, 1824 – 1831 0.74 Figure 116 115, Reasonably strong correlation 108, Strong correlation. Years 1832, 1833 removed from data set Figure 250 Summary of regression analyses between eligible 1649 grantee population and acreage granted Conclusion We have shown that Immigration and land confiscation are codeterminate agencies in the violent Palawa dispossessory process, a process that led to indiscriminate killing, female abduction, sexual predation, child kidnapping, the breakdown of family structures, starvation, and psychological stress, all carried out or endorsed by the British Government. Was it the primary factor? Probably, with female abduction also lethal to the Palawa survival. Killing, imposed disease, and other factors also played their part. Why was it primary? Because we can ask the question, without the British invasion, would have the Palawa survived and grown as a society? The answer is yes, more than likely. We will now examine genocidal roles and agencies more closely, within the analytical framework of the UN Convention on Genocide (1948). 758 759 The role of British Law in Tasmanian genocide In Tasmania, British colonizing policies gave genocide a sharp focus. With genocidal policies in place – the legalized confiscation of Aboriginal land, the extermination of those who resisted, accelerated immigration – ethnic cleansing was mandated, and genocidal excess became inevitable. We may attempt to parse the argument against genocide by attributing blame equally between Government, settler and Aboriginal. Perhaps we might go further, as some historians do, by further shifting responsibility for the indiscriminate violence to a small number of white miscreants – sealers, bushrangers – and the desperate resistance of Aboriginals who saw all colonists as the enemy. The argument is both false and misdirected. British laws, edicts, proclamations, orders, and policies gave shape to collective societal dysfunction, to racism, to poorly controlled exploitation. It is this dynamic we will now investigate. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through the accepted practices of judicial and extrajudicial killing, and through the one-sided application of British Law, Britain is culpable of genocide under the following articles: 2 (a) Killing members of the group 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group 2 (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group British Government genocidal complicity Beyond space, time is humanity’s most invaluable commodity. We trade our time for labour, with which we buy space in order to survive. We invest our time in the future of our children; we often buy our future time at other people’s cost, or sell our time to our future disadvantage, the discounted cost of commodified labour, the casualization of time. We are now running out of time, as individuals, as a species. Colonial society bought their future at the expense of Aboriginals. It was an unequal transaction. The rise of the Angloworld and settler sovereignty depended upon the theft of Indigenous space, and therefore Indigenous society’s time. 760 Britain believed that its culture was superior, that other Indigenous races were inferior, and that it had a right to deprive Indigenous societies of their future. It was a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary processes, of what became Darwinian survivalist theory, of biological ‘fitness’ where the ‘weak’ must give way to the ‘strong’ in some biological imperative, a misconceived ‘law of Nature’ that is now ceding to more nuanced interpretations of complex system modalities, the still mysterious emergence of biological system properties through the agency of epigenetics. British racism led to calculated genocide, the right of territorial occupation, the right to impose subjugation and inferiority on weaker races, the right to confiscate space and time through violent subjugation, the right to impose competitive advantage against other Indigenous societies, the right of the strong to exploit the weak. So it was done. We have failed to learn from our colonial past. We are becoming irrelevant to the Earth’s future for as long as our displacive behaviours persist, our desire to use other species and spaces for short-term commercial benefit, for the misuse of other’s time and place. Ultimately, genocide is about the theft of time. It is a theft committed against a targeted group for their present and future generations. It denies the targeted group a voice to protest their displacement. This makes it a profound crime, far beyond simple homicide. It becomes a calculated imperative for the group committing the humanitarian atrocity either to deny their culpability or rewrite history. Britain did both. In so doing, it has failed to be accountable for the extermination of the Palawa; instead, it has rewritten history in its own image, the history of the colonizing victor where time is bought at the expense of the supplanted race. Britain is a time thief. It stole the future of a unique society, along with its ancestral space. The appalling theft of Indigenous lives was almost incidental.1650 The tools of British genocide If maritime communication channels were the arteries of Empire, then despatches to and from the Colonial Office were its blood. Far-flung British administrative centres were in regular contact with their superiors. Orders, edicts, proclamations, regulations and legislation followed. We have included contextual timelines elsewhere, for example: Tasmanian invasion timeline; Britain’s genocidal timeline 1824 – 1831; Arthur’s genocidal timeline 1824 - 1831. So we refer you to these summaries, which include the key communications that shaped Tasmanian genocide. What we will show here is a synopsis of the British policies around land allocation in Tasmania. They are the basis for Britain’s invasive territorial occupation and how Britain would decide to handle any Aboriginal resistance. 761 What becomes clear from these ‘edicts’ is the humanitarian disregard with which Britain held the Palawa; there is nothing, no plan, no resolution for the management of displaced Aboriginals; the ‘edicts’ are focused on facilitating the dispossessory process; there is little evidentiary concern for Britain’s genocidal methods or the catastrophic racial outcome of its confiscatory land policies. Aboriginals were expected to ‘disappear’ without a murmur of protest or any measure of desperate insurgency. When the Palawa resisted, Britain showed indignant outrage at the Indigenous presumption to any land rights and reacted with force. Britain built the road to settler supremacy using the tools of: 1. invasion (declarations of sovereignty, ‘legal’ edicts, proclamations of martial law, one-sided interpretation of British law, ‘legalized’ ethnic cleansing, armed force); 2. territorial consolidation (land regulations and legislation, police and paramilitary deployment); and finally 3. subjugation (detention, disenfranchisement, segregation). The exercise of Imperial power had multiple layers of persuasion to exercise against recalcitrant subjects who failed to acknowledge their new and evolving status as trespassers on private property, as ‘enemy combatants’, ‘criminal miscreants’, refugees, then detainees. Such dispossessory tools have a practised purpose. For Britain, the purpose was genocide, to replace one society with another. As quickly as possible. Economic priorities depended on it. Date Edict 1651 1805 In July, the New South Wales Judge-Advocate Atkins, in advice to Governor King, deems it is lawful to kill Aboriginals in ‘reprisal’ operations, and that their witness testimony is inadmissible if some are killed. Britain does not amend or rescind this ruling. It leads to widespread extermination without fear of prosecution for the entire colonization period.1652 1816 Governor Macquarie’s proclamation of Martial Law in New South Wales.1653 1823 Commissioner John Bigge’s recommendation to Lord Bathurst and the British Government for the sale, instead of a grant, of alienated Crown land.1654 It was a revenue generation measure to allow the colonies to become more selfsufficient. From this point, Aboriginal access to their land was lost to a legislative and juridical process that inexorably transformed Indigenous land into white property. 1823 In May 1823, Britain appoints Arthur as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land. He takes office in May 1824. 1824 In June, Arthur issues a Proclamation that anyone killing an Aboriginal will be charged. The Proclamation is widely ignored. During Arthur’s term, no one is ever charged for homicide against Aboriginals. Aboriginal resistance to invasive occupation continues, although their situation is becoming hopeless.1655 762 1824 14th August. Brisbane’s proclamation of Martial Law in New South Wales. 1656 1825 Governor Darling's Commission 1825 (UK).1657 Arthur reports to Darling as the senior Governor. 1825 Tasmania (Van Diemen’s Land) separates from New South Wales, forming its own judiciary and legislative body. 1825 British Secretary of State (Lord Bathurst) instructs Darling (the New South Wales Governor) and Arthur to ‘oppose force by force’. 1658 Military and paramilitary force against Aboriginals becomes normalised. Armed settlers can ‘protect’ their property without legal consequence, although the consequences of extrajudicial killing pre-1825 were effectively nonexistent, given Atkins 1805 ruling. 1825 Van Diemen’s Land Company received a royal charter for a group of London merchants to operate as a single legal entity. Britain granted the company 250,000 acres in North West Tasmania at Circular Head, under the management of Edward Curr.1659 Arthur appoints Curr as magistrate for the area. Curr oversaw extrajudicial killings. No one was ever charged.1660 1827 In November, Arthur despatches more troops into the interior, as a result of eleven ‘incidents’ between January and April. It has little effect. Aboriginal resistance escalates. 1828 In May, Huskisson approves Arthur’s plans to ‘afford greater security to the distant Settlers’ and notes ‘the ill-success which appears to have already attended your exertions to conciliate and civilize these unfortunate beings’.1661 1828 In November, Arthur declares Martial Law.1662 1828 In January, four VDLC shepherds along with the captain of the Caroline and four of his crew murder twelve Aboriginals at Cape Grim.1663 No one is charged. 1828 In February, four employees of the Van Diemen’s Land Company are involved in a massacre of around thirty local Aboriginals at Cape Grim.1664 No one is charged. 1828 In April, Arthur makes a ‘demarcation’ proclamation, which requires Aboriginals to have a passport under his seal to travel around the island.1665 In attempting to enforce his proclamation, Arthur establishes a line of military posts around the ‘settled’ districts, where entry is prohibited without Government permission and all Aboriginal trespassers are to be forcibly driven out. The plan fails. Violence increases.1666 1828 In November, Arthur’s Proclamation of Martial Law in Van Diemen’s Land 1667 allows Aboriginals to be legally shot. 1828 - 1830 Arthur maintains martial law; ‘roving parties’ and ‘pursuing parties’ are authorised to kill with impunity (and immunity from prosecution).1668 763 1829 Case: In August, employees of the Van Diemen’s Land Company committed a cold-blooded murder at Emu Bay, which was noted by George Robinson.1669 The murder was investigated by Edward Curr, the local magistrate and manager of the Company, but he took no action. Curr was ordered to conduct a formal enquiry, but concluded that the murder was justified, under Arthur’s declaration of martial law, a view that was supported by the Solicitor General Sir Alfred Stephen, with the caveat that ‘prisoners’ cannot be killed. Both Stephen and Arthur ignored the evidence that the woman had been axed to death while in custody because it might expose the illegality of widespread violence under Martial Law. The murders then continued around the state with legal immunity.1670 1829 – 1834 Arthur appoints George Robinson1671 to ‘induce’ Aboriginal survivors to move to Island detention, where they will be away from all the settled areas. It was a politically motivated ethnic cleansing exercise.1672 1829 Arthur establishes the Aborigines Committee to superintend all matters concerning the Palawa, including Martial Law, the ‘friendly mission’ and the deployment of ‘roving parties’. Arthur uses the Committee to bolster support for his actions within the Colonial Office.1673 1830 In February, Arthur offers a bounty for any captured Aboriginal. 1674 The offer is misconstrued by colonists that they are authorised to kill without consequence. Arthur is forced to clarify his Notice. 1830 In April, Arthur proposes to Murray that convicts be armed as a paramilitary force against the Aboriginals. Murray agrees. 1830 Britain approves Arthur’s request to arm convicts1675 and the offer of a bounty for capturing any Aboriginal. 1830 Arthur appoints Aborigines’ Committee to help justify his genocidal policy. 1676 1830 In October, Arthur proclaims martial law again, following the release of the Aborigines’ Committee report and Britain’s endorsement of his harsh policies. 1830 In October and again in November, Arthur orders a ‘black line’ to attempt a final solution across the entire state. 1677 It is organised like a wild game hunt, with ‘beaters’ attempting to drive the ‘game’ into entrapment on the south-east Tasman Peninsula, where they can be isolated and neutralised (captured). It is unsuccessful. The ‘black line’ is too porous, and the few remaining Palawa evade it easily. 1831 January. Lord Ripon introduces land regulations (UK) where grants of colonial Crown land were replaced by sale at auction for a minimum of 5s. an acre, a process enabled by intensive surveys and valuations of ‘settled’ counties in the roughly ten years prior. 1678 764 1831 In February 1831, the New South Wales Government orders that Crown Lands could only be disposed of through public auction. Arthur introduces land sales in 1832. 1832 In January, Arthur revokes Martial Law. He terminates the bounty in May. By this time, few Aboriginals have survived. Figure 251 Laws, edicts, regulations and proclamations around land allocation and Palawa insurgency: 1805 – 1832 Britain (and Arthur) merely watched while settlers were killing Aboriginals in Tasmania. They took no action because it might have caused a public backlash against the administration. They did not prosecute a single person for killing an Aboriginal, although Arthur hanged four Aboriginals as an example that Britain would not tolerate Aboriginal resistance. During martial law, Arthur obtained support from his superiors to arm convicts 1679 in pursuit of Aboriginals. Britain persisted in its rules of evidence, which disallowed Aboriginal witness testimony. Aboriginals were ‘citizens’ of the British Crown in name only. In the unlikely event that a white person was charged for killing an Aboriginal, Britain persisted in a flawed trial by white jury, where white settlers refused to convict any of their white fellows. Britain allowed the kidnapping of children and the abduction of Aboriginal women, without reasonably attempting to prevent or punish the practices. Britain perpetuated a racist application of British justice, and perpetuated a standard of public conduct, particularly during the final period of martial law, which allowed the murder of Aboriginals without legal consequence. With Imperial persistence came intent: Britain continued with its murderous Indigenous policies, in spite of practical difficulties from the mountainous Tasmanian geography and desperate Palawa opposition to the rapidly increasing British stranglehold on their ancient homelands. There could only be one result, wholesale Indigenous extermination, but Britain would not be deterred for as long as economic considerations overrode humanitarian concerns. The prize was settler supremacy, a prize that was to be pursued for the rest of the continent in a wave of murderous invasion across multiple frontiers, a century-long blitzkrieg of pastoralism that was to sweep the country clean of a traditional Aboriginal presence. British law became the juridical instrument of British genocidal policy, supported by the rule of the gun and racist land legislation. Case study: Arthur’s public hanging of four Aboriginal resistors In 1824, when Arthur arrived to take up his post as Governor of Tasmania, Aboriginal resistance to the British invasion was escalating. 765 In 1826, Arthur decided that he would hang ‘Jack’ and ‘Dick’ for the murder of a stockkeeper, Thomas Colley, at Oyster Bay. Arthur’s objective was to cause terror amongst those Aboriginals who challenged his authority. The executions were carried out on 15th September 1826 and immediately caused an upsurge in Aboriginal resistance. James Calder provides a gruesome report of the hangings: The elder one Dick, who seems to have had a very lively abhorrence of the executioner, of his entire apparatus, and above all of his office, which he quite understood, resisted the Sheriff’s officers most pluckily, refusing to mount the scaffold for any of them; and when forced up at last, he gave them such a specimen of his vocal endowments, as might have been heard halfway to Kangaroo Pont; and being a particular sort of fellow, he would not stand up to be hanged, along with the other six culprits (five of them whites,) who were ranked up to die along with him, but insisted on having a seat, and was accommodated with a stool, on which he squatted himself to receive the final attentions of Mr Dogherty, the Sheriff’s assistant; which seat, says the Colonial Times quite gravely, “dropped with him when the awful moment arrived which plunged him into &c., &c. The other black, a mere youth, treated the whole legal ceremonies that intervened between his capture and execution, with great unconcern, but his sufferings were painfully prolonged, by an accident that happened at the moment, before strangulation was completed.1680 Among the leaders of the resistance were Musquito and Black Jack, 1681 names conferred by the British. In 1827, Arthur resolved to hang them as a further example to their fellows.1682 Arthur tried to vindicate the executions, through a Government Notice: Colonial Secretary, Office, September 13, 1827 In the number of the unhappy men, upon whom the extreme sentence of the law has this morning been carried into execution, were the two natives who murdered the stock-keeper of Mr. Hart, at Great Swan Port, and the Lieutenant Governor would hope that this example may tend not only to prevent the commission of similar atrocities by the aborigines, but to induce towards them the observance of a conciliatory line of conduct, rather than harsh or violent treatment, the latter being but too likely to produce measures of retaliation, which have their issue in crime and death. His Excellency is particularly desirous, that Magistrates and Settlers generally, shall impress on the minds of their servants, the necessity for preserving a good understanding with this ignorant race, which is alike dictated by humanity and self-interest; for although it may at present be found difficult, and perhaps impracticable, to improve their moral condition, forbearance and kindness may do much towards lessening aggression on their part, and rendering them comparatively harmless. Whilst, therefore, a manifestly wanton and direct violation of the common law of mankind, such as was perpetrated by the two individuals who suffered this day, will assuredly be visited with the same punishment, the Lieutenant Governor is determined to protect the aborigines of the Colony from injury or annoyance; and on offenders in 766 this respect, the severest penalties which the law may prescribe, will be inflicted without the slightest interposition of mercy. By command of His Excellency, W.H. Hamilton1683 Arthur attempted to justify and defend his execution of the two Aboriginals, as we see in two public notices that are reproduced here. For Arthur, ‘conciliation’ and ‘kindness’ meant capturing and executing Aboriginal leaders as an ‘example’ to enforce (or as Arthur called it, ‘induce’) Palawa subjugation and end their insurgency against colonization. Aboriginals never forgave Arthur for the executions. Their resistance intensified. Nor did Arthur ever uphold the law where an Aboriginal was mistreated by a white. Arthur was living in a world of his creation, where being authoritarian was to be respected, if not loved, and colonization was a heroic enterprise where Aboriginals were meant to disappear without protest, forgoing any rights they had to their homeland. Arthur’s world had its own vocabulary; we will see terms such as ‘induce’ or ‘conciliate’ regularly used in his despatches and notices, although their practical meaning was corrupted by the peculiar language of the British occupation process, where Aboriginal resistance was an ‘outrage’ and homicidal white behaviour towards Aboriginals was ‘self protection’. [...] No. 4. The execution of the two Natives, it is hoped, will prevent the commission of further outrages by the Aborigines and induce conciliation – The magistrates enjoined to impress on the minds of their Servants the necessity of preserving a good understanding with this race – Any wanton injury offered by the Natives to be visited with the severest punishment which the Law may prescribe. No. 5. Great regret occasioned by the continuation of further outrages by the Natives in return for kindness. A spirit of forbearance has been uniformly inculcated without any good result. The capture of their leaders an object of great importance and measures for this purpose are promulgated.1684 Melville writes of this sorry episode: It would appear from a Government Notice, issued on the very day on which the execution of these unfortunate men took place, that the conduct of the Government required some vindication. The Colonists foresaw that, if the execution would have any influence whatever on the native tribes, it would be that of engendering revenge. These natives could not be expected to comprehend that the lives of their companions had been sacrificed to the outraged, when they knew not what laws meant, and were totally ignorant of the customs of their invaders. Strange as it may appear, His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor “hoped” that this example might tend, “not only to prevent the commission of similar atrocities by the 767 aborigines, but to induce towards them, the observance of a conciliatory line of conduct, rather than harsh or violent treatment.” The execution of these men, in the opinion of the considerate Colonists, appeared a strange method of conciliation! Supposing it possible that the whole of the tribes could have been acquainted with the manner which these two aborigines met their death – would not the reasoning of such men point out to them, that it was a deliberate murder? To have fallen by a musket ball, in the heat of a conflict with the whites, would, in the eyes of such men, have been considered as one of the chances of war, which all were subject to – but why they were taken and deliberately put to death on a scaffold, must have been beyond their comprehension they could not account for such conduct. It is to be regretted that these men suffered – if example had been required, how much more advisable would it have been to have commenced by the trial and execution of some of the wholesale murderers of the aborigines – the first perpetrators of crime; but not one single individual was ever brought to a Court of Justice, for offences committed against these harmless creatures.1685 James Calder, a contemporary of George Robinson, wrote: Many of the tribes were united by relationship or other ties, and Colonel Arthur was soon to understand that the example of these executions had quite the opposite effect to what he expected, for the aggressions of the enemy increased ten-fold from the time when they took place.1686 The Palawa were outraged at the lack of British procedural fairness, of Arthur’s hypocrisy, and their resistance grew more determined. For his part, Arthur would not tolerate any objection to his authority and like any petty bureaucrat, he dug his heels in, being careful to obtain the complicity of his superiors. Arthur used legal means, through ongoing proclamations and the use of the judiciary, to commit genocide. He was supported by the British Government, whom Arthur was careful to involve in his great deception of apparent lawfulness. Far from being a humanitarian, as some revisionist historians propose, 1687 Arthur was little better than a Himmler or Karadžić, a dutiful apparatchik in the service of a greater power to whom he was beholden for his career while purposefully targeting an ethnic group for intentional destruction with all the resources he could deploy, from Government policies through armed personnel to misuse of the legal system. During his time in Tasmania, Arthur was beholden to two masters: the colonists and his superiors. He could afford to antagonize neither. Aboriginal society was a hindrance to British territorial occupation, and he was determined to swat it away like an annoying insect or exterminate it as for some feral pest. He had to. Ownership of the land was at stake. 768 Applicable land legislation 1833 – 1910 1688 Land legislation was one of the important legal instruments that Governments used to dispossess Aboriginals of what they once owned and secure de jure sovereignty. Such legislation required a legislative body. Britain allowed Tasmania to have a legislative body from 1825. Land legislation grew from land and immigration policies and formed the backbone of a dispossessory process. However, for the Tasmanian period in which we are interested, from 1803 to 1833, most policy decisions that affected the Palawa were carried out autocratically by the Governor in consultation with his British superiors. These policies were primarily land alienation and grants, immigration, and internal security policies such as martial law and the like, where deployment of the military against Aboriginals was ordered by the commander in chief, who at this time was also the Governor. Arthur’s Executive Council was generally a rubber stamp for his wishes. After 1825 and in particular after 1833, legislation became increasingly significant for the mainland in accelerating the process of something we now call genocide (under the UN Lemkin Convention), but in the past simply involved removal – or ethnic cleansing - of Aboriginals from their homelands, a process that often required one-sided force. When Aboriginals began to disappear, settler society slyly ascribed it to some ‘mysterious agency’, or ‘Law of Nature’, unrelated to violence in the war for the land. This material is supplied courtesy of the DL Phillips Fox Library, Brisbane; the Justice Library, Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General; the Queensland Parliamentary Library; the New South Wales Parliamentary Library; and the Queensland University of Technology Law Library Another valuable resource for land legislation is ozcase.library.qut.edu.au/qhlc/lands.jsp ane Justi United Kingdom • • • Australian Colonies Waste Lands Act 1842 5 & 6 Vic c 36 Waste Lands Australia Act 1846 9 & 10 Vic c 104 Australian Waste Lands Act 1855 18 & 19 Vic c 56 New South Wales with particular thanks to the Queensland and New South Wales Parliamentary Libraries 769 • • • • • • • • • • • • Crown Lands Protection Act 1833 4 Wm 4 c10 Crown Lands Protection Amendment Act 1834 5 Wm 4 c 12 Crown Land Claims Act 1835 5 Wm IV c 21 Validity of Grants Act 1836 6 Wm IV c 16 Crown Lands Unauthorised Occupation Act 1836 7 Wm 4 c 4 Crown Lands Unauthorised Occupation Act 1839 2 Vic c 27 Crown Lands (Grants) Act 1839 3 Vic c1 Crown Lands Unauthorised Occupation Act 1842 5 Vic c 1 Crown Grants Confirmation Act 1848 11 Vic c 54 Pastoral Runs Survey Act 1852 16 Vic c 29 Land (Titles to) Act 1858 22 Vic c 1 Crown Lands (Unoccupied) Act 1858 22 Vic c 17 Queensland • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Letters Patent Crown Land (Tenders for) Act 1860 24 Vic c 12 Crown Lands (Unoccupied Act 1860 24 Vic c 11 Crown Lands (Alienation of) Act 1860 24 Vic c 15 Crown Lands (Leasing of) Act 1860 24 Vic c 16 Real Property Act 1861 24 Vic c 14 Pastoral Occupation Act 1862 26 Vic c 8 Crown Lands (Pastoral Leases) Act 1863 27 Vic c 17 Agricultural Reserves Act 1863 27 Vic c 23 Leasing Act 1866 30 Vic c 12 Crown Lands Alienation Act 1868 31 Vic c 461689 Town and Suburban Lands Act 1869 33 Vic c 8 Pastoral leases, Unsettled Districts Act 1869 33 Vic c 10 Homestead Areas Act 1872 36 Vic c 20 Land Orders Act 1874 38 Vic c 8 Crown Lands Alienation Act 1876 40 Vic c 15 Settled Districts Pastoral Leases Act 1876 40 Vic c 16 Crown Lands Alienation Act Amendment Act 1879 43 Vic c 12 Corrected Titles to Land Act 1882 46 Vic c 4 Settled Districts Pastoral Leases Act Amendment Act 1882 46 Vic c 11 Crown Lands Act 1884 48 Vic c 28 Crown Lands, First Amendment Act 1885 49 Vic c 7 Crown Lands, Second Amendment Act 1886 50 Vic c 33 Crown Lands 1884 To 1886 Amendment Act 1889 53 Vic c 14 Pastoral Leases Extension Act 1890 54 Vic c 14 Crown Lands Acts 1884 To 1889 Amendment Act 1891 55 Vic c 19 Crown Lands Acts 1884 To 1891 Amendment Act 1892 56 Vic c 16 Pastoral Leases Extension Act 1892 56 Vic c 30 Crown Lands Acts 1884 To 1892 Amendment Act 1894 58 Vic c 25 Pastoral Leases Extensions Act 1892 Amendment Act 1894 58 Vic c 26 Agricultural Lands Purchase Act 1894 58 Vic c 27 Crown Lands Acts 1884 To 1894 Amendment Act 1895 59 Vic c 31 770 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Pastoral Leases Extensions Act 1892 To 1894 Amendment Act 1895 59 Vic c 30 Agricultural Lands Purchase Act Amendment Act 1897 61 Vic c 13 Pastoral Leases Extension Acts 1892 To 1895 Amendment Act 1897 61 Vic c 14 Land Act 1897 61 Vic c 25 Pastoral Leases Act 1869 Amendment Act Of 1898 62 Vic c 7 Pastoral Leases Act Of 1869 Amendment Act Of 1900 64 Vic c 3 Pastoral Leases Act 1900 64 Vic c 14 Pastoral Leases Extension Act 1900 64 Vic c 20 Agricultural Lands Purchase Amendment Act 1 EdwVII c 9 Special Agricultural Homesteads Act 1901 1 EdwVII c12 Agricultural Lands Purchase Amendment Act 1901 1 EdwVII c 23 Land Acts Amendment Act 1902 2 EdwVII c 18 Land Acts and Agricultural Purchase Acts Amendment Act 1905 (5 Edw VII. No 28) Land Acts Amendment Act 1908 (8 Edw VII No 14) Land Acts Amendment Act 1909 (9 Edw VII No 20) Disposal of ‘Crown Lands’: 1787 - 1842 If there was any doubt that land was at the beating commercial heart of British colonial policy, we see the partial history of tightening land regulations between 1787 and 1842. Aboriginals were notably excluded from the process of land alienation and disposal to British capitalists. We note that this wealth transfer on a massive rolling implacable scale was on evident display as the originating trigger for Aboriginal genocide. Land confiscation led to Aboriginal displacement, causing Aboriginals to become trespassers for whom extermination was the judicial and extra-judicial response if they resisted the occupation of their homeland territories. The land heist was (in general terms) a once off event where land was initially granted away at the favour of the Government. After 1831, land sales became the dominant regulatory mechanism for supply and demand. 771 Authority Date Terms Superseded Remarks King’s sign manual to Governors of New South Wales 1787 and 1789 Residence on the grant. Cultivation and improvement. Reservation of naval timber. Quit-rent: emancipists, 6d. per 30 acres; free settlers, 2s. per 100 acres, after ten years. 1810 100 acres only to any person, over the quantity allowed to emancipists. Governor Macquarie January 1, 1810 Quit-rent, 2s. per 100 acres. Cultivation of a proportion (20th part) in five years. Reservation of naval timber. Right of forming highways. Non-alienation in five years. November 30, 1821 Town allotments usually leased at Hobart Town for twenty-one years, quit rent 30s. per acre; 7 only were granted, 1820. Allotments were occupied at Launceston on permission of the commandant. Bigge’s Report. Governor Brisbane July 11, 1822 Omits cultivation clause`, and saddles every 100 acres with a convict servant. This was cancelled by indorsement (sic) on some grants, on condition of cultivation. Colonial Office, November, 1824. Notified on Van Diemen’s Land, 18th May, 1825. Colonial Office 1824 Convict clause inserted. Purchase money repaid if claimed within ten years, or for the redemption of quitrent. Quit rent 5% value. Convict clause withdrawn, in 3rd edit of notice, 1827. April, 1826 Settlers who could obtain no convicts, allowed abatement of half quit-rent; or a new purchase at half-price, who Town lots granted on specified expenditure within three years, and nonalienation for 18 months. 772 should expend five times value of the grants, given or sold them. Governor Arthur 1828 Land Board established; capital required, £500 for each square mile granted. Land sold at highest tender; one-half left on mortgage for twelve years, at 5%. Precious metals reserved. January 20, 1831. Colonial Office January 20, 1831 Order: all land to be sold by public sale; upset price 5s., conveyed in fee simple at a peppercorn rent. Precious metals reserved, and indigenous produce for public works. August, 1838. Colonial Office August, 1838 12s. per acre. 1842 £1 per acre. 1845.1690 Figure 252 Disposal of Crown Lands in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land 1691 773 Conclusion Through a one-sided British legislative and juridical process, Britain (and British law) allowed killing (both judicial and extrajudicial),1692 persecution and harassment of Aboriginals,1693 and the legal expropriation of Aboriginal land without any recompense or treaty arrangement.1694 It failed to punish Aboriginal kidnapping or sexual predation.1695 It denied Aboriginal witness testimony, which meant that Aboriginal killings went unpunished (white witnesses refused to testify against their fellows). It tolerated the forcible removal of Aboriginal children.1696 It failed to provide reasonable standards of care when Aboriginals were brought into imprisonment: disease conferred plausible deniability of intent to cause harm; Britain could attribute disease to an ‘act of God’.1697 British law worked to protect the interests of the whites, not the Palawa. During the period of Tasmanian colonization from 1803 to 1833, no white person was ever charged for a crime of any kind against an Aboriginal, not sexual predation, or kidnapping, or grievous bodily harm, or murder, or destruction of property (hunting tools, clothing, dogs). For the term of Arthur’s administration, from 1824 until 1836, Arthur supported the rise of settler sovereignty and saw his role as protecting colonists from Aboriginal resistance by making ‘lawful’ use of the military and judiciary against the rights of Aboriginals. Britain used its laws to expropriate Aboriginal land and turn it into white property, subject to the rules of British commerce. For Arthur, Aboriginals were ‘debased’ and ‘savages’, as revealed by his official despatches and Government Notices. Arthur went further in his apprehended bias against the Palawa by asserting the right of colonists to ‘oppose force by force’, or to use lethal force in protecting ‘property’, or to declare martial law in 1828 and 1830 1698 that made the extermination of Aboriginals lawful, or to use armed convicts against the Aboriginals, or to request all able-bodied men to ‘rise up’ and participate in a an Aboriginal ethnic cleansing operation (the ‘black line’). Arthur bent the use of British law to the purpose of racial genocide. In the contextual timelines of events we see an ever-tightening British control of Aboriginal land. Where, at first, the legitimacy of territorial occupation may have been questionable, merely the self-imposed authority of an invasive force to assert dubious sovereignty as colonists began their determined push into extending what were unilaterally called the ‘settled areas’, it was then a small extra step for the British Government to proclaim Aboriginal resistance to the dispossessory process as unlawful, punishable by death. There was nothing ‘unintentional’ in Britain’s strategic objectives for Tasmania’s colonization; those objectives denied the Palawa a role in a transplanted society except as indentured 774 labour, servants, something they would not accept when previously they had been free to roam unhindered over their homelands. The British war of occupation against the Palawa embraced the logic of a genocidal process, violently displacing one culture with another for commercial gain. The hypothesis regarding the genocidal agency of British law, including land policies and regulations, is therefore confirmed under Lemkinian Articles 2 (a) to 2 (e). 775 The role of economics in Tasmanian genocide Britain ran its colonies as a business, a business with strategic objectives, controlled through its Foreign Office, with branch administrators (Governors) required to submit regular reports. Land alienation was an important part of that business and grew more so as free settlers poured into the Tasmanian colony from 1820, encouraged by an immigration policy that held inducements such as the free use of convict labour and grants of land that were unimaginably large to any citizen of the mother country. There was only one problem, but it was an inconvenient problem that the British Government tried to ignore: Tasmania was already occupied and had been for tens of thousands of years. The solution: legal dispossession, and if the Palawa objected, Britain would use its laws to remove them, by armed force if necessary. Unencumbered property had greater commercial value. So it was done. Genocide became Government policy, driven by economics. A superior culture demanded subservience from those it conquered. If killing and introduced disease were insufficient to cause significant depopulation, then Aboriginals, especially females and children, had other commodified values, for sex, for labour. Family groups became eroded. Palawa culture began to fray. From the 1820s a sense of Palawa despair became endemic, as martial law allowed extermination without consequence while armed roving/ pursuing parties harried them without mercy, making it impossible for them to sustain the conditions for ordinary life. Humanitarian considerations were barely a factor in the British imperative to improve colonial economic development and create greater financial self-sufficiency, as the pursuit of land, capital and labour transformed Tasmania within a few tens of years. The shell-shocked Palawa could only protest at the invasion through a guerrilla insurgency that would merely buy them a little time, but never success in protecting their country from the invaders. Britain would never concede Aboriginal rights to their home, not if it involved giving up land, not if it involved a treaty arrangement of any kind. In this dispossessory war, Britain had the upper hand and was determined to keep it. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through armed economic oppression by the settlers and military, exacerbated by ‘conciliation’, Britain is culpable of genocide under the following articles: 2 (a) Killing members of the group 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group 2 (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 776 We are interested in the period from the 1803 invasion to 1847, when the British Government finally ordered the relocation of the last surviving pure blood Palawa from Wybalenna on Flinders Island to a disused and run-down penal settlement at Oyster Cove, near Hobart, where they could complete the process of dying out as a unique race. Hartwell summarizes the rapid land alienation in Tasmania from two points of expansion – Hobart and Launceston - up to 1850. Occupation spread along the fertile river valleys through the midlands and along the northwest and east coasts, until – within 50 years – almost all the prime pastoral land had been taken by the British, with most of that allocated by 1832. 1699 Period Prior to 1832 Grants1700 Sales Leases Total Alienations 1,974,754 101,992 200,000 2,276,746 1832 - 1838 149,938 207,532 200,000 556,470 1838 - 1843 32,783 306,023 200,000 538,806 24,060 1,500,000 1,524,060. 2,156,475 639,607 1,500,000 4,396,082 1843 - 1849 Figure 253 Land Alienation up to 1850 1701 The question ignored in this rapacious process up to 1832 – where were the Palawa to go? The Government answer – Arthur’s answer - was to be exile to island detention, under the false promise that the surviving Palawa would be granted their own land, free from settler depredations. The British Government valued financial self-sufficiency from its colonies. Economically, the sale of land in Tasmania from 1832 was used to underpin the revenue of the expanding colony and was later directed to fund accelerated emigration from Britain. Settler society could not have spread across the continent in a ‘land rush’ without such economic and political support. Hartwell describes the accounting process: The public accounts of the colony were prepared yearly for inclusion in the ‘blue books’ which were sent to the Colonial Office in London. The Colonial Government manages its own finances, which were quite distinct from those in the Commissariat. The Commissariat received its income from the British Treasury and was directly responsible to that body; the Colonial Government depended mainly on taxation for its income, and was responsible to itself.1702 Melville comments on the healthy state of the Tasmanian economy in 1830. He believed that this was the reason for land grants being imminently discontinued. He also believed that immigration would slow because of the removal of the land grant stimulus. However, the decision for replacing land grants with land sales was already set in place with Bigge’s report to Bathurst in 1823. As we continue to note, Aboriginals had been excised from the British-driven colonial economy in Tasmania (and elsewhere). They were a non-people. They could not own land, 777 nor could they contribute as nominal citizens of the Crown to any form of economic development, except as Christianized labourers and servants, something they would not willingly accept. If they were superfluous to British requirements, the logical next step was to remove them entirely, a calibrated process that began from 1828. Here are Melville’s thoughts on the 1830 economy: The large balance in the hand of the Colonial Treasurer, was pointed out to the Home Authorities, as a certain proof of the prosperity of the Colonists, and His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor was highly complimented by the Home Authorities, for his financial measures. In former years, there appeared no chance whatever of the Colony paying off the debt incurred by advances made through the Colonial Agent, but the despatches of His Excellency now pointed out that the large annual surplus of income might hereafter be disposed of in such a manner. The flourishing accounts sent to the Secretary of State during this year, were ultimately attended with the most injurious consequences; for, owing to the prosperity of the Colony being so great, the Home Government thought it advisable to discontinue the stimulus formerly held out for emigration, and in the following January, an order was issued at the Colonial Office, stopping the giving away of any more land, and ordering for the future sale of all Crown land, for which purchasers could be found.1703 During this formative period between 1822 and 1847, the colony showed ‘remarkable growth’1704 to self-sufficiency and a corresponding lack of reliance on British capital, no doubt assisted by an early solution to the Aboriginal problem as Darwin noted approvingly in 1836. Year Commodity Trade Balance (£) Commissariat Expenditure (£) Approximate Balance of Payments (£) Premium of Bills on England (£) 1822 (1) 35,714 Up to 27% 1823 (2) 8,994 “ 1824 (3) (47,500) “ 1825 (4) (64,324) “ 1826 (5) (55,249) “ 1827 (6) (92,725) 1828 (7) (149,921) 104,146 (45,775) “ “ 1829 (8) (145,005) 95,245 (49,760) “ 1830 (9) (109,318) 106,317 (3,001) 3% to 7% 1831 (10) (156,999) 96,288 (60,711) “ 1832 (11) (234,760) 98,887 (135,873) “ 1833 (12) (199,927) 127,785 (72,142) “ 1834 (13) (273,092) 128,590 (144,582) “ 1835 (14) (262,967) 172,814 (90,153) “ 778 1836 (15) (138,117) 169,705 31,588 “ 1837 (16) (22,923) 145,971 123,048 Par to 2.5% 1838 (17) (121,481) 155,594 34,113 “ 1839 (18) 128,278 170,534 298,812 2% to 5% 1840 (19) (121,349) 183,729 62,380 “ 1841 (20) (221,480) 188,212 (33,268) “ 1842 (21) (4,944) 235,345 235,401 “ 1843 (22) (265,370) 250,394 (14,976) 1% to 5% 1844 (23) (34,189) 298,967 264,778 “ 1845 (24) (98,344) 274,585 176,241 “ 1846 (25) 21,347 289,572 310,919 “ 1847 (26) (123,717) 293,254 169,537 “ Figure 254 Van Diemen's Land Balance of Payments, 1822 - 1847 1705 Without a strong increase in Tasmania’s balance of payments during Arthur’s term of Government, his superiors in the Foreign Office may have been far less sanguine about the policies he adopted. As it was, Arthur left Tasmania in 1836 with Britain’s strong approval for what he had achieved economically and politically. He had solved the Aboriginal problem and left a healthy Treasury balance, measured by the terms of trade. Could a grateful Britain ask more of an administrator? Humanitarian concerns carry little weight in a financial statement, except perhaps as a suborned and subrogated cost off the balance sheet, something to minimize as much as possible. So it was for Britain and its weight of Empire on political ideology, the codependent embrace of global power and economic supremacy. Conclusion What primarily drove British Government colonial thinking was economics and political advantage. It was important for Tasmania to be economically self-sustaining. It was also important to prick the domestic problem of a disaffected underclass, by threatening them with transportation. In Tasmania, Britain achieved both. The ‘indelible stain’ on the British character caused by the massive Palawa depopulation became a small footnote of official passing regret, where the economic end justified the brutal means. Economic development meant that the Palawa were an encumbrance on alienated land, land required for livestock and agriculture. Britain sanctioned the killing of Aboriginals.1706 No one was ever charged. Palawa were driven off their homelands like feral pests. Their mental suffering increased as they became more desperate for their survival.1707 Their children and women folk were stolen, to be used as labour or for sex.1708 Sometimes, women were offered as a trade, to stop the ongoing persecution. 779 As armed roving and pursuing parties scoured the land for harried Aboriginal groups, they desperately sought humanitarian relief. None came. Arthur offered ethnic cleansing in the form of a ‘friendly mission’, deportation instead of their own land. Arthur won his war. He began to try and rewrite his role in history. The settlers applauded him. So did Britain. Tasmania became a template for an efficient genocidal process across Australia: one sided laws, legalized killing, marauding police, poisoning, land expropriation, no treaties, few humanitarian concessions, no citizens’ rights, violent ‘dispersal’, Aboriginal ‘protectors’, starvation, deportation, kidnap, sexual predation, stolen children, slave labour (stolen wages), disenfranchisement, segregation (Australia’s form of apartheid), imposed mental suffering, physical and cultural destruction, alienation. We conclude that, through the British agency (role) of economic development, the categorial behaviour conforms to Lemkinian genocide, the human cost of Britain’s expansionist policies ignored. Therefore, the hypothesis is confirmed. 780 The role of sexual predation, miscegenation, and abduction in Tasmanian genocide When settlers and sealers predated upon Aboriginal women, it often involved trading, murder, kidnap, violence, and enslavement, where Aboriginal women could be bought and sold. The effect was to reduce births in areas where sealers operated, and too often cause great mental suffering to the Palawa victims. Some historians argue that Palawa women voluntarily engaged with sealers in a bartering relationship that involved the sealers exchanging goods with local Aboriginal people to procure women for labour and sex. We will show that the female trafficking arrangements were far more complex than this simplistic assessment. Nor can we excuse the commodification of women as according to the standards of the time. George Robinson was part of that time and railed against the practice but was ignored by Arthur and his administration. The British Government turned a blind eye to the practice of exploiting Aboriginal women while further ignoring the violent or dubious means that were often employed in capturing them. To object would have caused public dissent when women were scarce. 1709 The British Government could have stationed a military presence on one of the Bass Strait Islands to control lawlessness but preferred to ignore the problem and allow the seal trade to continue, while sending an occasional patrol ship to search for escaped convicts. That is, economics trumped humanitarian concerns. Aboriginal women became important to the brutal seal trade economy. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, Britain condoned sexual predation and abduction, particularly in the northeast and east, through its complete failure to uphold the law for all its citizens, and is therefore culpable of genocide under the following articles: 2 (a) Killing members of the group 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group 2 (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Some historians contend that no genocide was committed in Tasmania because mixed blood Aboriginals still exist, but this argument misunderstands the meaning of Lemkinian genocide as we know it today, under Article 2 of the Convention, which clearly defines genocide as more than mass killing within the context of discriminatory group targeting. . Lyndall Ryan, in arguing against Tasmanian genocide, writes that: ‘the sealers were instrumental in the destruction of a number of Aboriginal tribes on the north coast of Tasmania through exchange and abduction of women, but they also saved Aboriginal Tasmanian society from extinction, because their economic activity enabled some of its traditions to continue’. 1710 However, the argument misconstrues the Lemkin meaning of genocide. Indeed, her book does not mention the subject at all, except in terms of rejecting ‘extinction’ and presenting sealer depredation as a doubleedged sword. 781 She reminds us that: ‘By 1837 forty Straitspeople remained in small groups over a number of islands at both ends of Bass Strait. From this group – six Aboriginal Tasmanian women, four Aboriginal Australian women, one part-Maoripart-Aboriginal Tasmanian women, and twelve European men – has emerged the present day Aboriginal community’ 1711 Others contend there was no abduction or enslavement of Palawa women, rather, consensual bartering where Aboriginal women were willing partners in ‘arranged’ marriages that ultimately secured the genetic survival of the Palawa.1712 In considering British culpability for the separate clauses under Article 2, it is difficult to make the actionable components or sub-processes distinct in any single event or series of related events. Most of the genocidal activity involved a spectrum of dysfunctional behaviours, all of them evident within the terms of the Convention, although any one event may have had a primary focus. For example, sexual predation (2b) often involved killing (2a), and the consequence of predation reduced the number of births (2d) and caused a group’s physical destruction in whole or part (2c), while causing terror and mental anguish within the persecuted group (2b). It is true that Aboriginal groups sometimes traded the sexual favours of women in return for limited protection from being harassed, or to procure certain goods when game was scarce. Sometimes, the miscegenation was actively sought by Aboriginal women because of the relative stability it brought at a time when Aboriginals were being hunted mercilessly. However, overt sexual predation and female abduction was also common, 1713 along with diseases that rendered women infertile, although there is limited evidence that syphilis was also a significant factor in depopulation. While miscegenation may have saved the Aboriginal race through mixed blood descendants, forced relocation and detention ultimately brought the pure blood Palawa to extinction. In time, there would emerge a similar genocidal pattern – characterized as end stage Lemkinian - throughout Australia and across the century, as the pastoral frontier spread like a wildfire, leaping with spot fires, destroying as it progressed, moving the survivors to detention centres like Wybalenna. The seal slaughtering industry and Aboriginal depopulation What do Tasmanian seal slaughter and Aboriginal depopulation have in common? Did sealers abduct and violently mistreat Aboriginal women from certain parts of Tasmania and did this lead to rapid depopulation in those areas? Did callous indifference to animal suffering transfer to a disregard for Palawa rights? It is hard not to think so. What we know of aberrant human behaviour is that humans can become desensitised to the effects of their violence. The terrors of the young cubs, who had not yet dared to take to the water, afforded us a great deal of amusement; they huddled in together among the rocks, putting up a dozen noses through the cavities and expressing their fears of their tormentors by piteous looks and moans. One of the elder would sometimes assume courage 782 enough to bark in a tremulous tone, and indeed became very fierce on our walking away from them. Those who had seen a farm yard, well stocked with pigs, calves, sheep, oxen, and with two or three litters of puppies, with their mothers, in it, and have heard them all in tumult together, may form a good idea of the confused noise at Cone Point. The sailors killed as many of these harmless, and not unamiable creatures, as they were able to skin during the time necessary for me to take the requisite angles; and we then left the poor affrighted multitude to recover from the effect of our inauspicious visit. x1714 It is a complex question, and more nuanced than we might have thought. Yes, there was abduction, yes there were forced arrangements involving reciprocal agreements between Aboriginal groups and sealers, and sealers and sealers, where Aboriginal women were bought and sold as commodities. Yes, there was unpunished violence and killing. But there were also mutually agreed partnerships – if not marriages - where families were brought up and became the ancestors of present day Palawa. As to the sealing ‘industry’, how it arose and how long it lasted is also not clear-cut: the peak of sealing was between 1798 and 1810, where the main base was in Kent Bay, and few Aboriginal people were involved. When the industry collapsed through over-exploitation, some sealers remained in the Furneaux Group and on King Island, and it is these who became dependent on Aboriginal women to continue ongoing use of the Strait’s resources: seals, ‘mutton’ birds, kelp, and other resources they could forage. Were these people misfits of society? Some were engaged in surviving as best they could, others were ‘banditti’, convict escapees, a criminal subclass. Killing seals was violent. Sealers became inured to cruelty. Animals were displaced from their environment. The process continued until there were few left. Behaviours hardened if they were not already inherent. We should not be surprised that such behaviours might easily transfer to the treatment of Aboriginal people. Britain wanted Aboriginal land, so it was taken; Aboriginal people were displaced, by force if necessary. Others, the unwanted, were killed or marginalised or deported. In the Straits, some Aboriginal women were bought and sold until the early 1830s, although Britain did not officially support slavery at this time. Could Britain have controlled such unlawful behavior by establishing a military outpost in the Strait? Yes, but it chose not to, apart from an occasional visit in search of escaped convicts. Sealers continued operating in the Strait when Arthur began deporting Palawa to Wybalenna in the early 1830s, and a small number of their descendants remain in the Strait today, on Cape Barren Island, collecting ‘mutton’ bird chicks (short- tailed shearwater) for their feathers and flesh as a seasonal commercial activity. In the early 1800s, shearwaters blackened the sky 783 as they flew from the arctic Aleutians on a 12000 km migration to islands in Bass Strait. It is a phenomenon we no longer see. We therefore identify a common pattern in the treatment of natural resources and the treatment of Indigenous people. It is a process of exploitation, of raw capitalism, where humans and animals were commodified, without rights, and cruelty was embedded in the process, a structural element or agency in its ‘success’, if that is the right noun. It is a process we would recognise today, where actors perform roles in a series of sometimes violent steps to achieve some outcome, usually a capital reward, over and over. Processes by themselves have no morality; they simply perform some function; it is the intent of the process which wraps around a society’s behavioural motivations, its values, and it is intent we should question here. ‘Gin raiding’ The pervasive practice of kidnapping Aboriginal women for sex was called ‘gin raiding’. The Government took no action to stop it. Newspapers simply mentioned the fact in passing. For example, on 11th November 1826, when the Aboriginal fight for survival was growing more desperate, the Hobart Town Gazette opines that settlers are ‘peaceful’, have every right to expropriate Aboriginal land, and that the Aboriginals are beginning to starve through their own actions, not those of the British: The Black Natives: On Monday the distressing intelligence reached Town, that a tribe of about 250 of these degraded people had attacked the shepherd’s hut of Mr. Burns, beyond the River Shannon; and, after being warded off, had watched an opportunity while the unfortunate men were following their flocks, unarmed, to commit the most dreadful atrocities. One young man named James Scott, a free shepherd, who had not long arrived from Scotland, and had the chief direction of the farm, had been cruelly murdered by them. They had first attacked the stock-hut of Mr. G. Thompson, on the same side of the River, where the two inmates were assailed with stones and other missiles. They then attempted to enter by the chimney, when these men, seeing death before them, fired through the crevices of the hut and wounded one, with whom his companions immediately retreated, but returned next day, evidently with a purpose of revenge, and robbed it of every article. On learning the unpleasant news, Lieutenant Dalrymple, from the military station at Clyde, instantly dispatched a party of soldiers, with a constable, to the scene; but their arrival would be too late to prevent the mischief already perpetrated, and the natives themselves would have retreated back into the woods. How a repetition of these evils will be prevented is a problem which, in the present state of the Colony, we confess, is most difficult to solve; but that some strong and effective measure must be adopted is evident. Let no inhabitant of the Island flatter himself that he is unconcerned in this matter. The hand of these unthinking savages, once imbrued in human blood, becomes hardened and eager for fresh aggression; and though their enormities may now be confined to the outskirts of the settled districts, 784 and the more remote and secluded huts, their treacherous habits will, if not timely arrested, soon lead them to attack more populous neighbourhoods. The present tribe is ascribed as being attended by a vast number of dogs, amounting at the least to 60, to which they are firmly attached, and which they teach to surround the huts, and attack the inmates. Mr. Thompson’s men were completely prevented from all possibility of escape by these ferocious dogs. When we consider therefore, how they multiply, and are nursed by their unthinking owners, we cannot but anticipate the early destruction of numerous flocks of sheep, as well as of the kangaroo and opossums, which have hitherto supported them in the woods; and that the blacks themselves must, in consequence, perish from want of their usual means of support, or be urged by the calls of hunger, and their already strong appetite for wheaten bread, to commit still more and more audacious acts of aggression on the peaceful settler. Viewing the matter calmly and divested of those sanguine sentiments which philanthropists, undoubtedly from the best of motives, in their closets are apt to encourage, we can entertain no well grounded hope of their civilization. Indeed the analogy of the past would stamp it as highly imprudent to attempt it; for scarce one instance has yet occurred, of an individual of the race, having been instructed in civilized habits, who did not afterwards abuse the kindness, and turn it to the destruction of his original benefactors. The springs of gratitude, the claim of association and interchange of mutual good offices, so strong in the breasts of all other men, seem absent and entirely unknown to these wandering miserable people. So fixed does their wretched doom appear, and so fruitless hitherto have been all attempts to ameliorate their condition, that they seem to have been decreed by Providence to remain for ever at the very bottom of the scale of humanity. Wherever the race is extended, the same inevitable degradation has been seen to attach to them, and at no former period have we the smallest reason to conclude that they ever existed in a superior state of society. These Oceanean negroes, or Papuas as they have been termed, are spread over this Island, the whole of New Holland, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, New Britain, Solomon’s Islands, and are found also in New Guinea. Had they any affinity to the African Negro, or could they be supposed to have emigrated from that quarter of the globe, which it would do violence to all fact and reason to believe, we might entertain some distant hopes of the possibility of civilizing them; for the African negro is both docile and intelligent. To argue that these murders are the just retribution for the aggressions of the stockkeepers themselves, and there let the matter rest, would be both futile and unjust. No one disputes that many, very many, needless acts of cruelty have been committed upon this perhaps originally harmless race. Travellers have needlessly shot at and murdered them in the woods – stock-keepers have pursued and carried off their women – nay the Commandment of the very first English settlers who set their foot on the shore at Risdon, by a fire of musquetry brought several to the ground; and these, and other enormities, have brought things to their present irremediable pass. Treachery and a vindictive spirit are now the prevailing characteristics of te original natives of Van Diemen’s Land. With their spears dragging through the grass, held between their toes, they will approach with uplifted hands as a token of peace; and, 785 having gained their opportunity will, upon a signal previously agreed on among themselves, inflict the pains of death on their unhappy victim, who had on repeated former occasions supplied them with bread, and used every endeavour to conciliate. But discrimination on their part is not to be looked for, and the innocent suffer for the unthinking and guilty acts of others, who are now perhaps far removed from the danger they provoked. Whatever means the wisdom of Government may devise to save the lives and property which now become the annual prey of these cunning, and, we grieve to say, ferocious tribes, we are at a loss to know; but, for ourselves, we should recommend an instant and decisive step. Were the tribes here alluded to, and one or two others on whose heads perhaps all the mischief is to be charged – were they to be collected and removed to some island in the Straits where they could have an equal chance, as here, of animal support, without the molestation of white men, we think the happiest results would ensue. We should consider it a most humane and judicious measure; and we have the satisfaction to know that many of the best friends of the Colony are of the same opinion.1715 The sexual predation continued, with the Government refusing to punish the offenders. In 1830, Mr James Hobbs1716 gave further evidence to the Aborigines Committee, commissioned by Arthur: 9th March. [...] The Sealers in Bass’s Strait sometimes stole the Native women from the Main – at one time the Native men would sell a Native woman from the main – at one time the Native men would sell a Native woman for four or five Carcases of Seals – Saw a dozen Native women once at Preservation Island who seemed anxious to get away from the Sealers – Some of the Sealers had three or four Black native women whom they ill treated – this was known by the Tribes and operated upon their minds – the Sealers had told him when they could not purchase women they shot the men and carried their wives away1717 The Government was well aware of the systemic sexual predation and horrendous racially based cruelty, but chose to do nothing, probably in order to preserve the public order. George Robinson did more than most to chronicle the violence, but that is as far as it went. Arthur was not interested in going further. Among Robinson’s numerous observations, as he travelled around the Island from 1829 to 1834: In tracing causes to their primary source an indubitable fact presents itself which occurred upon the first colonisation of this dependency, the circumstances of which are too well known to be adverted to.1718 It is very certain that the natives to this very hour foster in their minds a remembrance of this wanton massacre of their fellow beings, and are anxious to atone for this aggression by the blood of their enemies. This amongst many other similar disgraceful transactions must necessarily tend to engender and promote that bloodthirsty temper amongst the aborigines which we cannot say has unjustifiably led to such pernicious results. It must also be considered that this colony has imported the joint depravity of the three united kingdoms, men in 786 whom the common feelings of humanity are deadened and the voice of reason suppressed by the machination of sin. What can be expected from such characters but a continuation of sin, an utter callousness of the dictates of Christianity. Yet how many of these wretched beings have been and still are employed in the remote parts of the interior as shepherds to the resident settlers! These are the sort of men who have ravished the wives and daughters of these unbefriended people, and when provoked by resistance have massacred them with impunity and set their children as targets to shoot at. Some have even been so barbarous as to cut off the ears and noses of their murdered victims, which with horrid complacency they have exhibited to their depraved associates, and even gloried in their diabolical achievement. This is a notorious fact: Mr D recollects the circumstance of a man receiving corporal punishment for carrying the ears and noses of those whom he had slain in his pack and afterwards exhibiting them as trophies. What can be more unjust, what so inhumanly selfish, as to aim at a monopoly of their only means of subsistence, to offer a reward for the skins of kangaroos, which are slaughtered wholesale for the sake of their produce. Individuals who ought to have been actuated by more generous feelings, have encouraged this traffic and made a business of this outrageous plunder. What else than plunder! Are not these animals the exclusive property of the aborigines, and as such should they not be deemed sacred and inviolable? Certainly! But in this instance and in many others which impact mankind to the most absurd as well as unjust inconsistencies, the overwhelming love of money deluges all other considerations. As men in all stages are actuated in a greater or lesser degree by the same evil passions, let us refer this matter to ourselves.. Let us suppose that we possessed a herd of cattle on which we placed our chief dependence for support. Let them be placed before our eyes in good condition and thriving on the rich pasture with which the neighboring land is blessed. Then let us behold a banditti of fierce savage barbarians rush in upon our precious stock and heedless of our cries or remonstrances slay them in open defiance, drag them to their homes and then consecrate by a public feast the mischief they had done and the public ruin they had spread amongst their adjacent enemies. Doubtless a vindictive sense of their predatory incursions would prevail, and we should be strongly urged to wreak our vengeance upon such lawless aggressors. If such would be our feelings who vainly aspire to the subjection of our passions to the shrine of reason and humanity, what can or ought to be expected from the uncontrolled depravity of a savage. This is one of the manifold wrongs to which these poor creatures have been exposed, and it cannot be surprising that they should retain a strong sense of their injuries. It is well known that it is very usual for a number of aborigines, when assembled by their fireside under the open canopy of heaven, to recount the sufferings of their ancestors, to dilate upon their present afflictions and to consult upon the best means of being released from their cruel and bloodthirsty foes. They have a tradition amongst them that white men have usurped their territory, have driven them into the forests, have killed their game and thus robbed them of their chief subsistence, have ravished their wives and daughters, have murdered and butchered their fellow-countrymen, and are wont whilst brooding over these complicated ills in the dense part of the forest, 787 to goad each other on to acts of bloodshed and revenge for the injuries done to their ancestors and the persecutions offered to themselves through their white enemies. During a conversation that I had with Mr S. At Mr M., Mr S. Said that B’s sons had shot scores of natives; in reply to which I observed that any man who deliberately shot a native from mere wanton cruelty was in the eyes of God an actual murderer and would be condemned as such at his omnipotent and awful tribunal.1719 In December 1829, while Robinson was on his ‘friendly mission’, he recorded: 14 December 1829. Mr. Gavin selected thirty men who volunteered to accompany the expedition to Port Davey, four of whom were marked out for the Governor’s approval. Mr. Weeding, a settler from the neighbourhood of Oatlands, called me today. In the course of conversation he observed that the natives had been shamefully treated; that the stockkeepers had chained the females to their huts with bullock chains for the purpose of fornication. These grievances have become so numerous and common that ant further comment than has already been made upon similar occasions would be useless. Such facts as these do certainly tend to raise an indelible blot on the annals of this colony, to remove which will require an extraordinary degree of future well doing on their behalf.1720 As Robinson continued his journey of ‘conciliation’ around the Island, in practice an official programme of ethnic cleansing that ignored deaths in custody, he was to receive numerous stories of Aboriginal extirpation and sexual predation: 22 April, 1830. Captain Donaldson said he had been told by a man at the westward at a remote stock hut that the natives had been shamefully treated: said he had no right to speak well of them as they had killed his wife, but he said that he was witness of a barbarous transaction, that two stockkeepers kept a black woman and cohabited with her for some time, when they afterwards tied her up by the heels and left her to perish.1721 29 August, 1830 [...] They were all fine young men, stout made. The woman was elderly. They were all red skinned. I wrote the government how hard it was for these people: six young men and only one elderly woman among them is a cruel thing. The natives complain of the outrages which has been committed upon them and their progenitors, and in bitter terms complain of their women having been stole from them, and how white man would like black man to steal white woman. I made known to them the wish of the government that if they would not spear white men they might remain and hunt, and they seemed glad and lifted up their hands and said, ‘No, no, no’.1722 In October 1830, Robinson began his friendly mission of ethnic cleansing to the north-east of the state, where sealer depredations were most prevalent. October 1830. On 4 October Robinson had another interview with Captain Donaldson, who told him he had been shamefully treated, excusing Major Abbott as 788 being an old man, deplored the proceedings against the blacks, and told him he should go to Campbell Town and see Lieutenant Governor. In the town there were ‘great preparations to go against the blacks; with few exceptions they are extirpationers’.1723 Robinson noted the lack of young Aboriginal women wherever he travelled, for which this entry is an example. 3 November 1830. [...] In conversation with the natives, and from them (with other considerable information) I obtained the names of seventy-two men now in the bush, and also that they had gone towards Oyster Bay, but was to return, and that they were principally young men.1724 In researching the absence of women, Plomley confirmed sealer abductions as the key reason for the disproportionate lack of women and children. Arthur did little to criminalize the practice and nothing to charge the offenders. The skewed demographic population effect was devastating, for which Britain must bear most of the responsibility. A cynical view of history suggests that it is in the political and economic interests of an occupying power if the subjugated race is unable to regenerate itself, either by allowing (or causing) the number of menstrual women to collapse or by imposing conditions of life that discourage births. The list of these names exists: there is a copy of the full list in Robinson’s hand in the Archives Office of Tasmania 1725 and incomplete copies in the Robinson papers. It does indeed list seventy-two males and tree females, so that even taking into account KARNEBUTCHER and the two women captured on 1 November 1830, there had been no more than six women in the region, and for much of the time recently only two or three. This is forceful evidence of the effect of abductions by the sealers on the aboriginal population. It should be noted also that no children are listed, or mentioned elsewhere.1726 The severe plight of half-caste children became a notional problem for the Government, a problem that was generally ignored. Little was done for the children. They were largely unwanted by both black and white. For example, in October 1830, Robinson writes: The white men flog the black women for nothing and flog the women belonging to other white men. Thomson beat the women on the head with a stick or tomahawk, plenty of blood. Plenty children killed’. ‘How do they kill them?’ ‘The black women kill them in their belly, beat their belly with their fist. Kill the boys; take them in the bush to kill them, men no see it; men angry’. 1727 Then again in November 1830, Robinson records in his journal: ‘The half-caste children are a fine race. Numbers have been killed by the mothers and Parish said the men told them to do it.’ 1728 The solution, of course, was to criminalize the practice of sexual enslavement, but with a shortage of white women, warrants against the offenders might have caused the problem to go further underground. In August 1832, the Launceston Examiner wrote of one appalling 789 situation and the ineffectual resolution by the judiciary. The example was symptomatic of a wide-scale social breakdown in Government led humanitarian policy. We have frequently called the attention of the authorities to the destitute situation in which the half-caste children of this island are allowed to remain: a truly distressing case came before the sitting magistrate at the Police Office, on Friday; when a female child called Kitty, about 11 years of age, was found by the constables, in the midst of a notorious set of the lowest description of men, and conveyed to the Police Office. The only covering she had was a single garment of a light material. According to her own statement, she had lately been turned away from the house of a person called Griffiths, residing on the Tamar, and ever since then had been roving about the town, in the condition which she then appeared. The magistrate, Capt. Moriarty, who was sitting for Mr Lyttleton, immediately asked where she might be put for a short period, until some enquiries could be made, The watch-house was first enquired for; - there was no possibility of there providing the poor infant with a room separated from the men and women who might be thrown in for drunkenness &c. The jail? – the magistrate could not legally order her reception there. The factory?? – there was none: The only alternative left the worthy magistrate, was to send her by a constable, to her maser’s house, to ascertain the reason of her being thus thrown unprovided for into the world; and, if possible, to make some provision for her future support and protection. 1729 Findings and Conclusions In spite of the overwhelming evidence, Britain took no action to punish white perpetrators of violence against Aboriginals. No action at all. Ever. How could they, when officers of the Crown were routinely involved? Or when the conflict had degenerated into martial law? Or when armed military and police protected the settlers’ febrile incursions into Aboriginal lands?1730 Or when Britain treated Aboriginal resistance as a criminal misdemeanour by notional citizens who had few rights in British law. (Article 2a, 2b, 2c). When Arthur declared martial law (twice), the killing of Aboriginals was legalized. Aboriginals became enemy combatants.1731 However, Britain never treated captured Aboriginals as prisoners of war. Nor were they offered a treaty, or any other form of formal negotiated arrangement, on their surrender. Their status became that of captive, as Robinson’s journal makes quite clear. (Article 2a, 2b, 2c). Whether the Aboriginals saw themselves as captives rather than a free people who sought British protection is another matter. In particular, the British administration did not criminalize sexual predation and female enslavement. No warrants were ever issued for the practice. Women were scarce in Colonial Tasmania. The loss of Aboriginal women from tribal groups had a severe effect on the Aboriginal birth rate. Stock keepers and sealers were the main culprits, although the practice was widespread. The practice of abduction was formalized by Britain; it can therefore be regarded as an intentional aspect of the State-sponsored occupation process. (Article 2d). Britain sometimes removed mixed-race children from an Aboriginal family environment for their protection, but this was the exception, and the children were often badly mistreated, 790 especially if they were sent to a Government orphan school, little more than a labour camp, where they were taught to be Christians in the service of white society. (Article 2d, 2e). Such children can present a conundrum for some historians. To what group (Lemkinian or otherwise) do the children belong? If they are routinely ‘killed’ or ‘forcibly transferred’, does this correspond to killing members of the group (2a) or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (2e)? 1732 The answer is that, in this example, the group is the group of mixed-race children. British land and immigration policies encouraged indiscriminate killing.1733 More immigration meant a greater demand for land, which meant more displacement pressure on the Palawa. (Article 2a). To temper the violence and obtain a degree of physical security, Aboriginal groups sometimes tried to placate whites through offering sexual favours. This led to further miscegenation and introduced sexual disease, which greatly reduced Aboriginal fertility and accelerated the erosion of Palawa society.1734 Sexual exploitation often led to prostitution, with a consequent breakdown of family groups and social relationships. (Article 2d). Alcohol dependency became more common, a symptom of increasing despair, but also the effect of white sexual predation. Article 2c). Britain saw the targeted ethnic destruction, but their primary focus was on the economy.1735 Inaction can be as lethal as action when prevention is urgently required. Let us assume, for example, that up to 5% pa of Aboriginal females were abducted each year between 1807 and 1825, then we can calculate why there was a precipitous decline in the Aboriginal population in the so-called peaceful period: • • • • • • • Assume a pre-contact population of say 4,000, with four children per family and 30% no longer fertile or capable of procreating, Assume a family group was around 6, or 600 families, of which 600 were females between 17 and 35. If 5% of these females were abducted per year, assuming a falling birthrate, then the precontact population would reduce by 30 per year (one every two weeks or so) or 600 over 20 years. If children were also being kidnapped, then they were unlikely to have children because they had lost contact with their own people. Let us set the originating population P 1803 = 4,000, the final 1825 population P 1825 = 1200 from which we derive that the rate of decline r = -0.0533 or 5.3% pa. 1736 But this decline is also due to mortality (killing, disease, old age). Therefore, the rate of female abduction can be much less than 5% pa for the same demographic result. Therefore, we would expect an exponential decline in the population that reduced more rapidly from 1826 because of the war but within a diminishing number of survivors. 791 We wish to determine the demographic effect of a falling number of Aboriginal women of childbearing age over some period t and how this might compare with the impact of Lemkinian extermination through direct killing. • If we divide the Palawa depopulation s-curve into thirds, each third is called a tertile. We are particularly interested in the shape of the s-curve: how the value of r varies over time within the standard sigmoid function, from slow, to steep, to slow; and the value of r in the second tertile when r had its maximum value. • We can calculate an overall r if we know the population (P) in the beginning and end of some period t, where dP/ dt = rP, and P(t) = P0 e rt • If the overall value of r between 1803 and 1833 is calculated to be around -12% pa then we can hypothesize an approximate tertile distribution for r, say: 9%, 18%, 9%. • These tertiles correspond to the time periods: 1803 – 1813; 1814 – 1823; 1824 – 1833. • Suppose this is the total Palawa population loss by tertile: 1000; 3000; 600 for which the tertile depopulation distribution is 22%, 65%, 13%. This distribution allows for diminishing births over the period, below population replacement. • For the moment, ignore the population effects of the first tertile. Assume zero births within the second tertile, that is, a female born at the beginning of the second tertile will not reach reproductive age until halfway into the third tertile. Assume half the population in the second tertile were women and of these, a quarter were able to reproduce. Assume linear depopulation per second tertile. • Therefore a 10% annual population reduction in such potentially child-bearing women is a mere 50 per year over the ten-year tertile, or a modest one per week across the island, which is consistent with the exponential model. • The population reduction can be caused by removing the women from the reproductive pool by various means: killing, trauma, kidnapping, loss of stable family groups, disease, sexual predation and so on. We conclude that the loss of women capable of childbearing had a catastrophic effect on Palawa depopulation, greater than the effects of killing and disease, significant though they were, and may explain the heretofore mystery of how the fullblood Palawa became extinct so rapidly. And not just the Palawa, when we remember that over 90% of Aboriginal people across Australia ‘disappeared’ between 1788 and 1911. (Article 2d). Sexual predation now becomes a potent smoking gun for Aboriginal disappearance, one that is identified in the context of Lemkinian genocide but is often conflated by historians as ‘internecine warfare’, or Acts of God (introduced disease), or Darwinian unfitness (white supremacist theory). Beyond the popular ‘headline’ figure of depopulation through ‘massacres’, however they are defined or contested, Lemkinian female abduction now rears its destructive head with much greater lethal significance. 792 In summary, we conclude the procedural agency of sexual predation, miscegenation and abduction was genocidal, within the meaning of the Convention. (Article 2d, 2e). For some historians to claim that Britain ‘meant well’, Reynolds, Blainey and Windschuttle among them, is to forgive practices that Britain at the time knew were wrong, as evidenced by the available primary sources. What we see in the British occupation process is a utilitarian principle at work, where Britain believed that – for the glory of Empire - it must punish the few to save the many, a practice that is now discredited along with eugenics, the stolen generation, stolen wages, white Australia, forced dispossession, and indiscriminate killing. The imposed destructive behaviours by ‘settler’ society (if that is the right adjective for an invasion) and the British colonizing administration were often associated with other disruptive agencies, comorbidities such as killing (both direct and indirect), sexual predation, child kidnapping, deliberately inflicting conditions of life on the group that were calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and causing serious bodily or mental harm, all pathological characteristics of Lemkinian genocide where a group and its culture are targeted for eradication in whole or part. Therefore, the hypothesis is confirmed under articles 2(a) to 2(e). 793 The role of Arthur’s final solution in Tasmanian genocide (1824 – 1831) In the year when Beethoven completed and first performed his hymn to universal harmony and equality for all people, his ninth symphony based on the work of Friedrich Schiller, Arthur began his relatively long (thirteen years) and pivotally genocidal term as Lieutenant Governor of Tasmania. By now, we begin to understand the synoptic process, the pattern of British occupation and forcible dispossession. The Palawa and Britain had quite incompatible objectives in using the land. The Palawa wanted free and open access to their ancient tribal country with its strong totemic associations. The land was their mother,1737 the source of their food and water, their life force, something they had spent millennia in sustaining, in carefully protecting the resources for those who followed.1738 Britain saw virgin countryside to be exploited, owned by no one, where they could claim title for farming and grazing, property to be defended from trespassers at the point of a gun. If the troubling question of land confiscation ever raised its head, the issue was sanitized by the bland laws of property, of alienation and rights transfer, of quit rents and commercial transactions. With the arrival of British colonists, the mother of the Palawa died, along with their hopes. But not without a struggle. The colonists were eventually too many and far too relentless. It took around thirty years. In the process, the Palawa were ground into oblivion by the machinery of the British State. Civilization demanded it. The objectives of the Palawa and the British were irreconcilable. Genocide was the result. It’s not that there was a failure to communicate. The British simply didn’t see the need. Why negotiate from a point of power? Aboriginals were feral pests. Arthur barely thought it necessary to understand any Palawa dialect. How could anyone consider their rights? They were a lower form of humanity who should acquiesce to their subjugation by a superior race and accept their displacement, the confiscation of what had once been theirs, without murmur, without protest. Any insurgency was treated with a military response as unlawful conduct. A similar British pattern was to play out across Australia. What was ethical, if the question was ever asked, became subsumed by a system of imposed one-sided laws supported by armed force. We have still not solved this problem today. The fallback is often a resort to primitive tribalism, the defensive ‘us and them’, where ‘them’ , those ‘others’, are demonized. 794 Our behavioural pathology has barely moved forward in its resolution in the last two centuries, our evolutionary adaptation overwhelmingly constrained by normalized group selfinterest. Ethnic conflict was almost mandated from the time when Britain first invaded the island of Tasmania. With no conciliated treaty in sight, the only real option for Aboriginals was to push back as best they could against the increasing wave of colonists who had taken over traditional Palawa territory. The colonists pushed back harder and could call on their Government to support them. We will use the evocative term ‘final solution’ because, for Arthur, that was his intent, a final anxious comprehensive sustained set of initiatives to counter the highly effective guerilla war being fought by the few remaining Palawa who wanted to stop settler encroachment on land that was once theirs. The initiatives culminated in August 1830 with a decision by Arthur’s Executive Council, the rubber stamp for his (and Britain’s) policies: it appears to the Council that the time is now arrived when it has become absolutely necessary that some vigorous effort upon a more extended scale than has hitherto been practicable should be made for expelling these miserable people forthwith from the settled Districts 1739 The tone and extremism of this decision is startling in its racist resolve and unambiguous directness: ‘expelling’, ‘miserable people’, ‘vigorous effort’, ‘extended scale’. When Arthur committed to this racially destructive coup de grâce, he could not (and did not) avoid the implications of ethnic cleansing. He had come to this ‘final solution’ over six years or so. First, as we have seen, he issued instructions to ‘oppose force by force’ that legitimized homicide against Aboriginals on the flimsiest of pretexts: defending private ‘property’ by lethal force. Then he failed to prosecute any white person for criminal conduct against a Native. He feverishly increased the rate of land alienation and accelerated immigration, with a blatantly intentional Palawa dispossession process. As the war intensified, his solution became increasingly dependent on the military, and when that was insufficient, he introduced paramilitary forces, including the unprecedented use of convicts. In the ensuing race war, genocide became inevitable for as long as Palawa resistance continued, and thereafter with imprisonment for the relative handful of captured survivors. Let there be no mistake or misconstruction: Wybalenna - on Flinders Island - was a prison, what our Government would euphemistically call an ‘offshore detention centre’ today. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 795 From time to time, at least up to 1828, Arthur spoke of partitioning the island, but nothing came of it. He held no conciliatory talks with any Aboriginal group, probably seeing it as beneath him. Ongoing Aboriginal resistance to the occupation process caused the colonists to demand military protection and forcible expulsion of the Indigenous people. White political pressure overrode any question of a treaty or land rights. Nor would the settlers have agreed; they wanted all the island, not some of it. They wanted the Palawa to be gone. Arthur’s final solution for Indigenous guerilla resistance from 1824 to 1831 is characterized as the series of aggressive policy driven actions that Arthur initiated against the Palawa to neutralize their struggle against the British colonization process, culminating in a genocidal ethnic cleansing campaign from 1828, a campaign supported by the British Government and fueled by Britain’s overarching policy for displacive colonization. This final determined push by the British administration against the Palawa was further motivated by strident colonists’ demands for armed counter-insurgency measures, including complete Palawa removal, first from the ‘settled districts’, then from the entire island. The Palawa removal process embraced extermination through to ethnic cleansing, for which ‘conciliation’ (or induced surrender into imprisonment) was a key Government strategy. The summary genocidal timeline for Tasmania is sobering, something to which we will return during this chapter: • From 1823, Aboriginal resistance escalated as the colonists’ occupation of their land advanced, driven by Britain’s land alienation policies and its political resolve to increase the rate of immigration. • In 1826, Arthur wrote to his superiors requesting the paid use of the ‘best conducted’ convicts as field-police: ‘in active operations which have for their end the expulsion of the Aborigines from the settled districts’. 1740 • To prevent Aboriginals from returning to their homelands, Arthur then embarked upon his ‘final solution’, where Aboriginals could legally be shot on sight under martial law, a proclamation that remained in force from 1828 to 1832. All the while, he was careful to include words such as ‘amity’ and ‘conciliation’ in his communications, weasel words to confound the reality of his actions. • In 1828, Arthur declared martial law, and again in 1830. In 1828, he established ‘roving’ and ‘pursuing’ parties, to drive Aboriginals out of the ‘settled districts’, which he ringed with military posts. In October and again in November 1830, he established a ‘black line’ to drive Aboriginals from the ‘settled districts’ into entrapment, using a mass ‘call to arms’ on all available citizens and military personnel (about 2,200 men, including around 550 soldiers). The Line failed, 796 but it put pressure on the surviving Palawa for their continuing safety, when faced with legalized extermination. • In 1829, Arthur employed George Robinson on a ‘friendly mission’ of ‘conciliatory’ ethnic cleansing, operating in parallel with martial law, to coerce Aboriginals into surrender. Robinson offered them ‘protection’, a ruse de guerre he called it, to induce their capture. Robinson’s ‘protection’ while on his ‘friendly mission’ often involved some form of physical detention, where Aboriginals began to die in what became a lethal pattern of lung disease and other morbidities associated with close confinement. Upon their subsequent imprisonment on Flinders Island, deaths from disease continued in full view of the British administration. Britain took no action to slow down or halt the ethnic annihilation in Tasmania (or elsewhere in Australia for that matter), although it knew the reason for the incalculable Palawa death rate: invasive, expansionary and militarized colonization. The one solution that could have prevented the complete destruction of Tasmanian Aboriginals – relocation to their own territory in the west, northeast or southeast – Arthur and his superiors briefly considered, then ignored. The colonists would have objected. Palawa imprisonment in Bass Strait, the preferred solution for both settler and Government, became a death trap, a place of despair as Pedder had predicted. Today, the mixed race Palawa survivors perversely owe their existence to the sexual attentions of the sealers when women were kidnapped, either willingly or unwillingly. Aboriginals held by Arthur at the Wybalenna detention facility continued to believe he had given them a verbal agreement for a treaty and regular access to their homelands. Arthur was not above ruses himself, if it secured the removal of an Indigenous presence from areas required for colonization. If he ever made the offer, and it is highly likely that he did because he had discussed that option with his Executive Council and mentioned it to the Secretary of State, then it is certain that he never carried it out. He did not have to. He had won his genocidal war. Lyndall Ryan estimates an 1803 Palawa population of about 7,000, 1741 and we know in 1834 their number had reduced to around 200, the exact figure is not important for the moment. We will examine these demographic data later, when we consider the genocidal circumstances of Wybalenna and the overall horrifying depopulation statistics. Ryan has conducted intensive research into compiling a comprehensive list of all known Palawa massacres, using newspaper reports, despatches and private correspondence.1742 She has determined the estimated number of Aboriginals killed between 1823 and 1834 as about 878, with an overall Aboriginal to colonial death rate of about 4 to 1. It raises the question: what happened to the rest, to the many thousands of Palawa who are unaccounted for? At the frontier, it was unusual to record the number of Palawa 797 killed or injured in any armed encounter. This strongly suggests that Ryan’s figures are a conservative baseline estimate, as catastrophic Aboriginal depopulation occurred within a generation of about thirty years. It is an important question to which we will later return. 1803 – 1823 (invasion) Nov 1823 – Nov 1826 (resistance) Dec 1826 - Oct 1828 (force met with force, ethnic cleansing) Nov 1828 – Jan 1832 (martial law, ethnic cleansing) Feb 1832 – Aug 1834 (ethnic cleansing) Total Aboriginal people killed (est.) ? Colonists killed Total ? ? Aboriginal: Colonial death rate ? 80 40 120 2:1 408 61 469 6:1 350 90 440 4:1 40 10 50 4:1 878 201 1079 4:1 Figure 255 Death toll statistics: Black War (1823 - 1834)1743 For the moment, these are Ryan’s statistics, which indicate that the greatest period of Aboriginal extermination occurred in the two years from 1827, with the subsequent four years not far behind. We can reasonably infer that these painstakingly gathered numbers are significantly less than the probable death count, as Arthur (or his predecessors) did not impose any requirement that Aboriginal fatalities be tallied. If the statistics fall far short of the probable depopulation figures then, clearly, the statistics are not only wrong but also unreliable as any base measure. We know that many Aboriginal deaths were unreported; Arthur imposed no requirement on the settlers to keep a death count and it suited his administration to keep the actual carnage as secret as possible, to maintain the pretext to his superiors that he had the situation under control. However, Murray was not fooled, although he was determined to maintain Britain’s land and emigration policies, come what may. Ryan also estimates that, when martial law was declared in 1828, the number of Aboriginals within the ‘settled districts’ was only about 500. The ‘settled districts’ in the fertile and productive midlands of Tasmania were the preferred territory for many of the more populous tribes, and quickly became a contested space. Therefore. the question becomes: How many Palawa were in the ‘settled districts’ prior to 1828, say 1803? Let us pluck a figure and say around half the total pre-contact population. It gives us a number of around 4,000. So 88% of the midlands population had ‘disappeared’ by the time of martial law in 1828. Where did they go? What happened to them? 798 We will advance a possible solution elsewhere in this paper, when we examine Aboriginal demography in ‘depopulation statistics’. What cannot be questioned is the determined resolve shown by Britain as it forcibly dispossessed the Indigenous population and exterminated those who resisted. What Britain had not expected was the fierce resistance of the Palawa to the process of invasion and armed colonization. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through its ethnic cleansing policies, Britain is culpable of genocide under the following articles: 2 (a) Killing members of the group 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group 2 (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group 799 Britain’s policy of militarized ethnic cleansing and its role in Tasmanian genocide When Britain first arrived in Tasmania in 1803, it was accompanied by the military. Their role would continue for as long as Britain saw the need and could justify the expense. At first, there was little ethnic conflict, not until the following year when a detachment of the 102nd Regiment under Lieutenant Moore massacred a number of Aboriginals on a peaceful kangaroo hunt near Hobart. Relations between the races were never to recover. As the British colonizing push developed strength, the gathering invasion led to Aboriginal resistance. Racial tension escalated. The military enforced Britain’s sovereignty, with civil authorities making up the rear. For the new arrivals, land was granted to those immigrants with capital, but their ownership legitimacy was less secure, only being maintained by armed force. In 1824, Arthur inherited a conflict zone, where he tried to impose conciliation at gun point. By 1828, his anxiety was mounting. If Tasmanian settlement began with military support, it would now be consolidated with martial law. It was Arthur’s final solution to the continuing Aboriginal resistance, a desperate insurgency against the implacable process of British colonization. The determined Palawa guerilla war required increasing militarization of the conflict, with Arthur (and Britain) quickly using paramilitary colonists, field police, and military detachments, augmented by armed convicts. Britain’s use of lethal force in the race war contributed to a policy of extermination and ethnic cleansing. For the British Government, settlers’ rights exceeded those of the original inhabitants. The genocidal result in Tasmania was both predictable and preventable. Genocide developed a savage momentum, pushed forward by colonists’ agitation for greater protection. Therefore, we will begin our analysis of administrative genocide by first examining the question: was Arthur a pawn, a willing participant, or a key instigator in Palawa destruction? We remind ourselves that, within the semantic typology for mass killing, ethnic cleansing is an overlapping type variant for genocide and crimes against humanity. This is not to ignore that Lemkinian genocide is more than mass killing but includes: imposing the conditions of life on a group that leads to physical, mental and even cultural destruction in whole or in part. Above all else, genocide is a crime, an illegal act according to some agreed definition or code of conduct, carried out by people against other people. 800 You may ask: within a typology, aren’t ethnic cleansing and genocide distinct? How does a typology allow for overlapping constructs? The answer is in an analytical tool called a faceted classification schema.1744 This type of schema allows hybrid concepts such as genocidal ethnic cleansing. In understanding the nature and substance of the perceived crime of genocide in Tasmania, we must understand the behavioural motivations of the involved parties, specifically (in this instance) the motivations of Arthur and his superiors. Did Britain and Arthur recognize their dysfunction? Perhaps they regarded their acts as lawful, within prescribed limits? A proclamation of martial law substantially changes the limits of what is lawful. And how would we identify and assess the British Government’s failure of morality, the origination and progression of their moral collapse? Was it merely successful Imperial triumphalism, a triumph of colonial policy over subjugated races, depending on some oppressive point of view? For sometimes, genocide for one party is ideological or physical self-protection for another without some overarching measure such as the Lemkinian Convention. In examining Arthur’s behaviour, we must examine not just what he said, or what he professed, which leads some researchers to claim that Arthur, in limited instances, was a devout humanitarian, no more than a creature of his time. AGL Shaw writes: he was, however, a most devout Calvinist Evangelical. He believed that the 'heart of every man' was 'desperately wicked'; one 'must preach Christ crucified and faith in Him' as the only means of salvation, have 'always in view the nearness of Eternity' though not dwelling 'too much in Faith, setting at nought good works' for 'the latter are the result of the former'. With these views he was anxious to raise the moral tone of Van Diemen's Land. This high-minded, autocratic but thoroughly efficient administrator seemed a very fit person to reassert the relaxed authority of the government and to tighten up the convict administration on the lines suggested by Commissioner John Thomas Bigge. 1745 Perhaps, but did Arthur also have a sense of mens rea, driven by self-interest? We will show yes, particularly in the far from arbitrary conditions around the massacre at Emu Bay in 1828, which we will explore as a case study into the patterned mechanics of the British genocidal process, a process that can otherwise too easily be dismissed as an imbroglio of confused circumstances, with no one and everyone culpable. Apart from his religious beliefs, or his frequent references to ‘conciliation’, we must also assess Arthur’s actions, what he did. This is far more revealing of his true intentions, of his patterned behaviour. 801 If Arthur did sometimes show evidence of a ‘guilty mind’ it was quickly dispelled through his closely managed counter-insurgency military campaigns, the burgeoning support of the colonists for his administration of ‘justice’, and his blatantly self-enriching land dealings. Shaw comments: Arthur's attitude was determined too rigidly by his own standards of morality and by his belief in the rights of property. He showed neither wisdom nor understanding in his attitude and, though hampered by past abuses, he adopted the policy demanded by popular opinion, with which, in this case, his own interests were bound up, and he turned to 'conciliation' only when extermination was almost complete.1746 That is, any concerns that Arthur may have had for Aboriginal welfare were subordinated to the interests of the colonists, whose support he needed for the success of his administration, and for his own financial interests: Arthur's attitude reflected his idea that co-operation with the settlers was essential for the discipline and reform of the convicts. As 'substantial yeomen' became more numerous in the colony, the settlers ceased to be a 'most troublesome set' of whom the government 'has far greater cause to be apprehensive than of the emancipated convicts', as he had described them in March 1827. He now felt that on the whole he could rely on them. He shared their attitude to the Aboriginals.1747 He vehemently opposed charging them either for their convict servants or for their land. He suggested that payments to England be remitted in wheat. This encouragement was understandable, but it also suited the private interests of the lieutenant-governor, who by 1830 had become one of the most extensive landowners and mortgagees in the colony.1748 Shaw concludes: During his term of office, by personal thrift and shrewd investments in land, Arthur became extremely wealthy. Between 1828 and 1836 he bought 15,048 acres (6090 ha) of land, for a total price of £9765, and in 1833 he had lent £14,000 on mortgage to settlers and officials such as John Burnett, Matthew Forster and John Montagu. He profited both from a normal rate of interest exceeding 10 per cent and the enormous rise in land values. When he left he sold nearly all his landed property except Cottage Green in Hobart; the total value in 1839 was nearly £50,000 and he thought he could safely calculate on an annual income of £5000 from the colony apart from what he was about to lose when Montagu, his 'attorney', invested in the 'Port Phillip speculation'. 1749 Therefore, apart from Arthur’s professed Christian ideals, we must also carefully assess what he did, his pattern of behaviour. Notwithstanding any of Arthur’s public announcements or despatch communications with the Colonial Office about the need for ‘conciliation’, we should remember they were mere words to confound a harsh reality of ethnic killing, racially targeted removal, and repression, of 802 expulsion, of attempted and eventually successful Palawa destruction over a sustained period by the British administration in Tasmania. During Arthur’s long and authoritarian term of office as Lieutenant-Governor of Tasmania from 1824 to 1836, he ignored (or, more precisely, failed to punish) crimes against Aboriginals, being unwilling to upset the colonists. As an experienced military officer, he considered himself to be the senior commander of all the military detachments assigned to Tasmania. If there was any doubt about his military role, he sought to dispel it by publishing this General Order soon after his arrival in the colony, affirming that he was the military commander in chief: Government and General Orders. Brigade Major’s Office, Sydney, 12th May 1824 His Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief, with the sanction of His Majesty, has been pleased to appoint Lieutenant Colonel George Arthur of Van Diemen’s Land, to serve as Colonel upon the Staff in this territory. All reports of a military nature from the troops serving in Van Diemen’s Land, will hereafter be addressed to Colonel Arthur. By command of His Excellency, Major General Sir Thomas Brisbane, K.C.B. J. Ovens, Major of Brigade1750 Lieutenant General Darling (the New South Wales Governor) was, in principle, superior in rank and responsibility to Colonel Arthur, but the relationship was not enforced. For many military matters, it often suited Arthur to communicate directly with the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. In not always deferring to the NSW Governor of the time (Darling then Bourke) on his military offensive against the Palawa, Arthur – as Commander in Chief - maintained iron control of counter-insurgency operations, but he was heavily dependent on the military to enforce British sovereignty against the Palawa. In response to settler demands, Arthur continued to press Britain for more military detachments to be assigned to his colony. This was not to last. There were not enough troops for the purpose of protection: the settlement was becoming too spread out. Arthur to Bathurst, 2 March 1827. Arthur made multiple requests to the Colonial Office for further troop deployments to Tasmania, in particular of the 40th 1751 and 63rd 1752 Regiments, to grind Aboriginal resistance into submission, among them this plea to Bathurst: An entire Regiment is the least possible adequate force for the protection of the Colony which he justified as an expense saving measure, where a few steady Military Officers are most beneficially employed as Magistrates, and, as they make by far the best 803 Superintendents in charge of parties of prisoners employed in the Interior, or at the out Stations, and can be thus in either way employed at a comparatively very trifling expense to the Public. This is his letter: An entire Regiment is the least possible adequate force for the protection of the Colony, and a great desideratum is an augmentation of Officers, for, as the Military give the Jury, a measure from the circumstances of the Colony most proper and most desirable, the Regiment must necessarily and unavoidably suffer from their absence. Moreover a few steady Military Officers are most beneficially employed as Magistrates, and, as they make by far the best Superintendents in charge of parties of prisoners employed in the Interior, or at the out Stations, and can be thus in either way employed at a comparatively very trifling expense to the Public, it is impossible that a more effectual aid could be afforded than by giving some supernumerary officers to the Regiment serving in the Colony: and, as the Establishment of the Regiment is always augmented on being sent on to India, I presume this very useful measure may possibly be carried into effect without prejudice or inconvenience to the Service. 1753 Huskisson to Arthur, 6 May 1828. Sir, I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Dispatch of the 10 th of January, on the subject of the increasing temper of hostility which has been manifested by the native inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land, and suggesting a scheme by which you are in hopes that you may be enabled to afford greater security to the distant Settlers, at the same time that you will be spared the necessity of resorting to any measures of undue harshness against the Natives themselves. The ill-success which appears to have already attended your exertions to conciliate and civilize these unfortunate beings, leaves but slender expectation that you will now succeed in changing their predatory habits for those of a more industrious nature – whilst their restless character would seem to render it extremely difficult to confine them to any particular limits within the Colony, supposing even it were found possible to induce them to consent to such a restraint on their natural freedom. Any experiment, however, which might put a stop, although bur for a time, to that system of injurious treatment which has distinguished the proceedings of the Europeans towards these people, or may prevent the recurrence of those fatal measures of retaliation, which are so frequently resorted to by the latter, deserves serious attention, as well for the honour of humanity, as for the Interests of those Settlers whose Lands may be exposed to their depredations. I have, therefore, to approve of your following up the plans which you have it in contemplation to pursue, with a view to this desirable object, and I have only to impress upon you the necessity, on the one hand, of pursuing your plans with caution, and in the spirit of the utmost kindness, lest the Natives should look upon the attempt to confine their limits as an additional grievance, in proportion to which feeling, the difficulties will be enhanced of effecting their Civilization; and, on the other, of not authorizing any greater expense to be incurred, in carrying the plans which you have suggested into execution, than may be absolutely necessary for that purpose. 1754 804 Huskisson to Arthur, 5 July 1828. Arthur to Darling, 18 November 1829. Arthur repeated his request for more military support in a letter to Governor Darling, where he pressed the need to protect colonists from the continued atrocities of its Aboriginal Inhabitants: He continued the fiction that his attempts at reconciliation had failed. For Arthur, reconciliation involved removing or expelling Aboriginals from the ‘settled districts, a process that had failed dismally, so he now had to justify his failure as: the hostile spirit of the Aborigines has hitherto resisted an anxiety to bring about a cordial reconciliation, and their movements have baffled all our efforts to take or expel them from the settled Districts. He did little to protect the Palawa from the colonists, which was the primary source of the conflict. He clearly understood the source of the conflict The circumstances, under which Van Diemen's Land has been Colonized, and the extended and scattered manner, in which the Settlers have located their grants, necessarily require a large force to protect them from their double foe, Bushrangers and Aboriginal Natives. but was unprepared for a fair solution, relying on the one-sided use of military force I will by every means in my power endeavour to protect the Settlers with the Troops which shall remain; but, whilst scarcely a day now elapses without some White person being either murdered or most severely wounded, it is quite impossible for me to represent that any Troops can be withdrawn without considerable apprehension of the consequences. In the end, Arthur showed a lack of impartiality and this racial bias resulted in genocide, in targeted destruction for the purest of indictable motives, ‘us against them’ to protect the pursuit of profit. Once again, we see Arthur’s attempts to shore up his failing administration, where he is being besieged by settler and Aboriginal alike. Eventually, as we will discover, Arthur’s attempt at a military solution failed, and he was forced to resort to other paramilitary measures: the arming of convicts, the conscription of civilians in a ‘levée en masse’, the engagement of the civil authorities, the use of ‘roving parties’, the arming of convicts, the payment of bounties, the re-approval for settlers to use deadly force. These backfilling strategies had the advantage that they involved superior numbers of personnel, and it was through sheer numbers that Arthur was to prevail over the Palawa, inducing them in a ‘friendly mission’ to surrender for their ‘protection’. Sir, Government House, 18th November, 1829. I am conscious your Excellency is very desirous to send on the last Division of the 40th Regiment to India, and, under exigencies of this Country, I am greatly indebted to you for the consideration you have manifested in delaying the departure of this Force. I have already had the honor to apprise Your Excellency that the exigencies of this Country, arising out of the continued Atrocities of its Aboriginal Inhabitants, have been so great as to have required the most active aid from the Military Force to protect the Lives and Property of the British Subjects settled in the Interior. I wish it were in my power to state that the animosity of these Savages was abated and that, with a prudent regard to the public safety, a diminution of our Force was practicable. The circumstances, under which Van Diemen's Land has been Colonized, and the extended and scattered manner, in which the Settlers have 805 located their grants, necessarily require a large force to protect them from their double foe, Bushrangers and Aboriginal Natives. The Police of the Country is now so far organized that prisoners absconding are suddenly apprehended; but then this Force is greatly indebted for its efficiency to the imposing countenance it receives from the Military Stations; the hostile spirit of the Aborigines has hitherto resisted an anxiety to bring about a cordial reconciliation, and their movements have baffled all our efforts to take or expel them from the settled Districts. The most I can venture to state in this situation respecting the last Division of the 40th Regiment is that, if Your Excellency deems their Embarkation for India of urgent necessity, I will by every means in my power endeavour to protect the Settlers with the Troops which shall remain; but, whilst scarcely a day now elapses without some White person being either murdered or most severely wounded, it is quite impossible for me to represent that any Troops can be withdrawn without considerable apprehension of the consequences. I greatly fear it is hopeless to anticipate that another Regiment can be spared for this Colony; but I trust Your Excellency will point out the necessity of sending out the Depot Companies of the 63 Regiment, and relieving the Detachment of that Corps at Swan River by some Troops either from the Cape or the Isle of France. I have, &c., GEO. ARTHUR.1755 Darling to Lord Fitzroy Somerset, 17568 December 1829. Later that same year, Darling conveyed Arthur’s request to Somerset and confirms that he has sent more troops to Tasmania. It would not be enough. My Lord, Government House, 8th December, 1829. I have the honor to transmit, for the information of General Lord Hill Commanding in Chief, the Copy of a Letter which I have received from Lieut. Governor Arthur, commanding in Van Diemen's Land, on the subject of the Military Force allotted for the protection of that Colony. I had given orders, previous to the receipt of Lieut. Governor Arthur's Letter, for the embarkation of the last Division of the 40th Regiment, consisting of about 180 Rank and File, and, having already taken up a Ship for their conveyance to Bombay, it is not my intention to countermand the orders which have been given. The Garrison, which I had allotted for Van Diemen's Land, 1829, was the 63rd Regiment, and 100 Men of the 57th, the Head Quarters of which are in this Colony; but I have lately understood, though not officially, that a large Detachment of the 63rd for Tasmania, has been sent from England to the Western Coast of Australia with Lieut. Governor Stirling. The Force, intended for Van Diemen's Land, would, in the event of that Detachment being continued, be reduced in proportion to the Number of which it may consist. Being aware of the pressing nature of the demand for Troops at Home, and the difficulty of providing them under present circumstances, it is with extreme reluctance that I am induced to bring the subject of Lieut. Governor Arthur's Application under the 806 consideration of the General Commanding in Chief, and to request that, as the state of Van Diemen's Land appears to render an addition to the Garrison necessary, that the Depot Companies of the 63rd Regiment may be ordered out.1757 Through the 1820s, British Government policy was to promote rapid colonization in Tasmania. Racial violence increased in proportion to the incursions of the ‘settlers’, creating a demand for armed protection by the colonists. Palawa resistance to the British invasion quickly led to a militarisation of the conflict, with Britain bringing line regiments into the developing war as a counter-insurgency measure. These regiments, in order of progressive deployment, were: Line Regiment Period of Deployment 40th (2nd Somersetshire) Regiment of Foot 1824 to 1829 th 1825 to 1832 rd 63 (West Suffolk) Regiment of Foot 1829 to 1833 17th (Leicestershire) Regiment of Foot 1830 to 1836 57 (West Middlesex) Regiment of Foot Figure 256 Line Regiment ‘counter-insurgency’ deployment in Tasmania (1824 – 1836)1758 For the period of Arthur’s administrative term from 1824 his actions against the Palawa became increasingly draconian and one-sided, although he continued to mention ‘conciliation’ in his orders and despatches, more as a palliative than having any real substance. We can see the process of genocide being played out before us, with evidentiary events a matter of record. There is no other reasonable construction on these patterned and planned actions than genocide, targeted destruction, although some apologists continue to argue Arthur was a humanitarian with Christian ideals. The reality speaks otherwise. What happened in Tasmania (as we will progressively show) was a textbook case of genocide, motivated by British ideology (colonial Imperialism) and racism (a belief in the superiority of Britain to Indigenous races). Arthur intentionally planned and connived to commit ethnic cleansing, as we will see, but he had to get the support of key stakeholders: the colonists, the Executive Committee, the Aborigines Committee and the British Colonial Office. He did not regard the support of Aboriginals as a consideration for occupying the land. This fatal (or practical) oversight opened the door to genocide. He did not consider the Palawa as stakeholders at all, merely an impediment to Britain’s expansionary colonization programme, which he was determined to sustain under orders from Britain. He may have felt himself swept up in events outside his control, but in reality, they were events of his own making; and as a military officer, he was loathe to back down for a few ‘miserable savages’. Nor did he. 807 We will examine how Arthur went about securing stakeholder support, how he made them co-conspirators, the settlers, the military, the Colonial Office, the British Government, and how he subsequently executed his Aboriginal removal policy, a euphemism for extermination, ethnic cleansing and genocide. His primary motivation? He did not want to upset his ‘settler’ constituency, which, should it happen, might have had disastrous consequences for his future career. Like political parties today putting economic and border security front and centre of their policies while responding to voter demands (or risk losing office), Arthur did the same around two hundred years ago. We can ignore or dismiss the reassuring words from some commentators that the genocidal consequences of Arthur’s policies were unintended, based on randomly excised quotes from despatches that remove the context, allowing the criticism of interlocutory apprehended bias. In Arthur’s self-interested and – as will become evident - carefully planned actions, Aboriginal ethnic cleansing and genocide comprised a sustained and deliberate campaign over many years, at least ten, but it showed a consistent and calibrated pattern of disregard for Aboriginal rights, the enduring belief that colonists’ rights must be protected, that the Palawa were deluded to think that they owned their traditional country, that their resistance would not be tolerated, and even made unlawful under British law. Imperial Britain did not understand, or refused to accept, that ‘an abased race’ might not wish to gratefully accept the benefits of civilization and Christian education in exchange for the loss of their land and culture. Arthur’s removal of the Palawa inhabitants of Tasmania – ethnic cleansing - was a process of connected and planned events, often supplemented by armed force (as needed) and a disregard for the law (as it existed), a law that rejected Palawa prior occupation of Tasmania and ignored any Indigenous land entitlements. In his actions, his culpable pattern of behaviour, Arthur was almost always supported by the British Government. And if they did not support him, Arthur was not above disobedience, although the British Government deliberately went to some lengths to expunge this from the official House of Commons record, for fear of embarrassing the parties. Aboriginals could not ‘vote’ or exercise any Government pressure as a constituency, so they had little influence over their fate. For Britain, Aboriginals did not effectively exist. They were precluded from owning land. They were a people without rights. Under martial law (and informally before) they had also lost the right to exist as a race; their lives could be snatched away, and their families broken apart without consequence. British Law was found wanting. But genocide usually rewrites what is lawful, and it was no different in Tasmania. 808 Arthur’s genocidal timeline (1824 – 1831) All connected sets of events are connected through some purpose or policy. The British objective was to expand the rate of colonization and, should Aboriginals inevitably resist their displacement, provide enhanced military protection for the colonists to complete the ethnic cleansing process, the targeted removal of the Palawa that too often used the defining methods of genocide. Once genocide is in play, all other behaviours tend to become subordinate, like seeding a cloud with silver iodide to produce rain. There is the equivalent of a relatively abrupt phase change that affects the collective entity, whether a body of water vapour or white settler society. There is no going back, not without great difficulty. Genocide becomes syncretic. Being connected, the genocidal events have a timeline, and this is the evidentiary timeline from 1824 to 1831 in Tasmania. As we read the timeline, we will see the inevitable and almost predictable forward momentum of Arthur’s campaign, of his one-sided actions as the Lieutenant-Governor and senior military commanding officer, for which the genocidal consequences were completely intended. Arthur intended to remove the Palawa, or at least force their surrender through an overwhelming armed response by the military, by colonists, by legalised homicide and what we now know as Lemkinian genocide, but then was simply called extermination, extirpation, kidnapping, and a refusal to uphold the law for all targeted inhabitants caught up in the State driven process of armed occupation and Indigenous dispossession. Some researchers argue that Aboriginal genocide was unintended, that Arthur was fumbling around for a means to stop Aboriginal resistance, that he was responding to ‘settler’ demands for increased military protection as they continued their invasion, but when we consider these Government communications they read as a racist disregard for Aboriginal rights and we conclude that Arthur was pursuing a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing, while tempering his actions with meaningless words of ‘conciliation’, meaningless because he completely failed to uphold the law for the Palawa, never once prosecuting a white for sexual predation, kidnapping, bodily violence or culpable homicide. Indeed, Aboriginal homicide became expected, with Arthur’s increasingly intransigent response to Aboriginal resistance culminating in martial law where ethnic killings were legalised, a step supported by Arthur’s superiors and the colonists. It is tempting to defend, as some commentators have done, the actions of Arthur and Britain as appropriate for the time, that to criticize them is to invite the charge of reflexivity, that we cannot, should not, judge past actions based on current standards of reasonable ethical and lawful conduct. But this is to ignore that Britain chose its path of indictable behaviour knowing that the Palawa population would be sacrificed to British economic and geopolitical aspirations. 809 For colonial Britain and its administrators, the projection of Imperial power had a louder voice than the objections of a few ‘primitive and debased’ Natives. And if the Palawa should die from their ‘unlawful’ resistance, it was better that they die quickly, in one determined assault, for the common good of Britain. Their blood could quickly be washed away, and their deaths forgotten. Date Communication Type Summary 23 June 1824 Proclamation Arthur proclaims ‘the Natives of this island being under the protection of the same laws which protect the settlers, every violation of those laws in the persons or property of the Natives shall be visited with the same punishment as though committed on the person or property of any settler’.1759 No white was ever prosecuted but, under the Proclamation, Aboriginals could legally be shot in defence of life and property, which allowed the cycle of violence to continue unchecked. 13 September 1826 Government Notice of Aboriginal hanging Arthur hangs two natives as an example to their fellows. Aboriginals are outraged at the lack of procedural fairness. His Excellency is particularly desirous that magistrates and settlers generally shall impress on the minds of their servants, the necessity for preserving a good understanding with this ignorant race.1760 Arthur naively assumed that Aboriginals would view the hangings as just and fair, that they would accept his judgment and authority. 29 November 1826 Government Notice to oppose ‘force with force’, following Bathurst’s edict to Darling ‘If it should be apparent that there is a determination on the part of one or more of the native tribes to attack, rob, or murder the white inhabitants generally, any person may arm, and, joining themselves to the military, drive them by force to a safe distance, treating them as open enemies’.1761 The edict legitimised the use of lethal force. 29 November 1827 Government Notice Arthur requests all magistrates ‘that the black Natives may be driven from the settled districts, which has now become a measure of indispensable necessity, as they cannot by 810 conciliating means be induced to retire from them’ and that ‘sufficient troops to give confidence to the inhabitants will be at the disposal of the civil power in every district’. Ethnic cleansing begins. British law becomes racist in its application. The protection of the settlers therefore calls for the prompt exertions of the civil power to put an end to these acts of barbarity.1762 29 November 1827 Garrison Orders Arthur deploys the military around the ‘settled districts’ to aid the civil powers. No protection is offered to the Palawa. Several murders having been recently committed by the aboriginal Natives upon the detached settlers and stock-keepers in different parts of the interior of the island, and the civil power having represented the necessity of military aid for their protection, two subalterns, two serjeants, and 30 rank and file, of the 40th Regiment, will march from head quarters on Saturday morning next, at six o’clock, on this service.1763 10 January 1828 Arthur to Viscount Goderich Arthur proposes settling the Aboriginals on the northeast coast (with minimal expenditure). The British Government was under budgetary pressure to manage colonization costs. The measure which I rather incline to attempt, is to settle the Aborigines in some remote quarter of the island, which should strictly be reserved for them, and to supply them with food and clothing, and afford them protection from injuries by the stockkeepers, on condition of their confining themselves peaceably to certain limits, beyond which if they pass, they should be made to understand they will cease to be protected. With this view I caused a letter to be addressed to the Commissioners of Lands, directing them to point out some eligible district in which the trial may be made.1764 What an extraordinary statement to make: that he will not offer the protection of the law if Aboriginals should move out of a designated area. Nevertheless, Arthur quickly resiled from this option, when colonists made it clear that no part of 811 Tasmania should be ceded to the original inhabitants. 15 April 1828 Proclamation Aboriginals will be prevented by armed force from remaining in the ‘settled districts’, although they can travel across them. A line of military posts will surround the ‘settled districts’.1765 17 April 1828 Arthur to Huskisson Arthur informs Huskisson that he no longer believes he can give up one district to the Palawa. He informs Huskisson of his Proclamation. 1766 21 April 1828 Brigade-Major to Officers on Detachments ‘to remove the Aborigines from the settled districts by force’. The ethnic cleansing policy is given enhanced military support. Detachments of the 40th and 57th Regiments are deployed.1767 5 July 1828 Arthur to Huskisson Arthur reassures Huskisson ‘there is nothing, I would repeat, to be apprehended from the Natives to excite your alarm, or to check emigration’.1768 Here Arthur is confirming that Britain’s priority is expanded emigration (and corresponding land alienation). 24 August 1828 Brigade-Major’s Office In consequence of the renewed hostilities of the Aboriginal Natives, and the murders recently committed on the inhabitants of the interior, the Colonel Commanding deems it necessary to augment the military detachments for the purpose of strengthening the out-stations.1769 30 September 1828 Brigade-Major to Captain Walpole Orders that ‘the military are sent out for the protection of the inhabitants’ in aid of the civil power, ‘in case it may be found necessary to remove the Aborigines from the settled districts by force’. Orders that a police officer must accompany any military party, to represent the civil power.1770 30 October 1828 Executive Council minutes Council complains that Aboriginal attacks continue on the ‘settlers’. Arthur requests the Council to advise ‘what other measures should be resorted to by the Government for the protection of the settlers’.1771 812 31 October 1828 Executive Council minutes Council recommends that martial law be continued, but limited to the ‘settled districts’, through ‘the combined operation of the troops and armed settlers’, in order to ‘inspire them with terror’. Admits that ‘there are no means of communicating with them.’ 1772 At no time does Arthur send out the police and military to protect the Aboriginals. Martial Law was for the ‘protection’ of ‘settlers’ only. 1 November 1828 Proclamation of Martial Law Arthur extends Martial Law to most of the island, including the southeast Tasman’s Peninsula, the west and northeast.1773 1 November 1828 Notice of Proclamation to judiciary, police and military officers ‘it is hoped, by energetic and decisive measures, and by punishing the leaders in the atrocities which have been perpetrated, that an end will be put to the lawless and cruel warfare which is now carrying on, and which must terminate in the total annihilation of the Natives’. The Palawa were unaware of the Proclamation. No one told them. 1 November 1828 Arthur to magistrates ‘you will have the goodness to transmit to the Colonial Secretary weekly reports of your operations, and therein to state very minutely what steps you may have taken for opening a conciliatory intercourse and arrangement with the tribes, or of compelling them to abandon the settled districts’. 1774 1 November 1828 Brigade Major to Lieutenant Oliver ‘the military are sent out for the protection of the inhabitants, and in aid of the civil power’1775 3 November 1828 Brigade Major to officers on detachment Repeats the earlier Notice (1st November) and reiterates that the Government does not seek ‘the destruction of the Aborigines’. 1776 Nevertheless, the roving/pursuing parties killed many Aboriginals (see Batman, et al). The instruction was issued by J. Montagu, Major of Brigade, and a member of the Executive Council, where he also filled in as Colonial Secretary when Burnett was ill. 4 November 1828 Arthur to Murray Arthur advises that ‘the Natives renewed their hostile attacks’ and that he is 813 compelled to issue a Proclamation of Martial Law, which he hopes it ‘will be the means of putting a speedy stop, without much bloodshed’. 1777 11 December 1828 Government Notice 16 ‘It has become necessary, in consequence of the repeated incursions of the Aborigines, to extend the military out-posts to remote stations’.1778 12 December 1828 Garrison Order No. 4, 17 ‘detachments should be instructed to be constantly on search, and by forming themselves into parties of eight or ten each, with provisions for 14 or 16 days at a time’.1779 2 January 1829 Circular 18 from Colonial Secretary to magistrates ‘Mr Gilbert Robertson will have charge of a roving party of 10 or 12 men, to be employed in the capture of the Aborigines’1780 20 February 1829 Murray to Arthur Murray expresses concern that ‘conciliatory measures’ have failed; and surprise that Aboriginals believe they have ‘their own rights over the country’. This single statement reveals the irreducible source of the ethnic violence: Britain would not tolerate Palawa land rights.1781 4 March 1829 Government Notice No. 49, Colonial Secretary’s Office In furtherance of the Lieutenant-Governors anxious desire to ameliorate the condition of the Aboriginal inhabitants of this territory, his Excellency will allow a salary of 50l. per annum, together with rations, to a steady person of good character, who can be well recommended, who will take an interest in effecting an intercourse with this unfortunate race, and reside upon Bruné Island, taking charge of the provisions supplied for the use of the Natives of that place.1782 25 August 1829 Murray to Arthur Murray: ‘you have found yourself compelled, as the only mode of preserving the lives of His Majesty’s subjects, to resort to the extreme measure of proclaiming martial law’. Murray approves the Proclamation, while lamenting ‘the ineffectual efforts which you have used to establish a friendly intercourse 814 between the white population and the native tribes’. Murray requests a copy of all Government Notices sent to the judiciary, police and military on this ‘most interesting question’.1783 4 September 1829 Garrison Orders No. 20 Contains further troop deployment orders for the 57th and 63rd Regiments. As it appears by the reports of last week that the Aboriginal Natives have in no degree relaxed in their outrages upon the settlers and their assigned servants, it is of urgent importance that the officers on detachment should zealously enter into the measures which are now pursuing by the parties employed in this service by the civil power; and the Colonel Commanding hopes they will afford the most effectual cooperation in constantly visiting their out-stations, minutely inquiring into the conduct of the men, and exhorting them by every possible means to display that combination of zeal, forbearance and temperance, on this occasion, which is the true characteristic of good soldiers acting for the protection of a community. 1784 11 September 1829 Circular to Magistrates The obligation of protecting the Colonists having impelled the Government to adopt more energetic measures for checking the continued atrocities of the Aborigines1785 15 September 1829 Garrison Order 22 ‘the atrocities of the aboriginal Natives, of which the Colonel Commanding continues to receive the most unpleasant reports from all parts of the island, have rendered it essential that the police magistrates should, in their several districts, adopt some still more energetic steps than have yet been pursued. With this view an additional constabulary force, consisting of seven parties, has been attached , to aid the Fieldpolice in the especial service of pursuing the Native tribes, and of driving them from the settled districts, if it be not possible to surround and capture them’. Arthur was deploying all his available manpower, both military and civilian, but even this was proving inadequate against an agile foe. He therefore exhorted that ‘every officer and soldier in this Colony must feel 815 that his own individual efforts are essential towards the general security’, to support the civil power, which included armed convicts. 1786 5 February 1830 Town Adjutant to Captain Vicary The Colonel Commanding considers that by your strongly cautioning the men on the out-posts that they cannot be too circumspect in not being seen by day, and that they ought to remain quiet in the huts as much as possible, it would enable them to capture some of them, for otherwise it is quite hopeless to think of surprising the Natives.1787 19 February 1830 Government Order No. 1 Arthur repeatedly advised his superiors that all his attempts at ‘conciliation’ had failed, without mentioning what those measures were. Arthur’s actions suggest that Arthur believed ‘conciliation’ meant a show of armed strength to force Aboriginals into accepting their subjugation to a superior civilization. Other than military counter-insurgency actions, Arthur further advertises: ‘The Lieutenant Governor is prepared to offer a handsome reward to any individual who shall effect a successful intercourse with any tribe.’ The offer was taken up by GA Robinson. Arthur continues: ‘No opportunity should be lost to draw any tribe into terms of conciliation; and no effort should be spared to expel those who will not be conciliated from the settled districts, where they still continue to practise the utmost perfidy and inhumanity, for the purpose of accomplishing the destruction of the white inhabitants, or to plunder the habitations’.1788 25 February 1830 Government Order No. 2 ‘The parties employed in aid of the police will be augmented; and in order to stimulate them to increased activity, the LieutenantGovernor has directed, that a reward of 5l. shall be given for every adult Aboriginal Native, and 2l. for every child, who shall be captured, and delivered alive at any one of the police stations.’1789 816 19 March 1830 Report of the Aborigines Committee (the minutes of evidence were documented on 23rd February 1830) The Committee identified that expansionary colonization caused the racial conflict ‘as the white population spread itself more widely over the island, and the settlers came more frequently in contact with the Natives, many outrages were committed’, but did not propose stopping the rate of emigration or land alienation. Among its recommendations: attacks are easily repelled where parties are on their guard, and show a determination to resist force by force; and attempts on dwelling houses as the certainty they would encounter resistance, and a few instances of their incurring a severe chastisement in retaliation for their predatory attacks’. That is, Aboriginals should be killed as a show of strength. The Committee also recommended that roving parties, mounted police, and field police (comprising convicts) be augmented under the orders of police magistrates. Their argument: Aboriginal blood must be spilled to ‘prevent the effusion of blood’ and to protect life and property, but ‘the main effort should be directed to capture the Natives alive and unhurt.’ The Committee did not think it necessary to offer protection to the Aboriginals or provide them with their own country, free from molestation and settler incursions. Britain continued to believe that it was sufficient compensation for Aboriginal dispossession that they lead the Natives ‘into the paths of civilization’.1790 15 April 1830 Arthur to Murray Arthur advises Murray ex post facto that he has appointed an Aborigines Committee ‘to consider what measures it would be necessary to collect the most ample information, and to consider what measures it would be necessary to pursue’. Arthur blames Aboriginal hostility on ‘lawless convicts who have, from time to time, absconded, together with the distant convict stock-keepers in the interior, and the sealers employed in remote parts of the coast, have, from the earliest period, acted with great inhumanity towards the black Natives, particularly in seizing their women’. Arthur attaches no blame to the ‘settlers’ whom he 817 describes as kind and humane, while the Aboriginals are ‘a most treacherous race’. In establishing the Committee, Arthur is attempting to shore up colonists’ support for his ethnic cleansing policy, should the Colonial Office raise objections. Arthur requests Murray to provide 2,000 convicts to protect settlers in remote areas. Arthur mentions that he has employed George Robinson on an ‘embassy of conciliation’ to capture the Natives he finds, because they ‘are wearied with the harassing life they have endured for a considerable time past’.1791 15 April 1830 Arthur to Murray (attachments) Schedule of Government and Garrison Orders, Notices, Proclamations and Letters relative to the Natives for the period 25 June 1824 to 25 February 1830. Includes the notice dated 4 March 1829, for ‘a salary of 50l. to be allowed a steady person who will endeavour to effect an intercourse with the Aborigines’.1792 Arthur complains to Murray that ‘the Military strength under my command is, I submit, inadequate to the protection of the Colony’, and he requests the deployment of a detachment of the 63rd Regiment from the Swan River. He also requests ‘at once that two thousand convicts might be assigned away, if they are at all a useful class of men, and by distributing them principally among the settlers in the most remote parts of the Colony, very great protection would be afforded at a very trifling expense to the Government’.1793 23 April 1830 Murray to Arthur Murray asked Arthur what steps you may have taken for bringing to trial the Persons implicated in this Affair, that is, prosecuting the perpetrators of the 1828 Emu Bay massacre. Murray advised Arthur Nothing, I am certain, will tend more effectually to check the Evil than to bring before a Court of Justice any person who may have been instrumental to the death of a native, in order that the case may undergo as full an investigation as circumstances may allow. 1794 Arthur was thrown into consternation, because he had done nothing to uphold 818 British law where a white committed homicide.. 19 August 1830 Government Notice No. 160 (Enclosure No. 1) ‘a less hostile disposition towards the European inhabitants has been manifested by some of the aboriginal Natives of this Island, with whom Captain Welsh and Mr. G. A. Robinson have succeeded in opening a friendly intercourse’.1795 Arthur was urging ‘conciliation’ but was forced by the colonists to change tack in Notice 166. August 1830 marked a critical turning point for Arthur’s war. 20 August 1830 Government Notice No. 161 The Lieutenant-Governor has learned with much regret, that the Government Order, No. 2, of the 25th February last, offering certain rewards for the capture of the Aborigines, appears in some recent instances to have been misapprehended 1796 27 August 1830 Government Notice No. 166 (Enclosure No. 2) Any wanton attack against the inoffensive tribes on the west and south-west districts of the colony, or against the tribes inhabiting the adjacent islands, or against any Aborigines who manifest a disposition to conciliate and to surrender themselves, will undoubtedly be vigorously prosecuted; but it is not expected, much less required, that the settlers are calmly to wait in their dwellings to sustain the repeated and continued attacks of the tribes, who are manifesting such a rancorous and barbarous disposition as has characterized their late proceedings. They are, by every possible means, to be captured, or driven beyond the settled districts.1797 27 August 1830 Executive Council minutes (Enclosure No. 3) ‘the Council, after fully deliberating upon the subject, is of the opinion, that all the events which have happened since the Council advised His Excellency to proclaim martial law, and to drive the Aboriginal Natives out of the settled districts, have only tended to confirm the Council in its opinion of the actual necessity of such a measure; and it regrets that the force which has hitherto been at His Excellency’s disposal for that purpose has not been sufficient to effect it’. It then recommends what became known as Arthur’s ‘Black Line’: ‘in such a state of 819 things, it appears to the Council that the time is now arrived when it has become absolutely necessary that some vigorous effort, upon a more extended scale than has hitherto been practicable, should be made for expelling these miserable people forthwith from the settled districts’.1798 9 September 1830 Government Order No. 9 (Enclosure No. 4) ‘the Lieutenant-Governor, therefore, calls upon every settler, whether residing on his farm, or in a town, who is not prevented by some overruling necessity, cheerfully to render his assistance, and to place himself under the direction of the police magistrate of the district in which his farm is situated’1799 22 September 1830 Government Order No. 11 (Levée en masse, or ‘black line’) (Enclosure No. 5) ‘the community being called upon to act en masse on the 7th October next, for the purpose of capturing those hostile tribes of the Natives which are daily committing renewed atrocities upon the settlers’.1800 1 October 1830 Martial Law Proclamation (Enclosure No. 6) ‘martial law is and shall continue to be in force against all the black or aboriginal Natives within every part of this island, (whether exempted from the operation of the said Proclamation or not), excepting always such tribes, or individuals of tribes, as there may be reason to suppose are pacifically inclined, and have not been implicated in any of such outrages’.1801 5 November 1830 Murray to Arthur Despatch No. 43 (Received 9 May 1831) ‘It does not appear of much importance at the present moment to inquire further as to the quarter from whence the first aggressions have proceeded, although I fear that it is too evident, from the information obtained upon this point by the Committee, that the provocation has principally originated with the white people’. Murray encourages Arthur ‘to impress on the settlers the necessity of relying, more than they have been accustomed to do, upon their own exertions for protection’. This is an expense saving measure for Murray. He goes on to predict: ‘the great decrease which has of late years taken place in the amount of the Aboriginal population, render it not unreasonable to apprehend that the whole race of these 820 people may, at no distant period, become extinct’. Murray then goes on: ‘you have proposed, as a means of mitigating the evil complained of, that an increased number of Convicts should be sent out to Van Diemen’s Land, & that the Detachment of the 63rd Regiment, at present at Swan River, should be withdrawn from thence, & be ordered to join the main body of that Corps at Van Diemen’s Land. On the first of these points, your wishes will, if possible, be complied with. 1802 20 November 1830 Arthur to Murray Despatch No. 42 ‘notwithstanding the united efforts of the government and the respectable part of the community, to conciliate the Natives, they continued to show the most rancorous and determined spirit of hostility to the white people’. Arthur mentions ‘Mr. Batman, who has taken the most lively interest in conciliating these wretched people, and has been one of the few who supposed that they might be influenced by kindness’, without informing Murray that Batman had a horrific reputation for killing. Arthur discloses his ‘Black Line’ strategy, commenced on the 4th October, but unsuccessful, to drive Aboriginals into ‘the south-east quarter, containing many thousand acres of most unprofitable soil for Europeans, is well suited for the purpose of savage life, abounding in game, I have entertained strongly the opinion that it might be practicable to drive the savages into that portion of the territory, and that there they might be retained, as it is connected only by a very narrow neck, which might be guarded.’1803 20 November 1830 Memorandum, Arthur (regarding the failure of the ‘black line’) (Enclosure No. 7) ‘the mode which had for the last two years been adopted for expelling the Natives from the settled districts, or preventing their hostile incursions, by the establishment of military posts, or for capturing them by means of a few parties who were made to rove incessantly in the districts where they were likely to be found, had proved quite unavailing as a general security.’ It restates: ‘the only remaining means of remedying the evil, with a due regard to 821 humanity towards the Natives, was to drive them to a peninsula in which they could be confined by a small force occupying its isthmus, and then induce them to surrender without bloodshed’, but concludes ’a general discouragement took place, from the circumstance of no Natives having been for some days seen in front, which induced the belief that they had escaped through the sentries unobserved’.1804 1 January 1831 Arthur to Murray (at this time, Arthur was unaware that Goderich had replaced Murray) ‘I regret to report that the measures which I had the honour to lay before you terminated without the capture of either of the Native Tribes; but there is reason to believe, from the decisive operations of the Government, and of the community generally, have had the effect of deterring them in a great measure from their usual aggressions’.1805 4 February 1831 Report of the Aborigines Committee ‘The first subject of their enquiry was, to ascertain how far Mr. Robinson had succeeded in the main and principal objects of his mission, viz. the opening an amicable intercourse and friendly communication with the whole of the black population of this island. The Committee feel great pleasure in testifying their opinion, that Mr. Robinson has, in a great measure, accomplished this object’[...] ‘He appears to have acquired a competent knowledge of their language, enabling him to converse with them, and to explain the kind and pacific intentions of the government and the settlers generally towards them’.[...] ‘Mr. Robinson appears also to have gained the confidence of the Natives to such an extent that several of the most hostile class have put themselves under his protection, and he feels confident of the possibility of effecting the voluntary removal of the entire black population, which he is of opinion is not more than 700 in number’. The Committee then discussed a suitable island in Bass Strait for their detention, and decided on Gun Carriage Island, about two miles long and 1 ½ miles wide, where they would not have to be restrained and where they would be less likely to “feel discontented and pine away”. 822 The Committee recommended that Robinson be paid a salary of 250l. per annum with a further sum of 100l. as a free gift and a large grant of land.1806 12 February 1831 Arthur to Murray ‘Mr. Robinson having returned from his conciliatory mission, the Aborigines Committee have been attentively engaged in receiving his communications and have drawn up a Report of the future measures which they recommend for the protection of the community’.1807 19 February 1831 Government Notice, Colonial Secretary’s Office The Lieutenant-Governor having under consideration the Report of the Aborigines Committee of the 4th instant, detailing the proceedings of Mr GA Robinson on his conciliatory mission to the Aborigines, with a view of opening an amicable intercourse and friendly communication with the whole of the black population of this island, feels great pleasure in notifying, by a public order, that Mt Robinson has, in the opinion of the Committee, accomplished in a great measure the objects of his mission, and that in so doing he has manifested the most daring intrepidity, persevering zeal, and strenuous exertion. Arthur then approved a substantial payment to Robinson, along with a land grant (see later).1808 23 February 1831 Executive Council minutes1809 ‘Mr. Robinson has acquired a sufficient knowledge of their language to explain to the Natives the kind and pacific intentions of the government and the settlers generally towards them.1810 Mr. Robinson appears also to have gained the confidence of the Natives to such an extent that several of the most hostile chiefs have put themselves under his protection, and he feels confident of the possibility of effecting the voluntary removal of the entire black population, by holding out to them the inducements of food, clothing, and protection of the government from the aggressions of sealers and bushrangers.’1811[...] Robinson’s mendacity becomes apparent, when he opines to the Council: ’if the Natives were placed on an island in Basses Straits they would not feel themselves 823 imprisoned there, or pine away in consequence of the restraint, nor would they wish to return to the main land, or regret their inability to hunt and roam about in the manner they had previously done on this island’; but it was an opinion the Council wanted to accept.1812 3 March 1831 Colonial Secretary’s Office (Enclosure No. 2) You will immediately embark on board the cutter “Charlotte”, with the Natives now in Hobart Town, and proceed to Swan Island, where you will receive on board the Natives at that place, and thence repair to Clarke’s Island, where the establishment for the reception of the Natives is to be removed.1813 14 March 1831 Executive Council minutes1814 The Council recommended that the tribes to the west be ‘conciliated’. Because Robinson advised that only about 700 Palawa remained, Arthur ‘could not doubt the propriety as well as the policy of allowing 200 or 300 hostile Natives to be encouraged to proceed with their own consent to any island in the Straits’. Neither Robinson nor the Government told the captives where they would be imprisoned indefinitely.1815 4 April 1831 Arthur to Murray Arthur wrote: ‘you will perceive that the Council unanimously advise the adoption of the recommendation of the Committee, that the 34 Natives whom Mr. Robinson had induced to follow him to Swan Island, should be removed to Gun-Carriage Island [...] and that Mr. Robinson should resume his mission to the Native tribes’; but he noted ‘the Chief Justice does not recommend the adoption of measures tending to induce the Natives in tribes to consent to expatriation’ and recommends ‘that we should strive to negociate with them’.1816 Pedder was overruled. 17 June 1831 Goderich to Arthur Goderich acknowledged ‘a race entitled by the wrongs which they have suffered to much forbearance, even while it is necessary to repel their attacks’. Arthur would have been pleased at Goderich’s praise for ‘the confidence reposed in you by all classes of the inhabitants will enable you to turn to the 824 best account the resources of the Colony, and is the just reward of the zeal and ability which have distinguished your administration of its affairs’. 1817 Clearly, the British Government was not interested in making any concessions of land to the Palawa, or any treaty of any kind. The course was set for continuing genocide, first with Palawa detention, then for the violent, spreading pastoral invasion across Australia, an invasion fuelled by Government land and immigration policies, and ensured by Government force. Rather than learn from its mistakes in Tasmania, Britain and subsequent colonial Governments embraced them as a cook embraces a winning recipe: the principle of ethnic cleansing by armed parties; the refusal to allow Aboriginals to own land; the misuse of the law (disallowing Aboriginal witness testimony, the right to use lethal force to protect ‘property’); the unpunished sexual predation; the kidnapping; the subjugation through apartheid, through the system of detention centres; and finally, the ongoing marginalisation and chronic health problems, the refusal to offer a belated treaty, just as Arthur and Britain refused two hundred years before. Figure 257 Britain's genocidal timeline: 1824 - 1831 Tasmanian genocidal process in summary (1828 – 1831) The genocidal process in Tasmania requires a much larger document than we have here, if we are otherwise to provide something like a Historical Records of Tasmania, so we will focus on some of the important primary records, beginning in 1828 (that set the scene for what was soon to come in focussed ethnic purging by the Government), Arthur’s extraordinary hardening of attitude in 1830 (mirrored by the Colonial Office), and the deliberations of the Executive Council in 1831 regarding the disposition of the surviving Palawa. We have introduced some of these primary sources earlier, as we developed the threads of the various evidentiary arguments, but it is now the time to transcribe some of the key documents in full, to preserve their entire context. The transcriptions include a detailed analysis for each official communication as we look inside Arthur’s mind and motivation, based upon what he said, wrote and did. The documents tell us an appalling story of racism, self-interest, murder, injustice, deceit, insubordination, and an eagerness to censor anything unedifying from the official record. These documents, excluding those involving the proclamations of martial law and the Aborigines’ Committee,1818 are: 825 Communication Date of Communication Précis Arthur to Goderich 10th January 1828 Arthur proposes relocating all Aboriginals to the northeast coast. He did not follow through, instead proclaiming martial law. Government Order No. 2 25 February 1830 Arthur issued an order ‘that a reward of 5l. shall be given for every adult Aboriginal Native, and 2l. for every child, who shall be captured, and delivered alive at any one of the police stations’. The order was misconstrued. Murray to Arthur 23rd April 1830 (received 12th August 1830) Murray instructed Arthur to prosecute those responsible for the 1828 Emu Bay massacre. Arthur was forced to prevaricate. He had no intention to obey the instruction. Instead he enjoined the Executive Council (27th August) to find a way to avoid prosecuting whites. Government Notice No. 160 19th August 1830 Arthur ‘deferred’ carrying out Murray’s instruction; instead he urged that ‘all settlers and others will strictly enjoin their servants cautiously to abstain from acts of aggression against these benighted beings’. Government Notice No. 161 20th August 1830 After offering a bounty for the capture of any Aboriginal (25th February 1830), Arthur was forced to clarify that ‘any wanton attack or aggression against the Natives..the offenders will be immediately brought to Justice and punished’. He did not do so. Government Notice No. 166 27th August 1830 Arthur was forced to clarify (again) that ‘any wanton attack against the inoffensive tribes on the west and south west districts of the Colony ... will undoubtedly be vigorously prosecuted’. Once again, Arthur failed to uphold the law. Executive Council 27th August 1830 The Council considered (and rejected) Murray’s instruction ‘that 826 every person instrumental in the death of a Native should be brought before a Court of Justice’. Instead, the Council supported a ‘call to arms’ for ‘further protection to the settlers’. Arthur could now claim to Murray that his Council had found reasons not to follow Murray’s instruction, thereby avoiding a possible charge of insubordination. ‘Levy en masse’1819 and the ‘Black Line’ October to November 1830 Government Order No. 11 22nd September 1830 The ‘roving parties’ 1828 to 1831 Arthur to Murray 20th November 1830 (received 15th May 1831) Executive Council extract of minutes 23rd February 1831 Government Notice, 19th February 1831 Arthur issued a Government Order that ‘the community being called upon to act en masse on the 7th October next, for the purpose of capturing those hostile tribes of Natives which are daily committing renewed atrocities upon the settlers’. His Order included a detailed plan of military operations, which included ‘roving parties’ and ‘pursuing parties’. On 1st October, he reproclaimed martial law ‘within every part of this island’. By this time, Robinson has captured the first batch of Palawa prisoners and advises the Council he ‘does not think the Natives could now be induced to retire altogether from the settled districts and occupy the unlocated parts of the island’ and ‘that the Natives generally would not object to be removed to an island in Basses Straits’, although there is no evidence that he sought the captives’ view of being imprisoned away from their homelands. It was what the Council wanted to hear. They gave Robinson the job of capturing the remaining Palawa. Colonia Secretary’s Office 827 Colonial Secretary’s Office 3rd March 1831 Executive Council extract of minutes 14th March 1831 Arthur to Murray 4th April 1831 Arthur reconsiders (and again rejects) a treaty because ‘although the respectable class of settlers might be depended upon in maintaining the treaty, it is hopeless to contemplate that it would be observed by their servants’. It is a false argument, made possible only if the rule of law is not upheld, which Arthur has comprehensively failed to do until this point, for fear of upsetting the colonists. Figure 258 The Government documented events of Arthurian genocide. Arthur had revisited the possibility of partitioning the island on several occasions, beginning with a despatch to Lord Goderich in January 1828 where he proposed ‘to settle the Aborigines in some remote quarter of the island’. 1820 Nothing came of it. Colonists objected. They wanted the right to unrestrained occupation of any land they might choose, now and in the future. Partitioning was incompatible with settler expansion across the Island, no matter how remote. They also wanted Aboriginals kept out of the ever expanding ‘settled districts’. Continuing Aboriginal resistance caused demands from the white population for harsher tactics. Aboriginals had no voice in this discussion. Arthur tentatively revisited the partitioning plan in April 1828 in a despatch to Huskisson, after which he issued a Proclamation to separate the Aboriginals from the whites. 1821 As part of his April Proclamation, he built a string of military posts around the ‘settled districts’ and demanded that Aboriginals carry a piece of paper to authorise their passage through the area on their regular migrations. Unsurprisingly, his policy was unsuccessful. Arthur did not give up. In November 1828, he commissioned civilian ‘roving parties’ to act as a paramilitary force against the Palawa and they continued their operations until 1831, in parallel with the military. His earlier April plan for separation resolved itself in a November 1828 proclamation of martial law, together with a September 1830 ‘call to arms’ and an unsuccessful ‘black line’ of colonists, police and military in October and November to attempt the removal (ethnically cleanse) all parts of Tasmania required by the colonists. 828 Arthur was embarrassed by the failure of his ‘black line’, but like the Energizer bunny’ he would not concede defeat. The colonists would not allow it. In 1829, Arthur engaged George Robinson to commence to ‘an intercourse with the blacks’ and in parallel with this ‘friendly mission’ he reproclaimed martial law again in October 1830. There would be no treaty and no partitioning. It was to be winner take all. Genocide would be the footnote to Arthur’s campaign against the Palawa. James Boyce is among those historians who have examined the phases of Aboriginal removal from their Tasmanian homelands. With the November 1828 commencement of martial law1822 in the ‘settled districts’ stoking the violence, Boyce considers the Aboriginal problem (or the problem of Aboriginal existence) that Arthur confronted in 1829. Among Arthur’s potential solutions, Boyce suggests: to partition Tasmania; or to force the Aboriginals into detention on some remote island. 1823 The unfolding chain of decisions and events is more complex, but it was driven by Arthur’s unbending motivation not to make any concessions that might yield some amount of Aboriginal land ownership, although he continued to muse on the possibility, as though to maintain the pretense of impartiality. From 1825 to 1832, when reciprocal violence reached its frenzied peak, with Palawa deaths rocketing, with Aboriginal resistance at its most desperate, Arthur relied heavily on his longserving Executive Council to whom he could turn for a rubber stamp on his proposed ethnic cleansing plans that culminated with a final, determined assault against the Palawa in 1828 and was to last nearly four years. Who were the members of Arthur’s inner circle? There were surprisingly few. They were John Pedder (the Chief Justice from 1824 to 1836), John Burnett (the frequently indisposed Colonial Secretary from 1826 to 1834), and Jocelyn Thomas (Colonial Treasurer from 1825 to 1834). And of course, himself. Jocelyn Thomas 1780 – 1862)1826 John Burnett (1781 – 1860)1824 John Pedder (1793 – 1859)1825 Figure 259 Members of the Executive Council, 1825 - 1832 829 In 1830, Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Logan, commanding officer of the 63rd, was brought into Arthur’s coterie. The Executive Council became a War Council, even as the surviving Palawa were reduced to a few hundred. Arthur did not know, at the time, just how successful his war of extermination had been. Supporting the decisions of the Executive Council was Arthur’s Aborigines Committee, whom he handpicked in December 1829: Archdeacon Broughton, Rev. Bedford, Rev. Norman, P. Mulgrave, Jocelyn Thomas (Colonial Treasurer), James Scott (Colonial Surgeon), Samuel Hill and Charles Arthur. Their role was to gather statements from ‘settlers’ that would give gravitas and urgency for Arthur’s military campaign, should it be questioned by the Colonial Office. No Palawa were interviewed. As we will later see, Arthur was to rely on the Committee’s report when he justified his actions to his superiors, as they were considering ‘the most interesting question’ of how to manage the counter-insurgency. Arthur need not have worried. If the authority of Empire was being challenged, Britain generally approved an unequivocal response that would restore the perception, if not the reality, of British superiority. This superiority expressed itself in the intentional expropriation of all land for the Crown, the forcible removal of Aboriginals from their own country and the protected rise in settler sovereignty. Murray expressed some reservations that Arthur was not impartially administering the rule of British civil law, and Arthur became ‘technically insubordinate’ in his objections to Murray’s instructions, but these potentially embarrassing disagreements were soon airbrushed from the official historical record by the British Government, as we saw earlier. The British militarisation of the ethnic conflict in Tasmania gave colonization a murderously sharp edge. We will pick out some of the important and defining Government communications between 1828 and 1831 that induced shape and structure in Imperial genocidal policy, a policy that rapidly – within a few years - transmogrified into Arthur’s final solution for the Aboriginal problem. Britain would not cede land to the Palawa. The contested space was resolved through force. Britain would not tolerate any Aboriginal resistance to their dispossession. Arthur to Goderich, 10th January 1828 Four years after assuming office as LieutenantGovernor of Tasmania, Arthur was consistently showing evidence of a lack of impartiality. When Palawa resistance began to increase, he was quick to capture and execute two Aboriginals in September 1826 who were alleged to have been involved in the murder of a white, although the circumstances are still disputed. In November he followed up the judicial executions with an edict that settlers could legally ‘oppose force by force’ in protecting their ‘property’, following an 1825 instruction from Bathurst to Darling. 830 With Aboriginal witness testimony disallowed by the motley conglomerate of British jurisprudence that passed itself as the criminal and civil code, it was inevitable that whites would take the law into their own hands without fear of punishment. So they did. Ethnic conflict escalated, further driven by the unrestrained rise in British immigration and the vociferous demand by intending colonists for land, any land, Crown land, land that (until 1832) was granted to any respectable British citizen with sufficient independent capital. Britain would not concede that Aboriginals had any right to the country they once called home. The gender imbalance among the colonists encouraged them to kidnap and misuse Palawa women, leading to a reduced birth-rate and a breakdown of Palawa family structures. Aboriginals could be shot with impunity. For Arthur and Britain, there was one form of civil protection that was paramount: the physical security of the colonists and their property. If the safety and sovereignty of the colonists was threatened, the British administration generally ignored violence of all kinds against Aboriginals, with the frequently expressed belief that the Palawa were a sub-class of humanity who did not require the usual protections. It is a subject to which we will constantly return, as it is the basis for what reared itself as systemic British racism, of a firmly held sense of British superiority and the consequent genocidal behaviour that derived from those collectively held delusions, the hubris of Empire. Arthur consistently wrote about the need to prosecute any white for a ‘criminal act of aggression upon the Aborigines’, and the need for ‘conciliation’, but in practice he did little to uphold the law equally for all races. By his use of the terms ‘conciliation’ and ‘friendly intercourse’, he generally meant that the Palawa should respect his authority and the conferred rights of the colonists or be punished. Arthur’s choice of explicatory and exculpatory words for British violence against the Palawa is interesting. For example, he refers to the 1804 massacre of a large number of Aboriginals by the military at Risdon Cove as an unfortunate step of the officer in command of the garrison on the first forming of the settlement (the officer was never charged), whereas Aboriginal resistance is an ‘outrage’ of an ‘abased’ and ‘abject’ race, and he bemoans (but fails to punish) normalised colonist homicidal behaviour and systemic sexual predation against the Palawa while recognizing: as every kind of injury committed against the defenceless Natives, by the stockkeepers and sealers, with whom it was a constant practice to fire upon them whenever they approached, and to deprive them of their women whenever the opportunity offered. Arthur admits that I have been pressingly called upon the settlers, in several petitions, to adopt some measure which should effectually free them from these troublesome assailants, and this colonist pressure would continue, eventually to cause Arthur to accede to their demands in the interest of his career. 831 By 1830, he had given up all pretense that he cared about Aboriginal rights. He became focussed on his white constituency and their ‘property’ concerns. His government notices began to swing behind the rights of the colonists and to point out how far the settlers would be justified by law in making use of arms to drive off the Natives who should present a hostile front. Arthur is keenly aware that the colonists are dispossessing the Palawa but refuses to curtail or stop the process, which is mandated by British land and emigration policy; but even at this time he is considering, not partition, but forcible Aboriginal removal to island detention. We begin to see how Arthur is enjoining the Colonial Office to become co-conspirators in what was to happen. His superiors became willing participants in the genocidal process: The necessity of taking some decisive step, however, becomes every day more apparent, as the settlers advance on the favourite haunts of the Natives, but I confess I feel the subject exceedingly perplexing. The only remedy which I have heard proposed is, to collect the Natives, and remove them to some Island in the Straits. It is not as though Arthur was blind to the criminal Aboriginal disadvantage imposed by his administration. He knew exactly what their legitimate grievances were but chose to do nothing. Why? His white constituents were more influential with the British Government. Indigenous populations were meant to meekly accept their dispossession: They already complain that the white people have taken possession of their country, encroached upon their hunting grounds, and destroyed their natural food, the kangaroo; and they doubtless would be exasperated to the last degree to be banished altogether from their favourite haunts; and as they would be ill-disposed to receive instruction from their oppressors, any attempt to civilize them, under such circumstances, must consequently fail. Arthur must have consulted with the Palawa, as he reveals the Natives themselves (if they can be induced to remain quiet) would prefer it to any other part, but he quickly withdraws from the idea. Yet it might have avoided the subsequent genocidal catastrophe. Arthur was careful to advise the Colonial Office that in prosecuting the plan I have suggested, only a very limited expenditure will be authorized. For Britain. The expenses of Empire had to be managed down. Arthur makes the Aboriginal problem like a move in a game of chess or like reading a novel, an intriguing intellectual exercise where he attempts to tweak the interest of his superiors with ‘this most interesting and important subject’. Arthur admits that he is under pressure from colonists with their clamour and urgent appeals but concedes all aggression originated with the white inhabitants. Arthur moved back to his first solution, The measure which I rather incline to attempt, is to settle the Aborigines in some remote quarter of the island but his behaviour hardened in the next few years, reacting to colonists’ pressure. Island imprisonment would be his answer, not partitioning. With the Palawa at his mercy after martial law, he did not need to make them any concessions. 832 There would never be peace in colonial Tasmania for as long as Britain’s policies encouraged and condoned Aboriginal dispossession and a one-sided interpretation of British justice, or until the Palawa had been exterminated or forcibly removed. That, sadly, is what happened. It was entirely preventable with a more humanitarian and less avaricious British mindset. Soon after his arrival in Tasmania, Arthur was to become a part of this culture of selfenrichment. My Lord, I have the honour to report to your Lordship, that a more than usual temper of hostility has, within the last six months, manifested itself on the part of the Aborigines of this Colony, and has rendered some active steps for protection necessary, and I fear some still stronger measures will be required. On my succeeding to the government, I found the quarrel of the Natives with the Europeans, occasioned by an unfortunate step of the officer in command of the garrison on the first forming of the settlement, was daily aggravated, by every kind of injury committed against the defenceless Natives, by the stock-keepers and sealers, with whom it was a constant practice to fire upon them whenever they approached, and to deprive them of their women whenever the opportunity offered. I considered it my duty, therefore, to declare by proclamation, that every individual found to have committed any criminal act of aggression upon the Aborigines, should be prosecuted before the Supreme Court. At the same time I enjoined the magistrates and respectable settlers to use every means to conciliate and protect them. The proclamation, I have reason to believe, was not without effect; and I endeavoured still further to cultivate a friendly intercourse, and at least make the attempt to civilize this abased race, on the occasion of the unexpected appearance of a tribe in Hobart Town, by alluring them, with the promise of food and clothing, to repeat their visit. And I had formed the plan of establishing an institution, to which they might resort, in the hope that some might be persuaded to adopt the habits of civilized life. After stopping a few days, however, in the neighbourhood of Hobart Town, the tribe went back to their haunts, and have not again returned; though, to all appearance, they were highly satisfied with the treatment they received, and made it understood that they looked upon the Governor as their protector. It is not a matter of surprise that the injuries, real or supposed, inflicted upon the blacks, have been revenged upon the whites, whenever an occasion presented itself; and I regret to say, that the Natives, led on by a Sydney black, and by two Aborigines of this island, men partially civilized, (a circumstance which augers ill for any endeavour to instruct these abject beings), have committed many murders upon the shepherds and herdsmen in remote situations. And they have latterly assumed so formidable an appearance, and perpetrated such repeated outrages within the settled districts, that I have been pressingly called upon the settlers, in several petitions, to adopt some measure which should effectually free them from these troublesome assailants, and from the nuisance of their dogs, 833 which, originally purloined from the settlers, have increased to such a number as to threaten to become a lasting pest to the country. But it is much easier to complain than to find a cure for the evil, which none of the petitioners have ventured to suggest; and I have not thought proper to do more than afford the protection of some additional parties of police and military, and to point out, by government notices, how far the settlers would be justified by law in making use of arms to drive off the Natives who should present a hostile front. The necessity of taking some decisive step, however, becomes every day more apparent, as the settlers advance on the favourite haunts of the Natives, but I confess I feel the subject exceedingly perplexing. The only remedy which I have heard proposed is, to collect the Natives, and remove them to some Island in the Straits, where there is no want of their accustomed food, and where, by teaching them the aet of cultivating the soil, (in the meantime supplying them with bread), they might provide their own sustenance; and from the necessity which such a situation would impose of becoming stationary, a better chance would be afforded of success to any effort for their civilization. Not to mention the extreme difficulty of this scheme, nothing short of the last necessity could tolerate so great an aggravation of their injuries, as they would unquestionably consider removing them from their native tracts. They already complain that the white people have taken possession of their country, encroached upon their hunting grounds, and destroyed their natural food, the kangaroo; and they doubtless would be exasperated to the last degree to be banished altogether from their favourite haunts; and as they would be ill-disposed to receive instruction from their oppressors, any attempt to civilize them, under such circumstances, must consequently fail. The measure which I rather incline to attempt, is to settle the Aborigines in some remote quarter of the island, which should strictly be reserved for them, and to supply them with food and clothing, and afford them protection from injuries inflicted by the stock-keepers, on condition of their confining themselves peaceably to certain limits, beyond which if they pass, they should be made to understand they will cease to be protected. With this view I caused a letter to be addressed to the Commissioners of Lands, directing them to point out some eligible district in which the trial may be made. The Commissioners have recommended the North East Coast “as being the most advantageous situation for such a purpose,” conceiving “that food can be conveyed by water to that part with the least possible difficulty, and that the Natives themselves (if they can be induced to remain quiet) would prefer it to any other part, frequenting it as they continually do for shellfish, and also on account of its being the best sheltered and warmest part of the island, and remote from the settled districts.” It must be acknowledged that this plan also has its difficulties, which indeed the migratory habits of the Aborigines, and their attachment to their savage mode of life, must attach to any scheme, consistent with humanity, for effectually protecting the settlers from their outrages. But it is but justice to make the attempt, for, notwithstanding the clamour and urgent appeals which are now made to me for the adoption of harsh measures, I cannot divest myself of the consideration that all aggression originated with the white inhabitants, and that therefore much ought to 834 be endured in return before the blacks are treated as an open and accredited enemy by the government. In prosecuting the plan I have suggested, only a very limited expenditure will be authorized, until I am honored with the result of your Lordship’s consideration of this most interesting and important subject.1827 1830: Arthur’s administration in crisis Although Arthur consistently maintained, in his public communications at least, that killing Aboriginals would not be tolerated, in practice he ignored the continuing murders. He punished no one. In December 1829, he hastily brought together an Aborigines’ Committee to gather evidence for his harsh policies under Martial Law; they provided their report in February. In the next few months, he issued a flurry of orders, notices and despatches. In 1830, Arthur was thrashing around for a solution to the Aboriginal insurgency, a problem he and Britain had created. Colonists were demanding action. The Colonial Office was asking questions of his administration. On 12th August 1830, Arthur was thrown into turmoil. Murray, in despatch No. 22, demanded that the murderers of the Aboriginal woman at Emu Bay be prosecuted. Arthur did not know what to do. If he brought the perpetrators to trial, he knew he would face a backlash from the colonists that could end his career. Similarly, if he failed to follow Murray’s instruction, he could be accused of insubordination, which could also end his career. He decided to get support from as many quarters as possible. He asked his Executive Council for advice. But he could not ignore that the Aboriginal woman had her throat cut when she was in detention. In the end, he asked his crown solicitor, Alfred Stephen, for a legal opinion. Stephen’s partial advice to Arthur gave him an expedient excuse to maintain martial law and disobey Murray’s instruction to prosecute anyone who killed an Aboriginal: If the killing of the poor woman be held a crime cognizable by the Common Law, the effect of the Proclamation will be forever afterwards destroyed. Few would with alacrity risk their lives in the pursuit of these now sanguinary people, if aware that for every life destroyed the party taking it might be compelled to answer for it at the risk of their own.’ 1828 Arthur and Stephen deliberately concocted a story for Murray that the woman had been shot while attempting to escape and had died from her wounds. This was ‘lawful’ under Martial Law. If Murray had found out the real story, Arthur’s career may have become terminal. As it happened, he had an unexpected reprieve. Murray was replaced by Goderich on November 22nd. 835 1830 Issuance and flow of communications involving Lieut-Governor Arthur and/or Secretary of State Murray Summary Timeline Government Order No. 1 Because the Aboriginal insurgency is increasing, Arthur admits that his efforts at ‘conciliation’ have failed, although what he means by ‘conciliation’ is that Aboriginals accept their dispossession. He offers a ‘reward’ to ‘any individual who shall effect a successful intercourse with any tribe’ but assures the colonists’ no effort should be spared to expel those who will not be conciliated from the settled districts’. Issued 19 February Government Order No. 2 Arthur offers a bounty of 5l. for every Aboriginal adult and 2l. for every child who is captured alive. He refuses to prosecute those of the roving and pursuing parties who kill any Aboriginal. Issued 25 February Aborigines Committee In August 1829, employees commit a particularly callous murder of an Aboriginal woman at Emu Bay in the northwest. Formed December 1829 In December 1829, Arthur forms an Aborigines Committee to gather evidence against the Aboriginal insurgency, in an attempt to justify harsher methods under Martial Law. The Committee recommends ‘severe chastisement in retaliation for their predatory attacks’, Minutes of evidence 23 February Report to Executive Committee 19 March 836 and that roving parties be augmented. The Committee does not recommend any protection for Aboriginals, or partitioning the island to give Aboriginals more security. Arthur to Murray Plus extensive attachments (3 enclosures, 26 sub-enclosures) including the report of the Aborigines Committee) Despatch 72. Murray approves the 1st November 1828 Despatch 72 Murray to Proclamation of Martial Law,1829 while they lament the Arthur ineffectual efforts which you have used to establish a Sent Received friendly intercourse between the White Population, and 25 August 12 January the Native Tribes, and requests copies of all twelve sets 1829 1830 of directions that Arthur issued to the military. As an addendum, Murray also requests: I should wish to see as early as possible copies of all the circulars or other letters to the Police and other Magistrates relative to the Natives, Obtain also from the Town Adjt the Military Orders mentioned within & any other on the subject¸ Despatch 19 Arthur to Murray Sent 15 April Received 18 September Despatch 19. While gathering data, Arthur delays about three months before replying to Murray (Despatch 72). Government Notice No. 160 Arthur observes that ‘a less hostile disposition towards the European Inhabitants has been manifested by some of the Aboriginal Natives of this Island’ and that ‘the good understanding which has thus happily commenced, should be fostered and encouraged by every possible means’, which Arthur identifies as abstaining ‘from Acts of Aggression against these benighted beings’ by Settlers and their Servants. Arthur encourages the ‘settlers’ to ‘conciliate them wherever it may be practicable’, that ‘no attempt should be made to capture Issued 19 August 837 or restrain them’, and that they should be ‘fed and kindly treated’. The settlers would have none of it, nor did Arthur attempt to dissuade settler violence by the real threat of criminal prosecution. Government Notice No. 161 Issued 20 August Government Notice No. 166 Issued 27 August Executive Council Minutes 27 August Government Order No. 9 Issued 9 September Government Order No. 11 22 September Martial Law Proclamation 1 October Murray to Arthur Despatch No. 43 Despatch 19. Despatch 43. Murray had two choices: resile from Aboriginal dispossession or forcibly continue the occupation process. He chose to enforce the right of Britain to press territorial sovereignty. While writing of ‘an indelible stain upon the character of the British Despatch 19 Arthur to Murray Despatch 43 Murray to Arthur Sent 15 April Sent 5 November Received 12 August Received 9 May 838 Government’, he agreed to send more convicts to act as a paramilitary force. Arthur to Murray plus memorandum Despatch 22. Despatch 42. Arthur advises Murray that he has formed an Aborigines’ Committee to produce a report on ‘this most interesting question’. Arthur misleadingly blames the racial conflict on non-colonists – bushrangers, sealers, stock-keepers - but not the ‘settlers’ or roving/pursuing parties and not the process of forcible dispossession. He requests that Murray send further troops from the 63rd Regiment in Western Australia. He also requests an additional 2,000 convicts to act as a paramilitary force in the more remote districts, which would be ‘a trifling expense to the Government’ (which Murray approves in Despatch 43, while first noting the ‘indelible stain’ of the armed operation against the Palawa on the character of the British Government). Arthur mentions that GA Robinson has been employed on an ‘embassy of conciliation’. He sends Murray a copy of all Orders, Notices, Proclamations for the period 25 th June 1824 to 25th February 1830, as Murray had requested in Despatch 72. Despatch 22 Murray to Arthur Despatch 42 Arthur to Murray Sent 23 April Sent 20 November Received 12 August Received 15 May 1831 Arthur attempts to justify his failures at what he called ‘conciliation’ by writing these miserable beings I make no doubt are wearied with the harassing life they have endured for a considerable time past, and would gladly 839 be reconciled if they knew our real intentions towards them were those of kindness. This was far from the truth. The Palawa insurgency was the direct result of their lands being taken from them by armed force, hardly an act of ‘kindness’. Murray replaced by Goderich 22 November Figure 260 1830 communications flow and the 'tyranny of distance' 840 August 1830, a month of government turmoil August 1830 was a momentous month, a decisive and pivotal month, with official miscommunications, long delays in replies to urgent despatches, (the ‘tyranny of distance’ as Peter Chapman describes it) and anxiously reactive Government responses to the developing crisis, a crisis they had caused, but was now being aggravated by colonist hysteria. It was the month when the colonists turned Government resolve against the Palawa. It was the month when almost all Aboriginals were found to be enemy combatants rather than inhabitants with a legitimate grievance against their violent dispossession. It began, or perhaps ended, with an instruction from Murray. Murray to Arthur, 23rd April 1830. Murrays despatch (in reply to Arthur’s letter of 4th November 1828) was not read in the Executive Council until 27th August 1830, by which time it had already approved some of the measures that Murray had instructed them not to follow, or rather, had already decided not to uphold the law when it came to the murder of Aboriginals, contrary to Murray’s demand. Nevertheless, it caused Arthur great consternation. He had to bring other forces around him, including the Executive Council, to make himself a smaller target of reprimand from the Colonial Office. Murray asked Arthur the reasonable question what steps you may have taken for bringing to trial the Persons implicated in this Affair. Murray concluded Nothing, I am certain, will tend more effectually to check the Evil than to bring before a Court of Justice any person who may have been instrumental to the death of a native, in order that the case may undergo as full an investigation as circumstances may allow. Murray was legally correct. And such a prosecution may have had a profound effect on Tasmanian settler behaviour. But, as the 1838 Myall Creek massacre in New South Wales demonstrated, after Gipps brought the murderers to trial, the ‘settler’ backlash was so severe that no British administration ever upheld the law against a white murderer again, not until the process of colonization was complete, not until well into the 20th century when other punitive measures proved just as effective as homicide, measures such as internment facilities where Aboriginal lives were rigidly controlled under a system of apartheid. As for the colonists, after Myall Creek they became more surreptitious in their killing, making sure that there were no white witnesses who would testify, or hiding the evidence, or using more ‘discreet’ methods such as poisoned flour or poisoned water holes, or claiming it was selfdefence. There were many ways for white society to eradicate the ‘vermin’. Murray was, however, very clear in his instruction to Arthur that all colonists may be made duly aware of the serious consequences which will result to any person against whom a criminal prosecution may be undertaken. The problem was that Arthur had declared martial law in the interim, where all bets were off concerning legal due process. Arthur knew it, but he still had to scramble to save himself and his administration from the consequences of any illegality under the strict terms where civilian laws did not hold sway, where most homicide was condoned as part of a ‘military’ campaign, where killing was not only expected but de rigeur. Nevertheless, Arthur knew that, even under martial law, killing of innocents was not permissible. 841 Arthur’s problem was how to show that the Emu Bay massacre was justified. Murray had been very clear in his instructions. The law must be upheld for colonist and Aboriginal: if Acts of outrage & violence towards the Natives are permitted to take place, and are not checked by the chastisements of the offenders, it is in vain hope that any Military force which it may be possible to allot for the Colony, can protect the remote & isolated portion of the Population against Acts of retribution or of Vengeance which the Natives will have been instigated by such outrage or violence to commit or attempt. Arthur had not been so impartial before. Nor would he be now. The way he circumvented Murray’s instruction goes to the level of deceptive conduct of which he was capable, in emphatic contradiction of his professed religious ideals; it is the subject of a detailed case study later in this document.. Arthur was concerned at Murray’s firm despatch, and was quickly forced to cover his tracks, even mislead his superiors on some of the key evidence. He did not inform Murray that the Native woman, while trying to protect her child, was killed by having her throat cut when she was detained. Arthur maintained she was shot while trying to escape ‘lawful capture’, under the provisions of martial law. Arthur did not reply to Murray’s letter until 20th November 1830: I regret extremely that your instruction, enjoining me to apprise all classes of persons that any who should have been instrumental to the death of a Native should be brought before a Court of Justice, arrived at a moment when the most unhappy results could not have failed to follow my carrying it into effect.1830 Included in this very long despatch to Murray were a series of Notices, a further proclamation of martial law and the Aborigines Committee report, all intended to shore up his position for siding with the colonists. This is Murray’s despatch, the trigger for Arthur’s anxiety: Sir, In a Letter which my Under Secretary addressed to you, by my desire, on the 12th Ultimo, the circumstance was adverted to of an alleged murder committed on one of the Aborigines by persons in the employment of the Van Diemen’s Land Company. I have now to desire, in addition to the particulars which you were ten required to send home, that you will report to me, for the Information of His Majesty’s Government, what steps you may have taken for bringing to trial the Persons implicated in this Affair.1831 I am aware that before Hostilities between the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land & the white Population had been carried to the extent to which they have now unhappily arrived, your utmost endeavours were used to conciliate the former, & to prevent the repetition of those outrages on the part of the latter,, to which I fear is to be attributed much of the animosity which the natives have evinced, & seem still to entertain against the Settlers. Not only do considerations of humanity & justice require a perseverance in the same conciliatory course on the part of the Local Authorities, but policy& self interest as regards every class & description of Settler demand the enforcement of the same principle; and I cannot therefore refrain from again calling your attention to a subject of such vital importance to the Interests of the Colony. Nothing, I am certain, will tend more effectually to check the Evil than to bring before a Court of Justice any person who may have been instrumental to the death of a native, in order that the case may undergo as full an investigation as circumstances may allow. You will take care that this be distinctly understood by all classes of persons in the Colony & that they may be made duly aware of the serious consequences which will result to any 842 person against whom a criminal prosecution may be undertaken, unless he shall be enabled to shew to the satisfaction of the Court that it was either in the protection of his property or on the principle of self defence that the Native had met his death. I take this opportunity of acquainting you that His Majesty’s Government have not failed to give their serious attention to the application contained in your Despatch No. 56, of the 12th of September last, for an addition to the number of Troops of which the Garrison at Van Diemen’s Land now consists, but I regret to acquaint you that at present it is not found practicable to meet your wishes. It is obvious however, that if Acts of outrage & violence towards the Natives are permitted to take place, and are not checked by the chastisements of the offenders, it is in vain hope that any Military force which it may be possible to allot for the Colony, can protect the remote & isolated portion of the Population against Acts of retribution or of Vengeance which the Natives will have been instigated by such outrage or violence to commit or attempt.1832 Government notice No. 160, 19th August 1830. Arthur informed the colonists that a less hostile disposition towards the European inhabitants had been observed by some of the military and therefore whenever the Aborigines appear without evincing a hostile feeling, that no attempt shall be made either to capture or restrain them, but, on the contrary, after being fed and kindly treated, that they shall be suffered to depart whenever they desire it. But his flurry or notices and orders were often contradictory, caused by the nature of the insurgency. Aboriginals in the west and far north east rarely came into contact with a colonist. Not all Aboriginal groups who traversed the midlands were consistently hostile. Nor were the Aboriginals in the south east openly antagonistic. Arthur’s attempts at what he called ‘conciliation’ were incompetent: it was not until Robinson thought to travel around the island talking to groups in their own language using other Aboriginals as mediators that some form of consultation was possible. Few colonists took the trouble. For them, the gun was a mediator. The promise of a reward encouraged armed capture. Most were unwilling to comply with a policy of ‘conciliation’ that allowed Palawa to travel across contested spaces unmolested. For colonists, it was a form of trespass. When Arthur issued Notice 160, colonists were confused. Were all Natives to be treated kindly and allowed to depart when they wanted, or were they to be captured for a reward? Could one general Government policy apply to all contested spaces for all Aboriginal groups and localities? Were Aboriginals to be allowed free access to all parts of the island, if they were not openly hostile to the invaders? Arthur was also concerned. Murray had instructed him to bring before a Court of Justice any person who may have been instrumental to the death of a native. Should he obey and risk a settler backlash? Instead, in this Notice, he promoted his version of conciliation. It was not to work. It is with much satisfaction that the Lieutenant Governor is at length enabled to announce, that a less hostile disposition towards the European Inhabitants has been manifested by some of the aboriginal Natives of this Island, with whom Captain Welsh and Mr G A Robinson have succeeded in opening a friendly intercourse. 843 As it is the most anxious desire of the Government, that the good understanding which has thus happily commenced, should be fostered and encouraged by every possible means; His Excellency earnestly requests, that all Settlers and others will strictly enjoin their Servants cautiously to abstain from Acts of Aggression against these benighted beings, and that they will personally endeavour to conciliate them wherever it may be practicable: and, whenever the Aborigines appear without evincing a hostile feeling, that no attempt shall be made either to capture or restrain them, but, on the contrary, after being fed and kindly treated, that they shall be suffered to depart whenever they desire it.1833 Government notice No. 161, 20th August 1830. The day after issuing the first notice (Notice 160), and coincidentally the day after receiving Murray’s instruction to prosecute any colonist who killed an Aboriginal, Arthur was forced to issue a clarification, made necessary because some colonists were intent on obtaining a reward for the capture of any Aboriginal, rather than allowing them to depart whenever they desire it. The colonists’ confusion had been caused by Arthur’s earlier Government Order of 25th February: The parties employed in aid of the police will be augmented; and in order to stimulate them to increased activity, the Lieutenant-Governor has directed, that a reward for 5l. shall be given for every adult Native, and 2l. for every child, who shall be captured, and delivered alive at any one of the police stations.1834 Arthur was now saying - by Government Notice 160, and amended in Notice 161 - that Aboriginals should not be captured, but treated kindly. He tried to clarify that Government Order No. 2, of the 25th February last, offering certain rewards for the capture of the Aborigines, appears in some recent notices to have been misapprehended. Colonists were beginning to agitate against the Government. Arthur was still ordering ‘conciliation’, with a warning that: any wanton attack or aggression against the Natives becomes known to the Government, the offenders will be immediately brought to Justice and punished, but the colonists were not listening, nor was Arthur serious. He had never taken such action before; he would not take it now. And if the murders were discreet, how would the Government know? British Law did not allow Palawa witness testimony. All the colonist had to do was ensure there were no witnesses. It was not always possible. On 21 st August 1829, there was a horrific killing in the north west. Murray had become aware of the murder and demanded that Arthur prosecute the offenders. Arthur was unwilling to comply. His stated policy, which he reissued with Notice 161, of bringing offenders of any wanton attack or aggression against the Natives to justice would now be shown as an empty threat. He writes: The Lieutenant Governor has learned with much regret, that the Government Order No. 2, of the 25th February last, offering certain rewards for the capture of the Aborigines, appears in some recent notices to have been misapprehended, and in order to remove the possibility of any future misunderstanding on this important subject, His Excellency has directed it to be distinctly notified, that if nothing is to be more opposed to the spirit of the above named Order, and to that of all the different 844 Proclamations and Orders which preceded it to offer any sort of violence or restraint to such of the Aboriginal Natives as may approach the European Inhabitants with friendly views; the Reward was offered for capture of such Natives only as were committing Aggressions on the Inhabitants of the Settled Districts, from which it was the object of the Government to expel them, with every degree of humanity that is practicable when all efforts for their conciliation had proved abortive. It is His Excellency’s most particular desire, and most peremptory order to all persons employed under the Government, that no violence, or restraint shall be offered to inoffensive Natives of the remote and unsettled parts of the Territory and that all such as may approach the Settled Districts, and offer to hold intercourse with the inhabitants, in a friendly manner, may be encouraged to do so, and permitted to depart whenever they desire it, and, after the promulgation of this Notice, any wanton attack or aggression against the Natives becomes known to the Government, the offenders will be immediately brought to Justice and punished. The Lieutenant Governor desires that this Notice may be read by all Magistrates to the Constables under their orders, and requests that Settlers will take every means of making it known to their assigned Servants.1835 Government notice No. 166, 27th August 1830 The Lieutenant governor has learned, that the intention of the Government in issuing Notices No. 160 and 161, which appeared in the Gazette of last week, has been misinterpreted by some of the Inhabitants of the Districts in which the natives have shewn the most decided hostility. A friendly disposition having been slightly manifested by a tribe which had been hostile: His Excellency anxiously availed himself of the occasion to repeat the injunctions which have been uniformly expressed in the Orders and instructions of the Government, that the measures which are indispensable for the defence and protection of the Settlers, should be tempered with humanity, and that no means of conciliation should be spared; but it was not intended to relax in the most strenuous exertions to repel and to drive from the settled country those natives who seize every occasion to perpetrate murders and to plunder the property of the inhabitants. The conduct displayed by those savages in their recent outrages in the Oatlands and Clyde Districts, proves that the utmost vigilance is necessary for the safety of every dwelling; and the Lieut Governor trusts, that the magistrates and respectable inhabitants will make it a point frequently to visit the huts in their neighbourhood, and urge the occupants to keep their arms in good order, and always at hand. The lives and property of every family depend, in fact, upon the individual exertions of its head. Any wanton attack against the inoffensive tribes on the west and south west districts of the Colony, or against the tribes inhabiting the adjacent islands, or against any aborigines who manifest a disposition to conciliate and to surrender themselves will undoubtedly be vigorously prosecuted; but it is not expected, much less required, that the settlers are calmly to wait in their dwellings to sustain the repeated and continued attacks of the tribes, who are manifesting such a rancorous and barbarous disposition as has characterised their late proceedings. 845 They are, by every possible means, to be captured, or driven beyond the settled districts.1836 On 20th November 1830, Arthur responded to Murray that he would ‘defer carrying into effect the instruction’ of 23rd April 1830 to prosecute the VDLC employees involved in the murder of an Aboriginal woman at Emu Bay, but this was edited out of the House of Commons publication of Tasmanian correspondence in September 1831.1837 for any wanton attack against the inoffensive tribes would be vigorously prosecuted. Arthur’s reason: I had great hopes that a friendly understanding might be restored: some of the Natives belonging to a Tribe which had been known to be hostile in the North East quarter of the Island having approached a party of white people in a peaceable manner, and Mr Robinson having succeeded in communicating amicably with some Tribes in the North West. Being most anxious that the peaceable disposition which had thus been shewn should be encouraged, I caused on this occasion the Government Notices to be issued of the 19th and 20th August, Copies of which I have the honor to enclose, 1838 but, I regret to state, that in the same week the Natives attacked and plundered in a more systematic manner than they had hitherto done, several residences in the heart of the Settled Districts and so great was the alarm created by the promulgation at such a moment of the Government Notices in question, that with the advice of the Council, I felt it necessary to issue a further notice Copy of which I also enclose.1839 It was at this juncture that I received your Dispatch, and I lost no time in bringing it under the consideration of the Exve. Council.1840 Executive Council, 27th August 1830 Arthur would now go further, by suborning his Executive Council to reject Murray’s instruction to prosecute the Emu Bay perpetrators, making a mockery of his Notices that offenders of any wanton attack against the Natives would be punished. Murray’s instruction to report what steps you may have taken for bringing to trial the Persons implicated in this Affair1841 caused Arthur to panic. Arthur had to construct a defence of his actions (or lack of them), and his Executive Council began the task. The first proclamation of martial law in November 1828, as noted by the Executive Council in August 1830, was ‘to drive the Aboriginal Natives out of the settled districts [...] and it regrets that the force which has hitherto been at His Excellency’s disposal for that purpose has not been sufficient to effect it’.1842 The Council opines: The Lieutenant-Governor stated, that feeling extreme anxiety from the state of alarm in which the settlers were thrown, and the great responsibility he should incur, in consequence of instructions he had lately received from the Secretary of State, if 846 further offensive measures were resorted to against the Natives, he had assembled the Aborigines Committee, and referred to them in reports received during the week.1843 Arthur was looking for support from his Executive Council, to resist Murray’s request demanding that Arthur prosecute whites who caused any harm to an Aboriginal. Having made his case for punitive action against the Palawa, Arthur requested the advice of the Council as to the measures which it would be desirable to adopt to afford further protection to the settlers. It was a Dorothy Dix question. That is, for Arthur and his Executive Council, ‘settler’ concerns overrode crimes against Aboriginals; and the urgent purpose of Arthur’s hastily assembled Aborigines Committee in 1830 was to shore up public support for his position of Martial Law and sanctioned violence, should it be questioned by his superiors, particularly Murray. However, it was unlikely that Britain would object to any harsh measures against the Indigenous population, provided that the proprieties of natural justice were observed, provided that Britain was seen to be upholding the rule of British Law in defence of life and property, particularly white property, expropriated property, property confiscated from the Palawa owners. Natural justice included the right of the occupying power to dictate terms for how the subjugated race would be allowed to participate in the process of invasion. Arthur was building his case for extreme intervention against Aboriginal resistance to colonization. Any Aboriginal assault on a white was an ‘outrage’, while any white killing of an Aboriginal was ‘in defence of life and property’. Arthur was always careful to speak of conciliation, for that was the nominal language of his superiors, but his actions (supported by Britain) were governed by force. Martial Law meant, in theory, that if an Aboriginal was killed, the perpetrator could not be prosecuted, if we ignore that no settler had ever been charged with an Aboriginal death up to that time. In the meeting of August 1830, the Executive Council considered and rejected George Murray’s instructions which called for a report of the circumstances of a murder alleged to have been perpetrated upon a Native by one of the people of the Van Diemen’s Land Company, and requiring His Excellency further to report what steps he had taken for bringing to trial the persons implicated in that affair 1844 and the need to call His Excellency’s attention to the importance of enforcing upon every class and description of Settlers a course of conciliation, and making it distinctly understood that every person instrumental in the death of a Native should be brought before a Court of Justice, in order that all persons might be duly aware of the serious consequences which would result to those who should be prosecuted, unless they should be enabled to prove that it was either in selfdefence, or in the protection of their property that they caused the Native’s death. 1845 The Executive Council’s reason? To act upon the Instructions which His Excellency has received would at the present juncture be exceedingly impolitic, and would lead to the most unhappy results.1846 847 We can infer these ‘unhappy results’ to be overwhelming settler anger with Arthur’s administration (and reduced career prospects for Arthur). Instead, the Executive Council supported Arthur’s ‘call to arms’ with: every settler, whether residing on his farm, or in a town, who is not prevented by some overruling necessity, cheerfully to render his assistance, and to place himself under the direction of the police magistrate of the district in which his farm is situated, or any other magistrate whom he may prefer; and his Excellency is convinced that, on an occasion so important, a sufficiently numerous volunteer force will thus be raised, that, in combination with the whole disposable strength of the military and police and by one cordial and determined effort, will afford a good prospect of either capturing the whole of the hostile tribes, or of permanently expelling them from the settled districts.1847 This is an extract from the minutes of the Executive Council for 27th August 1830: 1848 The `Lieutenant-Governor informed the Council that letters had this week been received from Major Douglas, Captain Vicary, and Mr. Anstey, reporting various outrages committed by the Natives in the Oatlands and Bothwell Police Districts; and that Mr. Anstey had enclosed a letter from the jury on the inquest over the body of James Hooper, who had been murdered, expressive of their alarm in consequence of two Government Notices published in last week’s Gazette, by which it was announced that Captain Welsh and Mr. T.A. Robinson1849 had succeeded in opening a friendly intercourse with some of the Natives, and by which the settlers were urged to use every endeavour to conciliate, whenever the Aborigines should appear without evincing a hostile feeling; and all persons employed under the Government were ordered to offer no violence or restraint to the inoffensive Natives in the remote and unsettled parts of the territory; and by which it was intimated that in the remote and unsettled parts of the territory; and by which it was intimated that if any wanton attack or aggression were committed against them, the offenders would be immediately brought to justice and punished.1850The writers of this letter concluded by entreating that some measures should be adopted to relieve the settlers from their perilous condition.1851His Excellency read Mr. Anstey’s communication in which this letter was forwarded, and in which he had taken occasion to express his firm opinion, that the Aborigines are now irreclaimable, and that the ensuing spring will be the most bloody that we have yet experienced, unless sufficient military protection should be afforded.1852 The Lieutenant-Governor stated, that feeling extreme anxiety from the state of alarm in which the settlers were thrown, and the great responsibility he should incur, in consequence of instructions he had lately received from the Secretary of State, if further offensive measures were resorted to against the Natives, he had assembled the Aborigines Committee, and referred to them the reports received during the week.1853Read the Report of the Committee, who stated, they were unwillingly compelled to conclude, after mature deliberation, that the whole of the Aborigines who had lately appeared in and near the settled districts, with only two exceptions, were actuated by the love of plunder, joined with the most rancorous animosity, and tar therefore it had become essentially necessary to adopt the most vigorous measures, and to repel the Aborigines from the settled districts by every means that 848 could be devised, both on the part of the Government and the community, as all efforts to conciliate the hostile tribes had proved quite ineffectual.1854 Under the circumstances, the Lieutenant-Governor requested the advice of the Council as to the measures which it would be desirable to adopt to afford further protection to the settlers. The Council, after fully deliberating upon the subject, is of the opinion, that all he events which have happened since the Council advised Hs Excellency to proclaim martial law, and to drive the Aboriginal Natives out of the settled districts, have only tended to confirm the Council in its opinion of the actual necessity of such a measure; and it regrets that the force which has thitherto been at His Excellency’s disposal for that purpose has not been sufficient to effect it.1855 Of the necessity of such a measure the Council apprehends no doubt can be entertained, when the nature and character of the attacks made by the Natives, and the manner in which they are made, and the situation of the settlers who are exposed to them, are considered.1856 It appears to the Council now, as it did nearly two years ago, that the wanton and barbarous murders committed by the Natives indiscriminately, as well on those who could not as on those who might have given them provocation, on men armed and unarmed, and on defenceless women and children, can be considered in no other light than as acts of warfare against the settlers generally, and that a warfare of the most dreadful description, for they have seldom spared the lives of any who have fallen in their power; and the love of plunder has of late much increased amongst them, yet they are equally if not chiefly actuated by a love of murder. The manner in which these attacks are made are such as no ordinary prudence can long guard against. The Council cannot but remember the repeated proofs it has had before it of the skill with which the Natives have availed themselves of the facilities presented to them by the natives of the country, to make their hostile approaches unperceived, of their patience in watching for days the habitation of those whom they design to attack, and on the frightful celerity with which they avail themselves of any unguarded moment to fall upon the inmates, and put to them a cruel death; nor can it forget those instances in which they have effected their purpose by means of the most consummate and deliberate treachery, have approached huts with apparently the most friendly disposition, and have succeeded in engaging the attention of the inmates, or in alluring some of them to a distance, and thus enabling their armed confederates to fall suddenly upon their unsuspecting victims and destroy them.1857 The Council conceives that these facts are sufficient to show how dangerous an enemy it is whom we have to contend with, and how impossible it is to rely upon any demonstrations they may make of a friendly nature, and how absolutely necessary it is that the settled districts be freed from their presence.1858 The Council begs leave to refer to the advice which it has offered on former occasions when this distressing subject has been before it, as a proof of the desire which it has felt, and does still feel, to put a stop to this unhappy state of things, if possible, by negociation and by conciliatory measures, a desire which it well knows to have been 849 shared by His Excellency, and by the most respectable classes of the community: but all endeavours to conciliate the Natives have failed.1859 The Council still wishes that conciliation may be attempted wherever practicable; but it cannot conceal from His Excellency its opinion, that little can be hoped from attempts to negotiate with or to conciliate a people in so rude and savage a state as the Aboriginal Natives of this island, who live in tribes independent of each other, and who appear to be without government of any kind, and who not only are without sense of the obligation of promises,1860 but appear to be insensible to acts of kindness, as has been clearly evinced by the commission of wanton murder almost immediately after they have quitted settlers by whom they have been fed and treated with the utmost kindness. In such a state of things, it appears to the Council that the time is now arrived when it has become absolutely necessary that some vigorous effort, upon a more extended scale than has hitherto been practicable, should be made for expelling these miserable people forthwith from the settled districts. The settlers appear to be generally so impressed with a sense of the danger of their situation, that the Council doubts not that His Excellency may rely upon having their hearty cooperation; and it trusts that the volunteers which they may be expected to furnish, joined to the troops which the late increase of the strength of the garrisons will enable His Excellency to employ in the field, will form a force sufficient for the accomplishment of this most necessary measure. In advising His Excellency to adopt such a measure, the Council is well aware of the responsibility it incurs, and of the painful situation in which its advice, if followed, may tend to place His Excellency; but the Council sees no alternative. It hopes and believes that if a sufficient force can be thus collected, the expulsion of the Natives may be effected at the expense of little bloodshed; and even if it should cost more lives than the Council anticipates, it is a measure dictated not less by humanity than by necessity,1861 since it is calculated to bring to a decisive issue a state of warfare which there seems no hope of ending by any other means, and which, if much longer continued, the Council fears will become a war of extermination.1862 ‘Levy en masse’ and the ‘Black Line’: October to November 1830 1863 Arthur’s exhortation for a ‘call to arms’ was issued by Government Order No. 11 from the Colonial Secretary’s Office on 22nd September 1830 and published in the Hobart Town Gazette on 25th September, with ‘the community being called upon to act en masse on the 7 th October next, for the purpose of capturing those hostile tribes of the Natives which are daily committing renewed atrocities upon the settlers.1864 There was only one problem. The purpose of this ethnic cleansing policy did not differentiate between hostile tribes and those who were peaceful, of which there were many. Aboriginals did not carry a sign on their forehead. Being Aboriginal was sufficient cause for removal, for eradication. In October 1830, Arthur re-proclaimed: 850 Martial Law is and shall continue to be in force against all the black or aboriginal Natives within every part of this island, (whether exempted from the operations of the said Proclamation or not,) excepting always such tribes, or individuals of tribes, as there may be reason to suppose are pacifically inclined, and have not been implicated in any such outrages.1865 As a result of this further ‘call to arms’, Arthur’s next attempt at ethnic cleansing was in October 1830, when he also extended martial law to cover the entire island. This reworked attempt included the abortive Black Line strategy, where he unsuccessfully (and at great expense) strove to form a human chain across the settled areas and drive Aboriginals into entrapment and captivity. However, it did demonstrate to the Palawa Arthur’s resolve to call on large numbers of armed people to eradicate them from all areas required (or potentially required) by the colonists, which at this time was most of the island except for the west, northeast and far southeast. Jorgenson writes approvingly of Arthur’s action, which amounted to a coin toss on the likelihood of mass public support. Arthur need not have worried about his job security: never was to call upon the inhabitants of any country more cheerfully and willingly responded to than on the present occasion, establishing His Excellency’s popularity beyond doubt.1866 The colonist public, perhaps aware that they were the invaders, the occupiers, defiantly rallied behind their own insecurity, like modern Australians fearful of a refugee horde. History turned. If it was ever in doubt, the Palawa had now lost. It was just a matter of time. Their country had already been taken from them and given English names by Englishmen, who must feel elated that at a distance of many thousands of miles in the Southern Hemisphere, the British language and names of places, are perpetuated.1867 If Aboriginals would not accept that they had lost their homelands, they would be removed by armed force. Invasion led to physical and cultural displacement, an occupation twice over, where even the memory of place was cleansed, when the colony got eventually rid of the Blacks.1868 The plan so formed was carried into execution in October and November 1830. The marvellous facility with which the colony got eventually rid of the Blacks was entirely owing to Sir George Arthur’s levy en masse. The success afterwards of Mr. G. A. Robinson was solely attributable to the formation of the Line; it showed the Aborigines our strength and energy. But for that demonstration Mr. Robinson could not have allured to Blacks to follow him. The dreadful nuisance which had so long annoyed the Colonists, and sir George Arthur’s mode of abating that nuisance, is really a fit subject for the information of posterity. It is unique; it stands without parallel; there is nothing like it to be found in history. The lieutenant-Governor called upon the Colonists to come forward to support him in a grand, combined, and simultaneous effort to surround and capture the black natives, but several difficulties presented themselves which were of a description not easily surmounted. A portion of the colonial press had for some years past assailed Sir 851 George Arthur’s government, and if belief could have been given to the bold assertions of a few factious individuals Sir George Arthur was very unpopular. Hence it is natural that the gallant officer should feel some anxiety until the Colonists had declared themselves. Happily however, never was to call upon the inhabitants of any country more cheerfully and willingly responded to than on the present occasion, establishing His Excellency’s popularity beyond doubt and cavilling, for the free of all ranks from the highest to the lowest tendered their services. Another cause of anxiety was that some supposed that free gentlemen of property would not readily move on in the same ranks with convicts, for it was found necessary to call out a number of the latter, but here again the population was unanimous. But the greatest difficulty to surmount was the great responsibility which Sir George Arthur incurred in placing fire arms in the hands of about one thousand convicts, a responsibility which must entirely rest with himself.1869 Most of such convicts were intimately acquainted with many parts of the bush, much more so than the military and others. No one however possessed a more perfect knowledge of the convict population than Sir George Arthur and after due deliberation he scrupled not to avail himself of their services. The Hobart Town Gazette of the 25th September 1830, announced the plan of operations for the ensuing Campaign.1870 I insert the whole of the Government Order, although I am aware that most readers are careless of the accounts of military evolutions, but in this particular instance the plan formed was indeed a master piece I have also on every occasion introduced as much as possible the names of the districts, parishes, and of the country generally, names so familiar and endearing to Englishmen, who must feel elated that at a distance of many thousands of miles in the Southern Hemisphere, the British language and names of places, are perpetuated. 1871 Arthur’s plan for the ethnic cleansing operation against the Aboriginal people was published by Government Order on September 22nd, 1830.1872 The plan was detailed, a military campaign, with multiple lines advancing from north to south east, showing Arthur’s experience as a military officer.1873 Along with civilians, police, the judiciary and convicts, he deployed three military regiments: 17th, 57th and 63rd. Here Arthur was in his element. But it was no way to fight a guerrilla war. Ultimately, it did not matter that his elaborate plan failed, 1874 although he was severely embarrassed, both privately and publicly, when there was some comment on Arthur’s expensive ‘Black String’. More importantly, it pressed home to the Palawa that they could not win, their guerrilla war would be futile, their people would continue to die, they would have no peace, their way of life was no longer possible, there were too many British against them, even conscripted convicts. Whether a plan fails or not, it is the genocidal intentionality, the pattern of genocidal behaviour, by which the Involved Party must be held accountable. 852 We will show Arthur’s plan in full, with the names of the military officers, magistrates, police and settlers who took part, to reinforce the measured intentionality of the British administration in vigorously attempting to clear Tasmania of Aboriginals and the extent to which the entire population of settler/colonists were involved in claiming back what Britain called the ‘settled districts’, but what are more accurately called the ‘occupied districts’, occupied by an invading power that was unwilling to peacefully share the country on amicable and fairly negotiated terms. Britain’s plans for its Tasmanian colony did not include an iota of Aboriginal land ownership. Britain wanted it all. To do it, they had to eradicate the ‘vermin’. Arthur’s Black Line failed spectacularly, but in taking decisive action on the ‘settlers’ behalf, in making most of the whites collaborators in his plan (including convicts), in demonstrating that he sided with colonist rather than Aboriginal, he won almost universal public support for his administration, where public meetings were called at Hobart Town, Launceston and other districts, voting thanks to His Excellency for his unwearied attention in the field, and the concern he had evinced for the safety of the Colonists, and his regard to humanity on behalf of the Blacks. For once, on this occasion the Colonists were unanimous, and the foundation was then laid for that well acquired popularity which subsequently marked Sir George Arthur’s administration.1875 Arthur could now relax. His job seemed more assured, along with his career prospects. All he had to do was to bring his superiors along with him. To go back to the beginning, this is the Government Order of 22nd September 1830 that began the intended collaborative process of ethnic cleansing through Arthur’s Black Line. 1. The Community being called upon to act en masse on the 7 th Oct. next, for the purpose of capturing those hostile Tribes of the Natives which are daily committing renewed atrocities upon the Settlers; the following outline of the arrangements which the Lieutenant Governor has determined upon, is published, in order that every person may know the principle on which he is required to act, and the part which he is to take individually in this important transaction. 2. Active operations will at first be chiefly directed against the Tribes which occupy the country South of a line drawn from Waterloo Point East, to Lake Echo, west, including the Hobart, Richmond, New Norfolk, Clyde, and Oatlands Police Districts, - at least, within this country, the Military will be mainly employed, the capture of the Oyster Bay and Big River Tribes, as the most sanguinary, being of the greatest consequence. 3. In furtherance of this measure, it is necessary that the Natives should be driven from the extremities within the settled Districts of the county of Buckingham, and that they should subsequently be prevented from escaping out of them, and the following movements are, therefore, directed first to surround the hostile Native Tribes, - and secondly, to capture them in the county of Buckingham, progressively, driving them upon Tasman’s Peninsula, - and thirdly, to prevent their escape into the remote unsettled districts to the westward and Eastward. 853 4. Major Douglas will, on the 7th of October, cause the following chain of posts to be occupied; viz. From the Coast near St. Patrick’s Head, to the source of the St. Paul’s River, and by that river and the South Esk, to Epping Forest, and Campbell Town. This line being taken up, the parties composing it will advance in a southerly direction towards the Eastern Marshes, and will thoroughly examine the country between their first stations and the head of the Macquarrie, and on the afternoon of the 12th October they will halt with their left at a mountain on the Oyster Bay Tier, on which a large fire is to be kept burning, and their right extending towards Maloney’s Sugar Loaf. To effect this movement, Major Douglas will reinforce the post at Ovocca, and this force, under the orders of Captain Wellman, will be strengthened by such parties as can be dispatched by the police magistrate of Campbell Town, and by the roving parties under Mr. Batman, and will receive the most effectual cooperation from Major Gray, who will, no doubt, be warmly seconded by Messrs. Legge, Talbot, Grant, Smith, Gray, Hepburn, Kearney, Bates, and all other settlers in that neighbourhood. 5. Major Douglas will also, on the 7th of October, form a chain of posts from Campbell Town along the south west bank of the Macquarrie to its junction with the Lake River. These parties will then advance in a southerly direction, carefully examining the Table Mountain range on both sides, and the banks of the Lake River, and they will halt on the afternoon of the 12 th with their left at Maloney’s Sugar Loaf, and their right at Lackey’s Mill, which position will already be occupied by troops from Oatlands. In this movement, Major Douglas will receive the co-operation of the police magistrate at Campbell Town, who will bring forward, upon that portion of the line extending from the high-road near Kimberley’s on the Salt-pan Plains to Maloney’s Sugar Loaf, the force contributed by Messrs. Willis, W. Harrison, Pearson, Jellicoe, Davidson, McLeod, Leake, Clarke, Murray, Horne, Scardon, Kermode, Parramore, Horton, Scott, Dickenson, R. Davidson, Cassidy, Eagle, Gardener, Robertson, Hill, Forster, with any other settlers from tat part of his district; while that portion of the line extending from Lackey’s Mill to Kimberley’s will be strengthened by Messrs. G.C.. Clarke, GC. Simpson, Sutherland, Ruffey, Gatenby, G. Simpson, C. Thomson, H. Murray, Buist, Oliver, Malcolm, Taylor, Mackersey, Bayles, Stewart, Alston, Bibra, Corney, Fletcher, Young, O’Connor, Yorke, and any other settlers residing in that part of the district, who will on their march have examined the east side of Table Mountain. 6. In order to obviate confusion in the movements of tis body, the police magistrate will, without delay, ascertain the strength which will be brought into the field, and having divided it into parties of ten, he will nominate a leader to each, and will attach to them experienced guides for directing their marches; and he will report these arrangements to Major Douglas, when completed. The remainder of the forces under Major Douglas will, on the afternoon of the 12 th, take up their position on the same line, extending from the Oyster Bay range to the Clyde, south of Lake Crescent, over Table Mountain. Its right, under the command of Captain Mahon, 63rd Regiment, resting on the Table Mountain, passing to the rear of Michael Howe’s Marsh. Its left, under Captain Wellman, 854 57th Regiment, at a mountain in the Oyster Bay Tier, where a large fire will be seen. Its right centre, under Captain Macpherson, 17th Regiment, extending from Maloney’s Sugar Loaf to Captain Mahon’s left; and its left centre under Captain Baylie, 63rd Regiment, extending from Malony’s Sugar Loaf to Captain Wellman’s right. 7. Major Douglas’s extreme right will be supported by the roving parties, and by te police of the Oatlands District, which, together with the volunteer parties formed from the District of Oatlands, will be mustered by the police magistrate in divisions of ten men, and he will nominate a leader to each division, and will attach experienced guides for conducting the march; and he will report his arrangement, when completed, to Major Douglas, in order that this force may be placed in the right of the line, to which position it will file from Oatlands by the Pass over Table Mountain. 8. Between the 7th and 12th of October, Lieutenant Aubin will thoroughly examine the tier extending from the head of the Swan River, north, down to Spring Bay, the southern extremity of his district, in which duty he will be aided, in addition to the military parties stationed at Spring Bay and Little Swan Port, by Captains Maclaine and Leard, Messrs. Meredith, Hawkins, Gatehouse, Buxton, Harte, Amos, Allen, King, Lyne, and all settlers in that district, and by Captain Glover and Lieutenant Steele, with whatever force can be collected at the Carlton and at Sorell by the police magistrate of that district. In occupying this position, the utmost care must be taken that no portion of this or any other force shows itself above the tiers south of Spring Bay before the general line reaches that point; and the constables at East Bay before the general line reaches that point; and the constables at East Bay Neck, and the settlers on the Peninsula, must withdraw before the 7 th October, in order that nothing may tend to deter the native tribes from passing the Isthmus. On the 12th, Lieutenant Aubin will occupy the passes in the tier which the Natives are known most to frequent, and will communicate with the extreme left of Major Douglas’s line; taking up the best points of observation, and causing at the same time a most minute reconnaissance to be kept upon the Schoutens, in case the Natives should pass into that Peninsula, as they are in the habit of doing either for shell-fish or eggs, in which case he will promptly carry into effect the instructions with which he has already been furnished. 9. Captain Wentworth will, on the 4th of October, push a strong detachment, under the orders of Lieutenant Croley, from Bothwell towards the great Lake, for the purpose of thoroughly examining St. Patrick’s Plains and the banks of the Shannon, extending its left on retiring to the Clyde, towards the lagoon of Islands, and its right towards Lake Echo. This detachment will be assisted by the roving parties under Sherwin and Doran, and by the settlers resident on the Shannon. 10. Captain Wentworth will also detach the troops at Hamilton Township, under Captain Vicary, across the Clyde, to occupy the western bank of the Ouse. For this service every possible assistance will be afforded by the parties formed 855 from the establishments of Messrs. Triffith, Sharland, Marzetti, Young, Dixon, Austin, Burn, Jamieson, Shone, Risely, and any other settlers in that district, together with any men of the Field Police who may be well acquainted with that part of the country. 11. A small party of troops, under the command of Lieutenant Murray, will also be sent up the north bank of the Derwent, to scour the country on the west bank of the Ouse. This detachment will be strengthened by any parties of the police or volunteers that can be supplied by the police magistrate of New Norfolk, and from Hobart Town. 12. These three detachments, under the orders of Captain Vicary, Lieutenant Croly, and Lieutenant Murray, after thoroughly scouring the country, especially the Blue hill, and after endeavouring to drive towards the Clyde whatever tribes of Natives may be in those quarters, will severally take up their positions on the 12th October as follows; viz. Lieutenant Croly’s force will rest its left on the Clyde where Major Douglas’s extreme right will be posted, and its right at Sherwin’s. Captain Vicary’s left will rest at Sherwin’s, and his right at Hamilton; Lieutenant Murray’s left at Hamilton, and his right on the high road at Allanvale, his whole line occupying that road. 13. The parties of volunteers and ticket-of-leave men from Hobart Town and its neighbourhood will march by New Norfolk, for the purpose of assisting Captain Wentworth’s force in occupying the Clyde; and they will be rendering a great service by joining that force in time to invest the Blue Hill, which will be about the 10th of October. 14. The police magistrate of New Norfolk will reserve, from amongst the volunteers and ticket-of-leave men, a sufficient force to occupy the pass which runs from the high road, near Downie’s, by Parson’s Valley, to Mr. Murdoch’s, on the Jordan, and on the 9th of October he will move these bodies by the Dromedary Mountain, which he will cause to be carefully examined towards tat Pass, which, on the afternoon of the 10 th, he will occupy, taking care so to post his parties as to prevent the Natives from passing the chain, on being pressed from the northward. 15. Captain Donaldson will, with as delay as possible, make arrangements for advancing from Norfolk Plains towards the country on the west bank of the lake River, up to Regent’s Plains and Lake Arthur, driving in a southerly direction any of the tribes in that quarter. He will also push some parties over the tier to the Great Lake, so as to make an appearance at the head of the Shannon and of the Ouse; and on the 12th of October his position will extend from Sorell Lake to Lake Echo, by St. Patrick’s Plains. In this important position he will remain, with the view of arresting the flight of any tribes towards the west, which might possibly pass through the first line. And as the success of the general operations will so much depend upon the vigilant guard to be observed over this tract of country, the Lieutenant-Governor places the utmost confidence in Captain Donaldson’s exertions in effectually debarring the escape of the tribes in this direction; for which purpose he will withdraw, if he thinks proper, the detachment at Westbury, and will concentrate his forces on the position 856 described. In this service Captain Donaldson will be supported by all the force that can be brought forward by the police magistrates of Launceston and Norfolk Plains, in addition to that which can be contributed by the settlers in those districts. 16. It may be presumed, that by the movements already described, the Natives will have been enclosed within the settled districts of the county of Buckingham. 17. On the morning of the 14th of October Major Douglas will advance the whole of the northern division in a south-easterly direction, extending from the Clyde to the Oyster Bay range; Captain Mahon being on his right, Captains Macpherson and Bailie in his centre; and Captain Wellman on his left, while Lieutenant Aubin will occupy the crests of the tiers. The left wing of Major Douglas’s division will move along the tier nearly due south to Little Swan Port Rive, the left centre upon Mr. Hobb’s stock run, the right centre upon the Blue Hill Bluff, and the tight wing to the Great Jordan Lagoon. Having thoroughly examined all the tiers and the ravines on its line of march, the division will reach these stations on the 16th, and will halt on Sunday the 17th of October. 18. A large fire will be kept burning on the Blue Hill Bluff, from the morning of the 14th until the morning of the 18th, as a point of direction for te centre, by which the whole line will be regulated. 19. On Monday, the 18th, Major Douglas’s division will again advance in a southeasterly direction, its left moving upon Prosser’s River, keeping close to the tier, its centre upon Prosser’s Plains to Olding’s Hut, its right upon Musquito Plain and the north side of the Brown Mountain, which stations they will reach respectively on the evening of the 20th, and where they will halt for further orders, taking the utmost care to extend the line from Prosser’s Bay, so as to connect the parties with the Brown Mountain, enclosing the Brushy Plains, with the hills called the Three Thumbs, in so cautious a manner, that the Natives may not be able to pass them. 20. From the morning of the 18th to the 22nd a large fire will be kept burning on the summit of the Brown Mountain, to serve as a point of direction for Major Douglas’s right and Captain Wentworth’s left. 21. On the morning of the 14th October, the western division, under the orders of Captain Wentworth, formed on the bank of the Clyde, will enter the Abyssinia tier, and after thoroughly examining every part of that range, will move due east to the banks of the Jordan, with its left at Bisdee’s, Broadribb’s, and Jones’s Farms, its centre at the Green Ponds, and its right at Murdoch’s Farm, at the Broad Marsh, which station they will severally gain on Saturday evening, the 16th of October, and where they will halt on Sunday the 17th. 22. Whenever Captain Wentworth’s force moves from the Clyde to the eastward, those settlers who do not join him will invest the road of the Upper and Lower Clyde, and will keep guard on it during the remainder of the operations, extending their left through “Mile’s Opening” to Mrs. Jones’s Farm. 23. On Monday, the 18th, the western division will advance its left, which will connect with the right of the northern division by Spring Hill, the Lovely Banks, 857 and the Hollow-tree Bottom, to Mrs. Reis’s Farm, on the west of the Brown Mountain; its centre over Constitution Hill and the Bagdad Tier, and by the Coal River Sugar Loaf to Mrs. Smith’s Farm at the junction of the Kangaroo and Coal Rivers; its right over the Mangalore Tier, through Bagdad and the Tea-tree Brush, to Styne’s and Troy’s Farm, on the Coal River, which stations they will respectively reach on the afternoon of the 20th, and where they will halt for further orders. 24. Whenever the right wing of Captain Wentworth’s Division shall have reached Mr. Murdoch’s on the Jordan, Mr. Dumaresq’s force will abandon the pass of Parson’s Valley, and will extend itself on Captain Wentworth’s extreme right, advancing with that force until it occupies the Coal River, from Captain Wentworth’s right to the mouth of the river. A post of observation will be stationed on the mountain called “Gunner’s Quoin” near the Tea-tree Brush. 25. The Assistant Commissary-General will provide rations at the under-mentioned stations; viz. Waterloo Point; Maloney’s Sugar Loaf; Lackey’s Mill; Murdoch’s (Jordan); Brighton; Cross Marsh; Hobbs; Little Swan Port River; Mr. Torlesse’s; Nicholas’s on the Ouse; Green Ponds; Bisdee’s Farm; Richmond; Mr. Reiss’s; Kangaroo River; Olding’s; Prosser’s Plains; Captain McLaine’s; Spring Bay; Lieutenant Hawkins’s; Little Swan Port; Oatlands; Tier west of Waterloo Point; Jones’s Hut; St. Patrick’s Plains; Captain Wood’s Hut; Regent Plains; Mr. G. Kemp’s Hut, Lake Sorell; Michael Howe’s Marsh. The arrangement at the different depots, for the conveyance of rations and stores to the parties employed, will be undertaken by Mr. Scott, Mr.Wedge, and Mr. Sharland; and as the leader of each party will be a respectable individual, he will keep a ration-book, in which he will insert his own name, and the names of all his party, which, on his presenting at any of the depots, stating the quantity required, the respective storekeepers will issue the same, taking care that no greater quantity than seven days’ supply, consisting of the following articles per diem, viz. 3 oz. of sugar, ½ oz. of tea, 2 lbs. flour, and 1 ½ lb. of meat, for each person, shall be issued at one time to any party. 26. The inhabitants of the country generally are requested not to make any movements against the Natives within the circuit occupied by the troops, until the general line reaches them, and the residents of the Jordan and Bagdad line of road will render the most effectual assistance by joining Captain Wentworth’s force while yet on the Clyde. 27. The assigned servants of settlers will be expected to muster provided each with a good pair of spare shoes, and a blanket, and seven days’ provisions, consisting of flour or biscuit, salt meat, tea and sugar; so also prisoners holding tickets of leave; but these latter, where they cannot afford it, will be furnished with a supply of provisions from the government magazines. 28. It will not be necessary that more than two men of every five should carry fire arms, as the remaining three can very advantageously assist their comrades in carrying provisions, &c., and the Lieutenant-Governor takes the opportunity of 858 again enjoining the whole community to bear in mind, that the object in view is not to injure or destroy the unhappy savages, against whom these movements will be directed, but to capture and raise them in the scale of civilization, by placing them under the immediate control of a competent establishment, from whence they will not have it in their power to escape and molest the white inhabitants of the Colony, and where they themselves will no longer be subject to the miseries of perpetual warfare, or the privations which the extension of the settlements would progressively entail upon them, were they to remain in their present unhappy state. 29. The police magistrates and the masters of assigned servants will be careful to entrust with arms only such prisoners as they can place confidence in; and, to ensure regularity, each prisoner employed will be furnished by the police magistrate with a pass, describing the division to which he is attached, and the name of its leader, and continuing the personal description of the prisoner himself.1876 If we accept Arthur’s professed concern the object in view is not to injure or destroy the unhappy savages, against whom these movements will be directed, but to capture and raise them in the scale of civilization, by placing them under the immediate control of a competent establishment, from whence they will not have it in their power to escape and molest the white inhabitants of the Colony, then it is quickly dispelled when he admits that the British Government’s intention is to continue (if not accelerate) the rate of occupation, knowing the human suffering this would cause the Palawa. He defends this intention by arguing that ethnic cleansing is in their best interests, where they themselves will no longer be subject to the miseries of perpetual warfare, or the privations which the extension of the settlements would progressively entail upon them, were they to remain in their present unhappy state.1877 859 Figure 261 Arthur's 'Black Line' ethnic cleansing operation October/ November 1830 1878 Jorgenson continues the story of the ‘levy en masse’, as he calls it, where he gives the number of convicts called up by Arthur to man his Line as 738 (although there is some evidence that the number was larger), an extraordinary measure, unprecedented in any military operation. The use of convicts was approved by Murray who even offered up to two thousand, hardly a ‘restraining hand’. 860 Arthur’s ‘line’ cost the Colonial Treasury about £35,000. 1879 Many of the colonists judged it well spent, a little like a Government spending public money during the GFC to counter a threat to the banking system caused by some financial institutions, or spending several hundred million dollars in pork barreling to marginal electorates. Jorgenson writes: Whoever is in any shape acquainted with Van Diemen’s Land must feel much pleased with the details of the plan of operation published in the Government Gazette. It displays a prefect knowledge of the localities of the island. Some of the forces would have to cross rugged mountains, when others had to pass over plains and valleys. It therefore required great skill in so arranging derails that one unbroken line might be preserved.1880 At the onset the forces did not join, but the various divisions took a wide range, gradually closing in, and firing occasionally in the direction towards East Bay Neck. The Blacks of course retreated to that portion of the island where they found everything quiet. On the following 18th October appeared an official communication in the Gazette1881 purporting to supply an account of some adventure which a convict of the name Savage said he had encountered. He told a plausible tale, and was believed, but it has since been proved to demonstration that the whole tale of the arrant knave was a vile fabrication. Savage’s clothes were found afterwards in a cave where he had concealed them, and as to the man Brown he was elsewhere at the time. It is however that Savage’s account was readily believed as there had always appeared an inclination on the part of the Government, and most of the Colonists, to seize every opportunity to fasten on the whites the blame of the outrages perpetrated rather than on the Blacks. The forces in the field amounted to about two thousand. Each division consisted of a number of sections of ten each, the whole under the command of some military officer, civilians and the military being intermixed, except the Oatlands division, which were all civilians. It was a most gratifying sight to see a master, a gentleman of property, walking onwards, with his own convict servants, accoutred in a bush dress, and encumbered with his knapsack full of provisions. The convicts engaged in the expedition amounted to 738, to these were added a number of prisoners employed in the roving parties, and as constables. The number of the leaders of sections amounted to 119 – accompanied each by an experienced guide. The free civilians who acted a common part in the Line were 139 in number. To this mass must be added the whole of the military available in the Colony, the towns being left to the protection of the respectable inhabitants who formed themselves into a guard. When the lines closed in, the right wing on Sorell, the centre at the White Marsh, and the left wing on Spring Bay, the scene at night was truly sublime. For a distance of thirty miles fires were seen blazing on the top of mountains, descending thence into the valleys and the plains. The line remained stationary for some times, and Mr. 861 Olding’s estate at Prosser’s Plains was speedily cleared, the fallen wood being consumed. It would have cost much labour and expense to have otherwise cleared the land. Meanwhile several untoward circumstances and accidents impeded the progress of the Line. For many days the rain came down in torrents, rendering the rough road almost impassable for carts laden with provisions and stores, and what is no uncommon thing in this country, when crossing the Brown Mountain, or passing through an opening leading to the White Kangaroo and the Coal Rivers, the sky on the north west side of the mountain would be clear and serene, when the rain deluged those parts on the south east side. Two of the most ferocious tribes of the Aborigines were now circumvented, 1882 and until the Line had closed in they had no distinct notion of the grand manoeuvre. One of the Blacks actually had the audacity to advance, throwing a spear at a man in the Line. Four others who were a few miles behind the forces attacked a house in the settlement at Jerusalem, spearing a woman in it, and robbing the place of many tings valuable. Some of the Blacks, within the Line, came to the place of one Mr. Walpole, and had he exercised sound judgment and patience, their capture had been certain. He wished to claim the sole merit of taking them all, and himself with one or two armed men, fell upon them, so they speedily made their escape, except one that was captured. This in fact proved fatal, for the Blacks could now perceive that they were in great peril, they could not hunt for kangaroo, and dared not make fires. They would thus naturally enough endeavour to effect some desperate push to get through the Line. However it was no easy task to do so, for the large fires kept up by the forces, enabled all the sentries to observe anything moving between. At length the native dogs made their appearance, and there could be but little doubt that the natives were not far behind. Sir George Arthur now desired a number of skirmishing parties to advance, and scour the country within the Line, in every direction. A number of young gentlemen of the first families in the Colony accompanied the Line, and participated in the fatigues of the campaign, acting their part manfully, carrying on their backs knapsacks with provisions, blankets, and cooking utensils, of a weight sufficient to incumber a stout man. These young gentlemen were sent out in charge of the skirmishes. They fell in with most extensive scrub, not before known, and almost impenetrable. The weather now becoming fine and settled, the whole Line was ordered to advance, but met with much impediment, when the scrub, many miles in circumference, rendered it almost impossible to proceed. It was ten ascertained that the Aborigines had succeeded in escaping through some one or other of the divisions, and the forces after having remained nearly two months in the field, were disbanded. The settlers with the Line exerted themselves to the utmost although they were engaged at a time of the year when they were most required on their estates, and their families exposed to the attacks of the Blacks. Sir George Arthur as Colonel commanding had taken the command of te forces, and shared in the fatigues as one of the common men. Lady Arthur was at the time in that 862 interesting situation which requires most the attention of a husband, and although Sorell is not more than 25 miles from Hobart Town, His Excellency could not be persuaded to visit the Government House when intelligence arrived that his lady had brought him another child. The English reader will almost be lost in astonishment, after all the tales which have been so industriously circulated in the mother country of the immoral state of the Colonists, free and bond, to learn that during the time the forces were in the field, not a single convict out of one thousand was guilty of any act of insubordination, and on the return of such a mass to their various and distant homesteads, not a single theft, robbery, or act of violence was committed. As might have been expected, directly after Sir George Arthur had returned to the capital, at the instance of numerous and respectable gentlemen, A.F. Kemp Esq taking the lead, public meetings were called at Hobart Town, Launceston and other districts, voting thanks to His Excellency for his unwearied attention in the field, and the concern he had evinced for the safety of the Colonists, and his regard to humanity on behalf of the Blacks. For once, on this occasion the Colonists were unanimous, and the foundation was then laid for that well acquired popularity which subsequently marked Sir George Arthur’s administration. The expedition entailed upon the Colony an expense of about thirty five thousand pounds entirely defrayed by the Colonial Treasury, without any assistance from the Home Government. This large sum, the savings of a provident government had been for some time past been locked up and useless in the Treasury, and was thus made to circulate for the public benefit. In April, all the roving parties and armed bands were called in and, so far, the war with the Aborigines ceased. The poor Blacks had taken the alarm, they were in utter consternation, they had nearly been encompassed, and reduced to a state of starvation; they could not see that the Colonists were unable to remain constantly in the field, and carry on an expensive war without ample finances. It will be observed in subsequent pages that in November 1830, the precise time tat the Line was out, an Aboriginal tribe made its way to Cape Portland, where they brought the most exaggerated accounts of the many “red coats” that were out after them, with thousands of others in pursuit, and would no doubt kill the Blacks, or starve them to death. A peaceful party was then at Cape Portland who explained to the Aborigines that it was not the intention to hurt or kill them, but that if they would surrender themselves, the North East quarter of the island would be reserved for them to hunt, and that they would remain unmolested.1883 Upon this the whole tribe of thirteen surrendered, and they shortly after succeeded in capturing twelve more. Those Blacks promised every assistance; and were found extremely useful in promoting a friendly intercourse with the other hostile tribes. It must be borne in recollection that the conciliatory mission had at that time been out 10 months without effecting anything good, and hence it is that although the Line did not succeed in capturing any of the Aborigines we must consider the grand movement in connection with the labours of the mission, and then it will be clearly seen that the success of the latter was entirely owing to the demonstration of the large number of men in the field under the immediate command of Sir George Arthur. 863 Arthur was reacting to settlers’ demands for a final solution against the Aboriginal population. The Line, imposed on the back of Martial Law, was one of his attempted genocidal instruments. It was to prove less effective than subsequent deception, employing believable ruses to obtain their surrender, which Aboriginals soon realized was capture and imprisonment on the Government’s terms. The Aboriginal constituency had no voice with which to protest. They were unlawful combatants, declared criminals, who refused to accept colonization of their country. Nor were they landowners, which might have allowed them some negotiating leverage. Britain had long taken that right from them. The Line failed, but it also succeeded. It convinced the surviving Palawa that they could not win their war of resistance, their guerrilla war, with ever reducing numbers, unable to light a campfire, unable to gather food without the possibility of being shot. Yet they had convinced the occupying force, through their desperate tactics, that their numbers were much greater than the reality, a fact which Arthur soon discovered through his ‘friendly mission’, whose purpose was to inveigle the scattered Aboriginal members into captivity. The Roving Parties: 1828 to 1831. In 1828, Arthur ‘sent circulars to all the Police and other Magistrates, craving their assistance and vigilance for putting a stop to the incursions of the black natives.’1884 Thomas Anstey,1885 the Oatlands magistrate, suggested to Arthur what became called ‘roving parties’, civilian paramilitary groups, to flush out and remove all Aboriginals from the ‘settled areas’. Anstey recommended that: In compliance with the request of the Lieutenant Governor, expressed to me, at Jericho yesterday, I have now the honour to inform you that I have found four men, well qualified for the service, who will readily undertake to lead parties to the usual haunts of the natives in their recesses. The names of the proposed guides are John Danvers (convict) now a watchman at the Commissariat store, Oatlands James Hopkins (ticket-of-leave) late a Field Police Constable Samuel May (ticket of leave) a fencer at Mr. Bryant’s farm, Blue Hills William (ticket-of-leave) in the service of Mr. John Earle, Wakeman Eastern Marshes These men (particularly Hopkins and Danvers) know every rood of bush from the Launceston Road to Oyster Bay – east and west – and from Stocker’s Bottom to Constitution Hill, north and south. 864 When the face of the country to the eastward of this district, and the cunning tricks of the Aborigines are considered, I own I have some fears tat their capture will be a work of more time than His Excellency expects. I conceive that full three fourths of tat extensive range of country, consists of scrub and defile nearly impenetrable; and the natives are accustomed, on the approach of danger, to throw themselves flat on the ground, and crawl under dead wood etc. Etc. – so that a party will frequently pass within a few yards of them, without being aware of their vicinity. A few parties, each consisting of 10 or 12 active men, should look for the native fires at night – cautiously approach them, and wait with patience until the dawn of the day, when many of the poor creatures might, thus, be captured.1886 I am decidedly of opinion that by acting in this manner for a month or two, we should get great numbers of them into our hands. If His Excellency should think this mode preferable to that of ‘drawing the covers’ I shall most willingly proceed to the Blue Hills, Eastern Marshes, Maloney’s Sugarloaf, and the Upper Macquarie etc, to direct to movements of several parties, and see that their operations are carried out with all possible humanity. Night-time ambush on Aboriginal camp (attrib. Samuel Thomas Gill) Aboriginals attacking a shepherd’s hut (attrib. Samuel Calvert) Figure 262 Stylised frontier warfare (1820s)1887 But to rid the country of this scourge, a considerable number of troops will be required. The hordes which infest the bush around Michael Howe’s Marsh, and the Lakes, and other places to the westward of this station, are, I am told, more numerous, bold 865 and hardy, than those to the eastward: - but mobs of the former tribes frequently pass across to Oyster Bay, and are confounded, by the settlers, with the local tribes. I will proceed with vigour, the moment the reinforcement of troops arrives here. 1888 Arthur quickly approved Anstey’s plan and, in 1828, put him in charge of the civilian ‘roving parties’. Among others, Batman led a team in the Campbell Town district up to Ben Lomond. Gilbert Robertson operated in the Richmond district. Jorgenson with four parties roved the Oatlands district. Their purpose was to locate and pursue Aboriginals to their ‘haunts’, and kill or capture any who were found. Each party comprised convicts, hoping for a partial remission of their sentence. Several Sydney natives contributed - as trackers - to Batman’s party. At the time, the Gazette offered a reward of £5 for every Aboriginal adult taken alive, with £2 for children. Some ‘respectable’ colonists were sworn in as Special Constables, to oversee operations and provide advice on where the Palawa were most troublesome. During this period, the military were deployed across stock huts around the ‘settled districts’ to discourage Aboriginal attacks. 1889 The constant harassment by the armed parties caused the Palawa to avoid their usual ‘haunts’ and fall back to the most inaccessible places, such as the tops of rocky mountains, where there were few materials to construct their usual dwellings and food was scarce, along with fuel for campfires (although they were reluctant to light fires for fear of being ambushed). It is surprising that the Palawa were so effective in their resistance, given their diminishing numbers, a fact unknown to their persecutors at the time. Jorgenson informs us: Oatlands, although an extensive district, had at the time spoken of a scanty population, not exceeding nine hundred souls. When the outrages committed in that district alone in a few years, and the innumerable depredations and murders perpetrated in all other districts are considered, posterity will scarcely believe that it was possible for a handful of Blacks to commit so many acts of barbarity, almost with impunity. And if we further reflect that for many successive previous years, the Aborigines had carried on their outrages upon the whites, the loss of lives sustained by the latter is truly astonishing. 1890 866 In April 1830, Arthur thanked Anstey for his services. Sir, I am directed to express to you, in the strongest terms, the Lieutenant Governor’s approbation of your zealous exertions, in regulating and directing the parties who have for some time past been employed in protecting the settled districts of tis Colony against the aggressions of the Aboriginal natives, and to convey to you His Excellency’s thanks for the trouble you have taken. As it is now intended to make some change in the present system of employing these parties, and to divide the anxiety, responsibility, and trouble which has hitherto fallen solely on yourself, with the other Police Magistrates, making each answerable for the security of his respective district, and for the men who are placed under his charge, I am directed to request that you will send me a nominal return of all the men who are at present employed on this service, at the same time, stating how many you may require for your own immediate district.1891 Jorgenson explains Arthur’s thinking for the marauding groups of civilians, police and military. It was ‘friendly conciliation’ at the point of a gun. Few Palawa were captured. In 1828, Robertson had captured five; Batman fifteen or sixteen. Others fared little better. If Aboriginals tried to evade capture, they were shot. The roving parties succeeded only because Aboriginals could find little respite from the constant worry of ambush and faced the reality of their reducing numbers, making them open to Robinson’s ‘friendly mission’. Jorgenson explains further: The movements of the armed parties were intended to facilitate, and stand in connection with the conciliator mission. Governor Arthur’s sagacious mind easily suggested to him that no friendly mission could hope for the slightest success, unless the Aborigines were in some way made to understand the difference between peace and war, and that the choice should be left to themselves.1892 Jorgenson was clear in the objectives of the roving parties: to protect the ‘settled districts’; and to capture and remove Aboriginals from all areas that colonists had occupied or might occupy in the future. Few Aboriginals were captured, but an unknown number were killed. Jorgenson wrote to the Oatlands Police Magistrate, Thomas Anstey, on 18 th June 1829: 867 If I understand rightly – the two main objects in view are 1) to protect the settlements and stock huts from the attacks of the native tribes, so as to reduce it to almost a matter of impossibility that any more of the white inhabitants should fall victims to the fury and misguided notions of the Aborigines – and 2) finally to place the native tribes in a situation that they may be captured without the parties in pursuit of them being compelled to shed more human blood than should be necessary to bring them to a sense of justice and moderation.1893 Jorgenson continued: Some of the Aborigines may undoubtedly be fallen in with, and many killed, long before the measures I propose could be finally accomplished, but if defence against their attacks, and final capture, are the principal objects, I think the propositions I have made will most fully answer those ends.1894 Jorgenson gives us further insight into the operations of Arthur’s roving parties: Perhaps I can do nothing better than at once furnish a statement of the principal transactions of 1829 and 1830 with respect to the measures pursued for the capture of the Aborigines, as appearing in a memorandum transmitted to the Aboriginal Committee by the Lieutenant Governor’s order in the beginning of 1831. Memorandum: Mr G.A. Robinson set off on his expedition upon the coast in February 1830 (prior to the report of the Committee of 19 March 1830). The roving parties under Mr Anstey were organized in July 1829, also prior to the report of the Committee. On the 19th March 1830 John Small was engaged to proceed against the Aborigines with a party of five men, under a promise of a free pardon at the expiration of twelve months. On the 24th Match two parties of convicts were sent out under the respective charge of Mr Sherwin and Mr Doran with the engagement of a reward of £5 for every adult they might capture, and deliver up without wound or injury. 868 In August 1830 Nicholas Tortosa was engaged to lead a party of nine men for twelve months, under the promise of one thousand acres of land, provided he captured twenty natives, and to receive a reward of £5 for each adult native and £2 for every child captured. In September 1830, called upon the community at large to make a combined effort with the military, to surround and capture the natives. 7rh January 1831 – a place for entrapping the natives at the Shannon Corner was approved, and the necessary hut was built upon the plan of Fisher, a ticketof-leave man, who was appointed to conduct the scheme. 1895 With his approval of ‘roving parties’, Arthur suborned the judicial system, the police magistrates, mounted police, field police and special constables, imported Aboriginal trackers, civilians, even convicts and ticket-of-leave men, to operate as an extrajudicial paramilitary group against Aboriginal resistance to the occupation process, in concert with the military. The ‘roving’ tactic was soon adopted by other Australian colonies, where (from the late 1830s) police formed flying mounted detachments, to ‘disperse’ Aboriginals who presumed to trespass on their traditional lands. Nowhere was the practice to be more extreme than in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory towards the end of the century and beyond, when a programme of Aboriginal eradication, of ‘dispersal’, became Governments’ policy across Australia, followed by a combination of forced detention and separation under a system of apartheid that persisted until the 1960s. Murray to Arthur, 5th November 1830 1896 Arthur to Murray, 20th November 1830 1897 Executive Council extract of minutes: 23rd February 18311898 The Council notes the possibility of effecting the voluntary removal of the entire black population, by holding out to them the inducements of food, clothing, and protection of the government from the aggressions of sealers and bushrangers, but fails to mention the depredations of the settlers, police, roving parties and military. With the first batch of Robinson’s prisoners now in custody at Swan Island, Arthur was not going to let them escape: a government vessel be immediately dispatched, with the necessary stores and a military guard, under the superintendence of Mr Robinson, for the purpose of conveying to that place the Natives now at Swan Island or elsewhere. 869 With the surrender of some Aboriginals and likely capitulation of more the Committee recommends that small armed parties should be stationed in the most remote stock-huts, but that the roving parties should be discontinued. Robinson’s deposition to the Council was inaccurate and self-serving, in parts simply wrong and misleading. Consider these examples: he feels confident of the possibility of effecting the voluntary removal of the entire black population, by holding out to them the inducements of food, clothing, and protection of the government from the aggressions of sealers and bushrangers but to achieve the trust and cooperation of disparate tribes, he had to use trickery and false inducements that they would have their own land and would be free to return to their homelands periodically. Robinson does not think the Natives could now be induced to retire altogether from the settled districts, and occupy the unlocated parts of the island, or that a negociation to that effect could now be accomplished through their chiefs. Nor did Robinson think the use of Aboriginal Protectors would work, although this is exactly what he later proposed to the colony of Victoria after he had completed his ethnic cleansing operation for Arthur in Tasmania: he thinks the Natives would not for a long time permit white people to reside constantly with them, although it should be explained to them that the government would send to the different tribes a respectable person as agent, whose duty would be to protect them from bush-rangers and stock-keepers, and escort them safely from one district to another, and enable them to make known their wants and complaints to the government, and negociate for them whenever it might be necessary. Robinson tells the Council what they want to hear when he says: that the Natives generally would not object to be removed to an island in Basses Straits. He egregiously advises Gun-Carriage Island is better adapted for the formation of an establishment for the reception of the Aborigines than any other of the islands, when it was entirely unsuitable. More unconscionable still, Robinson’s wilfully untruthful assertion: that if the Natives were placed on an island in Basses Straits they would not feel themselves imprisoned there, or pine away in consequence of the restraint, nor would they wish to return to the main land, or regret their inability to hunt and roam about in the manner they had previously done on this island. But it was what Arthur wanted to accept. Only Pedder, the ‘hanging judge’, disagreed. 870 The Government gave Robinson the job of completing the ethnic cleansing process. All that remained was for the Council to select an island from which the detainees could not escape, where an ‘establishment’ or detention centre could be built for their ‘reception’. There exists no evidence that these plans were ever discussed with the Palawa. Indeed, they were not consulted at all, nor were they invited, through representatives, to speak on their own behalf before the Council, although they would have been perfectly willing to do so. No, Robinson did not want their views expressed. He would speak for them and secure a Government contract for their capture, made possible because he had found how to secure their trust by using what the British called Judas goats, a small number of Aboriginals whom Robinson induced to participate in his ‘friendly mission’, who could help lead their fellows into captivity. Trucanini was key amongst them, who acted as translator for many of the tribes encountered on Robinson’s ‘friendly mission’. Robinson used her. It is doubtful he would have succeeded without her help. Nor did Arthur ever speak to her after. Jorgenson writes: The aboriginal asylum at Bruné Island became an object of deep interest to the committee. On that island was a tame tribe which it was intended should accompany Mr Robinson on his conciliatory mission, but delays naturally occurred. The difference of languages, as already mentioned, made it difficult to form immediate arrangements. It was necessary that Mr Robinson should acquire some knowledge of the Aboriginal languages, at least one of them. He was ably assisted by an Aboriginal woman, Trugananna, the wife of the Chief, who possessed a quick perception, and with facility made herself conversant with the eastern and western languages. The mission was therefore not able to pursue its intended avocations until the month of January in the following year (1830).1899 Robinson did not mention to the Council, except as a regrettable footnote, that his detention of Bruny Island Aboriginals had resulted in a frightening level of mortality from pulmonary disease caused by the unsuitable clothing and close quarters, a pattern of death likely to repeat for any other detainees or ‘establishment’. It was likely that the Council already knew, as it had become public knowledge, but were unconcerned by ‘acts of God’ and were more focussed on complete Aboriginal removal. ‘Settler’ agitation demanded it. Pedder’s wise dissenting voice: before his Honor could concur in the advice of the rest of the Council, he wished it to be ascertained whether some treaty could not be made with these people, by which their chiefs should engage for their tribes not to pass certain lines of demarcation which might be agreed upon, and that it should be proposed to them to allow an European agent to reside with or accompany each tribe was overruled by Arthur and other Council members. 871 If his view for a negotiated treaty had been adopted, Tasmanian history would now be very different. Among the despatches and Minutes of Council and letters we will find the euphemisms of British conflict terminology, where ‘settler’ meant invasive colonist occupier, ‘conciliation’ meant forcible or induced surrender, Aboriginal resistance was an ‘outrage’, ‘settler’ homicidal attacks were ‘justifiable protection of life and property’, ‘roving parties’ were a legal instrument of martial law (in fact, they were marauding paramilitary death squads), the military were deployed for lawful ‘counter insurgency’, the ‘settled districts’ were those constantly spreading areas claimed by Britain, Aboriginal witness testimony to British atrocities was disallowed because Aboriginals could not swear a ‘Christian oath’, a detention centre was an ‘establishment, ‘protecting the Natives’ meant enforced custody – imprisonment - in a militarised facility from which they could not escape, Aboriginals were ‘savages’ but the British were ‘civilized’, and the ‘friendly mission’ meant capturing the Palawa by false inducements. With reference to the Minutes of the Council of the 30th November last, when the Lieutenant-Governor brought under consideration the further measures deemed necessary for the protection of the Settlers against the Aboriginal Natives, his Excellency now submitted, for the opinion and advice of this Council, the Report of the Aborigines Committee, dated 4th February 1831, derailing the proceedings of Mr G. A. Robinson on his conciliatory mission to the Native Tribes. By this Report it appears that Mr Robinson has acquired a sufficient knowledge of their language to enable him to converse with and explain to the Natives the kind and pacific intentions of the government and the settlers generally towards them. Mr Robinson appears also to have gained the confidence of the Natives to such an extent that several of the most hostile chiefs have put themselves under his protection, and he feels confident of the possibility of effecting the voluntary removal of the entire black population, by holding out to them the inducements of food, clothing, and protection of the government from the aggressions of sealers and bushrangers. And with a view to the immediate formation of an establishment for the reception of the 34 Aborigines already under protection of the government at Swan Island, and of any others who may desire to avail themselves of it, the Committee recommends GunCarriage Island in Bass’s Straits (and which is about eleven leagues from the main land), to be selected for that purpose, and suggests that a government vessel be immediately dispatched, with the necessary stores and a military guard, under the superintendence of Mr Robinson, for the purpose of conveying to that place the Natives now at Swan Island or elsewhere. The Committee also recommends that a small armed vessel should be stationed in the Straits for the protection of this establishment against the sealers, whalers, and runaway convicts, who resort to Gun-Carriage and other islands adjacent to it, and also for the purpose of transporting supplies and stores to the establishment. The Committee also submit that the best method of protecting the settlers is to continue the conciliatory measures so successfully adopted by Mr Robinson, and recommends the appointment of an assistant, who should proceed with him to Gun872 Carriage Island, and that Mr Robinson should, as soon as practicable, renew his mission to the hostile tribes to induce them to join the establishment at that island. In the mean time, the Committee recommends that small armed parties should be stationed in the most remote stock-huts, but that the roving parties should be discontinued. Read the Minute of Council of 30th November last, and Mr Robinson’s Journal of the 12th inst., also a letter from Mr J. Welsh, the harbour-master at Launceston, dated George Town, 10th February 1831, reporting his return on the previous day from Swan Island, having left the 34 Natives well, and contented. He reports the want of water at Swan Island in sufficient quantities for the use of these people, and recommends their immediate removal to some other island in the Straits where that necessary article will be found in greater abundance. Read a letter from the Commandant at Launceston, dated 14th inst., making a similar report and recommendation. Mr Robinson was called in and examined at great length by the Council. From the information he had obtained from the Settlers and Natives, he was of opinion that all tribes of Aborigines did not exceed 700 persons, and that they are divided into various tribes under chiefs occupying particular districts. He states that he can confer with them, as he knows some of them by name, particularly in the tribes about Macquarrie Harbour and Port Davey. In his opinion it would require three years for him to communicate with every tribe before their final removal from the main land, the difficulty of approaching them being so great as sometimes to occupy several weeks even after knowing the exact place of their resort. He thinks the power of their chiefs is sufficient to control a tribe so long as the chief is present, but not otherwise. He does not think the Natives could now be induced to retire altogether from the settled districts, and occupy the unlocated1900 parts of the island, or that a negociation to that effect could now be accomplished through their chiefs; nor could the Natives be restrained from attacking the white people, or be bound to confine their excursions to the unsettled parts of the island, even if arrangements were made by the government through their chiefs to secure them in such situations from the encroachments of the settlers and stock-keepers. If their chiefs were to promise to conform to such arrangements, and to engage themselves to prevent further aggressions on the part of their tribes, he does not think the promises would be attended to by the tribes, as the chiefs have not sufficient power over them to enforce obedience. Such arrangements might be made, but it would require a very long time; he thinks the Natives would not for a long time permit white people to reside constantly with them, although it should be explained to them that the government would send to the different tribes a respectable person as agent, whose duty would be to protect them from bush-rangers and stock-keepers, and escort them safely from one district to another, and enable them to make known their wants and complaints to the government, and negociate for them whenever it might be necessary. 873 In time, he thinks, they might permit it, and such a plan might have been adopted before their women and children were destroyed by the whites; but he fears it would be difficult now. He is opinion the Natives are fully aware of the pacific disposition of the government towards them, but are now afraid to show themselves near the towns on account of the soldiers and stock-keepers. He states it to be his opinion that there are some few tribes of Natives to the westward who have never been at war with the whites, and who would gladly receive agents to reside amongst them, to instruct and protect them. He is aware that the Natives can distinguish between stock-keepers and settlers, and attack the latter, although they are conscious of not having received an injury from them. He has heard them boast with much pleasure of the murders they have committed on the whites, and has known them to be revenged on particular persons for inflicting injuries on the. Mr Robinson is of opinion that the Natives generally would not object to be removed to an island in Basses Straits, and he thinks it would be humane policy towards them, as he feels satisfied the government can never sufficiently protect them from the outages the sealers and runaway convicts inflict upon the tribes, especially the women. From all the information he has obtained, and from his personal inspection of some of the islands, he is of opinion Gun-Carriage Island is better adapted for the formation of an establishment for the reception of the Aborigines than any other of the islands. If the 34 Natives now at Swan Island were removed to Gun-Carriage Island, he would, after conciliating others of the hostile tribes, and endeavour to persuade them to return with him to GunCarriage Island. The means for conciliating and bringing in the hostile tribes might be multiplied, if respectable persons could be found to go amongst them without arms, and would use the same means he has already practised; but he thinks there should be no military force with the Natives at Gun-Carriage Island, as the very appearance of fire-arms immediately dispels all confidence, and prevents communication with them. Mr Robinson is of opinion that if the Natives were placed on an island in Basses Straits they would not feel themselves imprisoned there, or pine away in consequence of the restraint, nor would they wish to return to the main land, or regret their inability to hunt and roam about in the manner they had previously done on this island. They would be enabled to fish, dance, sing, and throw spears, and amuse themselves in their usual way, and he feels confident they would accompany him to the Main and again return to the island, and endeavour to induce others to accompany them to the establishment. Mr Robinson thinks Clarke’s Island is not eligible for the establishment, there being no wood there, and the water bad. There is no bird-rookery there, or any kangaroos; the land is very bad, and the Natives would find no amusements there. He thinks Maria Island better suited for the establishment than Gun-Carriage Island, except as regards the facility of escape from it to the Main, which he thinks could not easily be overcome. 874 Mr Robinson thinks, from his own observations and inquiries, that there are not more than 30 sealers on the islands in Basses Straits, and that if they were turned away by Government they would expect some compensation for their huts and gardens. They have 25 native women residing with them, and if they were deprived of them, he is of opinion they would abandon the Straits immediately. Read a letter from the police magistrate at Campbell Town to the Colonial Secretary, dated 30th August 1830, enclosing two letters from Messrs John and William Darke, offering to go amongst the Natives to induce them to follow them, or o capture them uninjured, if deem necessary. The Council having fully considered the statements made by Mr Robinson, and the letters read, is of opinion that it is necessary to take some immediate steps for the removal of the 34 Natives now at Swan Island to some other island in the Straits where a sufficient supply of water can be found for their use; and although the Council would rather have advised their removal to Clarke’s Island, on account of its nearer vicinity to the main land than Gun-Carriage Island, yet, as it appears that Clarke’s Island is unfit for the purpose, there seems to be no other alternative than to recommend the removal of the Natives from Swan to Gun-Carriage Island. At the same time the Council is of opinion that the master of the vessel to be dispatched for their conveyance, and Mr Robinson, should, upon leaving Swan Island, again examine Clarke’s Island, and if, after a careful inspection, they are both unfavourably impressed towards it, then the Natives should be placed on Gun-Carriage Island; and the master should be instructed to proceed at once to survey and diligently examine all other islands, to ascertain whether any other of them nearer to and in view of the main land possess the necessary requisites for the establishment in the same degree as Gun-Carriage Island. The Colonial Secretary and Lieutenant-Colonel Logan were also of opinion that it would be advisable for Mr Robinson to renew his mission to the Native tribes, and that other persons of respectability, and properly qualified for the undertaking, should be employed in the same manner, with a view to conciliate others of the hostile Natives, and try to induce them to go voluntarily to the establishment in the Straits, and place themselves under the protection and care of the Government. The Chief Justice concurred with the other Members of the Council in advising the removal of the Natives from swan Island to Gun-Carriage or any other of the adjacent islands which may be found adapted for their reception, and he advised the removal thither of such other of the Natives as may hereafter be captured during any hostile incursion made by them, and that they should be detained there until some satisfactory negociation could be concluded with the tribes to which they belong; but he could not recommend the adoption of measures tending to induce the Natives, in tribes, to consent to expatriation and imprisonment, until the absolute necessity of such measures was clearly manifested; for, nothwithstanding Mr Robinson’s opinion to the contrary, that, however carefully these people might be supplied with food, they would soon begin to pine away when they found their situation one of hopeless imprisonment, within bounds so narrow as necessarily to deprive them of those habits and customs which are the charms of their savage life; he meant their known love of change and place, their periodical distant migrations, their expeditions in 875 search of game, and that unbounded liberty of which they have hitherto been in enjoyment. Until Mr Robinson had gone upon his mission, scarcely any hope had been entertained of opening an amicable intercourse with these people, but Mr Robinson’s success justified a hope that more was attainable, and before his Honor could concur in the advice of the rest of the Council, he wished it to be ascertained whether some treaty could not be made with these people, by which their chiefs should engage for their tribes not to pass certain lines of demarcation which might be agreed upon, and that it should be proposed to them to allow an European agent to reside with or accompany each tribe. He thought such agents would most materially contribute to maintain any amicable engagement of this sort which might be concluded. Up to the present moment, when aggressions had been made upon the Natives, they have not known to whom to complain, nor, had they known, could their evidence have been used to bring the offenders to justice; such agents would serve the double purpose of protecting the Natives on the one hand, and of checking any disposition towards hostility on their part on the other; and they would be constantly and usefully employed in endeavouring to reclaim the Natives from their savage state. The Council advised the Lieutenant-Governor to discontinue the roving parties, as the measure appeared to have a bad effect upon the Natives, but advised his Excellency to station small parties of military in the remote stock-huts in the interior, as the most likely means of protecting the settlers. John Montagu (Clerk of Council) Executive Council extract of minutes: 14th March 18311901 If ever there was doubt about what Arthur meant by ‘conciliation’, it was dispelled when he decided to capture the Aboriginals in the distant west, after inducing them through an intermediary into believing his good intentions. Arthur had often mused upon the possibility of allowing the Palawa to remain in designated areas that had not been encroached upon by ‘settlers’. He could have decided to leave the west coast Aboriginals undisturbed. There were no colonists in the area, being unsuited to livestock grazing because of its remoteness, peat soils, button grass plains, wild weather and often dense vegetation. Instead, he resolved to ethnically cleanse the entire coast. It was a disaster. After Robinson began capturing the local Palawa, he held them on an island prison in Macquarie Harbour where they began to die in large proportional numbers from the inhumane conditions prior to their shipment into a detention facility in Bass Strait. Arthur was unconcerned by the deaths in custody. What mattered to him (and the British Government) was the success of his ‘conciliation’ policy, which was a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. After the Palawa were removed, he could ignore the tragic consequences that 876 followed. What mattered more to him was ‘settler’ approval. If ‘settlers’ supported his administration, then so would the British Government. Arthur wanted the Aboriginals completely removed from Tasmania to stop their resistance to Britain’s occupation process: no measures should be delayed which are practicable to answer the pressing demands of the settlers from all quarters for protection against the atrocities of these people. Arthur was less troubled about stopping the atrocities of the settlers, which he regarded as self-defence. It was one-eyed British justice. Arthur disingenuously attempted to argue in Council that the Lieutenant-Governor cannot doubt the propriety as well as the policy of allowing 200 or 300 hostile Natives to be encouraged to proceed with their own consent to any island in the Straits, or other place of security, and where they will receive food and clothing, and above all, instruction in civilization, but he ignored the question of consent (few Aboriginals were aware that they were being sent into captivity)1902 and attempted to justify their incarceration as for the ‘greater good’ of the settlers, while absolving his conscience in that he was providing a ‘place of security’, in reality a death trap, where ‘instruction in civilization’ meant education in Christianity and the destruction of their culture. Arthur considers again, and rejects again, the possibility of a treaty by falsely arguing that a nomadic west coast population might be exposed to continuing aggression by whites (which he was unwilling to stop by prosecuting those responsible) although the respectable class of settlers might be depended upon in maintaining the treaty, it would be hopeless to contemplate that it would be observed by their servants. He ignores that the west coast Palawa population had little exposure to whites – the area had a minimal white population apart from that at the Macquarie Harbour penal settlement – and therefore, a treaty with these Palawa was eminently possible. Instead, Arthur argues that a treaty must be for all Palawa or none. It was a scorched earth policy, which admitted that Britain did not intend to punish white depredations, for fear of a colonist backlash against the administration. 1. The Lieutenant-Governor having considered, in the Executive Council on the 23rd February 1831, the measures recommended in the Report of the aborigines Committee, and having heard the statements of Mr Robinson in the Council, and at various times out of it, and having attentively perused his report, and maturely weighed the advice of the Council in connection with the general information which has through various channels reached his Excellency respecting the character and 877 proceedings of the Natives, it is his conclusion that the tribes to the westward (the country extending from Port Davey to Cape Grim), may possibly be conciliated, and that some qualified persons, if such can be found, should be sent, and presents should be made to them of blankets, tea and sugar; and that all white persons should be strictly prohibited from harassing or molesting them in any manner. The only violence to which they may be exposed, as there are no settlers in that quarter, will proceed from convicts escaping from Macquarrie Harbour, the servants of the Van Diemen’s Land Company, and sealers upon the coast. Escape from Macquarrie Harbour is not very frequent, and therefore the consequences are not to be so much apprehended in that quarter; Mr Curr will no doubt make every effort to deter the servants of the Company from harassing the Natives; and the sealers upon the coast, it may be hoped, will be considerably controlled by the employment of one of the government vessels in the straits. 2. As regards the tribes of Natives inhabiting the country from Cape grim to Port Dalrymple, and those whose usual haunts are in the neighbourhood of the Clyde, the Mersey, the Shannon, and country east of the main road from Hobart to Launceston, which comprehends all the blacks who have been for three years in open hostility to the white population, and have perpetrated murders and robberies without number, and evidently with the main desire to plunder, the Lieutenant-Governor entertains no hope of establishing any permanent good understanding with them, and no measures should be delayed which are practicable to answer the pressing demands of the settlers from all quarters for protection against the atrocities of these people. 3. If the question were whether a large body of many thousands of inhabitants should be removed from their native soil, there might be some difficulty in answering the only point upon which there is a difference of opinion in the Council; but if Mr Robinson be at all accurate in his calculations, the Lieutenant-Governor cannot doubt the propriety as well as the policy of allowing 200 or 300 hostile Natives to be encouraged to proceed with their own consent to any island in the Straits, or other place of security, and where they will receive food and clothing, and above all, instruction in civilization. For no terms which could now be entered into with the Natives inhabiting this portion of the country could be depended upon; they would, on the one hand, be extremely prone to pass the limits prescribed for them; and, on the other, although the respectable class of settlers might be depended upon 878 in maintaining the treaty, it would be hopeless to contemplate that it would be observed by their servants, runaway convicts, stock-keepers, and all that class of characters, who being free by servitude, are under no special control; the aggressions of any of these would be imputed by the ignorant Natives to be white inhabitants generally, and the savage acts, which we have severely felt as the result of their indiscriminate vengeance, would soon be revived in all their horrors. The inconsideration with which all savages act may possibly incline them, at the impulse of the moment, to follow Mr Robinson, or any other persons acting with him, to the establishment, and if so, by all means his Excellency thinks the feeling should be instantly taken advantage of; but he is not sanguine enough to anticipate any general success in this way, although it should be attempted, seeing that some Natives have already voluntarily placed themselves under our protection. 4. Upon the whole then it would appear to the Lieutenant-Governor most proper that an embassy should be again sent to the tribes inhabiting the Western Country, and that blankets and food should be given them; and that all the Natives at Swan Island, and in possession of the government either at Hobart or at Launceston, or indeed in any other part of the Island, should be removed to some eligible island in the Straits; that one of the government vessels should be engaged to remove them, and subsequently employed in conveying them provisions from Port Dalrymple, and when not so employed, the master should make a survey of the Straits, and control the sealers, taking from them any Native women whom they have carried away, and placing them upon the Native Establishment. That Mr Robinson, with any other persons who are inclined to afford their services in cooperation, should make another effort to confer with the hostile tribes, and explain the humane and kind disposition of the government towards them, and with the assistance of such Natives as may be depended upon, and, if possible, negociate with their chiefs either to proceed to the establishment, or to bind themselves to commit no further outrage on the condition of receiving food and clothing, and protection from all aggression. And whilst this attempt is in progress, as Mr Robinson himself thinks it will assist his operations, that armed parties of military or others should be stationed in all the distant stock-huts and known passes of the Natives, with orders to intercept and capture them if possible, or at all events to prevent the commission of the acts of barbarity and outrage which 879 have for the last three years attended all their expeditions against the white inhabitants. The time for negociation is peculiarly favourable, because it is evident that the Mobs who were so lately encompassed on the occasion of the general expedition have been exceedingly alarmed, and have not since committed any outrages; it is therefore highly probable that they may be more favourably disposed for conciliation than heretofore. The Lieutenant-Governor has heard no arguments used which determine him to think that the advantages are, upon the whole, (admitting the possibility of escape) in favour of an island in the Straits over Maria Island, but he cannot hesitate to submit his individual judgment in this respect to the opinion of the Council and the Aborigines Committee; at the same time his Excellency does not regard the possession of Gun-Carriage Island by the sealers; their atrocities have been so great, and are so notorious, towards the Natives, that he should feel no reluctance in chasing them away from their unsanctioned possessions in those islands. John Montagu, Clerk of the Council1903 Arthur to Murray: 4th April 18311904 Among the four Council members, the Chief Justice, John Pedder, was the lone voice in protesting the capture and expatriation of the surviving Palawa to imprisonment on a remote island in Bass Strait. Some researchers avoid the term ‘imprisonment’. They argue the inmates, including convicts, were free to move around. The Palawa were prevented from leaving the island, which is the nature of involuntary detention, of imprisonment. Pedder foresaw that they would begin to lose hope and ‘pine away’. The Council noted that Pedder ‘rather recommends that we should still strive to negociate with them, and that it should be proposed to them to allow an European agent to reside with or accompany each tribe, which agents would serve the double purpose of protecting the Natives, and of checking any disposition towards hostility on their part.’1905 He was overruled by Arthur; nor did Britain agree. Yet Island incarceration did indeed become a death trap. The Council authorised Robinson to continue his remunerated project of ‘inducing’ Aboriginals into accepting the ‘protection’ of a ‘kind’ British Government. Once in detention, for Arthur (and the colonists), the Palawa became ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Arthur occasionally asked the catechist how their religious instruction was progressing, but beyond that he had little interest in their welfare other than in managing the recurrent costs of what he called the ‘establishment’, in practice an island detention facility shared with convicts, where military guards and remoteness prevented any possibility of escape, food was 880 poor and often inadequate, mental health suffered, and death was a constant Aboriginal visitor, invited by the lethal conditions. Arthur had won his war and lost his soul, although it hardly mattered. When he left Tasmania in 1836, he was a wealthy man, wealthy from his land dealings, from dealing in expropriated Aboriginal land, from corrupt business transactions. As for the British Government, there was indeed an ‘indelible stain’ on its character, but it quickly faded as Tasmanian colonists and the mother country went on with the business of making money. The stain was not so indelible after all. Few remember it now. This is what Arthur wrote to Murray on 4th April 1831 about the proposed disposition of the Aboriginal captives: 1. With reference to my Despatch of 12th February last, enclosing a Report of the Aborigines Committee, I have the honour to transmit an transmit an extract of the Proceedings of the Executive Council, containing its advice upon the measures which the Committee recommend with regard to the Natives. 2. You will perceive that the Council unanimously1906 advise the adoption of the recommendation of the Committee, that the 34 Natives whom Mr. Robinson had induced to follow him to Swan Island, should be removed to Gun-Carriage Island, which is situated in Basses Straits, about 11 leagues from the Main, or on some other island which, on examination, might be found more eligible for the purpose, and there be supplied with food and clothing; and that the majority of the Council further advise, that Mr. Robinson should resume his mission to the Native tribes; and that other respectable persons, properly qualified for the undertaking, should be employed in the same manner, to act in unison, and cooperating with him, with a view to conciliate others of the hostile Natives, and endeavour to induce them to go voluntarily to the establishment in the Straits, and there place themselves under the protection and care of the Government. But, upon this point, the Chief Justice does not coincide in opinion with the other Members, and does not recommend the adoption of measures tending to induce the Natives in tribes to consent to expatriation. He rather recommends that we should still strive to negociate with them, and that it should be proposed to them to allow an European agent to reside with or accompany each tribe, which agents would serve the double purpose of protecting the Natives, and of checking any disposition towards hostility on their part. The Council further advise that the roving parties employed against the Natives should be discontinued, and that small parties of military should be stationed at the remote stock-huts in the interior for the protection of the settlers. 3. As no time was to be lost in removing the 34 Natives from Swan Island, where there was no water, to Gun-Carriage or some other island in the Straits, I have dispatched a small cutter for the purpose. Mr. Robinson has proceeded in the vessel with the Natives who accompanied him round the island, and such as have, from time to time, been captured; and his instructions are, as soon as those on Swan Island are removed and placed in security, to visit the islands in the Straits to require the sealers to give up the Native women whom they have forcibly carried away, and to place these women in safety with their countrymen at the intended Aboriginal Establishment on 881 Gun-Carriage Island. When the establishment shall have been formed, Mr. Robinson will undertake another mission to the hostile tribes upon the plan he has so successfully adopted, viz. approaching them unarmed in company with a few friendly Natives, explaining to them in their own language the amicable intentions1907 of the Government, and offering food and clothing, and protection from injury, on condition of their being peaceful and inoffensive, or of their going to the Aboriginal Establishment. By these means, and by conforming to their customs and habits, this zealous and persevering individual appears confident that he shall so ingratiate himself with the Natives as to be able to induce them to accompany him, and to remain upon the island where the establishment will be formed without exercising actual restraint, the appearance of which, in his intercourse with the Natives, he has been cautious to avoid. 4. As it appeared to me most important to mark in an especial manner the consequence which the Government attaches to well-directed exertions to conciliate the Natives, I have adopted the recommendation of the Committee in allowing to Mr Robinson, subject to your approval, a salary of 250l. per annum from the date of his appointment to the mission, and so long as he shall be retained in charge of the establishment, with a gratuity of 100l.; which, indeed, from his long absence from his large family, was only an act of justice; and I have further granted to him 2,560 acres of land, free from restrictions; and in the hope of inducing others to come forward in the same cause, the Government Notice, copy of which I have the honor to enclose, was issued. 5. I regret to report that since my last communication on this subject, several murders have been perpetrated by the blacks, without, as far as can be ascertained, any provocation whatever; but I coincide with the Chief Justice, tat as, contrary to the most sanguine expectation, an individual has at length been found, in the person of Mr. Robinson, who had the boldness, totally unarmed, to seek out, approach, and at length confer with the Natives, and has induced some of the most hostile to accompany him to Swan Island, a hope may be entertained tht others may be conciliated and induced to follow the same course; but, with reference to the experience we have already had of the instability of these savages, and attaching much in importance to Mr Robinson’s opinion, that the chiefs have but little influence over their tribes, and that he does not think they could deter them from the commission of fresh atrocities,1908 or that any dependence could be placed from the commission of fresh atrocities, or that any dependence could be placed in the observance of any treaty, even if they could be induced to enter into it, I rather incline to coincide with the other members of the Council, that they should be drawn by every mild excitement to resort to the Aboriginal Establishment at Gun-Carriage Island; for, even if they should pine away in the manner the Chief Justice apprehends, it is better that they should meet with their death in that way, whilst every act of kindness is manifested towards them, than that they should fall a sacrifice to the inevitable consequences of their continued acts of outrage upon the white inhabitants.1909 6. I have caused such temporary accommodation as the military have themselves been enabled to construct, with the assistance of a few convict mechanics, to be erected at the most remote districts; and, in accordance with the advice of the Council, 882 founded upon the recommendation of the Committee,1910 the military outposts will be maintained throughout the winter, and small parties detached from them for the protection of the most exposed settlers. This employment of the soldiers is exceedingly harassing, and to you, Sir, I need not add, very destructive to the internal economy of any troops, but I hope no precaution is omitted which may tend to maintain their discipline, or prevent that contamination which may always be apprehended from their being placed in circumstances tending to promote least intercourse with convicts. 7. Our continued warfare with these miserable savages must continue to be a subject of anxious consideration, but His Majesty’s Government may be assured that there is a most sincere disposition on the part of the constituted authorities, as well as of the inhabitants generally throughout the Colony, to embrace every opening for conciliation.1911 Following on from the Executive Council meeting of 14th March 1831 that discussed the disposition of the remaining Palawa, Arthur attached two enclosures for the Colonial Office, the first to set our Aboriginal transfer arrangements, the second to reward Robinson for their capture. Colonial Secretary’s Office, 3rd March 18311912 Sir, I am directed by the LieutenantGovernor to desire that you will immediately embark on board the cutter “Charlotte”, with the Natives now in Hobart Town, and proceed to Swan Island, where you will receive on board the Natives at that place, and thence repair to Clarke’s Island, where the establishment for the reception of the Natives is to be removed. If, however, you should consider Clarke’s Island to be objectionable, you will form the establishment on Gun- Carriage Island. You will afterwards proceed in the cutter to visit any islands in the Straits, and, if necessary, Western Port, where it is probable some Native women of Van Diemen’s Land are kept by the sealers, or other white men. You will notify to all persons whom you may find in the Straits accompanied by Native women, that the act of carrying off or detaining those unhappy people, unless by their most express and unequivocal consent, is a flagrant offence, for which the parties guilty of it are punishable by law; and you will charge and require those persons, in the name of the Government, to deliver up all such women to you accordingly, to be placed by you, with the other Natives under the care of the government, at the Establishment. If the women themselves, after your instructions shall have been fully explained to them, are not disposed to accompany you, you are not to interfere any further; but if, desiring to be removed, they are exposed to any ill-treatment, or the persons from whom you may be about to remove them offer you any resistance, you will be justified in using force to accomplish the object; but in resorting to any such measures you must use the greatest caution, and you will take care that the degree of violence used by you is no more than shall actually be necessary. You will use every exertion to ascertain and report to the government the circumstances of all the cases in which these poor creatures may have been injured, either by seducing or forcibly carrying them away from the Main originally, or by 883 subsequent acts of violence or cruelty towards them, or simply by detention against their will; the names and descriptions of the guilty parties, and the dates and places at which the several offences have been committed by them, and the accustomed names and descriptions of the women so injured, are particulars on which it will of course be important for the Government to be accurately informed, in order that warrants may hereafter be issued for the apprehension of the offenders, whom the Government is resolved, if possible, to bring exemplary punishment. 1913 You will also, as far as may be practicable, ascertain and report to the Government, the names and descriptions of every person (whether accompanied by Natives or not) whom you may meet with in the Straits or Islands; and if you have reasonable cause to suspect any whom you may so meet to be runaway convicts, you may apprehend all such suspected persons, and carry them back with you. You will signify, generally, to all persons (sealers or others) whom you so meet with, that it is the determination of the Government not to permit any residence upon, or resort to, any of the islands within this government, unless by express written license to be obtained for that purpose; you will accordingly, in all cases in which it may appear to you expedient to do so, warn all persons to quit the islands, which you will point out to them are solely the property of the Crown; on which, after such notice, they are trespassers. If, after a reasonable time allowed for that purpose, they do not accordingly quit the island, you may then proceed to compel their removal, using, nevertheless, no more force or violence than the occasion may absolutely call for.1914 In case your authority in any of these points may be questioned, you will be prepared with proof (which you may exhibit) of your appointment as a constable, and you are at liberty to communicate the contents of these instructions as the authority on which your proceedings are founded. I am further to desire that you will be particularly careful to address communications to me, for the information of the Lieutenant-Governor, by every opportunity. J. Burnett for Mr G.A. Robinson, Hobart Town1915 Government Notice, Colonial Secretary’s Office, 19th February 1831 The Lieutenant-Governor having had under consideration the Report of the Aborigines Committee of the 4th instant, detailing the proceedings of Mr G.A. Robinson on his conciliatory mission to the Aborigines, with a view of opening an amicable intercourse and friendly communication with the whole of the black population of this island, feels great pleasure in notifying, by a public order, that Mt Robinson has, in the opinion of the Committee, accomplished in a great measure the objects of his mission, and that in so doing he has manifested the most daring intrepidity, persevering zeal, and strenuous exertion. As further measures for extending these conciliatory feelings are in course of renewal by Mr Robinson, the Lieutenant-Governor cannot refrain from promulgating, before his departure, the sense entertained by the Government of the important services he has already performed. A salary of 250l. per annum will be granted to him from the date of his appointment to this mission, with a gratuity of 100l.; and, as an additional 884 inducement for promoting an object so anxiously desired, and in testimony of the approbation of the local government, the Lieutenant-Governor is further pleased to direct that a maximum grant of 2,560 acres of land, free from all conditions and restrictions, shall be made to Mr Robinson, in the title of which grant will be fully set forth the honourable services rendered by him to the government and inhabitants of this colony. The success which has already attended the conciliatory meaures adopted by Mr Robinson in his intercourse with the Aboriginal Natives will, it is most sincerely hoped by the Lieutenant-Governor, be the means of inducing other inhabitants to embark in the same useful cause, and it will always afford his Excellency great pleasure to reward with equal liberality any exertions which may prove as beneficial to the community, and to the Aboriginal Natives themselves. By his Excellency’s command, J. Burnett1916 Conclusion Throughout his term of office, Arthur pursued an ethnic cleansing policy towards the Palawa. While promoting settler sovereignty and aggressive immigration policies, he denied Aboriginals the right to share the land peacefully.1917 As Aboriginal resistance increased, he allowed them to be lawfully shot under Martial Law.1918 His attempt at a human ‘black line’ across the midlands was a failed strategy to drive any Aboriginals into captivity.1919 He then resorted to a ‘friendly mission’, for which he employed George Robinson to try and convince surviving Aboriginals to surrender to detention on an island by making false inducements.1920 Together, these initiatives conform to Arthur’s final solution to rid Tasmania of Aboriginals. Between 1824 and 1832, Arthur was determinedly pressing ahead with his ethnic cleansing policy, being always careful to involve the Colonial Office in his planning measures. Arthur could have changed his genocidal course at any point but driven forward by the expectations of the colonists and the demands by the British Government to increase immigration, he put the ‘greater good’ of colonization above the rights of the Palawa, their right to land, their right to culture, their right to life. If Robinson’s ‘friendly mission’ had been less successful, it is possible that Arthur may have reconsidered a treaty arrangement. It was certainly discussed by the Executive Council, but put aside when the early results of Robinson’s ‘conciliation’ efforts at Bruny Island became evident (although the high Aboriginal mortality while they were being ‘conciliated’ was barely considered as a reason to pull back from the capture process). 885 Nor was there a security need to cleanse Aboriginals from the west, where there were a negligible number of whites; these people did not present any threat to ‘settlers’ and could have been left unmolested to pursue their customary activities. But Arthur wanted all Aboriginals cleared from Tasmania. By 1831, he would consider nothing less. Removing an ethnic group from a geographic area requires hard work and determination. Arthur was not above such diligence if it furthered his career prospects. His proclamations of martial law in 1828 and again in 1830 were genocidal in character, as were his heavily armed ‘roving’ and ‘pursuing’ parties, which he established in 1828 and discontinued in 1831. The infamous ‘black line’ in October and November 1830, where Arthur publicly called for a levée en masse, a ‘call to arms’, was a singular failure but alarmed the Aboriginals that more than two thousand people (military, police, convicts, and ‘settlers’) were scouring the island for them, to capture them dead or alive. Finally, Arthur’s ‘conciliation’ process was little more than ethnic cleansing by another more palatable name. By March 1831, the remaining Palawa population was in perpetual fear for their lives, unable to light a camp fire without the possibility of an ambush, no longer able to hunt for food without becoming a target, excluded by armed force from the areas they once called home,1921 births plummeting,1922 their culture being destroyed, their survival as a race now in question. ‘Conciliation’ meant that remnant members of different tribal communities were being forcibly transferred to a secure detention facility that was entirely unsuited to their ongoing survival, either individually or as a race.1923 The result of Arthur’s prolonged seven-year genocidal campaign was that, by 1832, only about 250 Aboriginals survived,1924 with a demographic that was skewed towards the elderly. There were few children or women of childbearing age.1925 Arthur had succeeded in destroying Palawa society. Culture and tradition became a fading memory. All that remained was further subjugation where the survivors endured the rigors of imprisonment, suffering immense mental anguish, constantly threatened by death in custody, trying to remember what their lives had once been like.1926 The hypothesis regarding the genocidal agency of Arthur’s final solution, a Government campaign of targeted destruction and removal of the Palawa from 1824 to 1831, is confirmed. 886 887 The role of Martial Law in Tasmanian genocide Governor Arthur’s declarations of martial law between 1828 and 1832, fully supported by the British Foreign Office, was a continuation of the British policy of extermination for as long as Aboriginals resisted the occupation of their country. Arthur and Britain authorized killing without consequence. Britain resolved that settler sovereignty, and the colonizing administrative process would be protected by lethal means. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through the proclamation of Martial Law, Britain is culpable of genocide under the following articles: 2 (a) Killing members of the group 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group by J. W. Beattie, 1896 State Library of Tasmania Figure 263 George Arthur (1784 - 1854) 10th January 1828 Arthur to Goderich Arthur asserts that stock-keepers and sealers (not settlers, police or the military), committed ‘every kind of injury against the defenceless Natives’, where it was ‘a constant practice to fire upon them whenever they approached, and to deprive them of their women whenever the opportunity offered’. 888 Arthur says he tried to stop the targeted behaviour by ‘proclamation, that every individual found to have committed any criminal act of aggression upon the Aborigines, should be prosecuted before the Supreme Court’. There were no prosecutions, ever. We conclude that Arthur’s words were intended to placate any dormant humanitarian concerns of his superiors. He goes on to say that ‘injuries, real or supposed, inflicted upon the blacks, have been revenged upon the whites’ and that ‘it is much easier to complain than to find a cure for the evil’. But the conflict was caused by the process of settlement, which Britain was not prepared to forgo. The anti-Aboriginal views of the settler constituency were powerful. Arthur could not ignore them. If Arthur wanted to accelerate British immigration and settlement, his only solution was to remove the Aboriginals entirely from their ‘favourite haunts’. Arthur’s words are racist, when he refers to the Palawa as an ‘abased race’, and ‘abject beings’. He even questions if they can be civilized. The Sydney black to whom he refers, ‘Black Tom’, faced Arthur’s full punishment for leading a resistance against the colonization process and the occupation of Aboriginal lands: Arthur hanged him. Such was the price of challenging Arthur’s authority and the constant Government alienation of land in favour of settlers. Arthur then mulls over what would later become his final solution, ‘to collect the Natives, and remove them to some Island in the Straits, where there is no want of their accustomed food’. Of course, Arthur is overstating the case that an island would provide all their accustomed food in some kind of idealised existence that would preserve their culture while introducing another. We saw the consequences, when they were detained on Flinder’s Island, where the game was quickly depleted and their culture destroyed, along with their traditional way of life, pining to return to their ‘favourite haunts’ as Arthur calls them, what we would more properly call their ancestral homelands. Arthur’s interim thought bubble was to ‘settle the Aborigines in some remote quarter of the island’, for which the Land Commissioners ‘recommended the North East Coast’. Arthur was careful to reassure his superiors that ‘only a very limited expenditure will be authorized’, until they gave their endorsement to any resettlement proposal. In fact, both the west coast and the north east coast could have been ideal, as settlers did not find the areas suitable for pastoralism, not then anyway. But the Foreign (Colonial) Office did not endorse any resettlement proposal that might require giving up potentially valuable land. Nor did Arthur pursue this idea after remnant tribes surrendered to his ‘friendly mission’. It meant that Arthur no longer had to make concessions, not treaties or offers of land, not even as prisoners of war. Instead the Palawa became detainees, a concept we would find familiar today. Arthur removed them to Flinder’s Island, although he had already written ‘they doubtless would be exasperated to the last degree to be banished altogether from their favourite haunts; and as they would be ill-disposed to receive instruction from their oppressors, any attempt to civilize them, under such circumstances, must consequently fail.’ 889 [...] On my succeeding to the government, I found the quarrel of the Natives with the Europeans, occasioned by an unfortunate step of the officer in command of the garrison on the first forming of the settlement, was daily aggravated, by every kind of injury committed against the defenceless Natives, by the stock-keepers and sealers, with whom it was a constant practice to fire upon them whenever they approached, and to deprive them of their women whenever the opportunity offered. I considered it my duty, therefore, to declare by proclamation, that every individual found to have committed any criminal act of aggression upon the Aborigines, should be prosecuted before the Supreme Court. At the same time I enjoined the magistrates and respectable settlers to use every means to conciliate and protect them. The proclamation, I have reason to believe, was not without effect; and I endeavoured still further to cultivate a friendly intercourse, and at least make the attempt to civilize this abased race, on the occasion of the unexpected appearance of a tribe in Hobart Town, by alluring them, with the promise of food and clothing, to repeat their visit. And I had formed the plan of establishing an institution, to which they might resort, in the hope that some might be persuaded to adopt the habits of civilized life. After stopping a few days, however, in the neighbourhood of Hobart Town, the tribe went back to their haunts, and have not again returned; though, to all appearance, they were highly satisfied with the treatment they received, and made it understood that they looked upon the Governor as their protector. It is not a matter of surprise that the injuries, real or supposed, inflicted upon the blacks, have been revenged upon the whites, whenever an occasion presented itself; and I regret to say, that the Natives, led on by a Sydney black, and by two Aborigines of this island, men partially civilized (a circumstance which augers ill for any endeavour to instruct these abject beings), have committed many murders upon the shepherds and herdsmen in remote situation. And they have latterly assumed so formidable an appearance, and perpetrated such repeated outrages within the settled districts, that I have been pressingly called upon by settlers, in several petitions, to adopt some measure which should effectually free them from these troublesome assailants, and from the nuisance of their dogs, which, originally purloined from the settlers, have increased to such a number as to threaten to become a lasting pest to the country. But it is much easier to complain than to find a cure for the evil, which none of the petitioners has ventured to suggest; and I have not thought proper to do more than afford the protection of some additional parties of police and military, and to point out, by government notices, how far the settlers would be justified by law in making use of arms to drive off the Natives who should present a hostile front. The necessity of taking some decisive step, however, becomes every day more apparent, as the settlers advance on the favourite haunts of the Natives, but I confess I feel the subject exceedingly perplexing. The only remedy which I have heard proposed is, to collect the Natives, and remove them to some Island in the Straits, where there is no want of their accustomed food, and where, by teaching them the art of cultivating the soil, (in the meantime supplying them with bread), they might provide their own sustenance; and, from the necessity 890 which such a situation would impose of becoming stationary, a better chance would be afforded of success to any effort for their civilization. Not to mention the extreme difficulty of this scheme, nothing short of the last necessity could tolerate so great an aggravation of their injuries, as they would unquestionably consider removing them from their native tracts. They already complain that the white people have taken possession of their country, encroached upon their hunting grounds, and destroyed their natural food, the kangaroo; and they doubtless would be exasperated to the last degree to be banished altogether from their favourite haunts; and as they would be ill-disposed to receive instruction from their oppressors, any attempt to civilize them, under such circumstances, must consequently fail. The measure which I rather incline to attempt, is to settle the Aborigines in some remote quarter of the island, which should strictly be reserved for them, and to supply them with food and clothing, and afford them protection from injuries by the stockkeepers, on condition of their confining themselves peaceably to certain limits, beyond which if they pass, they should be made to understand they will cease to be protected. With this view I caused a letter to be addressed to the Commissioners of Lands, directing them to point out some eligible district in which the trial may be made. The Commissioners have recommended the North East Coast “as being the most advantageous situation for such a purpose,” conceiving “that food can be conveyed by water to that part with the least possible difficulty, and that the Natives themselves (if they can be induced to remain quiet) would prefer it to any other part, frequenting it as they continually do for shell-fish, and also on account of its being the best sheltered and warmest part of the island, and remote from the settled districts.” It must be acknowledged that this plan also has its difficulties, which indeed the migratory habits of the Aborigines, and their attachment to their savage mode of life, must attach to any scheme, consistent with humanity, for effectually protecting the settlers from their outrages. But it is but justice to make the attempt, for, notwithstanding the clamour and urgent appeals now made to me for the adoption of harsh measures, I cannot divest myself of the consideration that all aggression originated with the white inhabitants, and that therefore much ought to be endured in return before the blacks are treated as an open accredited enemy by the government. In prosecuting the plan I have suggested, only a very limited expenditure will be authorized, until I am honoured with the result of your Lordship’s consideration of this most interesting and important subject.[...] 1927 5th April 1828 Proclamation by Arthur In 1828, the ethnic violence was increasing. Arthur proclaims ‘that every violation of the laws, in the persons or property of the Natives, should be visited with the same punishment as if committed on the persons or property of any settler’ that equal justice will apply, but they were mere words. He ignored the substance. He failed, along with his predecessors, to prosecute any settler up to the time of his proclamation, and thereafter, as his proclamations became more militaristic and racially targeted. 891 He protests to his superiors about a growing spirit of hatred, outrage and enmity, against the subjects of His Majesty and the peaceable pursuits of civilized society, but does not see the hypocrisy in granting away Aboriginal land to an increasing army of avaricious settlers, who continued the targeted racial violence under protection from Arthur’s proclamation and continued their crazed push for land, while Aboriginals continued to complain in the only way they could, by trying to prevent the spread of armed settlement, a genocidal policy that Arthur or Britain would not abort, whatever the Palawa consequences. Arthur’s solution is to make the ‘settled districts’ – about 30% of the island and growing - a no-go area for Aboriginals without authorized permission under a passport arrangement. What Arthur presumes, in his Proclamation, is that the British laws of property are sacrosanct and must be obeyed by dispossessed Aboriginals, who must be encouraged to become used to habits of labour, industry and settled life. He proclaims the coloured inhabitants should be induced by peaceful means to depart, or should otherwise be expelled by force from all the settled districts therein. How the Palawa, travelling across their people’s ancient territory, were expected to read a Proclamation written in English, that they must obtain a passport under the Government’s seal, perhaps explains why Arthur’s line of military-posted demarcation around settled districts would quickly fail. It would fail, if only because Arthur never punished a British settler for violence against any Aboriginal. Arthur’s justice was more than blind; it was one-eyed. We may think Arthur naive, a mired autocrat and plenipotentiary who expected his commands to be followed without exception, a venal, petty, pumped up bureaucrat, pretentious with his own perceived authority, obsequious to his superiors, demanding of his subordinates (Robinson for example), placatory to those who might jeopardise his position, the chain of command rigid and myopic in the service of Empire, the tactical contortions unquestioned even if misguided. Except that territories taken over by an occupying power in recent history have had similar restrictions on civilian movement and for similar reasons, the exercise of some political imperative. It seems the patterns of oppression can repeat, moulded by predictable human behaviour, especially when the execution of relegated power is involved. Arthur’s proclamation may have been ill-conceived, but he did have the support of the British Government. Why? Britain expected indigenous races to bow to British superiority. If they did not, extermination could (and frequently did) result. Arthur was a loyal instrument of the Secretary of State and the Colonial Office and could call upon their support in return. It was how the Empire was built. Whereas at and since the primary settlement of this Colony, various acts of aggression, violence and cruelty have been, from different causes, committed on the aboriginal inhabitants of this Island , by subjects of His Majesty. And whereas, for the preventing and punishing such sanguinary and wicked practices, it was, by a certain general order made by Colonel David Collins, then LieutenantGovernor of this Island and its Dependencies, at Government-House Hobart Town, on the 29th day of January 1810, declared, “that any person whosoever, who should offer violence to a Native, or should in cool blood murder or cause any of them to be murdered, should, on proof being made of the same, be dealt with and proceeded 892 against as if such violence had been offered, or murder committed, on a civilized person;” And it was also, by a certain proclamation made and issued by me as such LieutenantGovernor as aforesaid, at Government-House, Hobart Town, on the 29th day of June 1824, after reciting the command of His Majesty’s Government, and the injunction of His Excellency the Governor-in Chief, that the Natives of this Colony and its Dependencies should be considered, as under British government and protection, declared, that every violation of the laws, in the persons or property of the Natives, should be visited with the same punishment as if committed on the persons or property of any settler; and all magistrates and peace-officers, and others His Majesty’s subjects in this Colony, were thereby strictly required to observe and enforce the provisions of that proclamation: And whereas, the Aborigines did not only defend themselves and retaliate on the offenders, but did also, subsequently to the order and proclamation aforesaid, and notwithstanding the recital, declarations and requisition mentioned, perpetrate frequent unprovoked outrages on the persons and property of the settlers in this island, and their servants, being British subjects; and did indulge in the repeated commission of wanton and barbarous murders, and other crimes; for the repression of which, as also for the prevention of further offences by either of the said parties, instructions, directions and injunctions were promulgated for general information, and for the especial guidance of the civil authorities, and the military forces, by the Government notices of the 29th November 1826, and the 29th November 1827, respectively. And whereas those several measures have proved ineffectual to their objects; and the persons employed in the interior of this island as shepherds and stock-keepers, or on the coast as sealers, do still, as is represented, occasionally attack and injure the aboriginal Natives, without any authority; and the Aborigines have, during a considerable period of time, evinced and are daily evincing a growing spirit of hatred, outrage and enmity, against the subjects of His Majesty resident in this Colony; and are putting in practice modes of hostility, indicating gradual though slow advances in art, system and method, and utterly inconsistent with the peaceable pursuits of civilized society, the most necessary arts of human subsistence, or the secure enjoyment of human life. And whereas the Aborigines wander over extensive tracts of country, without cultivating or permanently occupying any portion of it, making continual predatory incursions on its settled districts, a state of living alike hostile to the safety of the settlers, and to the amelioration of their own habits, character and condition. And whereas, for the purposes of protecting all classes and orders of persons in the island and its dependencies; of bringing to an end, and preventing the criminal and iniquitous practices hereinbefore described, by whomsoever committed; of preserving, instructing and civilizing the Aborigines, and of leading them to the habits of labour, industry and settled life; it is expedient, by a legislative enactment, of a permanent nature, to regulate and restrict the intercourse between the white and coloured inhabitants of this Colony; and to allot and assign certain tracts of land to the latter, for their exclusive benefit and continued occupation. 893 And whereas, with a view to the attainment of those ends, a negociation with certain chiefs of aboriginal tribes has been planned; but some prompt and temporary measure is instantly called for, not merely to arrest the march, but entirely to cut off the causes and occasions of plunder and crime, and to save the further waste of property and blood; and it is therefore become indispensably necessary to bring about a temporary separation of the coloured from the British population of this territory, and that therefore, the coloured inhabitants should be induced by peaceful means to depart, or should otherwise be expelled by force from all the settled districts therein. Now therefore, I, the Lieutenant-Governor aforesaid, in pursuance and in exercise of the powers and authorities inn me vested in this behalf, do hereby notify, that for the purpose of effecting the separation required, a line of military posts will be forthwith stationed and established along the confines of the settled districts, within which the Aboriginals shall and may not, until further order made, penetrate, or in any manner, or for any purpose, save as in hereinafter specially permitted. And I do hereby strictly command and order all Aborigines immediately to retire and depart from, and for no reason, or on no pretence, save as hereinafter provided, to re-enter such settled districts, or any portions of land cultivated and occupied by any person whomsoever, under the authority of His Majesty’s Government on pain of forcible expulsion therefrom, and such consequences as may be necessarily attendant on it. And I do hereby direct and require all magistrates, and other persons by them authorized and deputed, to conform themselves to the directions and instructions of this my Proclamation, in effecting the retirement or expulsion of the Aborigines from the settled districts of this territory. And I do further authorize and command all other persons whomsoever, His Majesty’s civil subjects in this Colony, to obey the directions of the civil, and to aid and assist the military power, (to whom special orders, adapted to situations and circumstances will be given), in furtherance of the provisions hereof, and to resort to whatever means a severe and inevitable necessity may dictate and require for carrying the same into execution; subject, however, to the following rules, instructions, restrictions and conditions: 1. Lands, the property of the Crown, and unlocated, or adjoining remote and scattered stock-huts, and are not to be deemed settled districts, or portions of land cultivated, or occupied within the meaning of this Proclamation. 2. All practicable methods are to be employed for communicating and making known the provisions of this Proclamation to the Aborigines, and they are to be persuaded to retire beyond the prescribed limits, if that be possible. 3. On failure of the expedient last-mentioned, capture of their persons without force is to be attempted, and if effected, the prisoners are to be treated with the utmost humanity and compassion. 4. Whenever force cannot be avoided, it is to be resorted to, and employed with the greatest caution and forbearance. 5. Nothing herein contained shall authorize, or be taken to authorize, any settler or settlers, stock-keeper or stock-keepers, sealer or sealers, to 894 make use of force, (except for necessary self-defence) against any Aboriginal, without the presence and direction of a magistrate, military officer, or other person of respectability, named and deputed to this service by a magistrate, of which class a numerous body will be appointed in each district; and any unauthorized act of aggression or violence committed on the person or property of an Aboriginal shall be punished as hereinbefore declared; and all Aborigines are hereby invited and exhorted to inform and complain to some constituted authority of any such misconduct or ill treatment, in order to its coercion and punishment. 6. Nothing herein contained shall prevent the Aborigines from travelling annually (according to their custom), until their habits shall have been rendered more regular and settled, through the cultivated or occupied parts of the island, to the sea coast, in quest of shell fish, for sustenance, on condition of their respective leaders being provided with a general passport under my hand and seal, arrangements for which form a part of the intended negociation. [...]1928 17th April 1828 Arthur to Huskisson Arthur describes his ‘kindness and forbearance’, his ‘reluctance to proceed to any coercive measures’, the ‘painful necessity’ of adopting some ‘decided measures’, and the ‘animosity of these wretched people’ with their ‘predatory incursions’ and retaliatory ‘frequent barbarous murders’ which he blames on ‘desperate characters amongst the prisoner population, who have from time to time absconded into the woods’. He proposes ‘entirely prohibiting the Aborigines from entering the settled districts’ and removing them ‘entirely’ from the ‘settled districts’. Arthur is setting out his behaviour as measured, restrained and conciliatory in order to enjoin support from his superiors in more punitive and draconian actions. It took many months for a despatch to arrive. Arthur had to get the words right. Arthur was proposing ethnic cleansing by armed force. He suggests that if the Palawa are removed, they might return when their ‘habits shall become more civilized’. Arthur disingenuously professes that he cannot trace the ‘cause of the evil’, knowing it was caused by his land and immigration policies, and the constant settler encroachment on Aboriginal land, often accompanied by violence that he refused to prosecute or curtail. Arthur claims he had considered giving up a district to the Aboriginals, bur rejected the idea because of possible inter-tribal ‘dissension’. However, he does not find his argument inconsistent when he rounds up various remnant tribes and detains them together on an island in Bass Strait. At no time did Arthur or Britain consider stopping the destructive process of land alienation, which was (and would be) the root cause of Aboriginal resistance in Tasmania and across the continent. Arthur believes that gifts of food and clothing are an adequate compensation for the loss of land. Arthur and Britain believe that the Palawa should be educated into a superior culture, where they can take their place as pliant Christianised ‘citizens’. Finally, Arthur reveals his overriding motive: he fears a settler backlash against his administration (and the possibility of his recall) if he does not take armed action against the 895 Palawa. He would therefore protect settlers from the Palawa and engage their support as a paramilitary group in an assault against the threat to settler sovereignty; but he would not protect the Palawa from the settlers – that might have caused his governorship to be challenged. In an unequal Tasmanian society, not all citizens had equal rights. When it suited Britain to impose the rule of British law, Aboriginals became a targeted group of ‘citizens’ who were acting unlawfully to resist their ‘lawful’ dispossession. Martial law became an extreme case of this political posture, but never quite became a recognized civil war, where the rights of ‘citizen’ prisoners were protected. It caused Britain and Arthur a conundrum: were the Palawa ‘abject savages’ who did not wish to be embraced by the British civilising process and could then be forcibly confronted; or were they British subjects who had the full protection of the law? It is a matter of history that Britain chose enforced subjugation of the indigenous population, in Tasmania, in Australia, in a corrupted version of British jurisprudence that was in service to a genocidal process that would not countenance resistance to the Imperial invasion. Arthur’s despatches cut to the reflexive argument of some modern historians. Were times different then? Can we judge? Are our judgments of actions relative to a particular culture at a certain time? Are the imperatives of power contextually dependent? Are we merely dispassionate observers? We clearly see from Arthur’s writings that he knew Aboriginals were being dispossessed, he knew that Aboriginals were being murdered and kidnapped, he knew they were aggrieved at settler incursions, but he also knew he could not stop the process of dispossession without affecting his career. Settlers would have objected. His administrative position might have become untenable. The British Government did not see the need to defer to an inferior race. Subjugated races were meant to show acquiescence to British superiority. If they resisted, they would be crushed in the commercial interests of Empire, an all too transient power structure that lasted a mere two hundred years. For Arthur, as a loyal colonial administrator, the rules of the Imperial game were: to be obedient to the chain of the command; to show initiative; to manage the expectations of the settlers without being subordinate; to put down any indigenous resistance; to obsequiously solicit the compliance of his superiors in any decisions; and to manage the branch accounts of profit and loss. The priorities of colonisation were also clear. The settler Imperium demanded indigenous subservience. What mattered was the Government protected rise of settler sovereignty, if at the expense of Aboriginal society. 896 Arthur’s decisions were made easier because he had far greater military might than the Palawa could present in a hit and run campaign of guerrilla resistance. We have the omnipotence of historical imperative, the short-term rule of a bigger weapon, we have Tasmania today where, once the indigenous population (or the settlers) were under attack, depending on the point of view, now it is the environment, the ecology, the long-term sustainability of our way of life. The argument of the greater good always remains the same: economic considerations almost always trump any other concerns, allowing the greatest financial benefit for the most people, or in some cases the most eligible people, those favoured by the political power structure. Perhaps until it is too late, until the damage is done, always until we have extracted the maximum commercial advantage, until we leave the problem to future generations. When Britain first colonised Tasmania, it arrived with the myth that it was bringing civilization to a savage hunter-gatherer society. But for many years, the British colonists were merely subsisting, competing with the Palawa for game, sustained by a foraging economy where the key cultural differentiator was the gun (an explosive weapon that borrowed from Chinese scientific technology). Britain was not interested in understanding other races. It was focused on exploitation. It would have been unaware, even disinterested, that the Palawa land management practices were far superior to their own,1929 or that Palawa food production techniques were an order of magnitude more sustainable. British culture was essentially invasive, like a metastasizing malignancy, destroying and displacing, feeding off itself for greater gain. Can we learn from Arthur’s and Britain’s mistakes? Not unless we recognize those mistakes. But the lessons of history are becoming more muted. Some people - historians and politicians - now propose that we should ignore those ‘black armband’ lessons because they diminish our self-view of a society that triumphed over adversity, the adversity of indigenous resistance, the adversity of an environment that must be tamed, the opportunity of a sunk cost that can be subrogated off the balance sheet, the deferred cost of a degraded environment or a displaced population. When martial law and the black line failed, Arthur’s next attempt at ethnic cleansing was his ‘friendly mission’. Settlers were amazed that Robinson succeeded, having never expected that kindness might work better than ‘conciliation’ through the barrel of a gun. The kindness was wrapped around false inducements. Arthur never honoured his proposal that the natives could return to their ‘favourite haunts’. Once his ethnic cleansing policy succeeded, Arthur did not have to make further concessions for Palawa land rights. He could focus on economic development and growing his personal wealth. [...] I had the honour to communicate with Lord Goderich, in my despatch of the 10th January last, the painful necessity of adopting some decided measures to suppress the increasing spirit of resentment manifested by the coloured inhabitants of this colony, and the difficulty which I felt in determining the measures it would be most advisable to pursue. 897 It gives me great concern to state that the animosity of these wretched people is in no degree abated, and that their increasing predatory incursions upon the settled districts, which are accompanied with the perpetration of frequent barbarous murders, have overcome my reluctance to proceed to any coercive measures against them. The subject has undergone several days’ anxious deliberation and discussion in the Executive Council; and having examined all such persons as are competent to give information, I am at length convinced of the absolute necessity of separating the Aborigines altogether from the white inhabitants, and of removing the former entirely from the settled districts, until their habits shall become more civilized. The proclamation which I have issued, with the unanimous advice of the Council, fully explains the origin and progress of the unhappy feeling which exists, and the measures directed for the purpose of averting its further fatal consequences. It is a subject most painful under every consideration: we are undoubtedly the first aggressors, and the desperate characters amongst the prisoner population, who have from time to time absconded into the woods, have no doubt committed the greatest outrages upon the Natives, and these ignorant beings, incapable of discrimination, are now filled with enmity and revenge against the whole body of white inhabitants. It is perhaps at this time in vain to trace the cause of the evil which exists; my duty is plainly to remove its effects; and there does not appear any practicable method of accomplishing this measure, short of entirely prohibiting the Aborigines from entering the settled districts, a measure, however, which you may be assured shall be carried into execution without the least avoidable harshness. I have long indulged the expectation that kindness and forbearance would have brought about something like a reconciliation, but the repeated murders which have been committed have so greatly inflamed the passions of the settlers, that petitions and complaints have been presented from every part of the Colony, and the feelings of resentment now runs so high that further forbearance would be totally indefensible. My intention was to have given up one district to the Natives, but such a spirit of dissension exists amongst the tribes themselves, that it cannot possibly be accomplished. It is painful and distressing to banish the Natives from their favourite haunts, but, beyond this, there is no occasion that His Majesty’ Government should be apprehensive, and I do not even yet resign all hope of pacifying those angry feelings which are at present but too evident on both sides. His Majesty’s instructions command that every measure shall be resorted to for the instruction and civilization of the Natives; may I therefore beg to be honoured with your commands, whether, in promoting this attempt, I am to consider myself authorized to afford some temporary relief in food and clothing, which I fear affords the only prospect of quieting a tribe of savages, and may perhaps be absolutely necessary for their support beyond the settled districts.1930 30th October 1828 Minutes of the Executive Council 1931 The Council, under Arthur’s guidance, began ramping up the rhetoric for more decisive action against the Palawa. 898 It was proposing militarised ethnic cleansing, eventually Martial Law, something that Macquarie had successfully pursued as Government policy in 1816 1932 and Brisbane in 1824, when each had been dealing with determined Aboriginal resistance and sought to remove Aboriginals from areas that the Government coveted for expanded settlement. There was one small problem. Eventually the whole of Australia was required by the Crown, as the pastoral frontier spread. So where were the Aboriginals to go? The problem was more distressing for the Palawa: they were trapped within the confines of an island, excluded from their usual places of activity, shot on sight if they trespassed on settlers’ ‘property’, their womenfolk being kidnapped (the colonists’ gender imbalance encouraged sexual predation), their mental and physical torment becoming extreme. Of course, they resisted in the only way they could. Arthur’s ‘conciliation’ was a mere form of words, a platitudinous phrase that Britain insisted on including for the instruction of each new Governor. How could there be conciliation at gunpoint? How could there be conciliation when Aboriginals were being dispossessed through the legal obfuscations of British Law. The offer of a reward for any individual making ‘conciliatory overtures’ probably piqued the interest of Robinson, when he later enlisted Arthur’s support for a ‘friendly mission’ in 1829, at a time when Martial Law was still in force and the Palawa were engaged in an increasingly desperate battle for their survival as a race. The one policy that might have allayed the conflict in Tasmania, restricting the rate of settlement, was never considered by Britain. Instead, the Government (with Arthur’s connivance) was drifting towards Martial Law, not quite a declaration of war, but only because Britain continued with the pretence that the Palawa were citizens, nominal subjects of the Crown, who were breaking British law under the ‘misapprehension’ - noted by Murray - that they owned the country1933 and were therefore not strictly enemy combatants. The official British policy for the Palawa was expelling them from the settled districts, using military force. The next graduated action would be to invoke Martial Law. The benefit of Martial Law, one step removed from the law of the bush, was that Aboriginals could be killed without any potentially troublesome humanitarian or legal consequences. The Executive Council complained of the great difficulty in apprehending them, or identifying the perpetrators of a felony or murder, even with the assistance of the military. Martial Law would remove this problem. The earlier proclamation of the 15th April, not yet Martial Law, opened the possibility that, in expelling Aboriginals as a group through military intervention, lethal force might be used on them as a group if they resisted. The Council did not mention that Aboriginals, in resisting, had been predated upon by whites. It spoke of the murders and aggressions committed by the Natives since the Proclamation, but nothing of British violence against Aboriginals. Arthur then invited his Council to suggest more extreme measures: the Lieutenant-Governor was pleased to require the opinion and advice of the Council, whether any, and what other measures should be resorted to by the Government for the protection of the settlers, their families and stock-keepers; as some immediate decisive measures might in the end prove the most merciful. 899 Arthur had Martial Law in mind, where it would be unnecessary to go through the timeconsuming legalities of apprehending the Palawa and putting them on trial. Instead, they could be summarily exterminated on contact. What Arthur wanted the Legislative Council would deliver. His next action, following any declaration of Martial Law, would be to make his superiors complicit in his plan. Arthur was nothing if not cunning. Arthur’s plan for a final push against Aboriginal resistance, for a final solution, was now in play. All he had to do was ensure there were humanitarian sounding phrases in his despatches to protect his reputation and that of his co-conspirators in the British Government. The Lieutenant-Governor referred the Council to the Minutes of the 10 th April last, respecting the murders and outrages committed by the aboriginal Natives, and to the proclamation which was then issued for the purpose of expelling them from the settled districts, under the restrictions imposed by that proclamation. For a short period after the troops were sent to the frontiers, and partially for a few weeks during the winter months, the Natives had been comparatively quiet; but the numerous murders and robberies which had lately been again committed upon the white inhabitants had been marked by such a determined spirit of hostility and revenge, that not only the whole of the distant and detached stock-keepers were in imminent daily danger, but it appeared that even the inhabitants of the settled districts were insecure at their farms and homesteads; attacks having recently been made upon them, and unoffending and defenceless women and children having fallen victims to the cruelties of these wretched people. In the atrocities recently committed by the Natives it was most painful to find they had, in several instances, manifested a desire to kill and destroy the white inhabitants whenever they had dared attack them, and not for the purpose of plundering for food or property: and to such an extent had this disposition shown itself, that the settlers were unable with safety to carry on their necessary avocations without fire-arms, even within the immediate neighbourhood of their houses; and the operations of woodcutters and splitters were in some instances entirely suspended, and in others only performed under the daily apprehension of the workmen being destroyed by the Natives; and so implacable a spirit had been evinced by the aboriginals, that it had been found impossible with safety for any individual to venture among them with a view of making conciliatory overtures, although the police magistrates and military officers on duty in the interior had been instructed to offer rewards to induce persons to make the attempt. The great difficulty in apprehending them, or identifying the perpetrators of a felony or murder, added to the increased cunning of the Natives, occasioned impediments to the ordinary modes of enforcing the law, which the magistrates and peace officers were unable to counteract, even with every assistance afforded by the military in aid of the civil power. Henry Glover, Esq., a magistrate residing at Sorell, and T. A. Lascelles, Esq., the police magistrate at Richmond, attended the Council, and pointed out the impossibility of proceeding to apprehend the Natives with any prospect of success after the commission of a crime amenable to the law of the realm. 900 An abstract minute of the murders and aggressions committed by the Natives upon the white inhabitants since the publication of his Proclamation was laid before the Council, and the Lieutenant-Governor was pleased to require the opinion and advice of the Council, whether any, and what other measures should be resorted to by the Government for the protection of the settlers, their families and stock-keepers; as some immediate decisive measures might in the end prove the most merciful.1934 31st October 1828 Extract from the minutes of the Executive Council The Executive Council gave Arthur what he wanted, Martial Law. But first there was some self-justification for this extreme measure. The council carefully painted the Palawa as the overwhelming aggressors, and that the settlers were ‘inferior’ in the presumed sense of being powerless victims. It was far from the truth. There had been little attempt by the Government to understand the Palawa languages and customs, although George Robinson, for all his vanities, achieved far more than most. The difference was: Robinson was genuinely interested; Arthur was not. The white colonists had shown constant aggression towards the indigenous population, unrestrained by the Government, and untroubled by the possibility of prosecution. Over a relatively brief period, racial tension had become extreme. We compare this outcome with what was achieved by the two French scientific expeditions, that of D’Entrecasteaux and Baudin, where more ethnographic research was accomplished by each in a few weeks than Britain managed in more than two decades.1935 Although Britain did not have great interest in living Aboriginal bodies, it showed intense absorption in those who were dead, boiling them down and collecting their skeletons for casual measurement and macabre display, their pseudoscientific research efforts meant to show, through phrenology and cranial measurements, that the Palawa were a lower order of humanity as incorrectly predicted by Darwinism. The medical ‘research’ led nowhere, leaving bones to gather dust in faraway repositories. That is, until Robinson, whose efforts were caught up in self-regard and remunerated ethnic cleansing on behalf of Arthur. Arthur’s Executive Council ignored why the Palawa were conducting an effective guerrilla war against the occupation process, but it complained that the Palawa attacks had unhappily been attended with a degree of success. Britain was looking at the possibility of a failed colony. How could Aboriginals prevail against the mighty British Empire and its colonists? According to the Council: the nature of the country, the distance at which the settlers resided from another, the manner in which the natives made their attacks, and were enabled to retire and conceal themselves, the difficulty of knowing them, and of detecting them in their hiding places, the impossibility of identifying the actual perpetrators of these enormities, either by knowledge of their persons, or by their being found in possession of any property of the victims of their attacks, were all so many circumstances which rendered the powers of the common law wholly inadequate to the suppression of these evils, and called loudly for the rigorous adoption of the measure of expelling them forcibly from the settled districts. 901 The Council decided that common law, even the one-sided law that Britain practised, was unsuccessful in convincing the Palawa that they must accept their inferiority and subjugation. The Council advised that armed military and paramilitary force was the answer. The question is: what did the British Government have in mind by the often repeated edict to conciliate the affections of the Natives. How did the extraordinary situation arise where, twenty five years after Tasmania was first invaded the Council believe, that there are no means of communicating with them. No person could be found who would venture to approach them alone, not any number who would venture to do so unarmed; and such is the distrust of the aboriginal Natives, that it seems they invariably fly from any two or three armed persons. The British were not interested in conciliation; they were interested in conquest and exploitation. Therefore, what happened to the Palawa could well be predicted from the first year or so following the British invasion. It could be predicted from the dominant collective settler behaviour, which we can characterise as confrontational, predatory, acquisitive, and racist. We can only surmise how history might have unfolded, if the French had remained in Tasmania. Britain and its colonial administrators spoke repeatedly of the ‘settled districts’ but for the Palawa they were ‘occupied districts’ and the settler-colonists were continually expanding the amount of occupied territory through a process of armed expansionism. The Council warned that settlers will be driven to take the remedy into their own hands, as though this was an undesirable future possibility, when they knew this had long been de rigeur, an established practice outside the law, an unofficial and extrajudicial policy of extermination for many years since ‘settlement’ began in 1803. The Council wrote of the powers of the common law wholly inadequate to the suppression of these evils, knowing that the common law had almost never operated for the protection of the Palawa. Arthur saw the ‘common law’ as an extension of his power and he applied it ruthlessly as he saw fit, hanging, jailing, obtaining property for himself. In approving Arthur’s war, the Council tried to argue that it would save Aboriginal lives, surely an illogical oxymoron: A war of this kind, confined as it would be to casual and petty encounters, whatever may be its result, must necessarily be attended with a great destruction of human life. The Council’s facile argument was if the Government interposes promptly and vigorously, it may reasonably be hoped that by the combined operation of the troops and armed settlers, under the guidance of their officers and intelligent magistrates, peace and tranquillity may be restored, with comparatively little effusion of blood. We should not be surprised that, after Arthur got his war, under his careful direction the process of genocide gathered pace. The Palawa saw no alternative than to make a stand against the British invasion. But how? The number of British was much larger than the indigenous population, and constantly growing. The violent predations on their people were increasing. They could not form a set 902 piece battle against heavily armed military. Logically, their tactics must be ‘hit and run’, guerrilla warfare, planned resistance. For a time it was successful. Until Arthur turned the island into a war zone, waging an undeclared war, the imposition of martial law where any Aboriginal was an enemy to be exterminated. So it was done. British humanity was sacrificed for settler sovereignty. With Britain, commerce had the louder voice. It would always have the louder voice, as the pastoral invasion spread across the continent. The Council thought that the papers now read were a strong confirmation of the opinion which the events of the last two years had led them to express on a former occasion, that all the Aboriginal tribes of this island with which we are acquainted, except the tribes who visit Bruné Island, are actuated with one common purpose of murdering the white inhabitants whenever met with, and without distinction of age, sex or condition; that their attacks had unhappily been attended with a degree of success, which, while it appeared to stimulate them to further hostilities, was well calculated to produce the great state of alarm which appeared to be felt generally by the inferior settlers and servants in husbandry. That the nature of the country, the distance at which the settlers resided from another, the manner in which the natives made their attacks, and were enabled to retire and conceal themselves, the difficulty of knowing them, and of detecting them in their hiding places, the impossibility of identifying the actual perpetrators of these enormities, either by knowledge of their persons, or by their being found in possession of any property of the victims of their attacks, were all so many circumstances which rendered the powers of the common law wholly inadequate to the suppression of these evils, and called loudly for the rigorous adoption of the measure of expelling them forcibly from the settled districts, as recommended by the Council on the 10th of April last; and that for this purpose the Council advised is Excellency to issue a proclamation of martial law, and regretted that it had not occurred to them to advise such a proclamation when the subject of the hostile acts of the Aboriginal Natives was under discussion on the 10th of April, because they apprehended that such a proclamation would be the justification of many acts which must necessarily be done in furtherance of the measure of forcibly expelling them. The Council recommended, however, that the proclamation should be limited in its operation to the settled districts; and that to prevent misapprehension of its effect, it should contain a distinct notice, that even within those districts it would not operate to stop or suspend the ordinary course of law or practice, further than would be absolutely necessary to the employment of an armed force against the Natives. The Council feel the deepest regret in advising these measures, but they find themselves compelled to do so by an inevitable necessity. The outrages of the Aboriginal Natives amount to a complete declaration of hostilities against the settlers generally. The civil powers, even when aided by the military, in cases in which by the common law such aid may be afforded, are insufficient to suppress them. Great and well-founded alarm generally prevails, and 903 unless the measure recommended be adopted, the Council apprehend that the settlers, finding themselves unprotected by the law and the government, will be driven to take the remedy into their own hands. The case will then become one of a war of private persons, the duration of which it is impossible to conjecture, but the end of which will in all probability be the annihilation of the aboriginal tribes. A war of this kind, confined as it would be to casual and petty encounters, whatever may be its result, must necessarily be attended with a great destruction of human life. On the other hand, if the Government interposes promptly and vigorously, it may reasonably be hope that by the combined operation of the troops and armed settlers, under the guidance of their officers and intelligent magistrates, peace and tranquillity may be restored, with comparatively little effusion of blood. Nor would the Council advise the immediate adoption of hostile measures, if there appeared to be any probability that such extremities might be avoided by previous negotiation for delivering up the principals in these attacks, if any can be so considered where all appears to be equally active, and for security for the future. The fact being, as the Council believe, that there are no means of communicating with them. No person could be found who would venture to approach them alone, not any number who would venture to do so unarmed; and such is the distrust of the aboriginal Natives, that it seems they invariably fly from any two or three armed persons. The independence of the several tribes one of another would make a separate communication with each necessary; to effect which, even if practicable, would require some time, while some instant step appears necessary to put an end to outrages which even now the Council have every reason to believe are in the course of commission. And after all, such is the treachery which the Natives have evinced in several cases, and so totally do they appear to be without government amongst themselves, that the Council much doubt if any reliance could be placed upon any negotiation which might be entered into with those who appear to be their chiefs, or with any tribe collectively. To inspire them with terror, the Council feat, will be found the only effectual means of security for the future.1936 4th November 1828 Arthur to Murray Arthur continued to push the line with his superiors that ‘the only means of affording to the King’s subjects protection against the atrocities of the Aborigines’ was to ‘issue a Proclamation of Martial Law’ , he naively hoped ‘without much bloodshed’ using arms as a last resort, with every means in his power to bring about ‘a good understanding with these wretched people’. How Arthur intended to impose martial law in a way ‘consistent with humanity’ in order to better understand them is a mystery, but his words were meant to establish his humanitarian resolve with the British Secretary of State, if they were not applied in practice. The contrived form of words was picked up by Murray as a satisfactory self-deception, one that would soothe British sensibilities when their bloody colonial conduct was beginning to reflect badly on the motives of Empire. Yet Arthur was becoming desperate. He had little understanding of Aboriginal culture and less of conciliation. He had to make his superiors complicit in whatever inhumane consequences 904 resulted from his increasingly brutal policies. He was the architect. Tasmanian genocide was taking shape. Arthur reassured Murray that the Palawa did not engage in open warfare, although they were ‘cunning and artful in the extreme’, but he did not describe their actions as guerrilla warfare either, as this might have concerned Murray more. With fewer numbers, guerrilla war was extremely effective against a much stronger enemy. With reference to my despatches to Mr. Secretary’s subjects protection against the atrocities of the Aborigines’ was to Huskisson of the 17th of April and 5th July last, I regret to report, that the spring had no sooner commenced than the Natives renewed their hostile attacks, in a manner which showed their intention to destroy, without distinction of sex or age, all the white inhabitants who should fall within their power; and as the measures resorted to, under the Proclamation issued on the 15th of April, (copy of which I had the honour to enclose in my Despatch,) proved ineffectual to remove the Native people from the settled districts, and as considerable doubts had arisen how far under it the acts could be justified which were necessary to expel them, I was under the painful necessity of again bringing the subject before the Executive Council, with the view, under its advice, of adjoining stronger measures. After the most anxious deliberation on two successive days, the Members of the Council concurred in recommending, as the only means of affording to the King’s subjects protection against the atrocities of the Aborigines, that they should be declared under martial law, and I have felt myself called upon to issue a Proclamation of Martial Law against them, a copy of which I have the honour to enclose. Though it has been unavoidably necessary to have recourse to this strong measure, I am in hopes that it will be the means of putting a speedy stop, without much bloodshed, to the lawless warfare which has been lately carrying on between the Natives and the settlers and stockmen, by compelling the former (to whom it may be possible to make known, through such as may be captured, the consequences of remaining in the settled districts) to retire to those parts of the colony which are excepted from the operation of martial law. You will perceive by the Proclamation that the use of arms is still in no case to be resorted to until other measures for driving them off shall have failed; and upon the same principle are my instructions to the police magistrates and military officers drawn up, copy of which I have the honour to enclose; and you may be assured that every means in my power, which are most consistent with humanity, will be used, even at the present extremity, for bringing about a good understanding with these wretched beings. I propose immediately visiting all the military out-stations, and i sincerely hope, at an early period, that it may be in my power to report that the aboriginal Natives are reduced to a state of quietness, and that the measure which has been resorted to, of treating them as open enemies, may be annulled. Terror may have the effect which no proffered measures of conciliation have been capable of inducing. With regard to the alarm which it is stated in the Minute of Council exists among the settlers, it is doubtless distressing that so many murders have been committed by the Natives upon their stockmen, but there is no decided combined movement among the Native tribes, nor, although cunning and artful in the extreme, any such systematic warfare exhibited by any of them as need excite the least apprehension in the 905 Government, for th e blacks, however large their number, have never yet ventured to attack a party consisting of even three armed men.1937 20th February 1829 Murray to Arthur In February 1829, Murray wrote to Arthur about the complete failure of ‘conciliation’. This was after Arthur had proclaimed martial law on 15 th April 1828, so there should have been no astonishment that martial law was far from conciliatory. Murray expresses further surprise that the Palawa might have been under the misapprehension ‘they appear to entertain in regard to their own rights over the country, in comparison with those of the colonists’. It was Murray who had the misconception. Arthur had repeatedly told him of his humanitarian gestures, and more recently of ‘conciliatory measures’ he had undertaken ‘with the view of establishing a friendly intercourse with the Aborigines’, but this was far from the truth. Arthur had hanged four people for their resistance to the occupation process, and the Palawa never forgave him. Nor did they appreciate Arthur’s one-sided application of British justice, where he completely failed to charge a single white for atrocities against any Aboriginal during his long term as Governor. Above all other grievances, above the sexual predation and the kidnapping and the killing, the failure of the British Government to offer the Palawa certain agreed rights over their country was the major continuing basis for the conflict, rights that Britain was not prepared to entertain. Conciliation with a few blankets was never going to be successful compensation for the expropriation of Palawa land, much as Britain might hope.1938: [...] His Majesty has learnt with much concern that the conciliatory measures to which you had resorted, with the view of establishing a friendly intercourse with the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land, should have so completely failed; and that the hostility which continues to be manifested on the part of these people, notwithstanding the endeavours which have been so often used to induce them to adopt more civilized habits, should have rendered other and more decisive measures necessary for the security of the lives and property of the settlers, as well as for the protection of the coloured inhabitants themselves. As it appears that you have not had recourse to the present alternative of confining the haunts of the Natives to particular limits until you had tried every other possible means of removing the existing evils, His Majesty has commanded me to signify to you his approval of the Proclamation which you have issued for that purpose, and of the instructions which you have given to the civil and military authorities for carrying its provisions into effect. I am aware of the extremely difficult task of inducing ignorant beings of the description of those alluded to, to acknowledge any authority short of absolute force, particularly when possessed with the idea which they appear to entertain in regard to their own rights over the country, in comparison with those of the colonists.1939 I cannot, however, omit to impress upon you my most earnest desire, that no unnecessary harshness may be exercised in order to confine the coloured inhabitants within the boundaries which you have fixed. [...]1940 906 Arthur’s first Proclamation of Martial Law, 1st November, 1828 This is an excerpt from Arthur’s proclamation on 1 November 1828. Before Martial Law was imposed, Aboriginal killing was ignored and unpunished. After the proclamation, it was accepted as quasi-legal, without consequence. I, the said Lieutenant Governor, did declare and proclaim, that from the date of that my proclamation, and until the cessation of hostilities, Martial Law was, and should continue to be in force against the said black or aboriginal natives within the several districts of this Island, excepting always the places and portions of this Island in the said proclamation after mentioned; and whereas, the said black or aboriginal natives, or certain of their tribes, have of late manifested, by continued repetitions of the most wanton and sanguinary acts of violence and outrage, an unequivocal determination indiscriminately to destroy the white inhabitants, whenever opportunities are presented to them for doing so; and whereas, by reason of the aforesaid exceptions so contained in the said proclamation, no natives have been hitherto pursued or molested in any of the places or portions of the Island so excepted; from whence they have accordingly of late been accustomed to make repeated incursions upon the settled districts with impunity, or having committed outrages in the settled districts, have escaped into those excepted places, where they remain in security; and whereas, therefore, it hath now become necessary; and because it is scarcely possible to distinguish the particular tribe or tribes by whom such outrages have been in any particular instance committed, to adopt immediately, for the purpose of effecting their capture, if possible, an active and extended system of military operations against all the natives generally throughout the Island, and every portion thereof, whether actually settled or not. Now, therefore, by virtue of the powers and authorities in me in this behalf vested, I the said Lieutenant Governor, do by these presents declare and proclaim, that from and after the date of this my proclamation, and until the cessation of hostilities in this behalf shall be by me hereafter proclaimed and directed, Martial Law is and shall continue to be in force against all the black or aboriginal natives, within every part of this Island (whether exempted from the operation of the said proclamation or not) excepting always such tribe, or individuals of tribes, as there may be reason to suppose are pacifically inclined, and have not been implicated in any such outrages, and for the purposes aforesaid, all soldiers and others His Majesty’s subjects, civil and military, are hereby required and commanded to obey and assist their lawful superiors in the execution of such measures as shall from time to time be in this behalf directed to be taken. But I do, nevertheless, hereby strictly order, enjoin and command, that the actual use of arms be in no case resorted to, by firing against any of the natives or otherwise, if they can by other means be captured, that bloodshed be invariably checked as much as possible, and that any tribes or individuals captured or voluntarily surrendering themselves up, be treated with the utmost care and humanity. And all officers, civil and military, and other persons whatsoever, are hereby required to take notice of this my proclamation, and to render obedience and assistance herein accordingly.1941 907 The words were conciliatory, the practice genocidal. If there was some doubt before, Martial Law now made massacres legal, a blood sport, where roving parties were scouring the bush, enticed by the Government offer of bounties. With nowhere for them to live, with all the best pastoral land occupied, with armed gangs legally harrying them, they became desperate refugees in their own land. Arthur offered a bounty of £5 for every Aboriginal adult and £2 for a child delivered alive to a police station.1942 Many death squads were not so humanitarian, preferring a clandestine ambush followed by killing and capture. John Batman, 1943 the ‘founder’ of Melbourne, reports an ambush he carried out on the 5th August 1829 while leading one of Arthur’s ‘roving parties’ under the guise and legal protection of Martial Law: In pursuit of the Aborigines who have been committing so many outrages in this district… The natives arose from the ground, and were in the act of running away into the thick scrub, when I ordered the men to fire upon them, which was done, and a rush by the party immediately followed, we only captured that night one woman and a male child about two years old … the next morning we found one very badly wounded in the ankle and knee, shortly after we found another, 10 buckshot had entered his Body, he was alive but very bad, there was a great number of traces of blood in various directions and learnt from those we took that 10 men were wounded in the Body which they gave us to understand were dead or would die, and Two women in the same state had crawled away, besides a number that was shot in the legs…We shot 21 dogs and obtained a great number of spears, waddies, blankets, rugs, knives, a tomahawk, a shingle wrench etc etc. On Friday morning we left the place for my Farm with two men, a woman and child, but found it impossible that the Two former could walk, and after trying them by every means in my power, for some time, found I could not get them on I was obliged to shoot them.1944 Arthur’s first declaration of Martial Law, supported by the British Government, caused fierce resistance among the surviving Aboriginals. In December 1829, Arthur attempted to shore up civilian support for his declaration, so he could present his superiors with an up-to-date commentary. He formed an Aborigines’ Committee, which took evidence of ‘atrocities’ from settlers and presented recommendations. Among them, Roderick O’Connor Esquire:1945 17th March 1830. The Natives have become so dexterous that it is now next to impossible to get a sight of them – they move with greater rapidity than formerly – they are never seen in winter – their attacks are from September to March – they then retire into the Interior – they will not now be content with Sugar, Bread and Blankets – they have very great appetite – saw a child of eight months old then at the Breast eat a whole kangaroo Rat and then attack a Craw fish – the settlements are now so numerous and many of them so wide apart that it is impossible to give them all protection.. Roving parties cannot travel so fast as the Blacks being obliged to carry provisions which the Natives know where to procure – The natives travel in parties of Ten, Twenty and Thirty. “the only way is for the Settler to protect himself and his men” - they do not at present – but expect Government to protect them – Would not anticipate any evil from the arming of the Convicts – there would be no union amongst them – they 908 would betray each other – Ranging the Country will never do any good – they are remarkably keen sighted – and they will never come near a place where they see Soldiers or Constables. Stratagem must be resorted to – and Ambushes formed – does not see how the Government can do it – Stockmen used to shoot and hunt the Natives – Captain Ritchie’s men to the Westward of Norfolk Plains used to hunt them on Horseback – and shoot them from their horses – One of those men was known by them and watched and followed ‘till they killed him at Piper’s Lagoon, he had told Mr. O’Connor that he had thrown a woman upon a fire and burned her to death – The Natives think lightly of the Whites – their huts being thatched are easily fired and the inmates being unarmed and frequently flying when attacked gives confidence to the Natives – After treating the Natives kindly would not trust himself with them – Knows they have taken bread with one hand and thrown a spear with the other – instanced murder of Osborne and his wife – The Settlers cannot send their men away in pursuit of the Natives - One party of Natives frequently decoy men from Stock huts whilst another plunders it – this cannot be prevented but by the men staying at home – the Natives are more anxious to plunder than to murder – they will not attack a respectable looking house – they did not go near Mr. Harrison’s house as reported – it was his own men who created the alarm. Mr. Sherwin’s hut was in a very secluded place – and had not the appearance of a house – they do not now come to the places in the Settled Districts they were wont to frequent – they are prevented by a consciousness of the Atrocities they have committed – Mr. Sherwin’s hut was surrounded by hills from which the Natives could watch it – the Natives would as soon murder each other as the whites – Mr. Wedge’s native boy says that wars continue amongst them – does not believe that the Natives act in concert – The Natives are as tenacious of their hunting grounds as Settlers are of their farms and are displeased when they find houses built or persons hunting upon them – this causes them to attack remote stock huts – Mr. Eddie’s farm under te Western Tier by the Black Sugar Loaf is much frequented by the Natives, but they have never attacked his house altho’ they have pursued his men – The Natives frequently have speared sheep and if they were taught to skin them would soon eat them – they scrape their Kangaroo and Opossums very clean before they roast them Knows no way that can be adopted than that every Settler should protect himself and the Military assist in repelling the Natives – believes the roving parties have driven the Natives into the Settled Districts – the Natives watch the Stock Huts incessantly and if a Soldier is in one they never come near – they can only be captured by their fires at night – the presence of Soldiers prevents Natives from coming into the neighborhood – A man named Douglas Ibbens’ would soon put an end to the Eastern Mob if he were employed he has killed half that Tribe by creeping upon them and firing amongst them with his double barreled gun – Some of the worst characters would be the best to send after them – Ibbens could get men to go with him who would capture the Eastern mob – the offer of a Reward was the best measure that could be adopted – the Soldiers formerly had no inducement to pursue the Natives – 909 Believes there are Six or Seven hundred Natives in the whole Island – A small Tribe at Port Davey, Abyssinia, Stoney Creek, Oyster Bay and North of the North Esk. The Natives cannot now be taught that the white people are well inclined towards them – they may be taught so after they are captured altho’ many who are captured and sent out again prove the most mischievous – the Natives might have been civilized here if they had been treated as they have been at Sydney – where, when they committed outrages they were immediately pursued till they were punished – they attacked the whites at Liverpool plains but desisted after a few of them were shot. 1946 A man employed by Mr. Stocker named “Cubitt” has killed a number of the Natives and they have made many attempts upon his life and speared him in several places – On one occasion when he was escaping from them they cried out to him in English “We will have you yet”. It is impossible to Suppress them by open force – they leave their women and children behind them when they go upon expeditions – does not know if capturing their women and children would induce the Males to come in – all they are now actuated by is a love of plunder – the chief thing they want is bread – and prefer getting a sack of Flour by robbing a hut to hunting for Opossums.1947 Report of the Aborigines’ Committee, 19th March, 1830 Arthur formed the Committee on 9 November 1829 with its initial focus on whether Bruné Island was suitable for a permanent settlement for the Aborigines and to recommend another site if necessary. 1948 Its first report on 1 December 1829 saw its evolution on 24 December 1829 into a ‘standing committee for regulating the care and treatment of captured Aborigines, and for suggesting such measures of conciliation as shall appear to you calculated to bring about a permanent friendly intercourse between the native tribes and colonists’. At this time, Arthur also directed the Committee, through the Colonial Secretary, to ‘review and report on any other initiatives with a view to the pacification of the natives’. This direction became the basis of the Committee’s enquiry into ‘the origins of the hostility displayed by the black natives of this island against the settlers’, and ‘the measures expedient to be adopted with a view of checking the devastation of property and the destruction of human lives occasioned by the state of warfare which has so extensively prevailed’. 1949 The Committee did not interview any Aboriginal, pointing to its partisan bias. All depositions were taken from colonists. Lending weight to this evident bias, the Committee produced a ‘list of atrocities committed by the Natives during the last three months’ 1950 but made no note of white predations or killings. Jorgenson gives us a contemporaneous insight into the ‘Aboriginal Committee’ and why Arthur set it up. We learn from Jorgenson that an emerging primary focus of the Committee was Robinson’s ‘friendly mission’, along with taking depositions from colonists for a ‘Report’ on the Aboriginal problem, which Arthur could forward to the Secretary of State. He needed the report to 910 defend his actions in protecting the ‘settled districts’, which Murray had asked him to provide in August 1829. Arthur hoped to share the administrative load in managing the insurgency crisis. The military campaign he would keep to himself. Jorgenson writes: Hitherto the whole arduous duties of superintending all affairs relating to the Aborigines had devolved on the Lieutenant Governor, and the whole responsibility entirely rested on his own shoulders. His Excellency was so harassed with accounts of robberies, arson, and murders committed by the Blacks, that he had often little time to bestow on other duties connected with his government. Sir George Arthur therefore in 1829 nominated a Committee for superintending all matters connected with the Aborigines, and which would divide the responsibility between several. The Committee so constituted was certainly composed of gentlemen exceedingly well qualified, and of distinguished humanity – Jocelyn Thomas Esq. Colonial Treasurer, Chairman, P.A. Mulgrave Esq. Chief Police Magistrate, J. Scott Esq. Colonial Surgeon, Samuel Hill Esq. Port Officer, Rev. William Bedford, Senior Chaplain, Rev. James Norman. During the short time that the Archdeacon from New South Wales sojourned in Van Diemen’s Land, the very revd gentleman consented to become a member of the Committee. The aboriginal asylum at Bruné Island became an object of deep interest to the Committee. On that island was a tame tribe which it was intended should accompany Mr Robinson on his conciliatory mission, but delays naturally occurred. The difference of languages, as already mentioned, made it difficult to form immediate arrangements. It was necessary that Mr Robinson should acquire some knowledge of the Aboriginal languages, at least one of them. He was ably assisted by an Aboriginal woman, Trugananna, the wife of the Chief, who possessed a quick perception, and with facility made herself conversant with the eastern and western languages. The mission was therefore not able to pursue its intended avocations until the month of January in the following year (1830). Meanwhile every care was taken to fit out the mission, in a manner so as to insure success. A small vessel was to navigate round the coast, and boats were allowed, all under the immediate directions of Mr Robinson. Pack horses to carry provisions were also to be provided but no one attached to the mission was to carry fire arms, in order to impress on the minds of the Aborigines that the white people were really sincere in their offer of peace and friendship. It was far different with the armed roving bands, each man was obliged to carry on his back a knapsack heavily laden with provisions, in addition to his blanket, which retarded his moving on fast. The justice and propriety of any hostile measure must in a great degree depend upon the absolute necessity which gave rise to such measure. In February 1830 the Committee advised the suspension of martial law at the suggestion of Mr Robinson, who was then proceeding with his conciliatory mission. The Colonists were struck with consternation at this unexpected proposition. Letters ran in every day, and the outrages of the Blacks exceeded all that had been heard of before. The settlers could not comprehend for what reason they were exposed to 911 plunder and murders from the natives, without possessing the means of repelling such aggressions. The wages of free shepherds, stock keepers, and other servants rose in proportion to the danger they incurred. Whole families quitted the country for the towns. Fortunately the Lieutenant Governor did not accede to Mr Robinson’s suggestion, and the Colonists did not hope for the slightest benefit from his peaceful mission. It was now seen that the measures hitherto pursued were not calculated to abate the dreadful nuisance which kept the Colonists in constant alarm.1951 This is the full transcript of the Report by the Aborigines’ Committee, organized by Arthur to bolster his case for firmer armed action against Aboriginal resistance. The witness statements give us a glimpse into Arthur’s probable state of mind at this pivotal time. It is an important document because it led Arthur into the final solution to the problem he created of Aboriginal resistance to his authority and ongoing settler encroachments into Aboriginal territory. Therefore, it is worth quoting in its entirety where we hear the statements in colloquial English, as though the speakers were sitting opposite us in conversation. As already observed, no Aboriginals were interviewed. Among the Committee’s findings: Whereas several Settlers and others are in the habit of maliciously and wantonly firing at and destroying the defenceless natives or Aborigines of this Island, and Whereas it has been commanded by His Excellency the Governor in Chief that the Natives should be considered as under the British Government and Protection, these instructions render it no less the duty, than it is the disposition, of the Lieutenant Governor to forbid and prevent, and when perpetrated, to punish, any ill treatment of the Native people of this Island, and to support and encourage all measures which may tend to conciliate and civilize them. The words were exculpatory, and were often repeated in official correspondence, but were overwhelmingly ignored in practice. As we have noted before, no colonist was ever charged with culpable homicide against any Aboriginal. The glaring failure, racially motivated, represented a comprehensive breakdown in the impartial administration of justice. The Committee also found: as the White population spread itself more widely over the island, and the Settlers came more frequently in contact with the Natives, many outrages were committed which no interposition of the Government, however well disposed, could, with the means at its command, have been able to prevent. Of course, the ‘collisions’ directly resulted from Britain’s colonization policy, and the solution was to limit the allocation of unlocated land to colonists until a treaty had been negotiated for Palawa protection. Britain’s ‘conciliatory’ process did not allow such direct discussion with the Palawa. Nor did the Committee suggest restraint in the spread of the ‘settled districts, instead recommending greater steps for armed self-protection by the colonists. The measure had the financial benefit 912 that the larger cost of protection would (and as Murray later suggested to Arthur, should) devolve to civilians. The most obvious suggestion certainly is that the first arrangements for precaution and defence should proceed from the Settlers themselves, and the first step to be taken, with this view, is that every head of family, with every male of competent age, at least of those that are free, should be well provided with Arms, and act on all occasions with a watchful regard to the security of their dwellings and possessions. Finally, the Committee recommended: the chief direction of all operations in every District shall be entrusted to its Police Magistrate. That to every Station a number of mounted Police should be attached, whose employment would be to convey intimation of the movements of the Natives, to those parts of the District which should appear to be most threatened, and afford the Settlers time to prepare for the defence of their houses. That the Field Police should be encreased to the utmost practicable limit. The Report was a start. It gave Arthur some wriggle room to progress a paramilitary solution using armed convicts, a stratagem that Murray was to approve. What Arthur did not know at the time: Aboriginal numbers had plummeted. It was to encourage the dispirited Palawa survivors to engage with a ‘friendly mission’ that spoke to them in their own language, something that had escaped Arthur’s ‘conciliation’ in the many years before. The ‘friendly mission’ spoke ‘kindness’ and practised ‘capture’. The Palawa circumstances were going to become far worse. Report of the Aborigines’ Committee1952 Arthur to Murray [Enclosure No. 2] REPORT OF THE ABORIGINES’ COMMITTEE +2529 Van Diemen’s Land + Received CD Sep. 19 1830+ Report of the Aborigines’ Committee Committee Room, Government House, Hobart 19th March 1830 The Committee consisting of The Venerable Archdeacon Broughton The Revd. W. Bedford The Revd. J. Norman P. A. Mulgrave Esqre. Jocelyn Thomas Esqre. James Scott Esqre. Col. Surgeon Samuel Hill Esqre. Charles Arther Esqre. 913 1. The Committee appointed to enquire into the origin of the hostility displayed by the Black Natives of this Island against the Settlers, and to consider the measures expedient to be adopted with a view of checking the devastation of property and the destruction of human lives occasioned by the state of Warfare which has so extensively prevailed, have the honor to report for His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor’s information the result of their investigation. 2. With a view to prepare themselves for recommending any specific measures, no less than to enable His Excellency to judge of their propriety and probable effect, they have sought for information respecting the disposition displayed by the Natives from the very first establishment of the Colony; and have endeavoured to obtain a connected view of the origin, progress, and existing character of their hostility. Upon all these points the Committee have collected a considerable mass of evidence, oral and written, which they annex to this Report, and to which they beg to refer in confirmation of the Statements and reasonings herewith presented. 3. From the testimony of persons who, from long residence in the Colony, are best qualified to afford information, the Committee have collected that many causes of Offence, some wanton and others unintentional, were given to the Natives by the first Settlers, and have been from time to time renewed, in opposition to the expressed disposition and desire of the Government to protect the former from violence and injustice. There is too much reason to apprehend that, as the White population spread itself more widely over the island, and the Settlers came more frequently in contact with the Natives, many outrages were committed which no interposition of the Government, however well disposed, could, with the means at its command, have been able to prevent. 1953 It would indeed appear that there prevailed at this period, too general a forgetfulness of those rights of ordinary compassion to which, as human beings, and as the original occupants of the soil, these defenceless and ignorant people were justly entitled – They were sacrificed, in many instances, to momentary caprice or anger, as if the life of a Savage had been unworthy of the slightest consideration; and they sustained the most unjustifiable treatment in defending themselves against outrages which it was not to be expected that any race of Men should submit to without resistance, or endure without imbibing a spirit of hatred and revenge – The Committee allude to those attacks which, it has come to their knowledge, were then frequently made, by lawless and desperate characters, for the purpose of carrying off the Native Women and Children: attempts, which, if resisted the aggressors did not scruple to accomplish with circumstances of dreadful and unnecessary barbarity – In exemplification of this assertion the Committee cannot but mention one fact which, from its atrocity, would have appeared to them perfectly incredible, had it not been confirmed by testimony which they cannot doubt. A person named Carrots, since dead, is known to have boasted that having killed a Native, in his attempt to carry off the Wife, he cut off the dead man’s head, and obliged the Woman to go with him carrying it suspended round her neck. The accuracy of these representations would seem to be most fully confirmed by the language of Proclamations issued by Lieutenant Governors Davey and Sorell on the 25th June 1813 and 13th March 1819, respectively – from which the following Extracts are given – Lieutenant Colonel Davey states that :It having been intimated to the Lieutenant Governor that a very marked and decided hostility has lately been evinced by the Natives in the neighbourhood of the Coal River in an attack 914 they made upon the herds grazing in that District, he has felt it his duty to enquire into the probable causes which may have induced them to adopt their offensive line of conduct, and it is not without the most extreme concern he has learnt that the resentment of these poor uncultivated Beings has been justly excited by a most barbarous and inhuman mode of proceeding acted upon towards them: - viz The Robbery of their Children! Had not the Lieutenant Governor the most positive and distinct proofs of such barbarous crimes having been committed, he could not have believed that a British subject would so ignominiously have stained the honor of his Country and of himself; but the facts are too clear, and it therefore becomes the indispensable and bounden duty of the Lieutenant Governor thus publicly to express utter indignation and abhorrence thereof”. 4. In the Proclamation of Colonel Sorell the following passages occur – “The Lieutenant Governor is aware that many of the Settlers and Stock-keepers consider the natives as a hostile people, seeking without provocation, opportunity to destroy them and their Stock; and towards whom any attempts at forbearance or conciliation would be useless. It is however most certain, that if the Natives were intent upon destruction of this kind, and if they were incessantly to watch for opportunities of effecting it, the mischief done by them to the Owners of Cattle or Sheep, which are now dispersed for grazing over so great a part of the Interior, would be increased a hundred fold. But, so far from any Systematic plan for the destruction of the Stock or people being pursued by the native Tribes, their meetings with the Herdsmen appear to be generally incidental; and it is the opinion of the best informed persons who have been longest in the Settlement, that the former are seldom the Assailants – and that, when they are, they act under the impression of recent injuries done to some of them by White People. It is undeniable that in many former instances, cruelties have been perpetrated repugnant to humanity, and disgraceful to the British Character, whilst few attempts can be traced on the part of the Colonists to conciliate the natives, or to make them sensible that peace and forbearance are the objects desired – The impressions remaining from earlier injuries are kept up by the occasional outrages of miscreants, whose scene of Crime is so remote as to render detection difficult; and who sometimes wantonly fire at, and kill the Men, and at others pursue the Women, for the purpose of compelling them to abandon their Children – This last outrage is perhaps the most certain of all to excite in the Sufferers a strong thirst for revenge against all White Men, and to incite the Natives to take revenge indiscriminately, according to the General practice of an uncivilized people, wherever in their migrations they fall in with the herds and Stockmen”. 5. The Committee, while they lament to revive these imputations, apparently too well founded, against the earlier Colonists, are, however, not prepared to say that the description given by Lieutenant Governor Sorell of the passive and inoffensive character of the Aborigines, unless when previously attacked, is entirely supported by the evidence before them. It would appear that on the first landing of the Settlers in the Derwent, under Lieutenant Bowen, they were permitted for a time to proceed in their operations without any, or, at the utmost, with a very slight manifestation of dissatisfaction on the part of the Natives. The first act of hostility was committed at Risdon on the eastern shore of the Derwent, at which place the Settlement was under the command of Lieutenant Moore of the 102nd Regiment – This occurrence took place 915 the 3rd May 1804, and the Committee have some difficulty in deciding whether it is to be considered as originating in an aggression by the Natives, calling forth measures of self defence, or in an attack upon them commenced by the Settlers and Military, under an impression that an attempt was about to be made upon their position by the unusually augmented number of the Natives who had made their appearance in the neighbourhood. It appears unquestionable that a person named Burke, whose habitation was considerably advanced beyond the rest, was driven from it by the Natives, whose number was estimated at upwards of Five hundred, and much violence was threatened by them towards this Man and his Wife and Dwelling – But it is the opinion of some persons who were then in the Colony that the displeasure of these people was excited only by finding this hut erected upon ground to which, as being favourably situated for water and hunting, they were in the habit of resorting, and on which they were preparing at this time to hold a general assembly, and that they had no more hostile intention than to remove this obstacle to their proceedings; while it is deposed to by one, who was an eyewitness, that they did not proceed even to this extent of aggression. Their having been accompanied by their Women and Children, whom, when engaged in expeditions of danger, they are known to be in the habit of leaving in a place of security, is a circumstance strongly in favour of the opinion, that they had in view no other than a peaceful purpose, and that they were not the first Assailants. But whatever may have been the actual course of the previous events, it is indisputable that a most lamentable encounter did at this time ensue, in which the numbers slain, of Men, Women and Children, have been estimated as high as fifty – although the Committee from the experience they have had, in the course of this enquiry, of the facility with which numbers are magnified, as well as from other statements, contradictory of the above, are induced to hope that the estimate is greatly overrated. 6. Whether or not the resentment occasioned by this encounter has been ever since maintained, and has continued to influence the Natives in their feelings towards the White population, it is impossible, with perfect certainty, to determine. It is however manifestly shewn, that an intercourse with them on the part of insulated or unprotected individuals or families has never been perfectly secure. Although they might receive with apparent favour and confidence, such persons as landed from time to time on various parts of the Coast, or fell in with them in other remote situations, yet no sooner was the store of presents exhausted, or the interview, from other causes, concluded, than there was a risk of the Natives making an attack upon those very persons, from whom they had the instant before been receiving acts of kindness, and against whom they had up to that moment, suffered no indication of hostility to betray itself. There have been, until the occurrence of the late Outrages, and their consequent total estrangement, repeated instances of the Natives exhibiting such confidence as, without any hesitation, to approach the dwellings of the settlers, and to partake of such refreshments as were then very generally offered to them; and this friendly intercourse, having sometimes continued for several days, was usually terminated by their departing to their own Districts in a regular and peaceable manner, so long as they were held in restraint by the presence of a sufficient number of observers. But it is within the knowledge of many members of the Committee, and has been confirmed by other statements, that even at this period there was, beyond all doubt, in the disposition of the Aborigines a lurking spirit of cruelty and mischievous craft; as, upon 916 very many occasions, and even on their retirement from houses where, as above stated, they had been kindly received and entertained, they have been known to put to death, with the utmost wantonness and inhumanity, Stock and Hut Keepers whom they fell in with in retired stations at a distance from protection – and who, there is every reason to believe, had never given them the slightest provocation. The opinion of the Committee is most decided, that these acts of violence on the part of the Natives are generally to be regarded, not as retaliatory for any wrongs which they conceived themselves collectively or individually to have been endured, but as proceeding from a wanton and savage spirit inherent in them, and impelling them to mischief and cruelty when it appeared probable that they might be perpetrated with impunity. At the same time, they have no hesitation in tracing to the manifold insults and injuries which these unhappy people have sustained from the dissolute and abandoned characters whom they have unfortunately encountered, the =universal= and =permanent= excitement of that spirit which now prevails, and which leads them to wreak indiscriminate vengeance, as often as they feel opportunity, on the persons and property of the White population.. 7. On turning their attention from the proceedings of individuals to those of the Government, the Committee derive the utmost satisfaction from discovering that, on the part of the latter, an uniform anxiety has prevailed to protect the Natives, and to secure for them the treatment which justice and humanity require. In evidence of this feeling, they have already referred to the Proclamations of Lieutenant Governors Davey and Sorell in 1813 and 1819, and they have before them other documents, of still earlier date, having the same object in view. So early as the 29th January 1810, a General Order was issued by Lieutenant Colonel Collins, declaring “that any person who should offer violence to a Native, or should in cool blood, Murder, or cause any of them to be Murdered, should, on proof being made of the same, be dealt with and proceeded against as if such violence had been offered to, or murder committed on, a civilized person.” With the Proclamation of Colonel Davey already noticed, publicity was given to an ”‘Extract of a letter from Lord Hobart to Lieutenant Governor Collins” in the following terms – “You are to endeavour by every means in your power to open an intercourse with the Natives, and to conciliate their good will; enl persons under your Government to live in amity and kindness with them; and if any person shall exercise any acts of violence against them, or shall wantonly give them any interruption in the exercise of their several occupants, you are to cause such offender to be brought to punishment according to the degree of offence”. In evidence of the continuance of this feeling, the Committee may also refer to a Proclamation of Lieutenant Governor Sorell dated 19th May 1817, - Herein it is stated that “Whereas several Settlers and others are in the habit of maliciously and wantonly firing at and destroying the defenceless natives or Aborigines of this Island, and Whereas it has been commanded by His Excellency the Governor in Chief that the Natives should be considered as under the British Government and Protection, these instructions render it no less the duty, than it is the disposition, of the Lieutenant Governor to forbid and prevent, and when perpetrated, to punish, any ill treatment of the Native people of this Island, and to support and encourage all measures which may tend to conciliate and civilize them.” There is some ground for believing, that these humane precautions were not wholly inefficacious in procuring at least a partial return of confidence on the part of the Natives, as in the Hobart Town Gazette of the 18 th April, 917 in the following year, the Committee find it stated, that “Notwithstanding the hostility which has so long prevailed in the breasts of the Natives of this Island towards Europeans, we now perceive with heartfelt satisfaction, that hatred in some measure gradually subsiding – Several of them are to be seen about this Town and its neighbourhood, who obtain subsistence from the charitable and well disposed.” In other directions there is, however, too much reason to fear that the former system of injury and destruction was still pursued, as the Committee find that his Excellency the present Lieutenant Governor considered it necessary to republish on the 23 rd June 1824, the Proclamation of his predecessors bearing date May 1817, to which attention has been above directed. Proceeding in the course of events, the Committee find recorded a “Government and General Order” dated 4th November 1824 importing that “a body of Natives having come into Hobart Town, the Lieutenant Governor requests that the utmost kindness may be manifested towards them, until some arrangements can be made by the Government for providing for their accommodation, and removing them to some proper Establishment.” This tribe was subsequently removed to Kangaroo Point, where they experienced a continuance of the humane attention recommended in the Government Order, and, being under no restraint, they were in the habit of departing and returning as often as their own convenience dictated, or they were desirous of obtaining fresh supplies of food and clothing, with which they were liberally furnished. This satisfactory intercourse appears to have subsisted during a period of two years, but not to have had the effect of inducing the black inhabitants, in any considerable numbers beyond those who originally came in, to associate and domesticate themselves among the Settlers. It is even to be feared, from the nature of the events which led to the termination of the intercourse here described, that such a display of kindness had failed to inspire them with ant sentiment or attachment, or of forbearance from their inveterate habits of treachery and mischief. 8. A barbarous murder was committed near Oyster Bay, of which two of the Tribe frequenting Kangaroo Point were ascertained to be the perpetrators. On their next return to that spot, they were arrested on this charge, and, after conviction on the clearest evidence before the Supreme Court, were executed on the 16th September 1826. After this occurrence the Natives came no more to the usual place of resort. They have resisted every subsequent attempt on the part of the Government or of individuals to enter into intercourse or explanation with them; and from that period the frequency of their attacks on White persons and their property has been gradually increasing. It is however necessary to remark that, whatever influence resentment arising from the execution of the above offenders may have had in exciting them to such acts of violence, there were other causes in operation contributing to produce this result; especially the outrages of the Bush rangers, who were then at large in the Country. 9. The Committee beg leave, in proof of the truth of this remark, to refer to a single instance – that of the notorious “Dunne”, who, after a long course of atrocity, was captured about the middle of October 1826 – and suffered the penalty of his crimes. A few days previous to his seizure, this man made his appearance at the Hut of Mr. Thomson on the further bank of the Shannon, bringing with him a black native Woman, whom he acknowledged he had stolen from her tribe, and whom in that hut he treated with violence, which she endeavoured ineffectually to escape.. After this “Dunne” 918 swam across the River Ouse, and landing on the opposite bank, found himself in the midst of that Tribe of Natives from whom the Woman had been carried off. During several hours he withstood their attacks, and finally succeeded in escaping. But their revenge was not to be thus disappointed. On the day following that on which this atrocious act had been committed by “Dunne”, and within a few miles of the spot, two men driving a Cart, were attacked in a secluded wood near the Clyde, by a party of Natives, headed by a half-civilized Black, who had been some time at the Settlement at Macquarie Harbour. One of the Men, William Tidwell, was pierced by a Spear through his thigh and perished. The same party afterwards attacked the Hut of Mr. Nicholas, and subsequently that of Mr. Thomson, before mentioned, where James Scott was killed. The Committee particularly allude to this catastrophe, in consequence of the evidence received by the Coroner, Thomas Anstey Esqre, on view of the body of Scott, plainly developing the connection between this act of violence on the part of the Natives, and the previous outrage of ‘Dunne”. Mr. Thomson’s servant deposed: “Some few weeks ago, ‘Dunne” the bushranger brought a Native Woman to our hut. He brought her by force. =The same Woman was with the tribe of Natives when they attacked and plundered our hut, and she was with the party who threatened us with death on the following day, about which time Scott was killed..=” (See Hobart Town Gazettes – October 14th, 21st and November 18th 1826). 10. Having brought down to this period the detail of occurrences, and stated such as, in their opinion, are calculated to account for the enmity displayed by the Black against the White population, The Committee deem it expedient to exhibit a brief compendium of the measures which have been adopted by the Government subsequently to the date last mentioned. Their purpose is thereby to furnish means of judging in what degree those measures have accomplished the intended purpose, and of further considering what proceedings may be now expedient and necessary for the tranquilization of the Colony. 11. On the 29th November 1826 a Government Notice was issued, wherein, after reference to the series of outrages perpetrated by the Aborigines, and a statement of His Excellency’s uniform anxiety to inculcate a Spirit of forbearance towards them, it was promulgated. 1st “That in the event of a felony being committed, or of an apparent determination existing on the part of the Native Tribes to attack, rob, or murder the White Inhabitants, any persons might arm, and, joining the Military, contribute to drive them by force to a safe distance.” 2d “That they might be apprehended, and, if resistance were offered, force might be resorted to for that purpose, by any persons acting under the directions of a Magistrate, or Peace Officer, in cases of their assembling in such a manner as to excite fear, or betraying an intention to do any harm short of felony to the person or property of any one.” 3d “That if any Natives should have actually committed felonies, the Magistrates should use all exertions to discover and apprehend, on their warrant, the principals concerned therein; and that the Officer executing the same might employ force if the Offenders could not otherwise be taken, or if acts of violence or intimidation were resorted to by them, or on their behalf.” 919 4th “That any person having actually witnessed the Commission of a Felony might raise the Neighbourhood, and pursue and seize the Offenders by all such means as a Constable might use.” 12. On the 29th November 1827, a second Government Notice appeared, which refers to the renewal of aggressions by the Aborigines against the Stock Keepers, and other White Inhabitants, and directs the Magistrates to act with vigour upon the principles laid down in the Order of the preceeding year, of which the substance has been just detailed. At the same time the Lieutenant Governor stated that sufficient Troops to give confidence to the Inhabitants would be at the disposal of the Civil power in every district; but expressed his wish to have it understood, that his own confidence chiefly reposed in the adoption of vigorous measures by the Magistrates and Constables, who were expected to “unite every degree of prudence and humanity with the energy and decision so necessary on this distressing occasion”. On the 15 th April 1828, a Proclamation was issued for the Protection of the Aboriginal Natives against the acts of aggression, violence and cruelty committed on them by the Stock Keepers and others His Majesty’s Subjects, and for the purpose of causing the Natives to retire from the settled districts of the Island, in consideration of their continuing to perpetrate unprovoked outrages on the persons and property of the Settlers, and to commit repeated wanton and barbarous murders and other crimes. Herein it is further represented, that the “Aborigines have, during a considerable period of time, evinced and are daily evincing, a growing spirit of hatred, outrage and enmity against the Subjects of His Majesty, and are putting in practice modes of hostility indicating gradual, though slow, advances in art, system, and methods and utterly inconsistent with the peaceable pursuits of civilized society, the most necessary arts of human subsistence, and the secure enjoyment of human life.”. 13. In order therefore to prevent as far as possible, collisions which were attended with consequences so fatal, the Proclamation now in question established a line of Military Posts along the confines of the settled districts, within which the Natives were forbidden to penetrate. All practicable methods were directed to be employed to make known to them the provisions of the Proclamation, in furtherance of which object, a letter from the Major of Brigade, dated 21st April 1828, informed the Officers commanding Detachments, that the Colonel Commanding would authorize them to offer any reasonable reward to persons who should succeed in becoming the channel of such communications. 14. All these measures of forbearance having however failed to produce the desired effect, and acts of murder and devastation being continually on the increase; a Proclamation declaring Martial Law against the Natives was issued on the 1st November 1828 excerpting from its operation only certain specified Districts. The actual use of arms was, at the same time, strictly prohibited in all cases wherein the Natives could be induced by other means to retire beyond the prescribed limits; and the Proclamation was conveyed to the Police Magistrates, accompanied by a letter from His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor, wherein it was stated, that “the Government puts forth its strength on this occasion,, by no means whatever with the view of seeking the destruction of the Aborigines. On the contrary, it is hoped by energetic and decisive measures, and by punishing the leaders in the atrocities which have been perpetrated, 920 that an end may be put to the lawless and cruel warfare which is now carrying on, and which must terminate in the total annihilation of the Natives.” 15. The observance of these principles of action has been repeatedly inculcated since that period, and up to the present moment, by Circular letters addressed to the Police Magistrates, and by the Garrison Orders; but in consequence of the covert and crafty mode adopted by the Natives, in making their approaches and attacks, and their almost inconceivable adroitness in effecting their escape, no progress whatever has been made in repressing their outrages, or apprehending their persons. 16. The suggestion formerly thrown out in the Proclamation of Lieutenant Governor Sorell, as to the more extended mischief which the Natives would be capable of inflicting, were they incessantly to act upon a systematic plan of attacking the Settlers and their possessions, has been but too completely verified by the events of the last two years, and still more fatally by those of the few months which have just elapsed. It is manifest that they have lost the sense of the superiority of white men, and the dread of the effects of fire arms, which they formerly entertained; - and have of late conducted their plans of aggression with such resolution as they were not heretofore thought to possess, and with a caution and artifice which renders it almost impossible to foresee or defeat their purposes. They continue to occupy and ravage, beyond the reach of control, and in defiance of the orders and efforts of Government, those settled districts which they were prohibited from entering. Since the commencement of the present year, an unparalleled series of devastation has marked their passage through the Country, as the annexed List of atrocities perpetrated by them within the three last months will abundantly testify. List of atrocities committed by the Natives During the last three Months. 1st January 1830 William Smith in the employ of Mr. Triffit Junr. Killed near the River Ouse. Pipers Hut at Bark hut plains broken open and plundered of a musquet, blankets, sugar &c. Captn. Clark’s hut at Bark hut plains robbed, and his house entered by the Natives. 9th February Mr. Marzetti’s hut robbed. Lawrence Dering servant to Mr. Bell killed. 11th Mr. Betts house and Servants attacked on great Jordan Lagoon, the Natives kept at bay, from the house, but one Man received a Spear through the thigh. February 11th “ Mr. Hopley murdered about a mile from Mr. Betts’ – James McCarthy desperately wounded. 12th February 1830 Mr. Howell’s dwelling hut burned. Mr. Howell and her Children narrowly escaping the Flames. Twenty of Mr. Espie’s Sheep killed and maimed. 921 Mr. Thomson’s hut attacked by 40 or 50. Mr. Patterson’s Shepherd pursued by the Natives. 17th “ “ Philip Norboy killed in Dysart parish, Oatlands, at noon day. Lawrence Murray, Servant to Mr. Bell killed. A child killed at Bagdad near the road side. 20th February 1830 Mr. McKae’s1954 house near Bothwell plundered of flour, and within a mile of the Military Station at Bothwell. Mr. Sherwin’s house burned to the ground with the greater part of his property – his servant’s hut, and fences also consumed. The Weazel plains hut burned down, a black Man wounded in the act of setting fire to it. 22nd “ “ Cpatn. Clark’s barn and Corn stacks consumed containing 1200 bushels of Grain. 2nd March 1830 A hut near Captn. Clark’s fired. A hut at Davis Marsh plundered. 10th “ “ Piper’s hut fired and partly destroyed. 11th “ “ Captn. Woods hut at Poles Marsh robbed; Mr. Jones’ hut Side-line Marsh threatened; Mr. Bisdee’s hut attacked; also Mr. Thomson’s Stock hut and Mr. Broadribb’s at the Black Marsh – Mr. Denholms hut at the same place attacked and his Servant speared. 13th March 1830 McGinnis’ hut Richmond District plundered of Musquets Powder and Ball and every thing of value in the house. 15th “ “ A hut near the mouth of the Carlton river attacked, a Man and Woman dangerously wounded, the latter four spear wounds and a cut on the head supposed mortal. Another woman speared through the arm. The following were omitted to be inserted above 1st February 1830 Mr. Broadie’s hut near the Upper Clyde was attacked while he was in it. He was speared in several parts of his body but not mortally – They stole Blankets, Tea, Sugar &c. 9th March “ A mob of Natives appeared at Captn. Smith’s hut at his run; a part of them attempted to rob the hut, and another mob of them killed 100 of his Sheep. 17. After a careful comparison of the several statements they have received, the Committee have no hesitation in expressing their persuasion that a sentiment of alarm pervades the minds of the Settlers throughout the Island, and that the total ruin of every Establishment is but too certainly to be apprehended, unless immediate means can be devised for suppressing the system of aggression, under which so many are at 922 this time suffering, and of which all are in dread that they themselves become the victims. It cannot be necessary to offer any additional observation to prove that the measures hitherto resorted to, though apparently the most judicious that could be devised, have not been attended with success. The urgency of the case, and the hazard to which the safety of individuals and the public peace continue to be exposed, render it imperative on the Committee to afford the Government the aid of their best ability; and, at least, to attempt the suggestion of some more effectual mode of preservation and resistance. They cannot however enter upon this province of their labours, without expressing their entire and hearty concurrence in the sentiments of humanity and forbearance towards these wretched people so constantly enforced by His Excellency the present Lieutenant Governor and his Predecessors, in all the public Documents which have been issued in connection with this subject. The feelings of His Majesty’s Government, and of the British Nation, they cannot doubt, are altogether in accordance with these views. For themselves, as Men, as Englishmen, and as Christians, the Committee are sensibly persuaded that every degree of moderation and forbearance is due to an ignorant, debased, and unreflecting race, who, it is impossible to doubt, were first excited to general aggression and systematic barbarity, by the wrongs which they themselves experienced on the part of miscreants, who were a disgrace to our name and nation, and even to human nature. It is, as they conceive, a plain and most imperative duty, - a duty which they would on no account take upon themselves the responsibility of violating, or of recommending others to violate, that no act of increased severity should be resorted to against the Natives, without first having recourse to every conceivable and practicable method of making known to them that intention, and of forewarning them of the dangers and punishment to which they will expose themselves by persevering in their present hostility. On the other hand, the Committee are bound to consider that the Natives are now visiting the injuries they have received, not on the actual offenders, but on a different and totally innocent class; and they acknowledge the force of the obligation to attend to the interests of that very numerous portion of their fellow subjects. In the Proclamation of the 15th April 1828 it was stated with equal force and justice that “the security and safety of all who have entrusted themselves to this Country on the faith of British Protection, are imperatively required by the plainest principles of justice. 18. These views the Committee would therefore carry into effect by respectfully recommending to His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor the adoption of certain specific measures which they will now proceed to enumerate. They are perfectly aware that such arrangements as they have to propose cannot be effected without a very considerable increase of expenditure; but they are unavoidably compelled to overlook this consideration, from a sense that increased exertions are necessary for the security of those who, naturally, and with justice, look up to the Government for support and protection. They consider it moreover a proceeding of manifestly good policy to make a temporary sacrifice for the sake of preserving the whole property of the Colony from destruction, and to abate that waste of lives which has of late been so rapidly on the increase. The most obvious suggestion certainly is that the first arrangements for precaution and defence should proceed from the Settlers themselves, and the first step to be taken, with this view, is that every head of family, with every male of competent age, at least of those that are free, should be well provided with Arms, and act on all occasions with a watchful regard to the security of their dwellings and 923 possessions. It has been clearly shown by repeated instances, that the Natives have by Artifice decoyed persons to quit their houses for the purpose of pursuit, who, on their return, have found their homes utterly destroyed by fire, and every thing of value carried off. 19. It is impossible for the Committee to suggest, or for the Government to prescribe all the measures of self-defence which, in the event of an attack, it may be necessary to adopt, but it is their unanimous persuasion that all Settlers should with their families and dependants make the defence of their own habitation for the chief object of their concern, and should, by no inducement, be persuaded ever to leave it without a competent guard. This line of conduct appears to be the only one effectual for defence, for it is justly observed by one of the Gentlemen who has favoured the Committee with an answer to their enquiries, that “a house left without protection becomes an easy prey to those insidious depredators, who will, for days and weeks, watch a house that they have marked out for plunder till they find the whole of the males absent; they then pounce upon the Dwelling, and with a celerity incredible plunder it of every article they consider valuable.” 20. On the other hand the Committee are persuaded by instances which have occurred even within the last few days, that these attacks are easily repelled where parties are on their guard, and shew a determination to resist force by force, and they are persuaded that nothing would so effectually deter the Natives from hostile attempts on dwelling houses as the certainty that they would encounter resistance, and a few instances of their incurring a severe chastisement in retaliation for their predatory attacks. 21. In the next place the Committee consider it their duty to recommend to every Settler to point out to his Stockkeepers and assigned Servants the fatal consequences which have resulted to the entire Community from the base and barbarous conduct which some of their class have pursued towards the Natives; - how little surprising it is that the latter should proceed to measures of retaliation; and how much it behoves them to desist from a repetition of such disgraceful conduct from a regard even to their own safety; seeing that not one of these barbarians by whom the Natives were thus irritated has ultimately escaped the effects of their vengeance. 22. With these efforts it would be proper that the Government should cooperate by renewing, and with augmented strictness, the prohibition to destroy Kangaroos, by hunting, shooting, or other means, within the limits prescribed to the Natives. So great is the injustice of this proceeding on the part of the Whites, and so apparent the injury suffered by the Natives through the destruction of this their principal source of sustenance, that the Committee would deem it expedient, if other modes of prevention fail, to make this a legal offence to be visited with severe penalties. The unassisted efforts of the Settlers must however, it is evident, be insufficient even to defend their own dwellings. Other and more active measures such as the Government alone can institute or support, must be called for: It is therefore recommended that the chief direction of all operations in every District shall be entrusted to its Police Magistrate. That to every Station a number of mounted Police should be attached, whose employment would be to convey intimation of the movements of the Natives, to those parts of the District which should appear to be 924 most threatened, and afford the Settlers time to prepare for the defence of their houses. That the Field Police should be encreased to the utmost practicable limit, and that sufficient inducements should be held out, to prevail on persons of much superior qualifications to those who have hitherto acted in that capacity, to serve as leaders, and that the whole be regularly clothed and equipped, and placed under a system of discipline appropriate to the service in which they are to be employed. Lastly, that the Military should be engaged in aid of the Civil power so far as the very inadequate force now in the Colony will permit. 23. The Committee are aware that the efforts of Government have never been wanting in supplying the greatest possible amount of disposable force to the disturbed Districts, It is however worthy of consideration whether by some additional encouragement the efficiency of that force may not be encreased. The Committee would suggest that an augmentation of allowances should be granted to the Soldiery while engaged in this service, and that to secure their efficiency and discipline they should be under the Command of their own Officers who should also receive a proportionate increase of pay at the expense of the Colony. With respect to the mode in which the descriptions of force, here spoken of, may be most advantageously employed. The Committee do not consider themselves qualified to offer an opinion, excepting so far as to point out some of the defects in the system of roving parties which have hitherto been employed. – To the propriety of engaging leaders of higher qualifications, attention has been already directed; It is besides the persuasion of the Committee, that, notwithstanding the exertions of that highly respected individual who has had the superintendence of these parties, an error has been committed by them in extending their march over too wide an extent of Country, whereby the Natives have been either chased before them, and a useless state of alarm has been kept up, or they have passed the Natives unperceived, and have left them unmolested to ravage the Country in their rear. It has also been proved that great want of caution has been shewn in shouting, smoking, and suffering other indications of their approach to alarm the keen senses of Natives and to warn them to fly. The Committee are fully persuaded that such parties conducted upon these principles are worse than useless, and they therefore recommend that, instead of traversing the Country as heretofore, without system or mutual cooperation, each band should have a particular portion of the District assigned to it which it should continually traverse in the manner of a patrol, and endeavour to obtain the most intimate acquaintance with the tracks which the Natives pursue in their migrations – and the haunts (for such there are known to be) which they by preference frequent. The men under whose command they are must also be such as possess sufficient prudence and authority to repress all those imprudent modes of proceeding above detailed, which necessarily give alarm to the Natives, and preclude the possibility of coming among them by surprize. – The only additional suggestion which the Committee beg leave to offer, is, that Magazines of Provision might be established in central situations, from which the Police and Military parties might receive their supplies without the necessity of quitting their Stations or interrupting their pursuit.. 24. In recommending these measures the Committee are animated by a desire not to occasion, but to prevent, the effusion of blood. – They are desirous that the use of arms should be resorted to only for the purpose of repelling an attack, or danger to life and 925 property, and that the main effort should be directed to capture the Natives alive and unhurt. 25. For the encouragement of this measure they acknowledge the propriety, and recommend a continuance, of the system adopted by Government of offering a reward to any free person, military or civil, by whom any such capture shall be effected; and they presume that a Ticket of Leave or other appropriate indulgence would not be withheld from a Prisoner who should succeed in the same object. They are persuaded, that if the patrolling parties are sufficiently numerous and persevering, the Natives must either be deterred from venturing into districts so occupied, or by due vigilance in watching their movements, and caution in approaching them, must be fallen in with and captured. 26. In effecting this, the design of the Committee is to attain the means of opening if possible, a communication with the hostile tribes, and of convincing them generally that the White Population have no other desire than the maintenance of peace. – In pursuance of this object they have forwarded to His Excellency their recommendation that the Native women lately captured, and who have been treated with kindness and indulgence, of which they appeared very sensible, should be sent back to their Tribe. To this destination they have been forwarded with a suitable safeguard, and the opinion of the Committee is, that as opportunities present themselves, the same course should be pursued with respect to any Natives, male, or female, who may in future be taken prisoners, until it shall evidently appear that this mode of acting has its effect in subduing their feeling of hostility, or that they are utterly beyond the reach of conciliation. 27. It is much to be desired that while under a state of restraint the Natives should be accessible only to persons who have the sanction of the Government; as experience shews that, from indiscriminate intercourse, they are liable to imbibe impressions from ill disposed and improper characters, which render them, on their return to their countrymen, more formidable enemies than those who have never had any intercourse with Europeans. 28. The Committee can scarcely imagine that these recommendations will be considered as severe, or otherwise than, as they in their consciences believe them to be, measures of humane and necessary precaution. To guard against misconception they however, deem it necessary to observe, that there are circumstances existing which would render it criminal to withhold protection from the Settlers and which in some degree deprive the Natives of their claim to an entire forbearance from coercion. – These are first, - that the latter have resorted so systematically to the use of fire for the destruction of property, as to render even their approach to a dwelling house without any other indication of hostility, extremely hazardous; - and secondly, - that they are now not acting the part of injured Men seeking to avenge the wrong they have sustained, but rather that of marauders stimulated by eagerness for plunder, and the desire of artificial luxuries, the use of which has now become familiar to them. If on the other hand there should be any who conceive that the aggressions lately sustained by the Settlers would justify a more severe exertion of force against the Natives than is here proposed. The Committee would entreat them again to consider the circumstances in which the present unhappy posture of affairs originated. They are 926 persuaded that under all provocation, and in opposition to any appearance of immediate advantage, the wisest policy will always be found to be that which has justice for its basis. They are sensible that the Natives had originally many causes for complaint, and many sources of provocation from the treatment they experienced; and, excepting so far as may be necessary for the actual defence of life and property, they desire for themselves and for their country to be pure from the blood of all men. – The debt which they have incurred in taking possession of this Country they would willingly acquit themselves of by every justifiable degree of forbearance and moderation towards the Native Inhabitants, and by leading them, if opportunity should be afforded, into the paths of civilization. 29. In conclusion, they venture to express a hope that the experience of present transactions may be even rendered useful in the history of the World, and that in all future attempts of colonization it may be steadily borne in mind how strict an obligation exists to exercise mercy and justice towards the unprotected Savage, and how severe a retribution the neglect of those duties, even by individuals, may ultimately entail upon an entire, an unoffending, Community. On behalf of the Committee (Signed) W. G. Broughton, Archdeacon, Chairman To His Excellency Lieut. Governor Arthur &c [Enclosure No. 3] MINUTES OF EVIDENCE OF ABORIGINES’ COMMITTEE1955 +2529 Van Diemen’s Land+ +Received Sep 18 1830+ Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee for the Affairs of the Aborigines 23rd February 1830 Mr. Sherwin Senior. Has been in the Country seven years – was attacked six months ago by Forty or Fifty of the Natives. Conceives they must be captured or exterminated – those who attacked him were the Abyssinian Mob as is believed – they were young men – Saw only four or five of them – conceives their object was plunder – does not know of any atrocities committed by the whites upon the black native people – believes they have been exaggerated. His House was burnt – saved only a small part of his property – the thatch of his house was set fire to – Believes the natives wish to have their Lands to themselves – if something be not speedily done no one can live in the Bush. Sydney natives or Blood hounds would contribute to the capture of the Natives in this Colony – has heard it proposed that decoy Huts containing flour and sugar strongly impregnated with poison should be used. Believes that beyond the Big River there are places where two or three hundred Natives may be constantly seen at a time. Mr. George Espie. Had a number of sheep killed at Bashan plains six months ago near the Big River – very little land located in that neighbourhood – his Stock Hut was the highest 927 up the River – none of the sheep killed by the Natives were eaten – Spears were left in some of them – Kangaroos and Opossums destroy pease and wheat – Would have been a hundred and fifty prisoners sent after the Natives who should be rewarded by a Conditional Pardon for every two or three they captured – Such prisoners to be strongly recommended before they were armed – Soldiers and Constables to go with those Convicts – believes they would shoot more than they would capture – Natives are very selfish – has no notion they can be conciliated – if they were brought in they would be worse afterwards – they are very treacherous – their outrages are daily increasing – and every outrage increases their audacity. Mr. John Brodie – Bothwell. Was alone in a Hut in Meads Bottom on the 4th of February. – Two Natives speared him without saying a word – they took away flour, sugar, a shirt, and Blankets – conceives plunder their primary object – they will have flour sugar and good Blankets – Six natives were seen in the neighbourhood two months before that – they robbed the Huts on both sides of the river – besides other things they always took Knives and Razors – The Blue Hills five miles from his house is a Station where Natives are generally seen – Thirty were seen there together last Summer – the assigned servants have become very much afraid of the Natives. 3rd March, Mr. Gilbert Robertson. The Condition of Service of the men under his Orders was simply a Ticket of Leave after Twelve months – has no complaint against any of those men – did not capture any Native during the last twelve months – Grant captured one whilst in charge of a detachment of the party – he learnt so much of their places of Resort and habits – that he is certain he was always within one to three days march of them – sometimes in sight of them – he was within four miles of them for four days near the Blue Hills – they beat round and round him like a Hare – had Natives with him, who had been captured to trace them whom he could trust – in July he was upon the Track of from one to two hundred Natives at the Blue Hills – supposes there were two tribes, - one party going towards Oyster Bay the other towards the westward – A party he followed to the Westward suddenly disappeared – does not know by what means they hid their tracks which he could not discover – does not know of any effectual means of pursuing them by which they can be captured – they cannot be surrounded by several parties coming upon them – they have no rendezvous except where Game is plentiful – they go over the whole Island – they always keep regular Sentries – and pass over the most dangerous grounds and by the Brinks of the most dangerous precipices – they leave their women and children behind them and send out parties to commit depredations – he has learnt this from Tom and Dick – the natives do not move by night – they are afraid of the Moon – he killed a good many of their Dogs – the Oyster Bay Natives and Big River Natives are of the same tribe – they are hostile to the Northern Tribes to which Umarow belongs he is only a second Chief of the Stony Creek Tribe – he knows the names of many of the Settlers at Norfolk plains – followed his party from Oyster Bay to Maloneys Sugar Loaf where he was captured – Umarow’s people were asleep in Bark Huts – they were awoke by their Dogs – I fired at Umarow – One of the men also fired at him and hit him under the ear – one of the Soldiers used him very ill after he was down – five were taken there. There are Five hundred Native men, women and children, in the Inhabited Districts – very few children. There are no children with the Oyster Bay Mob – their children are with the Big River mob – Many of the Oyster Bay mob have been killed by the Port Dalrymple Natives. 928 The Soldiers are quite useless in pursuit of the Natives – they will not exert themselves. Saw Eighty seven of the Natives on one occasion at his own house at the Coal River they behaved very peaceably there were men, women and children. The breach of faith on the part of the Government to Musquito when sent in pursuit of the Bush-rangers was the cause of all the subsequent Murders – Musquito was driven into the Bush by the ill treatment he received from the Prisoners on account of his having taken the Bushrangers – I got this information from Tom and others – Musquito complained to me of this and of subsequent ill usage after he went into the Bush – Met him after he went into the Bush – under these feelings and Mosquito treated him kindly – believes Musquitos first Murders were committed in Self Defence. After Musquito was driven into the Bush he used to come begging to his house and make himself very useful – saw him frequently for two years after he was driven into the Bush. Musquito must have committed Murders within eighteen months after he went into the Bush – His Execution was the cause of the subsequent Murders – believes horrible outrages were committed at Mr. Harte’s – Jack and Dick were supposed to be present – their execution caused subsequent murders - =it is principally from my own conjecture that I have said Musquitos execution caused subsequent murders and from what Tom has said to me=. Dicks brother who was executed is the leader of the Tribe which is committing Murders at present – The Oyster Bay Tribe. The only means of conciliating the Natives would be by keeping such a one as Umarow – giving him a taste for our comforts and then permitting him to go into the Bush – he would then come - if you do not let him go he will try to escape – Umarow had heard of the death of Dick – the Natives are inclined to be friendly but have no confidence in us – Umarow is disposed to pilfer. Once when we came to a Stock Hut where we saw some flour he urged us to take it – he has committed several Murders although he denies it. Believes Twenty Natives have been killed for one white man – great ravages were committed by a party of Constables and some of the 40th Regt sent from Campbell Town – the party consisted of Five or Six – they got the Natives between two perpendicular rocks – between which there was a sort of Shelf on which the Natives got – has heard and does believe that Seventy of them were killed by that party – believes that five or six men could destroy seventy of the Natives – the party killed them by firing all their ammunition upon them and then dragging the women and children from the crevices in the rocks and dashing out their Brains – the Natives watch to recover the dead bodies of such as are killed on these occasions and put them in hollow Trees – believes from Dugdales account who was one of the party that the whole Tribe was destroyed – Grant could give some clue to these Murders –believes that there was provocation that two Whites had been previously murdered – Morley as well as Dugdale was with the party – never heard this great Slaughter mentioned by any of the Natives. Thought well of Samuel Robinson’s conduct whilst with the party but did tell him he should serve three months extra for his Certificate because he subsequently offended him. The Richmond Police three years ago killed fourteen of the Natives who had got upon a hill and threw stones down upon them – the police expended all their ammunition and being afraid to run away at length charged with their Bayonets and the Natives fled – If the Sydney Natives were sent into the Bush they would return and bring these Natives in but kill a great many of them first – Ten Sydney Natives would drive all the Natives in the Colony before them – I conceive so from what I have seen Musquito do with a Bent Stick – 929 I have seen him cut off Pigeon’s head when flying with one – Grant is a fit man to lead a party. 4th March, Doctor Turnbull.Heard about two years ago that Mr. Robertson’s hut was robbed (not far from Campbell Town) by Twenty five or Thirty Natives – it was immediately afterwards reported that One hundred, Seventy, Forty, Fifty and then Seventeen of them had been killed – did not believe any of them had been killed no bodies were found – believed the report was utterly ridiculous – the report was first partially believed but afterwards utterly disbelieved – heard that they were killed in a place like that described by Mr Gilbert Robertson – said to have been at the back of Mr Hugh Murray’s Farm at the Western Tier – it was said two parties fired upon the Natives and Killed them by a cross fire – but that some of them ran off. Mr Robertson (Merchant) of Elizabeth Street. Has seen the place where about two years ago the natives were said to have been attacked – it was a very deep Gulley on the East end of which there are precipitous rocks and hills on each side of the Gully I went there the next day after the attack was said to have taken place with the party – they said they had killed seven of the Natives but appeared disinclined to go into the Gulley – We went but found no bodies and he then said to tell you the truth we did not kill any of them we had been out a long time and had done nothing and we said it in Bravado – Dugdale and Morley were with the party but they said nothing – there were bodies of three Dogs: laying near three small fires: there was plenty of room for the Natives to have escaped in every direction – there was a thick scrub on the North East side – this was at the very time there was a rumour that seventy Natives had been killed the day before at that place – I saw no blood in the Gulley. I knew one Native was killed in Self Defence – I was in a hut with two of my men – Forty of them surrounded it – We were armed – they came peeping in at the windows with Spears in their hands – We could not have killed many of them or taken them Prisoners but I would not let the men kill them – After being detained so long one of them was shot and the rest ran away – it was a detached stock hut – the Natives had killed a man there two months before whilst he was drawing water at the river they had never previously been ill used there – they plundered the Hut of Flour and Blankets – There were no women with the party who surrounded me in the Hut – I think they intended to plunder it – I believe if one Native be killed it is immediately reported that Ten have been destroyed. 9th March, Mr. James Hobbs. Came to the Colony with Colonel Collins – the natives then showed no hostile feelings – some had previously evinced between them and Lieutenant Bowen’s party – Twelve or Eighteen months after Colonel Collin’s arrival some of the prisoners ran away with a Boat to Oyster Bay where one of them was killed by the natives whilst hunting – believes the natives are very treacherous _ Musquito and Black Tom who were hung had been much with Europeans – Mr. Hobbs was Speared whilst riding along the road to Jerusalem in December 1828 – Lemon and Brown the Bushrangers committed every species of cruelty upon the Natives – they used to Stick them and fire at them as marks whilst alive – knows that Bowen reported this – Knew Carrotts who had been a Convict – he told him that he had once cut off a Native man’s head at Oyster Bay and made his wife hang it round her neck and carry it as a plaything – from Carrott’s manner he credited the story – The Sealers in Bass’s Strait sometimes stole the Native Women from the Main – at one time the Native men would sell a Native woman for four or five Carcases 930 of Seals – Saw a dozen Native women once at Preservation Island who seemed anxious to get away from the Sealers – Some of the Sealers had three or four Black native women whom they ill treated – this was known by the Tribes and operated upon their minds – the Sealers had told him when they could not purchase women they shot the men and carried their wives away – most of the Sealers are an abandoned Ferocious set – had a Servant named Doyle killed five or Six years ago by the Natives at the Blue Hills near the Eastern Marshes – he was wantonly killed and the Hut plundered – they burnt his hut four or five times bin one year about Five years ago – heard there were three or four hundred Natives each time – he sent provisions quarterly in that year and soon after they were sent the Hut was always attacked – on one occasion they drove the men away by firing the Bush and the next day it was found that about two acres of potatoes near the Hut had been carried away – Supposes there were three hundred of the Natives – thinks they pass near his hut at the Blue Hills every fortnight – Fifteen Natives robbed his hut three weeks ago – there were six white men upon the Farm – two of them were in the Hut with arms when the Natives approached but they ran away and left some arms behind them – the men are now very much afraid of the Natives. Parties in pursuit can only come upon them in the morning by watching their Smokes – they leave their women and children them when they go upon their Plundering excursions they are more shy and more difficult to come up with than Kangaroo – they smell tobacco smoke at a great distance – they fear the Devil would take them if they move at night – thinks the Oyster Bay and the Big River tribe are connected – Natives are in no want of Kangaroo altho’ they destroy a great many Fifty or Sixty at a time – they first got their Dogs from the Sealers in the Straits – Natives in Van Diemens Land are not so brave as those in New South Wales – they are more cruel and treacherous – The Sydney Natives would not be able to bear cold of our winters unless they come from the Five Islands or Two Fold Bay – Our Natives are not susceptible of Civilization – their children even if taken away when Infants would return to their Parents like wild ducks when they grew up – Knows no means of protecting the Settlers from the Natives – if they were ever so well used they would turn upon those who fed them – the Women visit the Stock huts as spies and then the men attack them – the men order the women to go to get all they can first and then they rob the Huts – the Execution of the two Natives who were last hung did not exasperate the Natives generally – never heard that one Native had been killed in defence of his property – if any of them had been shot they would not have come back so frequently – if a Severe example were made of that Tribe it would deter them from returning. One of Mr. Fisher’s men was killed by them whilst mending a Gate at his Farm – my Nephew and a man of Mr. Betts’s was killed whilst going along the road by the great Lagoon – near Jericho – these outrages were committed by the Oyster Bay Tribe – the Natives invariably run away if one man be shot – An instance of this happened at the Coal River – the body was left but a wounded man was taken away – in an hour after the Bush was closely searched by a number of whites but no traces of the Natives could be found – tho’ when the man was shot the Bush appeared alive with them – it was reported about fifteen years ago that the Natives killed Three hundred sheep ay Oyster Bay – but did not eat any of them and that Twenty two of the Natives were killed the next day by part of the 48th Regiment – they move in smaller bodies now than then – they were then more afraid of Europeans than they are now – A Mr Wood was murdered close to his own house by the Natives not very long ago – Once went around the Island in a whale boat – saw four or five Tribes between Cape Grimm and the South West Cape and Supposed there were a dozen 931 fires to each Tribe – Natives to the Northward are as hostile as every where else – they are decreasing in numbers – they now take less care of the Female than of the Male children – has heard of the Natives having three or four hundred Dogs with a Tribe – Sixteen large wild dogs were recently left near his hut at the Blue hills. There were three Dogs chained up at my hut when it was last robbed and they took no notice of the approach of the Natives altho’ if a white man had approached they would have given an alarm – they unchained the Kangaroo Dog and led him away – I was on horseback when I was speared and my horse appeared exceedingly agitated. Mr. Gilbert Robertson has never exerted himself in pursuit of the Natives he has done much mischief in not following them up – he has been more employed in looking for Grants of Land than the Natives – Parties moving in proper places would keep the Natives in check – the tribes talk different languages but understand each other. 10th March, Mr. Kelly. Arrived here in 1804 – has been a great deal amongst the Natives – found they were generally met by them in a friendly manner – but upon leaving them they would attempt to spear them. Such circumstances would generally occur when Boats went for wood and water – A small expedition from Sydney under Lieutenant Bowen took post at Risdon – the party had been there about three months when Four or Five hundred Natives attacked it suddenly and unprovokedly – who were then fired on – no previous violence had been then offered to them – was not at Risdon himself – Lieutenant Governor Collins came to Hobart Town while Lieutenant Bowen was at Risdon – The Natives attacked the party at Hobart Town near the Hospital and were then fired upon with Grape shot – Forty or Fifty Natives were killed at Risdon and three at Hobart Town – The attack at Risdon was the cause of all that happened afterwards – they wished to drive the Whites out of the Country – they were said to belong to the Oyster Bay Tribe – both banks of the Derwent were then thickly inhabited by the Natives – saw three hundred of them at Brown’s River in 1806 who attempted to cut off a watering party – the Sealers have frequently attacked the Natives to get their women – they Sometimes bought them but if they could not get enough that way they shot the men and brought the women away – the women were not always unwilling to go – and after a time preferred stopping on the Islands in the Straits. Has met the Natives in the Bush – they were always friendly at meeting but treacherous at partings. – Noticed this whenever he met them – the Natives of New South Wales are not so treacherous as those of Van Diemens Land – was amongst the latter a great deal in 1815 – they frequently received favors from the parties and then endeavoured to injure them – estimates their numbers in 1815 at Seven thousand – Conceives the number must still be very great in the uninhabited parts – the most will be found about Cape Grimm and round the Coast to the Eastward- Tribes on the Coast are connected – estimates the present numbers of the Natives in the Island at Five thousand – The Natives far to the Southward and Westward take no part with the Natives in the interior[,] those on the Northern and Eastern Coasts do take part with the Tribes in the Interior – the Tribes to the Southward and Westward are a much finer race of men than those to the Eastward and Northward – Some of those in the South, from South Cape to Cape Grimm have a better description of Huts and wear Moccasins when travelling – At Port Davey the Natives enticed a boat to put in – Received bread from the Crew and when it was departing threw Spears at it, and speared one Man – has heard that unprovoked aggressions have been 932 committed by Whites upon the Natives – principally by Stockkeepers – who endeavoured to get their women and were resisted by the men – Knows that many aggressions were committed on the North East Coast by Sealers because the men refused to give up their wives without an equivalent. A man named Harrington procured ten or fifteen women placed them on different Islands and left them to procure Kangaroo skins for him – and if on his return they had not procured enough – he used to punish them by tying them up to trees for Twenty four or Thirty six hours together, flogging them at Intervals – some of those women got back to the Natives on the main – Harrington and others not unfrequently killed the women they procured in cold Blood if they were stubborn. 11th March, The Reverend Mr. Bedford. The Oyster Bay Tribe never came to Kangaroo Point after Dick and Jack were executed – The Natives are grateful for kindness – has been amongst them frequently – is convinced they are so from their behaviour to Mr. Harte when he spoke disrespectfully of Mr. Bedford in their presence. Mr. Brodribb Senior. Conceives that when he first arrived in the Colony and during the time Colonel Sorell was here – the Natives were more pacifically inclined towards the Settlers than now – if they fell in with them alone and unarmed there would have been some risqué of their being murdered but not so much as now – had been at his house frequently and were kindly treated – immediately afterwards they have shewn a disposition to be mischievous whilst there and have subsequently robbed his neighbor’s houses – Knows no cause for such conduct – Cannot form an idea if the Natives are displeased at our taking possession of their Country – is not inclined to think the Whites were the first Aggressors – Fourteen years ago there was constant communication between the Stockkeepers and the female Natives – but that did not excite ill blood in the Males – the men would offer to give up their wives for bread – did not feel indignant at the intercourse they permitted – might have felt enraged at the Stockkeepers taking their wives by force – The Natives are now more hostile than ever – and have been so for the last two years – They have Speared my Shepherd and my son when alone and unarmed – before Martial Law was proclaimed they had plundered some Huts were pursued and the Plunder retaken – apprehends the plunderers were punished – they have been growing worse than ever in the last year – Supposes they are enraged at having been overtaken and punished – Is convinced that the Majority of the Settlers are disposed to treat the Natives kindly – and that the Natives are acquainted with that disposition – the greatest number of Natives he ever saw was at Abyssinia – Resides at the Black Marsh – a party in pursuit of the Natives scoured the Hills in the neighbourhood of his house in October or November last – the Natives have not been seen there since. After committing Murder the Natives quickly remove to a great distance – thinks the party that lately burned Howell’s Hut was the same that was afterwards at Green Ponds in a track of the Natives in such a position as denoted as he supposed that they had come from the Westward – Does not believe that all the recent enormities were committed by one Tribe – The Natives from the Eastward do not go farther west than Abyssinia – it would be worth while to embody a number of prisoners and send them in pursuit of the Natives holding out Tickets of Leave as Rewards – thinks proper Leaders could be found who might expect remuneration in Land – conceives the parties hitherto sent out have not done any good – There are places which are frequented by the Natives where they might be fallen in with if they were watched – there is one in the Campbell Town District where the Natives go to obtain Flint – The Natives remain more stationary in the Winter than in Summer – 933 Winter is the best season for pursuing them – they are then comparatively inactive – they lay up no Stores of Provisions and have been known in the Winter time to eat Kangaroo skins – They wantonly kill sheep but never eat them – Conceives several parties should be sent in pursuit at the same time – The native women do not accompany small parties – has seen fifty natives go together – Conceives Dr. Ross’s calculations as to their number was a chance calculation – does not believe it possible for an active party to be in the Bush Twelve months without falling in with the Natives. Thomas Anstey Esquire. The recent Atrocities must have been committed by two Tribes – one from the Eastward the other from the Westward – the Atrocities committed at the Big Lagoon, Green Ponds., Bagdad and at Hoopers must have been done by those from the eastward – there were about Forty Natives and they were pursued by armed people in Different directions amounting to about Forty in number – the only Traces of the natives they found was a Blanket which had been stolen – believed it was this party which fired Captain Clark’s Barn. The Reverend Mr. Knopwood. Lieutenant Moore of the New South Wales Regiment commanded at Risdon on the 3rd of May 1804 – Lieutenant Bowen was at Slopen Island produced a Note from Dr. Mountgarret – has heard different opinions – that they (the Natives) wanted to encamp on the Scite1956 of Burke’s hut half a mile from the Camp and ill used his wife – that the Hut was not burned or plundered – that the Natives did not attack the Camp – that our people went from the Camp to attack the Natives who remained at Burke’s house – does not know how many Natives were killed – Supposes five or six – in the year 1813 and 18134 a number of Natives were constantly fed from his door – A number of children were forcibly taken from the Natives and they disappeared from the Camp. There were no Natives killed upon the Hospital Hill at Hobart Town – Some shot and skeletons were found there some years ago after the Settlement was formed – the shot were the remains of stores brought from Port Phillip and the bones those of persons who arrived from India, died, and were buried there – the Natives behaved well all the time they came to my house – their number varied from six to twenty five – they came there constantly for Twelve months – the first white man who was murdered by the Natives was George Munday – he was out hunting – I believe at that time if any person had been surprised in the Bush unarmed the Natives would have murdered him – Munday had fed the man who speared him – the Native had a spear concealed and held by his toes and as Munday turned from him he caught up his spear and threw it at him – This happened in 1807 – I arrived in February 1804 – We had little intercourse with the Natives until after the attack at Risdon – Has frequently been in boats, landed, fed the Natives, and when putting off has been obliged to have Muskets presented at the Natives to prevent them from spearing the people although not the least provocation had been given them. Conceives this treacherous and ungrateful disposition prevailed amongst all the Natives – has understood that the Natives cross the Country from East to West in the Month of March – the generally received opinion was that the Natives went to Risdon to hold a Corroberry in May 1804. Mr. W. T. Stocker. Arrived in 1804 was not at Risdon in May – heard that the Natives came to Risdon to hold a Corrobery and that our people went to them – never heard of any attack upon the Natives at the Hospital Hill in Hobart Town. 934 16th March, Edward White. Was one of the first men who landed Twenty seven years ago – built Lieutenant Bowen’s house at Risdon – was then a servant to a man named Clarke – on the third of May 1804 was hoeing new ground near a Creek – Saw three hundred of the Natives come down – in a circular form and a flock of Kangaroos hemmed in between them – there were men, women and children – “they looked at me with all their eyes” – I went down to the Creek and reported them to some Soldiers and then went back to my work – the Natives did not threaten me. I was not afraid of them – Clarke’s house was near where I was at work – and Burke’s house near Clarke’s house – the Natives were never within half a quarter of a mile of Burke’s house – the Natives did not attack the Soldiers – they would not have molested them – the firing commenced about Eleven o’Clock – there were a great many of the Natives slaughtered and wounded – I don’t know how many – Some of their bones were sent in two casks to Port Jackson by Dr. Mountgarrett – they went in the “Ocean” – a boy was taken from them – this was three or four months after we landed – they never came close again afterwards – they had no spears with them – only waddies – they were hunting and came down into a Bottom – there were hundreds and hundreds of Kangaroos about Risdon then and all over where Hobart Town now stands – The Natives were driven from their houses afterwards – and their wives and children were taken from them by Stockkeepers – lived three years as a Shepherd in the Western Tier – was always afraid of them – afraid they would kill him – they often fell in with him – never pursued him – they carried Spears in the Bush – he never carried a Gun – The Soldiers came down from their own Camp to the Creek to attack the Natives – I could Shew all the ground – Mr. Clarke was there – the Natives were close to his house – they were not on Burke’s side of the Creek – never heard that any of them went to Burke’s house. Is sure they did not know there was a white man in the Country when they came down to Risdon. The Natives leave their women and children behind them when they are going to war – believes the largest Natives were at Prosser’s plains – does not know any difference between the Natives of New South Wales and here – “those at Port Jackson are Savages”. Robert Evans of Muddy Plains. Arrived in Van Diemen’s Land early in the year 1804 – was a Marine landed on Hunter’s Island – was not at Risdon when the attack took place upon the Natives – heard that they came down in a great body not that they made any attack – that they brought a great number of Kangaroo with them for a Corrobery – never heard they interrupted any one but that they were fired on – does not know who ordered them to be fired on, or how many of them were said to have been killed – heard there were men women and children – that some were killed and some children taken away – never heard that any Natives were killed upon the Hospital Hill – never left the Colony since his arrival – nor this side of it except once or twice – If natives had been killed on the Hospital Hill must have heard of it – A small tribe of Natives came to his house at Muddy plains for six years constantly – until Musquito behaved ill to his wife and he was the cause of their going away. Never found them disposed to be mischievous – they would pilfer – never any person killed by them at Muddy plains – At first Eighteen or Twenty used to come to his house – then nine or ten – has seen none for the last five years – does not know if the last Execution of the two Blacks had any effect upon the minds of the Natives – they left off coming to his house before that occurrence – Never would have thought it safe for a person to trust 935 himself with them – always thought them treacherous – they have always behaved treacherously to others who went into the Bush. 17th March, Roderic O’Connor Esquire. The Natives have become so dexterous that it is now next to impossible to get a sight of them - they move with greater rapidity than formerly – they are never seen in the winter – their attacks are from September to March – they then retire into the Interior – they will not now be content without Sugar, Bread and Blankets 0 they have very great appetites – saw a child of eight months old then at the Breast eat a whole Kangaroo Rat and then attack a Craw fish – the Settlements are now so numerous and many of them so wide apart that it is impossible to give them all protection. Roving parties cannot travel so fast as the Blacks being obliged to carry provisions which the Natives know where to procure – The Natives travel in parties of Ten, Twenty and Thirty. “the only way is for the Settler to protect himself and his men” – they do not at present – but expect Government to protect them – Would not anticipate any evil from the arming of the Convicts – there would be no union amongst them – they would betray each other – Ranging the Country will never do any good – they are remarkably keen sighted – and they will never come near a place where they see Soldiers or Constables. Stratagem must be resorted to – and Ambushes formed – does not see how the Government can do it – Stockmen used to shoot and hunt the Natives – Captain Ritchie’s men to the Westward of Norfolk plains used to hunt them on Horseback – and shoot them from their horses – One of those men was known by them and watched and followed ‘till they killed him at Piper’s Lagoon, he had told Mr. O’Connor that he had thrown a woman upon a fire and burned her to death – The Natives think lightly of the Whites – their huts being thatched are easily fired and the inmates being unarmed and frequently flying when attacked gives confidence to the Natives – After treating the Natives kindly would not trust himself with them – Knows they have taken bread with one hand and thrown a spear with the other – instanced the murder of Osborne and his wife – The Settlers cannot send their men away in pursuit of the Natives – One party of Natives frequently decoy men from Stock huts whilst another plunders it – this cannot be prevented but by the men staying at home – the Natives are more anxious to plunder than to Murder – they will not attack a respectable looking house – they did not go near Mr. Harrison’s house as reported – it was his own men who created the alarm. Mr. Sherwin’s hut was in a very secluded place – and had not the appearance of a house – they do not now come to the places in the Settled Districts they were wont to frequent – they are prevented by a consciousness of the Atrocities they have committed – Mr. Sherwin’s hut was surrounded by hills from which the Natives could watch it – the Natives would as soon murder each other as the whites – Mr. Wedge’s native boy says that wars continue amongst them – does not believe that the Natives act in concert – The Natives are as tenacious of their hunting grounds as Settlers are of their farms and are displeased when they find houses built or persons hunting upon them – this causes them to attack remote stock huts – Mr. Eddie’s farm under the Western Tier by the Black Sugar Loaf is much frequented by the Natives, but they have never attacked his house altho’ they have pursued his men – The Natives frequently have speared sheep and if they were taught to skin them would soon eat them – they scrape their Kangaroo and Opossums very clean before they roast them – Knows no way that can be adopted better than that every Settler should protect himself and the Military assist in repelling the Natives – believes the roving parties have driven the Natives into the Settled 936 Districts – the Natives watch the Stock Huts incessantly and if a Soldier is in one they never come near – they can only be captured by their fires at night – the presence of Soldiers prevents Natives from coming into the neighbourhood – A man named Douglas Ibbens’ would soon put an end to the Eastern Mob if he were employed he has killed half that Tribe by creeping upon them and firing amongst them with his double barrelled gun – Some of the worst characters would be the best to send after them – Ibbens could get men to go with him who would capture the Eastern mob – the offer of a Reward was the best measure that could be adopted – the Soldiers formerly had no inducement to pursue the Natives – believes there are Six or Seven hundred Natives in the whole Island – A small Tribe at Port Davey, Abyssinia, Stoney Creek, Oyster Bay and North of the North Esk. The Natives cannot now be taught that the white people are well inclined towards them – they may be taught so after they are captured altho’ many who are captured and sent out again prove the most mischievous – the Natives might have been civilized here if they had been treated as they have been in Sydney – where, when they committed outrages they were immediately pursued till they were punished – they attacked the whites at Liverpool plains but desisted after a few of them were shot. A man employed by Mr. Stocker named “Cubitt” has killed a number of the Natives and they have made many attempts upon his life and speared him in several places – On one occasion when he was escaping from them they cried out to him in English “We will have you yet”. It is impossible to Suppress them by open force – they leave their women and children behind them when they go upon expeditions – does not know if capturing their women and children would induce the Males to come in – all they are now actuated by, is a love of plunder – the chief thing they want is bread – and prefer getting a sack of Flour by robbing a hut to hunting for Opossums. The formation of Roads would not tend to the capture of the Natives unless the Lands in the Vicinity of those Roads were settled. Murray to Arthur, 25th August 1829. 1957 In this despatch, Murray approves Arthur’s 1st November 1828 proclamation of Martial Law: I have therefore to approve of the Proclamation, which you have issued for putting in force Martial Law, as a means of compelling the Natives to keep within certain Districts prescribed beyond the Settled Country, with the expectation that you will recall your Proclamation, and restore the Law to its proper state, at the first moment after the accomplishment of the object for which your measures have been taken. It was not to be. Sir, I have had the honour to receive your Despatch No. 77 of the 4th of November, by which it appears, that in consequence of the determined spirit of hostility manifested by the Black or aboriginal Natives of Van Diemens Land, and the Acts of barbarity which they have committed on defenceless Settlers, you have found yourself compelled, as the only mode of preserving the lives of His Majesty’s Subjects to resort to the extreme measure of proclaiming Martial Law with respect to the Aboriginal Inhabitants in those Districts of your Government, which are the most exposed to the Inroads of those People. 937 His Majesty’s Government have learnt with extreme regret that you have been obliged to resort to this alternative, Whilst, however, they lament the ineffectual efforts which you have used to establish a friendly intercourse between the White Population, and the Native Tribes, they cannot under all the circumstances, withhold their sanction from the measure which you have adopted. I have therefore to approve of the Proclamation, which you have issued for putting in force Martial Law, as a means of compelling the Natives to keep within certain Districts prescribed beyond the Settled Country, and, if the instructions given to the Magistrates, and other Officers, founded upon that Proclamation, be executed by them in the same spirit, by which you have been guided, I trust that the result will not only secure the lives and Property of the Settlers, but benefit the Native themselves. It appears from a Paragraph at the end of the circular instructions addressed to the Military Officers, that twelve sets of directions have been issued, one to each of the twelve Officers employed, prescribing to each the manner, in which he is to proceed with relation to the circumstances of his own particular district, in removing the natives. I have to request that you will send me a Copy of each of these sets of directions, together with copies of any other Orders which may have been issued to those Officers, or to any other Persons entrusted with this difficult and anxious duty. As you appear to have provided in your Proclamation against any unnecessary interruption or interference with the ordinary course of the Law, I will not urge this subject further upon you; and His Majesty feels assured that you will recall your Proclamation, and restore the Law to its proper state, at the first moment after the accomplishment of the object for which your measures have been taken. Arthur to Murray, 15th April 1830.1958 With this inordinately large and historically important despatch, Arthur was attempting to shore up support with his superiors for the manner of his colonial administration, an administration that was becoming chaotic, with worsening Palawa relationships and an increasingly febrile colonist population. Arthur is positioning himself as a smaller target for any recriminations, by sharing responsibility for the race war with the Executive Council, the Colonial Secretary, the magistrates, the military, the colonists, and his Aborigines Committee. In Arthur’s fawning despatch in reply to Murray’s letter of the 25th August 1829,1959 he is being asked by Murray to justify the adequacy of the actions he has taken against the Palawa to protect the ‘settled districts’: you are pleased to require me to furnish you with a copy of the orders which had been issued by the military officers employed in aid of the civil power, in the protection of the settled districts, together with copies of any instructions which may have been given to any other persons entrusted with this difficult and anxious duty. 938 By this time, Arthur has given up any pretence that he is acting to protect ‘settler’ and Aboriginal equally. Nor can he conceive that British Imperial policy has caused the racial problem by violently displacing the Palawa from ‘their usual haunts’. It was not what Britain would concede anyway, as they would never resile from emigration, for which more land was mandated to feed the colonization process. Murray wants to determine that Arthur has capably administered British policy without causing excessive embarrassment to the Home Government. Later Secretaries of State such as Goderich would have less concern. Arthur continues to stress, and the Colonial Office to nod approvingly, that the orders and measures of the Government have been uniformly consistent in inculcating the most amicable and friendly feeling towards the Aboriginal Natives, and this is true, for Arthur constantly refers to the need for ‘kindness’, ‘forbearance’, ’good understanding’ and so on, but they are mere words without any real substance, intended more to impress his superiors than expect the military or colonists to take heed. He does not mention the ongoing Aboriginal death toll, nor that he has deliberately failed to instruct the military and roving parties to keep a body count, nor that he has chosen not to charge any colonist or soldier for any act of homicide against an Aboriginal. With no Palawa deaths to report, Arthur could maintain the fiction that his military campaign was intended to be ‘conciliatory’, to force the expulsion of Aboriginals from the ‘settled districts’ without any bloodshed. Murray did not prick this fiction. The Committee was a pliant party to the deceit; Arthur did not ask them to obtain the views of any Aboriginals, which is made evident by their racially prejudiced Report. The most effective lie is the one that is partly true. In blaming the lawless convicts who have, from time to time, absconded, together with the distant convict stock-keepers in the interior, and the sealers employed in remote parts of the coast, Arthur could ignore the killings carried out by the military forces under his direct command and the predatory role of the colonists as they staked out the best land for occupation. Nor was he above racial vilification, if it would help his argument that the kindness and humanity which they have always experienced from the free settlers was repaid with ‘treachery’, ‘unprovoked acts of barbarity’ and a ‘disposition to maim or destroy the white inhabitants’. For Arthur, settlers were lawfully occupying the land, and Aboriginal ‘incursions’ were unlawful trespass on private property. The truth was starker. Arthur was confronting a different adversary to one he had encountered before. He knew how to handle colonists: by generally giving them what they wanted. He knew how to handle convicts: with harsh authority, severe punishment for transgressions and occasional reward for good conduct. The Palawa were not a carceral population. They were desperately fighting for their survival against far superior numbers. And for a time, they were holding their ground. Arthur was becoming anxious, possibly for the first time in his career. He had already been put on notice by the British Government that he could expect no additional military support. He fell back to the argument that the best defence was self-defence. He encouraged the colonists to take the law into their own hands, when there would be little to fear if ordinary measures of precaution were adopted with spirit by the settlers, while hoping that the small 939 glimmer of promise shown by Robinson’s ‘conciliation’ experiment at Bruny Island – being carefully monitored by the Aborigines’ Committee - might be scaled up to the rest of the island. In Arthur’s terminology, ‘conciliation’ ultimately meant capture, as strange form of mediation. Arthur naively observed the enmity of the Native inhabitants is coeval with our settlement in the Colony and has been progressively increasing; and that they have hitherto rejected all our efforts to conciliate them. It was as though he had a scotoma that made him unable to recognize or concede that all the Palawa wanted was the use of their traditional land, unmolested by armed assaults on their safety. This is what conciliation meant to the Palawa. Instead, Britain chose expanded settlement, leaving no space for the Aboriginal society to live their lives. As Arthur got the upper hand on the ‘insurgency’, complete ethnic cleansing became his solution for the few survivors of his military campaign against them. He ‘conciliated’ the remnant Palawa population by imprisonment on Flinders Island, where he could forget about their wellbeing and focus on his career. Arthur shows no contrition about the true nature of his ‘conciliation’ process or the killing that resulted from his ‘roving parties’ of which Batman led one group. Mr Batman, who has been employed on the north-east coast, represents that he has, through the intervention of some black women, a very reasonable prospect of conciliating a tribe in that quarter. Arthur knew, or should have known, the bloodshed his ‘kindness’ was causing. His lack of human feeling for his Aboriginal victims is monstrous. These miserable beings, I make no doubt, are wearied with the harassing life they have endured for a considerable time past, and would gladly be reconciled if they knew our real intentions towards them were those of kindness; He continues to press the falsehood with his superiors that outcasts of colonial society were responsible for any barbarity: but, unfortunately, the most conciliatory measures of the Government have been already frequently rendered nugatory by the barbarity of runaway convicts, or of detached stock-keepers. Arthur admitted that: The Military strength under my command is, I submit, inadequate to the protection of the Colony – two Regiments are certainly now required, but if the disposable force of the Empire will not at present allow of such an augmentation, but the British Government deleted this embarrassing passage from the House of Commons publication. Arthur finished his letter with two requests for significant additional manpower: one for more military support from the strong detachment of the 63rd regiment which is detained at Swan River which will be a valuable acquisition to the force in this Colony; the other extraordinary request was for an additional 2,000 convicts, where at once 2,000 might be assigned away if they were at all a useful class of men, and by distributing them principally among the settlers in the most remote parts of the Colony, very great protection would be afforded at a very trifling expense to the Government. Arthur was proposing to use convicts as an additional paramilitary force to augment his police force and the military detachments he had deployed around the island. As we will see, Murray agreed. . 1. In your Despatch of the 25th August last, after acknowledging my Despatch of the 4th November 1828, in which I had the honour to lay before you the measures to which I had been compelled to resort in order to protect the 940 settlers from the attacks of the Aboriginal Natives, by the proclamation of martial law against them, you are pleased to require me to furnish you with a copy of the orders which had been issued by the military officers employed in aid of the civil power, in the protection of the settled districts, together with copies of any instructions which may have been given to any other persons entrusted with this difficult and anxious duty. In obedience to your directions, I beg to transmit copies of the whole of the instructions which have been issued, both to the civil and military authorities; the latter, indeed, have been almost entirely restricted to act as auxiliaries to the civil power. 2. Your desire to be furnished with copies of these instructions leads me to conclude that His Majesty’s Government will be well pleased to be supplied with still more ample information upon this highly interesting subject than my Despatches have hitherto contained, although I trust you will be satisfied that it has been my endeavour throughout to afford a comprehensive statement of our situation to His Majesty’s Government. 3. Some time before I was honoured with your communication, as the hostile spirit of the Natives appeared to increase rather than subside, and as I have observed there was some difference of opinion in the community, many respectable inhabitants in Hobart earnestly desiring a continuance of conciliating measures, whilst the residents in the interior deemed more severe measures essential to their preservation; I judged it expedient to appoint a committee to collect the most ample information, and to consider what measures it would be necessary to pursue; the records of such a committee composed of the most discreet and most qualified officers of the government, I considered would afford a most satisfactory exposé, to answer any objections which might hereafter be raised to the proceedings of the government in this very anxious matter. The Committee is named in the margin, and I trust it will be found to incorporate gentlemen the least likely to countenance any measure of unnecessary harshness. The arrival in Van Diemen’s Land of Archdeacon Broughton, on his first visitation, enabled me to avail myself of his valuable aid as an additional member, and being uninjured by the Natives, and wholly unconnected with the settlers, his opinion, founded upon a very laborious research into the subject, is the more valuable. 4. The zeal and industry with which the Committee has applied itself in collecting information, both oral and written, from all classes of persons, together with a most diligent inquiry into, and examination of all the orders and instructions which have been given by Local Government from the earliest period upon this subject, have enabled it to trace out the origin and progress of this hostility, together with the views and measures of the Colonial government, with very great precision; and in the ample Report which I have now the honour to lay before you, I feel very confident that it will be highly satisfactory to you to find, that, much as the present state of things is to be deplored, the orders and 941 measures of the Government have been uniformly consistent in inculcating the most amicable and friendly feeling towards the Aboriginal Natives. 5. That the lawless convicts who have, from time to time, absconded, together with the distant convict stock-keepers in the interior, and the sealers employed in remote parts of the coast, have, from the earliest period, acted with great inhumanity towards the black Natives, particularly in seizing their women, there can be no doubt, and these outrages have, it is evident, first excited, what they were naturally calculated to produce in the minds of savages, the strongest feelings of hatred and revenge. On the other hand, it is equally apparent that the Aboriginal Natives of this colony are, and ever have been, a most treacherous race; that the kindness and humanity which they have always experienced from the free settlers has not tended to civilize them in any degree, nor has it induced them to forbear from the most wanton and unprovoked acts of barbarity, when a fair opportunity presented itself of indulging their disposition to maim or destroy the white inhabitants. 6. Our present state, there can be no doubt, is very distressing, as far as it places all remote settlers in much danger, and continued apprehension, from the sudden attacks of these savages; but notwithstanding the agitation which is excited, it is my deliberate opinion, founded on personal observation, having just returned from visiting the districts which have been most exposed to the incursions of the Natives, that there would be little to fear if ordinary measures of precaution were adopted with spirit by the settlers. The indifference I have generally noticed is quite remarkable, and strikingly manifests that people are always much more ready to complain of evils than disposed to exert themselves to overcome them; not that I mean to assert that the sudden attacks of the Natives are at all times to be avoided, and are not very alarming, but certainly much more precaution might be individually used in every family, and this is, after all, the only effectual security which can be given, unless a safety-guard were placed in every dwelling, a thing which is impossible. 7. The Report of the Committee I received in the Executive Council on the 19 th March, as I was desirous that there should be a full discussion of the whole subject, and that the members of the Council should obtain such further oral information as had been incorporated by the Committee in the Report. As it was the decided opinion of the Council, that the recommendations of thee Committee, so far as they advise still more energetic measures, should be forthwith carried into effect, but that no prospect of conciliation, however desirable conciliation was, should induce the least abatement of the most active operations. 8. In the margin of the Report I have made such observations as present themselves to my mind on the several recommendations of the Committee, and I would earnestly beg to draw your particular attention to the whole of that document, which tends to throw a very great light on the most interesting, and, I may add, the most embarrassing circumstances of this Government. His Majesty’s subjects must be protected, and the outrages of the black Natives 942 must be repressed, and yet if it can be avoided these wretched people must not be destroyed. 9. On the destruction by fire of the premises and corn-stacks of Mr Howells and Captain Clark, and subsequently of Mr Sherwin, the Council advised that a reward of 5l. should be offered for the capture of every adult Native, and 2l. for every child. This inducement to activity in capturing the Natives alive it seems most desirable to encourage, and I am glad to find it falls in with the view of the Committee. The Government Order which directs this reward will be found in Enclosure No 1, p. 35, and it will, I trust, meet your approbation. 10. The Military strength under my command is, I submit, inadequate to the protection of the Colony – two Regiments are certainly now required, but if the disposable force of the Empire will not at present allow of such an augmentation, I hope you will permit me to request First, That the strong detachment of the 63 rd regiment which is detained at Swan River may be relieved either from the Mauritius or the Cape, and ordered to join their corps, which will be a valuable acquisition to the force in this Colony. And, secondly, I would anxiously hope, that immediately on receipt of this Despatch, you will be pleased to recommend that all transports about to sail with convicts from England (the Irish convict not having been hitherto sent to Van Diemen’s Land) may be ordered to proceed to this Colony; at once 2,000 might be assigned away if they were at all a useful class of men, and by distributing them principally among the settlers in the most remote parts of the Colony, very great protection would be afforded at a very trifling expense to the Government. Should this suggestion meet your acquiescence, I would beg to recommend, that in taking up the transports, it may be provided in the charter-party that the Lieutenant-Governor should have the power to order any transport to proceed from Hobart to the port of Launceston, by which means a proportion of the convicts may be landed at once at the north side of the island if it be found desirable. 11. By the Report of the Committee you will perceive that the enmity of the Native inhabitants is coeval with our settlement in the Colony, and has been progressively increasing; and that they have hitherto rejected all our efforts to conciliate them. Their numbers, I am persuaded, are inconsiderable; although, from their migratory habits, it is difficult to calculate them with any certainty. They are naturally a slight and very feeble race, but certainly their exploits in the pursuit of plunder have rendered them much more daring and robust during the last two years; and it is rather the apprehension that they may become still more formidable that makes me uneasy than any dread of their present prowess. 12. At the moment of concluding this Despatch, I have received an encouraging report from two of the parties who are employed on an embassy of conciliation. Mr Robinson, who proceeded to the south-west with a party to which were attached some Native black men who had been captured, reports that he has fallen in with a tribe, which had received him with so much kindness that he 943 felt a strong hope of eventually conciliating them; and Mr Batman, who has been employed on the north-east coast, represents that he has, through the intervention of some black women, a very reasonable prospect of conciliating a tribe in that quarter. These miserable beings, I make no doubt, are wearied with the harassing life they have endured for a considerable time past, and would gladly be reconciled if they knew our real intentions towards them were those of kindness; but, unfortunately, the most conciliatory measures of the Government have been already frequently rendered nugatory by the barbarity of runaway convicts, or of detached stock-keepers.1960 The chronology of the attached enclosures reveals Arthur’s developing agitation, where ‘conciliation’ and ‘kindness’ in his official correspondence pay lip service to his deadly war of racial attrition. There is a common thread. Throughout, Arthur has enjoined the military to act according to the directions of the civil power. One thing Britain did not want, when their regimental forces were in short supply, was an intensive military operation they could barely afford, either in manpower or expense. Arthur wanted it to appear that his actions were reasonable under the practised rules of British martial law. When he thought that his actions might be questioned, he hastily convened a hand-picked Aborigines Committee in late 1829 and required them to report their ‘findings’ by the end of February. The Report was read to the Executive Council on 19th March and quickly forwarded to the Colonial Office. Not only the settlers needed protecting; so did Arthur and his career. Once again, Arthur attempts to reframe the worsening situation as a ‘highly interesting subject’, almost an academic exercise for the desk bound person to whom he had to report. Trapped in an office, such a person would never see the real human cost, the rivers of blood, the intransigent racism. But they could relate to statistics and firsthand reports from colonists that suggested they might need more protection from ‘outrages’. After all, colonists were British citizens. Enclosure 1 Schedule of Government and Garrison Orders, Notices, Proclamations and Letters relative to the Natives. 1. Circular letter to magistrates, 25 June 1824 This letter included the proclamation of 23rd June. 2. Proclamation, 23 June 1824 ‘the Natives of the Colony considered under British protection, and under the same laws as protect the settlers’. However, Arthur never honoured the Law. From this point, Arthur set out to protect colonists, but not Aboriginals. 3. Government and general order, 4 November 1824 944 ‘the utmost attention to be paid towards a body of Natives while they remain in Hobart Town’. 4. Government notice, 13 September 1826 ‘the execution of two Natives it is hoped will prevent the commission of further outrages by the Aborigines’. 5. Government notice, 29 November 1826 ‘great regret occasioned by the continuation of further outrages by the Natives, in return for kindness.’ ‘the capture of their leaders an object of great importance, and measures for this are promulgated’. 6. Government notice, 29 November 1827 ‘further outrages committed by the Natives’ ‘to put an end to them...the Natives may be driven from the settled districts’ ‘troops to aid the civil power will be afforded’. 7. Garrison order, 29 November 1827 ‘military aid sent into the interior’. 8. Proclamation, 15 April 1828 ‘the Natives forbidden to enter the settled districts on pain of forcible expulsion’. 9. Brigade Major to officers, 21 April 1828 Forwards proclamation of 15th April. 10. Brigade Major to Capt. Walpole, 30 September 1828 ‘as the military are sent out in aid of the civil power, it is his duty to pay attention to the application of the police magistrate, and to send out detachments according to his suggestions’. 11. Garrison order, 24 October 1828 Further military aid sent into the interior. 12. Proclamation, 1 November 1828 ‘proclaiming Martial Law against the Natives within the several districts of the Island, excepting certain places and portions named therein’. At this point, Arthur suborned the police magistrates and field police in his race war. 13. Circular to magistrates, 1 November 1828 ‘calling upon the magistrates to act upon the spirit of the Proclamation declaring martial law, a measure adopted not with a view of seeking the destruction of the Aborigines, but rather punishing the leaders in the several atrocities committed’. 945 Arthur was aware that many Palawa were being killed, but sought to protect his administration from culpability, knowing that military detachments scouring the ‘settled districts’ under the instructions of local magistrates would shoot rather than capture. The number of captives was minimal. Arthur did not require the military to record the number of Aboriginal deaths. Aboriginal resistance increased. Arthur made no attempt to communicate with them, directly or indirectly. 14. Brigade Major to Lieut. Oliver, 1 November 1828 Arthur repeated his earlier instruction to Capt. Walpole ‘that as the military are sent out in aid of the civil power...pay attention to the application of the police magistrate’. 15. Brigade Major to officers, 3 November 1828 Encloses the proclamation declaring martial law’ and that they are to act ‘in unison with the magistrates’. 16. Government notice, 11 December 1828 Arthur extended the military out-posts to remote stations. 17. Garrison order, 12 December 1828 ‘troops in the interior to repel or capture the Natives. Small parties from the detachments to be constantly roving through the districts. Any Natives taken to be treated with kindness’. ‘Repel’ was a euphemism for shoot. There is no record of any Aboriginals being captured. ‘Kindness’ usually meant gaol. This is the first time Arthur uses the term ‘roving’. 18. Circular to magistrates,2 January 1829 Arthur asked the magistrates ‘to render Mr Robinson any assistance in their power’. 19. Government notice, 4 March 1829 ‘a salary of 50l. to be allowed a steady person who will endeavour to effect an intercourse with the Aborigines’. At this time, Arthur had not committed to Robinson. 20. Garrison order, 4 September 1829 Arthur repeated his earlier instruction for detachments ‘to cooperate with the civil power; constantly to visit the out-stations, and exhort their men to use every exertion for the capture of the Natives’. 21. Circular to magistrates, 11 September 1829 ‘to act in the spirit of the injunctions contained in the Proclamation declaring martial law’ and ‘any Natives captured to be treated with kindness and humanity’. 946 Arthur had repeatedly been asked by the Colonial Office to ‘conciliate the affections of the natives’. He was aware that many Aboriginals were being killed under his proclamation. Although Arthur was the commander in chief of the military regiments deployed in Tasmania, no military personnel were ever disciplined for killing an Aboriginal person. 22. Garrison order, 15 September 1829 Arthur demands ‘still more energetic measures to be adopted by the magistrates’ with the assistance of the military. 23. Colonial Secretary to magistrates, 18 September 1829 Encloses a copy of the garrison order. 24. Town Adjutant to Capt. Vicary, 5 February 1830 Cautions military at the out-posts to be watchful and that ‘Natives to be captured rather than fired upon’ How Aboriginals are to be ‘captured’ without force is not made clear. 25. Government order, 19 February 1830 Arthur repeats his offer for rewards ‘to any persons who shall open out an intercourse with the Native Tribes’. He suggests the sole responsibility for putting ‘an end to the present harassing warfare’ on ‘increasing activity and vigilance’ by the settlers. 26. Government order, 25 February 1830 ‘the destruction of Mr Sherwin’s property by the Natives demands energetic proceedings on the part of the Settlers’. Arthur offers ‘rewards for the capture of the Natives’. Enclosure 2 Report of the Aborigines Committee, 19 March 1830 Arthur uses this long report to justify his military campaign against the Palawa. Figure 264 Arthur to Murray, 15 April 1830, list of enclosures Murray to Arthur, 5th November 1830. 1961 George Murray’s response dated 5th November 1830 to Arthur’s defensive despatch of 15th April 1830 has been widely quoted, often inaccurately when some of those comments have been taken out of context. For this reason, and for its importance in Arthur and Murray pressing a final solution to the Aboriginal ‘problem’, Murray’s response is quoted in full. Murray praises Arthur and his Aborigines Committee on the exertions which you have used to conciliate these misguided people but concludes: It does not appear of much importance, at the present moment, to enquire further as to the quarter from whence the first aggressions have proceeded, although I fear it is too evident from the Information obtained upon this point, by the Committee that the provocation has principally originated with the white people. 947 Murray’s accurate observation, based upon the Committee’s Report, might have led him to conclude that a solution to the racial conflict would be to punish the white offenders (if only as an example of impartiality) and limit the rate of settlement. He did neither. Instead, he agreed with the Committee that the Settlers, themselves, evince a more determined spirit of resistance to their opponents than they have hitherto manifested, knowing that such a solution would consolidate the colonists’ sovereignty and lead to more bloody confrontation. Murray was driven by other imperatives, economic rather than ethical. He knew the British Government would never temper the process of colonization for humanitarian issues, particularly the welfare and land rights of an Indigenous race, nor would it extend a blank cheque on the Treasury funds for military protection of the settlements. His solution: you will require, in every such case, that the Settler should take upon himself a prominent part in the defence of the Property threatened with an attack, knowing that the great decrease which has of late years taken place in the amount of the aboriginal Population, renders it not unreasonable to apprehend that the whole race of these people may, at no distant period, become extinct. This widely quoted phrase is offered by some as evidence of genuine British concern, especially when it is followed by: and the adoption of any line of conduct having for its avowed or for its secret object, the extinction of the Native race, could not fail to leave an indelible stain upon the Character of the British Government. Murray’s consubstantial regret was more apparent than real. He quickly dismissed Arthur’s request for more troops: that to seek a remedy in the augmentation of the number of His Majesty’s Troops in the Colony of Van Diemen’s Land, would be to trust to a resource which must unavoidably be both limited & uncertain, but approved that an increased number of Convicts should be sent out to Van Diemen’s Land as an inexpensive paramilitary force, agreed increasing to a reasonable extent, the field police. & the awarding a moderate bounty to the Military but opined the cost of the bounty should be borne by the settlers. Finally, Murray exhorted Arthur to employ every means which kindness, humanity & justice can suggest, to reclaim the natives from their original savage Life, & render them sensible of the advantages which would ultimately result to themselves, & to their descendants, from the introduction amongst them of the religion & the civilization of those whom it must be difficult for them to regard, at present, in any other light than as formidable Intruders. Murray saw no contradiction in conciliating the Palawa by dispossessing them through armed force. Nor did those who preceded him, or his successors. Britain could convince itself that the act of repeatedly saying something palliative might divert attention from the profoundly displacive and often genocidal practice of militarised colonization. The problem for Arthur were his conflicting objectives, when he wrote to Under Secretary Twiss on 9th March 1830: The great difficulty is to proceed on a system which combines conciliation with the absolute necessity of expelling the Natives altogether from the settled districts until they shall conduct themselves in a more peaceful manner. 1962 948 Murray had previously admonished Arthur in February 1829 that: ‘His Majesty has learnt with much concern that the conciliatory measures to which you had resorted with the view of establishing a friendly intercourse with the Aborigines should have so completely failed, & that the hostility which continues to be manifested on the part of these people, notwithstanding the endeavours which have been so often used to induce them to adopt more civilized habits should have rendered other & more decisive measures necessary for the security of the Lives & property of the Settlers, as well as for the protection of the coloured Inhabitants themselves.1963 Murray was now to go further in his criticisms, but it is clear that he has been persuaded by the report of the Aborigines’ Committee that Arthur’s conciliatory ‘exertions’ were praiseworthy, and that settler protection was now a priority. There would be no going back and no giving ground. Colonization must proceed, whatever the consequences. Sir George Murray to Lieut. Governor Arthur America, 9 May 1831 Read in the Executive Council 1st June 1831 John Montague [Despatch No. 43] Sir, Downing Street, 5th November 1830 I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Dispatch, No. 19, of the 15th April last, transmitting Copies of the Orders which you had issued to the Civil & Military Authorities employed in the protection of the Districts most exposed to the hostile Attacks of the Natives, accompanied by the Report of a Committee whom you had appointed to enquire as to the origin of those proceedings, & to consider the measures most expedient to be adopted with a view to protect the Settlers from a repetition of them in future. I regret to find that the steps which have been already taken should have proved ineffectual in establishing a more friendly feeling on the part of the Natives towards the Settlers. Too much praise, however, cannot be bestowed on the exertions which you have used to conciliate these misguided people, and much credit is also due to the Gentlemen composing the Committee, whose able report you have transmitted, for the attention which they have given this subject. It does not appear of much importance, at the present moment, to enquire further as to the quarter from whence the first aggressions have proceeded, although I fear it is too evident from the Information obtained upon this point, by the Committee that the provocation has principally originated with the white people. The question which it is now most essential to consider is as to the remedy to be applied in the present conjuncture, & I will, with this object in view, proceed to make such observations as an examination of the papers before me, has suggested. It is evident from the opinion of the Committee (& I perceive that you have expressed yourself as strongly upon the same point) that no effectual check can be opposed to the hostile attacks of the Natives, nor can the Country ever be restored to a state of security, unless the Settlers, themselves, evince a more determined spirit of 949 resistance to their opponents than they have hitherto manifested – Although there can be no doubt that the indifference of which you complain, on the part of the Settlers, in a cause in which they are so much interested, might be urged as an excuse for leaving them to their fate when assailed by the Natives, yet a due regard to the general Interests of the Community, would render it imprudent to decline affording assistance to those Settlers whose property may be most exposed to plunder. At the same time, you will take care, whenever called upon to render such assistance, to impress upon the Settlers the necessity of relying more than they have been accustomed to do upon their own exertions for protection, and you will require, in every such case, that the Settler should take upon himself a prominent part in the defence of the Property threatened with an attack. – I am satisfied that in proportion as the Settler is reduced to this alternative, will be his anxiety to abstain from all acts likely to irritate the Natives, - Whilst on the other hand, the latter will be less disposed to annoy the Settler when they find they can no longer do so with impunity. The great decrease which has of late years taken place in the amount of the aboriginal Population, renders it not unreasonable to apprehend that the whole race of these people may, at no distant period, become extinct. But with whatever feelings such an event may be looked forward to by those of the Settlers who have been sufferers by the Collisions which have taken place, it is impossible not to contemplate such a result of our occupation of the Island, as one very difficult to be reconciled with feelings of humanity or even with the principles of justice and sound Policy: - and the adoption of any line of conduct having for its avowed or for its secret object, the extinction of the Native race, could not fail to leave an indelible stain upon the Character of the British Government. The Committee has expressed an opinion “that these Acts of Violence on the part of the Natives are generally to be regarded, not as retaliatory for any wrongs which they conceived themselves collectively or individually to have endured, but as proceeding from a wanton & savage spirit inherent them, & impelling them to mischief & cruelty, when it appeared probable they might be perpetrated with impunity” – In order to the “unqualified admission however, of this opinion, it would be necessary to have established the fact that aggression had not begun with the new Settlers. You have proposed, as a means of mitigating the evil complained of, that an increased number of Convicts should be sent out to Van Diemen’s Land, & that the Detachment of the 63rd Regiment, at present at Swan River, should be withdrawn from thence, & he ordered to join the main body of that Corps at Van Diemen’s Land. On the first of these points, your wishes will, if possible, be complied with. But with regard to the second, I must remind you, that to seek a remedy in the augmentation of the number of His Majesty’s Troops in the Colony of Van Diemen’s Land, would be to trust to a resource which must unavoidably be both limited & uncertain. I approve of your increasing to a reasonable extent, the field police. & the awarding a moderate bounty to the Military who may be employed upon this particular duty; but I am of the opinion that this Bounty should be supplied by the Settler, at whose desire the Soldier may be employed, not only with the view of relieving the public from this additional expense, but to prevent unnecessary applications from the Settles for Military protection, as no augmentation which could be made to the Military force 950 under your command would be adequate to meet every application of this nature from Settlers whenever any danger might be apprehended; nor would such a mode of employing the Military, if carried to excess, be at all consistent, probably, with the discipline of the Troops. The mounted-police could not be augmented in number, without incurring a charge to which the finances of the Colony would not be equal, & it will therefore be desirable that the men now composing this Corps, should be employed in watching the proceedings of the Natives, & in conveying to the Settler in whose neighbourhood they may have been seen, the earliest intelligence of their movements, in order that he may secure his habitation & make such other arrangements as shall appear to him to be necessary to meet the approaching danger. Upon many of the details which are adverted to by the Committee in their report, I do not consider that I can enlarge with any advantage. – The Local Authorities can alone appreciate the several recommendations with which the Report concludes, & it must accordingly be left to you to decide as to the best mode of stationing the Police Authorities, & of establishing the Magazines of provisions & other necessaries which they may require in the execution of their duties. – I cannot, however, refrain from adverting specially to the measure proposed by the Committee, of prohibiting the Settlers from destroying the Kangaroos by hunting or shooting them within the limits prescribed to the Natives, in order that this grievance may be immediately removed, although I am happy to find that no Injury has been sustained on this head, in consequence of there appearing to be no real scarcity of these animals in the Districts which these People most frequent, Although it is greatly to be feared that much time & pains will be requisite to alter the footing upon which the British Settler, & the Aborigines of the Colony, unfortunately stand towards one another, I cannot conclude that this Dispatch without urging you in the strongest manner to continue to use your utmost endeavours to give to the Intercourse between them, a less hostile Character than it now has; and to employ every means which kindness, humanity & justice can suggest, to reclaim the natives from their original savage Life, & render them sensible of the advantages which would ultimately result to themselves, & to their descendants, from the introduction amongst them of the religion & the civilization of those whom it must be difficult for them to regard, at present, in any other light than as formidable Intruders. With this object in view, the utmost forbearance will be requisite, on the part of the Settlers, in every case in which a native may fall in their way; and I hope you will be able by degrees to prevail upon the Settlers to believe that such a line of conduct, both on their own part, & on that of their assigned Servants, will not only be the most proper & becoming, but will also prove in the end, to be the most conductive to their own Interests & their Security. I am &c., G. Murray 951 Arthur’s second Proclamation of Martial Law: 1st October 1830 However, the war intensified. Arthur was committed to expelling the Palawa from the ‘settled districts’ with every means available to him. Arthur reissued his Proclamation on 1 October 1830. This time, he included a picture. It has been published on many occasions, because of its significance. The reissued Proclamation (which Aboriginals could not read) and pictogram (which was posted on trees around the colony) made much of Arthur’s promise that British justice would be dispensed equally and impartially for Aboriginals and colonists alike. Of course, it was not true. It could not be true, when Arthur had declared war on the Palawa. Arthur continued to repeat his injunction that the British population should treat the Palawa with kindness and conciliation, but it was too late. The kindness came at the point of a gun. Conciliation spoke with a bullet. Arthur’s words did not match his actions. 952 Figure 265. Poster of Arthur's Proclamation of Martial Law.1964 953 Governor Arthur's Proclamation1965 By His Excellency Colonel George Arthur Lieutenant Governor of the Island of Van Diemen’s Land and its Dependencies. A PROCLAMATION WHEREAS, by my Proclamation bearing date the first day of November, One thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight, RECITING (amongst other things) that the Black or Aboriginal Natives of this Island, had for a considerable time, carried on a series of indiscriminate attacks upon the person and property of His Majesty's Subjects, and that repeated inroads were daily made by such Natives into the settled Districts, and that acts of hostility and barbarity were there committed by them, as well as at the more distant stockruns, and in some instances upon unoffending and defenceless women and children, and that it had become unavoidably necessary for the suppression of similar enormities, to proclaim Martial Law in the manner thereinafter directed, I the said Lieutenant Governor, did declare and proclaim, that from the date of that my Proclamation, and until the cessation of hostilities, Martial Law was and should continue to be in force against the said Black or Aboriginal Natives within the several Districts of this Island, excepting always the places and portions of this Island in the said Proclamation aforementioned. … But I do, nevertheless, hereby strictly order enjoin, and command, that the actual use of arms be in no case resorted to, by firing against any of the Natives or otherwise, if they can by other measures be captured; that bloodshed be invariably be checked as much as possible; and that any tribes or individuals captured, or involuntarily surrendering themselves up, be treated with the utmost care and humanity; And all Officers Civil and Military, and other persons whatsoever, are hereby required to take notice of this my Proclamation, and to render obedience and assistance accordingly. Given under my hand and seal at arms, at the Government House, Hobart-Town, this first day of Oct. in the Year of our Lord, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty. GEORGE ARTHUR, (L.S) By His Excellency's Command, J. Burnett GOD SAVE THE KING. Van Diemen’s Land Company However, if mass killing was de rigueur before, Arthur’s declaration of Martial Law in 1828 legitimized the practice. Many massacres went unrecorded, the absence of an Aboriginal presence in any area being the only doleful evidence of what went before. The Van Diemen’s Land Company was different. It was a major landowner and public company. It kept voluminous records. We can infer that what happened for VDLC also happened for many other pastoral holdings around the island, whose activities would otherwise slip relatively unnoticed from the public eye. There was a pattern of homicide around the Island, for which no one was ever prosecuted. Arthur could not risk the public backlash to his authority and the likely impact on his career, if he were to uphold British law and charge British offenders for Aboriginal murder. 954 While engaged on his ‘friendly mission’, Robinson recorded the ongoing incidents of British barbarity, among them, massacres committed by the Van Diemen’s Land Company in the North West: 24 June 1830. Cape Grim massacre.1966 [..] Took McKay and went through the forest to view the rocks where the natives had been massacred. The road lay through some excellent marsh ground and an open forest of large gum trees where there was excellent feed and the sheep was grazing. Crossed over some high grassy hills and after travelling for about five miles came to a point of rock opposite the Doughboys. My informant pointed out the spot, which was a point of land which runs into the sea opposite these two islands – on the one side was a perpendicular cliff of not less than two hundred feet in altitude and the base washed with the sea; the other side was a rapid declivity. About two hundred yards from this cliff a steep path led down to the rocks at its base. At the bottom of the path was a beautiful spring of water, at which the natives used to quench their thirst and procure their water when they were wont to go to the LAY.HOO.NER islands to get mutton birds. .Two hundred yards further along the rocks was a large cave which had often served as a shelter for the natives during a storm. On the occasion of the massacre a tribe of natives, consisting principally of women and children, had come to the islands. Providence had favoured them with fine weather, for it is only in fine weather that they can get to the islands, as a heavy sea rolls in between them. They swim across, leaving their children at the rocks in the care of the elderly people. They had prepared their supply of birds, had tied them with grass, had towed them on shore, and the whole tribe was seated round their fires partaking of their hard-earned fare, when down rushed the band of fierce barbarians thirsting for the blood of these unprotected and unoffending people. They fled, leaving their provisions. Some rushed into the sea, others scrambled round the cliff and what remained the monsters put to death. Those poor creatures who had sought shelter in the cleft of the rock they forced to the brink of an awful precipice, massacred them all and threw their bodies down the precipice, many of them perhaps but slightly wounded. Whilst I stood gazing on this bloody cliff, methought I heard the shrieks of the mothers, the cries of the children and the agony of the husband who saw his wife, his children torn forever from his fond embrace. I was shewed a point where an old man who was endeavouring to conceal himself, was shot through the head by one of the murderers – who mentioned these circumstances as deeds of heroism. I went to the foot of the cliff where the bodies had been thrown down and saw several human bones, some of which I brought with me, and a piece of the bloody cliff. 1967 10 August 1830. [..] Interrogated Gunchannon respecting the massacre at Cape Grim. The indifference of this man was quite astonishing. He acknowledged to having been one of the four men who massacred the natives. I asked him how many they killed. He said he could not tell whether any were killed, but they saw traces of blood afterwards. ‘How long was it after killing the sheep that this circumstance occurred?’ – ‘Six weeks’. ‘Were there any women among them?’ - ‘Yes, there was both men and women’. Finding this man was not willing to disclose, I told him that I had full information on the subject, both from the blacks and whites, and it was of little consequence his keeping it back; he might prevaricate but I knew; Chamberlain, an accessory, had told 955 me there was thirty killed. I severely reprehended him and assured him I was not certain he would not be cited to Hobart Town for the murder. He seemed to glory in the act and said he would shoot them whenever he met them.1968 5 May 1832. North-Western Tasmania. Emu Bay massacre.1969 Crossing the plain in a south-westerly direction the native woman pointed to the verge of the forest as the place where the natives had been shot. As we neared the spot she pointed out some trees that had been barked and said that was the place where the natives had encamped. They evinced a reluctance to approach this place, but by persuasion they accompanied me. I found the remains of an old native hut where the people had encamped when they were shot at by the white ruffians. The woman pointed out the spot where those miscreants stood when they fired upon those poor creatures. McKay, the man who headed this band, had a rifle gun which he subsequently sold to Captain Robson. The other two men were also armed; they fired together. There appeared to be only two men, three women and a boy in the party. One woman was shot dead and one run away, a stout woman whose fire I saw at the Mersey. When the natives were fired upon they surrendered themselves. I saw the bones of the woman that was shot. The skull and teeth was quite perfect. The skull was laying on the ground near the hut. It was a refinement of cruelty to force this woman to lead the white men, the enemies of her race, to the haunts of her countrymen for the purpose of massacring them. Moreover, the government awarding the two men Ward and Wells, the Company’s people1970 who assisted in this attack, was at once sanctioning the wanton outrage, for the Company’s men have ever evinced a strong desire to commit outrage with impunity upon these people and it is not to be wondered at since there was no authority and no magistrate to subordinate them. 1971 Case Instance: The killing of a woman at Emu Bay in the northeast under Martial Law This is one of these recorded murders by the British among a multiplicity during Martial Law, none of which was ever prosecuted by the British administration. In fact, there were no prosecutions at all from the time of the initial invasion in 1803 until Aboriginals were removed to Bass Strait in the 1830s. But Martial Law went further in Arthur’s hypocrisy. Martial Law meant Aboriginals could be massacred with legal immunity from any criminal charge. The Emu Bay killing is significant because there was a Government investigation, more to protect Arthur’s reputation than through any sense of accountability; most mass killings were never investigated, which allows Windschuttle to claim that – without court proceedings – there were no massacres, ergo, no genocide. This particular killing, a war crime that Arthur and the British Government subsequently covered up, took place in northwest Tasmania, near Cape Grim where the Van Diemen’s Land Company operated under license from the British Government and had a brutal reputation for its treatment of Aboriginals. The killing is a singular instance of the failure of British law, or rather, the inglorious process of Government led genocide, an Aboriginal or more at a time. At the end of Martial Law in 1832, the North West Palawa population had been driven almost completely out of existence. 956 There was no census to give us the actual depopulation figures, but we do know the numbers of those Robinson managed to round up for relocation. Robinson travels to the Emu Bay massacre site and writes: 4 August 1830 […] Passed where the women was shot by Mr. Goldie’s party. This was a melancholy transaction! These natives had heretofore always evinced a peaceable disposition until this catastrophe happened. Two women were walking along the beach about two miles east of the Cam River when one of the men shot the woman who had the child. The affection of the poor creature was striking: seeing she was about to be shot, she turned her back to her executioner, placed her child between her legs and stooped down in order to save it. The ball went through the woman’s body and when she fell another of the party run up and chopped her on the neck. The other woman was secured and the child, and was harshly treated. Mr. Curr investigated this circumstance. I have since been told by the natives at MINE.DIM that the husband of this woman took it so much to heart that he vowed to revenge her death on every white man he had the chance to meet, and which it appears he has done in numerous instances. [...]1972 Guns were not the only weapons. Poison was also favoured. On 8 August 1830, Robinson was visiting Mr. Robson. Robinson writes in his journal: In the course of conversation Mr. Robson said that he had proposed to the shepherds at the Surrey Hills to give them some poison to use for the destruction of the hyaena. The men said that they did not require it then but if Mr R would let them have some in the summer they would find a use for it. He asked them why they should find a use for it in the summer more than now. They said, ‘Oh, Sir, we will poison the natives’ dogs’. Mr R took it away with him, their object, he said, being to poison the natives by putting it in the flour &c. No doubt hundreds have been destroyed in this way.1973 There is no better guide than Plomley to set out the context for this murderous instance and the shameful consequences, which became the pattern for Arthur’s genocidal war. Plomley writes: This case was particularly shameful. Alexander Goldie, the superintendent of the Hampshire and Surrey Hills establishments of the Company, and two of his men, Nathaniel Russell and Richard Sweetling, were responsible for the killing of a native woman at Emu Bay in August 1829. (Another man, John Palliser, seems to have been present but not to have taken part.) Besides murdering a woman, the party captured another woman and a girl four or five years old, possibly the daughter of the woman shot, the girl being by her when the shot was fired. Goldie seems to have been determined always to treat the natives cruelly and to show no restraint in attacking them. There had been trouble previously at Burleigh,, in reprisal for which Goldie led an attack on them in which several were killed (one of the men beaten up by the natives ten was Gunshannon, who had earlier been concerned in the massacres of the natives at Cape Grim. Curr 1974 had considered Goldie’s reprisals at Burleigh as being justified, but he strongly condemned the murder of the woman at Emu Bay. Writing to Goldie on 30 September 1829, Curr said: It has never occurred to me since I have been in the service of the Van Diemen’s Land Company to read a more revolting detail than that contained in your letter 957 of 16 September respecting the destruction of a native woman at Emu Bay on 21 August, and the manner in which the barbarous transaction is related without one word of disapprobation being expressed against your associates in the deed or one word of regret, is scarcely less offensive to every feeling of humanity than by the deed itself. That the killing of this woman amounts to murder in the moral sense, I have no doubt, and as little that you are a guilty accessory to the crime. What may be thought of it in a legal sense I do not know, but it is my bounden duty to communicate to the Governor all that I know on the subject, and to request that I may be instructed what steps to take regarding it… Goldie seems to have sent a bitter reply to Curr. Answering this letter on 8 October, Curr gave his reasons for having approved Goldie’s attack on the natives at Burleigh, yet now considered on the natives to be murder: In the present instance you came suddenly upon a party of people who probably never did you or any European any injury, at a time too when none of our people have been disturbed by them for many months. You go back to fetch your men with weapons in their hands: it is not a case of self-defence – you are the aggressors. It does not appear that any resistance was made when you commenced the aggression. The poor creatures fled, and one, a woman, having a child with her, is shot by one of the armed men you had let loose upon them. You add that by the time you returned from catching one of the women the men had killed the one whom the shot had wounded. I bear in mind that the men had axes in their hands, and it is impossible not to draw a picture of what occurred, at which human nature shudders. Now compare the two cases and say yourself whether the one is precedent for the other… Curr was instructed by the Governor to make a magisterial enquiry into the killing and he visited Emu Bay to do this in December 1829. He concluded that the proclamation of martial law precluded him from committing those concerned for the crime of murder. The Solicitor General1975 concurred in this conclusion. Goldie subsequently resigned from the Company.1976 On 7 October 1830, Curr wrote to the directors of the VDLC: My whole and sole object was to kill them, and this because my full conviction was and is that the laws of nature and of God and of this country all conspired to render this my duty… And although I feel a perfect loathing to the idea of shedding human blood and know no difference in that respect between white and black, yet I regret upon principle that I was not successful against them. I think it would have done good, it would have alarmed the Natives more than anything else, prevented them from attempting our huts again, made them keep aloof, given them a lesson they would long have remembered and really been the means of saving more of their lives eventually than it would have cost them, as well as some of our own. As to my expression of a wish to have three of their heads put on the ridge of the hut, I shall only say that I think it certainly would have the effect of deterring some of their 958 comrades, of making the death of their companions live in their recollections, and so extend the example made of them.1977 When Stephen conducted his investigation of the Emu Bay massacre, he argued that if the woman died of a gunshot wound, it would not constitute an offence because of martial law. However, if she died from an axe blow while she was a prisoner, it would constitute murder. So Stephen trivialised the axe blow as ‘trifling like a lancet cut’, although Goldie’s original statement said, ‘one of the men hit her on the neck with an axe, and cut the jugular vein, when she died instantly’. 1978 Arthur preferred the version with the gunshot wound as the cause of death because Stephen reminded him of the risk to his proclamation of martial law and the consequences to his authority if the incident was deemed to be murder. Stephen advised Arthur: ‘If the killing of the poor woman be held a crime cognizable by the Common Law, the effect of the Proclamation will be forever afterwards destroyed. Few would with alacrity risk their lives in the pursuit of these now sanguinary people, if aware that for every life destroyed the party taking it might be compelled to answer for it at the risk of their own.’1979 So Stephen’s advice was to ignore the murder or risk damage to the public order and Arthur’s authority. 1980 There is no evidence that Arthur ever revealed the further details of the Emu Bay massacre to his superiors, or Stephen’s troubling advice in particular. We know, from his numerous despatches to the Foreign Office, that Arthur was always careful to put forward his version of events, in order to engage their support for his actions. One of his more execrable fictions was that those who killed Aboriginals were men of ‘bad character’ and not settlers, while all Aboriginal reprisals were an unwarranted ‘outrage’. In the end, at the end of his term, he had succeeded in destroying the Palawa. George Arthur reprised Lieutenant Governor George Arthur (1784 - 1854) was a long serving military officer and his career is a salutary study in the administrative operations of British imperialism. While carefully managing the expectations of his superiors in the ‘motherland’, between 1824 and 1835 his autocratic administrative control oversaw the almost complete extermination of an entire race in Van Diemen’s Land. Some historians still argue that it was not genocide because mixed race survivors endure still, beyond the murder, beyond the indescribably cruel mistreatment and miscegenation by an imperial power that lost its compassion, if it ever laid claim to such an emotion, which was usually left to well-intentioned missionaries who believed Christianisation was a solace for dispossession.1981 Arthur did not have the partial excuse of Smallpox, used by New South Wales to avoid a mea culpa, or acknowledgment of fault. Arthur was like our present day Milosovic, with his racially targeted killing: like Milosovic, he had his supporters and detractors; and like Milosovic he could be either charming or ruthless, depending on what he wanted to achieve. Most of all, 959 Arthur knew how to fawn to his superiors, and they respected him for it and for allowing their consciences to be appeased. Arthur’s approach to the Aboriginal question was to first try and remove the problem, then make a passable effort to regret how the problem was removed (perhaps as a gesture to posterity and the concerns of Britain), all the while counting the economic gains from the lack of an Aboriginal presence. Certainly, Arthur became wealthy from land taken from Aboriginals. But consider Arthur’s retrospective lip service to the concept of negotiation: On the first occupation of Tasmania it was a great oversight that a treaty was not, at that time, made with the natives and such compensation given to the chiefs as they would have deemed a fair equivalent for what they surrendered.1982 Victors tend to write history, and Arthur was no exception in attempting to excuse his crime or those of his superiors who supported the targeted destruction of the Palawa. During Arthur’s term, he allowed much of the best grazing areas in the Island to be ceded to pastoralists, over a million acres, 1983 and when the Aboriginals sustained a very effective war of resistance to their dispossession, Arthur ordered a process of direct military operations and paramilitary ‘roving/ pursuing parties’ against them. He ignored all Aboriginal killings by landowners, none of whom he ever prosecuted, although he did hang four Aboriginals and sentenced others to incarceration. In 1830 he went further, requesting (and receiving) Foreign Office permission to use armed convicts against the Aboriginals.1984 By 1824, at the end of Sorell’s term, around 524,000 acres had been granted. Arthur then followed with 43,000 acres in 1824, 112,000 acres in 1825, 60,000 acres in 1826, 77,000 acres in 1827, 165,000 acres in 1828, 208,000 acres in 1829, 108,000 acres in 1830, 206,000 acres in 1831. In 1829, Arthur wrote that ‘the finest portion of the Island has been already granted away’. The full text reads: ‘The number of persons who have emigrated to the Colony during the Year 1828, was not very considerable compared with former years, and the quantity of land granted was but little more than 200,000 Acres. Of this quantity upwards of 50,000 Acres have been sold at an average of 58d ¾ per acre, and a considerable proportion has been given as Grants, in extension, subject to immediate Quit Rent. The finest portion of the Island has been already granted away, and the lands, remaining at the disposal of the Crown, are of course much less valuable from their remoteness from the Principal Towns’.1985 Yet these grants did not include those made to such private companies as the Van Diemen’s Land Company, which had the backing of the British Government, for whom 250,000 acres were granted in 1825, at the time Britain had authorised its Australian Governors to ‘oppose force by force’ if Aboriginals resisted the occupation process. Arthur acknowledged that British land policies left Aboriginals with nowhere to live. Not Arthur or the British Government cared to ask the question ‘What will happen to the Aboriginals, now that we have taken their land? Can we offer them their own land?’ Instead, Britain decided on a policy of extermination, wherever Aboriginals resisted their occupation. Or if they cooperated, they would be offered Christian training and the opportunity to work as indentured labourers. 960 In 1835, with the help of George Robinson in rounding the survivors up by ‘conciliating their affections’, he moved most of the pitiful remnant Aboriginal population to an island in the Flinders group, where they were subjected to punitive conditions under a Commandant. Arthur’s effective approach to ethnic cleansing - including armed civilian ‘roving parties’ whom he rewarded for every Aboriginal killed or captured and forced or coerced Aboriginal relocation - was to be the adopted template for other colonies around Australia, through mounted troopers, homicidal pastoralists who were generally above the law, and forced relocation of remnant Aboriginals to detention centres. But was Tasmania a genocidal conflict? By now, we should all know the answer. Simple Aboriginal population statistics will suffice for a preliminary conclusion. In 1803, the Aboriginal population has been estimated between 4,000 and 9,000.1986 In 1835, when Arthur ordered the surviving population to be removed to extremely harsh physical conditions on Flinders Island, around 200 remained, and these rapidly succumbed to pulmonary and other disease, which was deliberately inflicted or allowed by their gaolers while they remained at the mercy of the state. Disease was a useful weapon in ethnic subjugation. The Palawa had inadequate shelter, lacked proper clothing and were given unwholesome water and food (although Reynolds claims otherwise).1987 They died from malnutrition, pneumonia, dysentery, influenza and tuberculosis. Their daily rations were one pound of salt meat and one and a half pounds of flour per person. Their conditions were cold and wet. Britain knew the living conditions were lethal but did nothing for 12 years. In 1847, when the camp was closed, only 46 remained. Britain was successful in speeding up the process of extinction. In contrast, by the time Lieutenant Governor George Arthur left the Island in 1836, weeping as he boarded the Elphinstone1988 at Hobart’s New Wharf, 1989 he had managed to acquire extensive land holdings, all expropriated from the Aboriginals, which he sold for a sum equivalent to several million dollars in 2013 (£50,000 was a very large sum in 1839, around £2.5 million at today’s value). According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, between 1828 and 1836 Arthur bought 15,048 acres of land, for a total price of £9,765 and in 1833 he had lent £14,000 on mortgage to settlers, at an interest rate of 10%. When he left Van Diemen’s Land, he arranged in 1839 to sell nearly all of his land for about £50,000, which he lent out for an expected annual income of £5,000, or £250,000 pa in today’s money.1990 He profited from the enormous increase in land value during his term, due in greater part to his removal of the Aboriginal problem. When Lieutenant Colonel Arthur returned to Britain, a grateful Government promoted him to Colonel and K.C.H. for services rendered to the Crown. In December 1837, he was appointed lieutenant governor of Upper Canada which he administered until early 1841, after which he was created a baronet. In 1854, he was gazetted lieutenant-general. Britain Inc. could have admonished Arthur for his crimes against Aboriginals, but reproach was far from the mind of a wholly supportive Government, which chose to exalt him with their gratitude. 961 For the business of Britain in its Australian branch office became contingent on ethnic cleansing, and genocide. It was a profitable business. 1991 He began his term of duty as ‘gaoler in chief’ and left Van Diemen’s Land in a healthy administrative state, with substantial cash reserves, a significantly increased immigrant population, and a thriving economy, but without the problematic encumbrance of Aboriginals for which the landed Vandemonian gentry and the British Government were overwhelmingly appreciative. Conclusion The Aborigine’s Report, commissioned by Arthur to shore up British political support for his war against the Palawa, also identified horrific cases of Aboriginals being slaughtered or mistreated as a result of his policies.1992 Arthur ignored this evidence and took no action against the white perpetrators. He continued his programme of martial law and then began a mopping up exercise of ethnic cleansing, through Robinson’s ‘friendly mission’. Arthur’s sole objective was to rid the ‘settled districts’ of Aboriginal resistance, which was affecting Tasmanian economic development and his career prospects. His genocidal actions – self-serving and dutiful - were supported by the British Government. Therefore, the genocidal hypothesis is confirmed, that martial law was Lemkinian in character and motivation, the outcome intentional to the extent that it was an avoidable choice. 962 The role of introduced disease in Tasmanian genocide The Palawa did not ask to be visited by Europeans. They came anyway, the later arrivals with guns, germs, livestock and - initially - a predominantly carceral population. Terre Français (or Terre Napoleon) may have saved the Palawa; the British destroyed them. Figure 266 Nicolas Baudin map of Australia, from the expedition of 1802 - 18031993 This is the contention or hypothesis we will now test: the genocidal role of introduced or imposed disease, genocidal because it was avoidable, genocidal because it was inflicted. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through introduced disease, Britain is culpable of genocide under the following articles: 2 (a) Killing members of the group 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group I have no experience of genocide. Or homicide. Yet I am appalled and revolted by the British invasion of Tasmania. Not the historical reality that willful murders were committed as Britain displaced the Aboriginals from their homelands without compensation or any measure of Government regret. That was egregious enough. No. It was more that the British did not seem to care. And if they were found out, the British reaction was defensive: the Palawa were sub963 human, or savages, they impugned, who succumbed to a mysterious natural process where the less fit did not survive. Let us be clear. The Palawa were driven to extinction without mercy or pity, where even their food was begrudged in the final stages of their detainment. Administrated deaths from acute respiratory disorder were simply a procedural step, of autopsy and entombment if they were fortunate, or objects of medical interest if they were not. Our cruelty to the Palawa is without precedent. But we continue to deny our culpability or say ‘sorry’. Britain won its war of extermination and did not see the need to look back. They still don’t. Introduced disease as a genocidal agency Among many historians, disease can be of little interest, often being perceived as an ‘Act of God’. But is it? As we will see, the secondary lethal effects of this indirect (but avoidable) targeted mass killing through introduced disease were paragraphs 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), and 2 (d) of Lemkinian genocide. For Britain, disease was a potent weapon, and it was often deliberately wielded, or if not deliberate, then through omission, by not allowing the conditions of life that would ensure Aboriginal survival, a point too frequently lost in many of the current histories of Tasmania between 1803 and 1833 and thereafter as imprisonment or confinement of subjugated Indigenous people cemented the detainees’ future at the hands of the master race, the superior British of the 19th century Imperium where genocide was the flip-side of a sense of entitlement. If the effect of disease was acknowledged at all, it was frequently to disguise or diminish the impact of frontier violence, which has only recently become more evident through the writings of Rowley, Stanner, Butlin and others, where our racist past is belatedly acknowledged. The subject of Tasmanian Aboriginals and their demise at the hands of the British has been an area of intense study by many researchers, notably including Henry Reynolds and Lyndall Ryan. So, we should begin our investigation of the effect of introduced disease on the Palawa by examining their publications. Reynolds writes briefly of the effect of disease in his considerable body of research on frontier violence in Tasmania. In ‘Aborigines and Settlers’, Henry Reynolds was one of the first popular historians to briefly touch on the subject of ‘disease and deprivation’, 1994 when he considers the impact of various introduced diseases such as smallpox, influenza, measles, venereal infections, whooping cough and tuberculosis. He correctly describes endemic malnutrition as an imposed form of deprivation that frequently led to a significant proportion of deaths causing entire communities to become dislocated and fragmented. However, he does not consider any disease aetiology or specific statistical morbidity. Nor, surprisingly, does he review the impact of introduced diseases on Aboriginal depopulation in his adopted state of Tasmania. That came in later books. 964 So far as Tasmania is concerned, he tends to focus on the very high death rate at Wybalenna, ignoring Oyster Cove or the disease effects of ethnic cleansing through Arthur’s ‘friendly mission’, or any population loss from disease between 1803 and 1830. He writes: Death scythed through the Aboriginal community. One hundred and thirty-two people died between January 1832 and October 1847. [..] Death hung like a heavy pall over Wybalenna.1995 Later, he speculates (based upon third-hand hearsay): It seems very likely that the mortality rate on Flinder’s Island was merely a continuation of a catastrophic pattern of death which had begun even before the first permanent settlements in 1803 and 1804. Robert Clark, teacher and catechist at Wybalenna for almost ten years, told the historian Bonwick that the Aborigines had told him that they were originally ‘more numerous than the White people were aware of’, but that: Their numbers were very much thinned by a sudden attack of disease which was general among the entire population previous to the arrival of the English, entire tribes having been swept off. 1996 Reynolds does not include the rest of Bonwick’s quote, which adds ‘in the course of one- or two-days’ illness’. Plomley has investigated the possible role of pandemics in Palawa depopulation. He concludes (as do I), there is not the least evidence that epidemics killed large numbers of the population at some period or other. Plomley writes: Although the introduction of European disease could bring about death very quickly, as for example the deaths from pneumonia at Macquarie Harbour in July 1833,1997 there is not the least evidence that epidemics killed large numbers of the population at some period or other. No record has been found of large numbers of bodies found lying unburied anywhere in Tasmania at any period. It can therefore be concluded that the decline in population was, generally speaking, gradual although more or less rapid at one time or another. Thus, it is likely that Aborigines of the eastern parts of Tasmania declined more rapidly than those of the western parts, because the Europeans occupied the eastern half of Tasmania when they first came, rather than the western, where the only contacts with Europeans were with pioneers in the Port Davey region,1998 at Macquarie Harbour, and in the north-west where the Van Diemen’s Land Company had settled.1999 The question arises: what pandemic disease can kill within one or two days? Influenza usually takes longer. We aren’t told the symptoms. If we consider the constraint ‘prior to the arrival of the English’, we can imagine that this might refer to the British arrival in 1803, not that of Furneaux (1773) or Cook (1777) or Bligh (1788 and 1792) or Cox (1789), all of whom had limited and brief Palawa contact. As for the sealers and whalers who began arriving from about 1798, we know little. 965 Therefore, if the unverifiable Bonwick secondhand assertion from Clark is factually correct, might it refer to the (non-English) D’Entrecasteaux (1793) expedition in the decade prior to Bowen and Collins? The Baudin (1802) expedition seems too late to qualify. Or perhaps the hearsay comment, if correct, might refer to Tasman’s visit one hundred and fifty years before that – surely too early? We have no way of knowing. Or do we? If there had been a respiratory viral outbreak while the French were visiting in 1793, then it would have become evident within a few days of contact, sufficient time for it to manifest itself during the month or more of extended visitation. There was no such indication, not from Labillardiere or any other early explorer. Moreover, it is unlikely that Palawa oral records would go back more than a century to the time of Tasman’s visit. But Bonwick’s reference is clear enough: the event (or related events) occurred previous to the arrival of the English. Was there a worldwide influenza pandemic in the period between 1793 and 1802? There is partial support for this possibility, but no such record for any shipboard outbreak and significant death, unless ‘fever’ is categorized as ‘influenza’. A shipboard outbreak of influenza would likely have infected a large proportion of the crew, something which is not mentioned in the available ship journals, in particular those of Péron and Labillardière. Is there any further evidence? Taubenberger and Morens note these historical pandemics between 1780 and 1790: Pandemic 6: 1780 to 1782 The 1780 pandemic, which began in Southeast Asia and spread to Russia and eastward into Europe, was remarkable for extremely high attack rates but negligible mortality, although there were excess deaths in the London bills of mortality, perhaps in part due to excess blood-letting by some physicians. It appears that in this pandemic the concept of influenza as a distinct entity with characteristic epidemiological features was first appreciated.2000 Pandemic 7: 1788 to 1790 Although the 1788 pandemic is generally regarded as being separate from that of 1782 (largely because of its by now typical genesis in Asia, its rapid global and directional dispersion, and its extremely high attack rates), Creighton contends that persons who became ill in the 1782 pandemic were protected not only in 1788 but through 1802. Whatever the case, the 1788 pandemic initiated another pandemic era, in which global influenza activity appears to have been heightened for almost 20 years (1788 to 1806); some observers have postulated additional pandemics in this interval.2001 966 As we have mentioned, there is no mention of an outbreak of acute respiratory disease among the French expeditionary crews (excluding anomalous ‘fever’) who instead suffered from other morbidities associated with ship travel, particularly dysentery and scurvy. 2002 Of the 22 deaths that occurred among the Geographe’s company, 13 were almost certainly due to dysentery or fever, 1 (Baudin’s own) to pulmonary tuberculosis, 1 was ascribed to a liver complaint, 1 to drowning, 1 to a fall on board, and 3 to scurvy. Of the previous expeditions dysentery and fever had also caused many deaths, mainly after cruises in the tropics or stops at East Indies ports. Thirty-one of the 41 deaths on the Endeavour were from these causes, and probably more than 70 of the 89 on D’Entrecasteaux’s expedition. Eight died of dysentery on the Investigator. So we return to Reynolds’ quote of Bonwick quoting Clark quoting unnamed Aboriginals that imputes the ‘Act of God’ defence where there was significant Aboriginal depopulation before the English arrived and that the presumed deaths were part of some natural but poorly understood pandemic disease process prior to the arrival of the British for which Britain’s 1803 invasion could not therefore be blamed. This contrarian whitewash of British responsibility continues, when Reynolds questions if genocide happened in Australia generally, or Tasmania in particular. Reynolds admits that, during Arthur’s administration, it was ‘clearly quite common for the settlers to discuss the extermination of the Aborigines, whether they favoured such an eventuality, were horrified by it or just considered it inevitable’, 2003 but then challenges if the ‘concept’ of extermination was related to the settlers, the Colonial office and the administration of Governor Arthur, arguing that bushrangers and people of bad character may have been involved rather than the Government who, according to Reynolds, generally deplored the racially motivated killing. Reynolds also spends some time in revisiting the Black Line and Wybalenna and tries to suggest that when surviving Aboriginals were removed to Flinders Island, ‘any hope of a demographic recovery had passed’. 2004 Why? Is this to convince us that their demise was inevitable, and not related to their imposed conditions? In 1833, their numbers were about 200 or above. If they had been given an amount of land as their own, possibly the greater part of northeast Tasmania, and if settlers had been prosecuted for any continuing violence, and if the Palawa had been left in peace from constant harassment by the military and roving death squads, populations have recovered from less. The chain of ‘ifs’ are conditional on a humanitarian policy. But Britain did not take this course of action. It chose incarceration, detention, imprisonment, the loss of freedom and autonomy. By 1847, Aboriginal numbers at Wybalenna had dropped to 46. During this period of forced detention, Reynolds tries to build the argument that the Aboriginals were well cared for, much better than the average convict, as though to absolve Britain from directly contributing to the fearful mortality rate. He writes: ‘ 967 Though it is difficult to draw definite conclusions, it seems that the Aborigines at Wybalenna were better provided for than other groups dependent on the government.’2005 He surmises ‘The high death rate was due to factors largely beyond the control or understanding of the European staff. With a resident surgeon for most of the period, the community had far better access to professional medical help than the great majority of settlers on mainland Tasmania’.2006 He encourages us to believe that incarceration had not made them despair or ‘pine away’.2007 Finally, he quotes the draft UN Convention on genocide, where it ‘was determined that in cases where victims were placed in concentration camps with an annual death rate of 30 to 40 percent, the intention to commit genocide was unquestionable’,2008 and agrees that ‘the death rate on Flinders Island puts it well within the range of such death camps’,2009 but concludes ‘there is no available evidence at all to suggest that it was the intention of the colonial government to effect the extinction of the Tasmanians’.2010 His conclusion, as we examine in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide, is flawed as it confuses the evidence with an incorrect assertion. What we must remember is that Aboriginals died in large proportional numbers as a consequence of their detention and the unsuitable conditions, where they did, indeed, pine away from a loss of hope that was recorded by multiple observers. Nowhere does Reynolds examine the actual causes of death at Wybalenna and whether the conditions were critically implicated. Ryan also writes of Aboriginal population decline due to disease. In her comprehensive second edition of The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Ryan reminds us that the Palawa did not die out but continue to press their claim for recognition as a hybrid people. But she is curiously silent on the subject of introduced disease. She writes: By 1818 the Aboriginal population of Van Diemen’s Land from an estimated four thousand to somewhere below two thousand, while the European population was 3,114. The first fifteen years of European settlement had brought no epidemics, in contrast to Sydney where, in 1789, an outbreak of smallpox severely depleted the local Aboriginal population.2011 Ryan does not cite any primary sources for her population statistics or provide potential reasons for the dramatic population loss. If we assume, for the moment, her statistics are correct, she does not ask the obvious question: If there were no reported disease epidemics before 1818, what caused the population to halve in barely fifteen years from 1803 to 1818? Ryan does not say. However, she does examine the question of depopulation between 1803 and 1833: if only half the stories Robinson heard were true, then it is possible to account for seven hundred shot. This is about three-quarters of the Aboriginal population in the settled districts. So how did the rest of the Aborigines die?2012 968 Her conclusion? It was not through disease or alcohol, but the loss of women. However, before 1818, there were few settlers, and only a small sealing community operating around the coast, so sexual predation was still limited.2013 Ryan later picks up the disease story when Robinson’s ‘Friendly Mission’ was underway from 1829 to 1834. Robinson, like all his contemporaries, understood little about the nutritional properties of the rations he distributed to his charges. Nor could he know that clothes and huts produced susceptibility to European disease. Above all, he could not understand that the Aborigines were not anxious to divest themselves of their land or their culture in return for European civilization.2014 What extraordinary assertions to make. Ryan is whitewashing Robinson’s behavior. How can Ryan possibly pretend to know the mind of Robinson, of what he may or may not ‘understand’? Ryan is putting a construction or ‘theory of mind’ on Robinson that ignores all the first-hand evidence we have so far presented that the British knew very clearly just how important land was to the Indigenous owners. When someone dies from the conditions imposed upon them, empirical evidence must call the circumstances into account. The fact that Robinson and Arthur chose to ignore or reprioritize the Aboriginal deaths suggests that their primary concern was purposeful ethnic cleansing (removal for political and economic reasons) rather than the unavoidable consequences of ‘deaths in custody’. Why else would they willfully continue the practices that caused the Palawa deaths? Ryan contradicts her own argument, when she later writes about Robinson’s capture of sixteen Port Davey people, whom he had incarcerated on Grummet Island in Macquarie Harbour:2015 Upon his return to Macquarie Harbour, Robinson found the sixteen Port Davey people on Grummet Island had succumbed to chronic chest complaints. One woman had already died and two men and another woman were dangerously ill. By 27 July two more were dead… On 31 July Wyne and another man died and another seven became critically ill. Robinson blamed the doctor, the hospital, and the settlement for the calamity. He could not see that confinement, the dramatic change in diet, and the loss of their land were more responsible for Aboriginal deaths than the erratic behavior of a doctor. When the Aborigines pleaded with Robinson to take them away, he refused because he was afraid they would escape and all his work would be lost. It was not until 6 August, when twelve of the twenty-seven Port Davey and Pieman River people had died, that Robinson removed them to the pilot station at the heads.2016 The primary genocidal account is much more damning. During 1833, Robinson began rounding up the tribal remnants in Western Tasmania and detained some of them in a Macquarie Harbour penitentiary that was shared with other convicts. The food was poor, the clothing inadequate and the conditions were cold and damp. This is what Robinson actually records in his journal, which we can compare with Ryan’s foregoing account. 969 To hear Robinson speak to us in the first person voice is chillingly compelling. It reveals the callous indifference that Robinson had towards the welfare of his charges while he was expressing concern at the mysterious deaths, the way he tried to shift blame from himself, the sheer horror that was Aboriginal genocide, the suffering of the victims and their solicitude for one another. He professed to be moved by weeping spouses but kept them captive anyway. Robinson saw people dying in large proportional numbers but chose not to allow them to return to their own country where they would be relatively safe in the rugged west, an area unsuitable for grazing and therefore uncoveted by the British. Nor did he choose to move them to a less lethal environment, at least not for some time, not until many had died in agony, because he was worried they could escape and his remuneration from Arthur with it. To Arthur’s pleasant surprise, Robinson’s ‘friendly mission’ was successful. It should not have been a surprise. It was successful because Robinson extended a hand of friendship to the persecuted Aboriginals he met, when previously the gun was a conciliator. Robinson’s motives were given credibility by the small band of Aboriginals who accompanied him. But his friendship had a darker motive. He was driven by the offer of Arthur’s financial reward. His deceptive conduct was soon revealed in the capture and detention of those who trusted him. They were to die through this deception. Robinson continued to believe that he was blameless. Although Robinson’s journals were only accidentally discovered until many years later, we can assume that Robinson shared the same lack of compassion as Arthur and his superiors. Why? Arthur wanted the Aboriginal problem gone. He was not too troubled by how it was achieved. His superiors rewarded his ultimately successful efforts with a promotion. The settlers cheered him with evident gratitude. Even Charles Darwin approved. For Britain, economic prosperity was far more important than a ‘few’ rebellious Aboriginals who were fighting their dispossession, or even the loss of a troublesome race. We turn to Robinson for his accounts of Aboriginal mortality and morbidity due to disease. June, July 1827: The prevailing disease, the catarrh, seems to continue all over the country affecting persons in various ways…the number of deaths which have occurred within the last few weeks are unprecedented in the colony. It is worthy of remark that the catarrh which was lately so general throughout the island affected Aboriginal natives exactly in the same way as Europeans. On the twelfth instance July) a woman named Black Kit, queen of the tribe which used to have Black Tom at its head, died of a complaint at the Coal river (located east of Hobart). Her companion is labouring under the same distemper, which, with the addition of leprosy, will probably be the cause of her death. 970 Bruny Island mission at Missionary Bay: March 1829 Winter months of 1829: George Augustus Robinson established a Bruny Island Mission to ‘conciliate’ the local Aboriginal people. 12 August 1829: Upon rounding the western corner of Adventure Bay saw the native chief Woorrady’s wife and her three children…This woman had been attacked by sickness since she left this establishment and had not yet recovered: she appeared in a forlorn and feeble state and was entirely naked, with only a small piece of blanket on which she was seated. She informed me that the Port Davey tribes had also been sick, that one man and child were dead and that they were still on Brune Island..2017 2 February 1830: While camped at Recherche Bay and preparing for the overland journey to Port Davey, Robinson records in his journal: Pm, one of the men came to inform me that he had discovered the remains of a man. Viewed the body with the natives who recognised it as the body of a female aborigine belonging to Port Davey, who had been attacked with sickness and left here by her tribe to linger and perish, as is their custom when overcome by sickness. The natives informed me that plenty of natives had been attacked with RAEGERWROPPER or evil spirit, and had died. Thus the mortality with which the Brune natives had been attacked, appears to have been general among the tribes of Aborigines. 2018 Plomley notes: In the report he (Robinson) made in February 1831 Robinson states that he was told by the natives ‘that the numerous tribes of aborigines once inhabiting that extensive country to the westward of D’Entrecasteaux Channel and of the Huon River were now extinct’.2019 Winters of 1830, 1831: May 1831: July 1832: July 1833: xx2020 Northwest Tasmania Late 1832: In 1843, Backhouse writes that, in 1832 while he was at Woolnorth in the northwest, he met a woman we now know as Luckerrermicticwocken, whose people were from the west of the Huon River: She was the sole relic of a band that inhabited the western side of the Huon River on the south coast. I inquired of her what became of the people of her country. She answered, they all died. I then asked her what killed them. An aged man of the Bruny Island band, who is one of their Doctors, and was sitting by, replied The Devil. I desired to know how he managed. The woman began to cough violently, to show me how they were affected, and she said, that when 971 the rest were all dead she made a catamaran, a sort of raft, and crossed the D’Entrecasteaux Channel to Bruny Island, and joined a band there.2021 James Backhouse (1794 – 1869) was a naturalist and Quaker missionary, who was in Van Diemen’s Land from 1832 to 1834. Arthur granted such missionaries free access to all penal and Aboriginal establishments,2022 including the Aboriginal detention centre on Flinders Island. In his interview with Luckerrermicticwocken, Backhouse did not ask her when this event happened. He visited Wybalenna in 1834. I can find no mention of Luckerrermicticwocken in Plomley’s Friendly Mission. This is Robinson’s journal for much of the time he was a Macquarie Harbour. We are thankful it survived, as so much of Arthur’s genocidal conduct was relatively secretive and poorly documented, but so are we appalled at the horrific conduct that Britain and its cohort enacted in the name of Christianity. As we read these distressing journal entries, we see Lemkinian genocide, articles 2a, b, c, d on full display. But we also see the tenderness of the Palawa towards each other while enduring unimaginable suffering inflicted by the British administration. 24 July. […] But still, whatever was the cause, the aborigines were in a very sickly state. The natives said that the prisoners did all they could to annoy them by pouring down water through the boards, urinating upon them and hammering on the floor. I complained to the major who gave orders to the constable to prevent it. 25 July. […] Visited the aborigines at the penitentiary and gave them an extra supply of provision, and conducted them over the settlement. LEE.LINGER died this evening. He belonged to the Point Hibbs and Birches Rocks tribe and was about forty five years of age. […] He died of the same malady as GO.LY.BEEK the woman that died on the 19th: symptoms, a short cough, difficulty of breathing, discharge of pus or purulent matter issuing from the nostrils. 28 July. […] WOM.MEN.NOO.KER, that died last night, was about forty years of age and a married man and has left a widow who attended him with great kindness during his affliction. In consequence of the mortality which had already taken place and with a view to discover the nature of the disease, I consented to a postmortem examination, which took place this day. There was no prayers in consequence. I saw the body after dissection. The left lung was completely diseased, the pericardium that covers the heart was decayed. The surgeon said that no medicine that could be administered would save the man, but in this man’s opinion I place little dependence. He is quite inexperienced and indolent. The man was placed in a coffin and buried at the back of the island. The symptoms of the disease was the same as the others. 29 July. […] In consequence of the affliction and the deaths that had occurred I removed the strangers from the penitentiary to the hospital, where they slept at night. During the day they stopped in the yard at my son’s quarters. They were terrified to stop any 972 longer at the penitentiary as they said the devils were there, that they should all die if they stopped there any longer; they said the devil run about the room, came to the windows and speared them. It was by no means politic to place the natives at the penitentiary where they were sure to come in contact with the convicts, who delighted and took every occasion to annoy and would not think it a crime to murder them. I occasionally sent them out in the boat for an excursion and took every occasion to divert them. The poor people suffered their affliction with great fortitude, perhaps greater fortitude than any aborigines that I had yet met with. They occasionally gave vent to their feelings. On one occasion I inadvertently asked why they cried, when one of them, DRAY, who had before lived with white people, retorted the question and asked why black man’s wife was not to cry as well as white man’s, what for PARLEVAR LORE TYRER TIME MER? 2023 31 July. […] Several others of the aborigines are in a very sickly state and great fears are entertained as to their recovery. Among the sick is TARTOYERUCK, WAR.RER.TORE.RER and wife WY.YER.REE, PENE.NE.BOPE and NOE.NE.DOE.RIC an aged female, WYNE was buried today at the back of the hospital. Another man who died before was interred in the same spot; his name was WOMENENOOKER. The man appeared to be afflicted like the rest and was about forty-seven years old. 1 August. […] The very alarming state in which the natives were from sickness and finding that no relief was afforded by the medical officer, who was worse than useless, induced me to try a change of situation and which was urged upon me by Major Baylee, although I confess I entertained but little hope by the change. Sent away the invalid aborigines to the small island and ordered Pell, one of the white attendants, to stay with and take charge of the people. 2024 Soon after dusk whilst I was walking outside the commandant’s quarters, I descried at the small island a large fire and which I knew to be a signal. Dispatched a boat to the island to ascertain the cause, and on the return of the boat was informed that one of the black men PENE.NE.BOPE belonging to the Pieman River tribe had fallen over the rocks in front of the penitentiary on the small island in a fit of delirium. The precipice from which he fell is upwards of forty feet in altitude. It was a miracle he was not killed on the spot. He was conveyed to the hospital and on examination it was found that he had cut his face against the rock, a deep gash through the side of the nose and upper lip, quite to the bone. He was quite insane and would not have it dressed. The doctor contented himself by looking on and laughing; said that if it had been a white man he would have been killed and that black men’s skulls was so hard &c. Said that he had suffered no other accident and there was no contusion, but I placed not the slightest dependence on this man’s statement. He ought to have been confined in a strait waistcoat. I ordered one of my men to watch during the night and which was hard on my people but I had no alternative. The wife of the poor man, TEMGORERER, accompanied him and watched him with the greatest tenderness, and whilst he wandered in delirium she would go after him and bring him back. But for the watch that I placed over him he would have rushed into the fire. He had (and which was peculiar to all that suffered from the malady) a propensity to feel with his hands. WYNE the night previous to his death walked to the gate; the watchman went and brought 973 him back and told me of the circumstances, how he wanted to abscond. Poor man, he was in a delirious state and little knew what he was about. After this accident I sent over another man with Pell, which I borrowed from the commandant for the occasion, and gave them strict orders to watch the other invalids that a similar accident did not take place. It was a dangerous place for these poor people. The building, which is of wood, stands on the top of the rock and almost covers it. The people are no sooner out of the door than they are on the verge of the precipice. The distance of the small island from the settlement2025 is one and a half miles. PENEBOPE and TEMGAREE his wife remained at the hospital. 2 August. […] At 2 am PEN.NE.BOPE, the unfortunate man brought from the small island, breathed his last. No doubt he had received serious injury by the fall, which together with the disease, hastened his dissolution. His wife TEMGARER gave way to the bitterest grief. She came back from the hospital and took up her abode with the convalescents. During the day she concealed herself in her blanket, and although I used every means to dispel or alleviate her sorrow it was to no purpose. By her constant attention to her husband, and which was so remarkable as to be noticed by the convicts on the settlement, she had caught the infection or had brought it on herself. I saw with great apprehension the approaching symptoms. PENENEBOPE her husband was a fine young man about twenty years of age. Had very large whiskers and was a native of Sandy Cape. His mother was at the settlement, an aged woman and a native of Cape Grim. The body was interred this day at the back of the hospital. My eldest son witnessed the burial. The body was enclosed in a neat coffin. Requested the doctor and my son to proceed to the island to examine the sick, and sent over a man to block up the door to prevent accident, and open a new door into the kitchen. I was grieved at the accident of this man falling over the rocks, but no person was to blame.2026 They were sent over with good intention and with the hope that the change would benefit them. Pell said that he was outside chopping wood and he heard this man fall down the rocks. The man could not walk and must therefore have crawled out of the door.2027 Pm, the boat returned from the small island with the doctor and my eldest son. They first attempted to cross with two hands but was driven to leeward and had difficulty to gain the small island. They then got the two other men and came over and had enough to do. They brought with them the body of TARTOYENRUCK, who had died the previous night at 10 pm. He was about twenty-two years of age, husband to WYREE and native of Sandy Cape. He was a fine man and in health when he arrived at the settlement. One of his sons went up in the Charlotte and one remained with the people at the settlement. His wife was with him and very kind to him and rendered every assistance in her power. My son said they were greatly dissatisfied at being there and wanted to come away. Although they went with their own concurrence, still the change had not that effect that was anticipated.2028 The doctor now considered it most advisable to have them brought away and recommended their being placed at the hospital. I sent a boat to bring them to the settlement. At 6pm the boat arrived with the invalids, when they were immediately conveyed to the hospital. 3 August. […] Sent the domesticated aborigines to Phillips Island, also four boys and one girl belonging to the strangers. This separation was necessary to avoid the 974 contagion, if such it was, for although the doctor at last said it was not contagious, yet he had changed his opinion so often that I placed not the slightest dependence in what he said. I think it more than probable that it is epidemic among themselves. In removing the children I first obtained their consent to the measure, for nothing ought to be done contrary to their wishes. TARTOYENRUCK, the man that died on the small island on the night of the 2nd instant, was interred this day and his body enclosed in a neat coffin. He was buried at the back of the hospital. I attended his funeral. WY.YEN.ER, a young female about twenty-one years of age, native of LOWGERNOUN south of Rocky Point and wife to WAR.HER.TARE.RER, died last night at 9 o’clock at the hospital. She was in a state of pregnancy. Soon after she had expired her husband who lay beside her in a dangerous state, suspecting she was dead as he did not see her move nor moan, pushed her with his hand, when he found she was dead. He himself grew worse and expired at 3 pm. They were both buried this day at the back of the hospital. Their bodies were enclosed as the rest in neat coffins. WAR.RER.TARE.RER was about twenty-two years of age, native of Port Davey, a fine young man. Was attached to the Pieman River tribe and came to the settlement in good health. Yesterday I had all the natives with the exception of WAR.RER.TARE.RER removed to the yard back of my sons’ quarters. The boy also remained at the hospital. After the occurrence of so many deaths the people became troubled in mind and said that there was plenty of devils at the hospital, and wanted to leave it, that is, those that were well and even the sick that was able to crawl; and when they saw me, without waiting for my order they packed up all their things and walked out, even the sick that was able. The little boy the mother had brought out, but was afterwards taken back again, NAG.DIP.ER, who was advanced in pregnancy and very ill, also walked out. An old woman, mother to PENE.NE.BOPE attempted to walk but lay down outside the hospital. She was removed to the hospital. WAR.HER.TARE.RER, who was in a dying state and insensible to what was going on, made no attempt to go. The mortality was dreadful, its ravages was unprecedent, it was a dreadful calamity. When I saw the poor creatures writhing in agony I asked the dispenser whether he had given the patients any sustenance. He replied they would not take anything. I said surely they might be made to take a few spoonfuls of chicken broth. He said they had no fowls. I told him if the doctor had applied to me I would have got fowls, and gold if it was wanted and would save their lives, and that I would have got those things had I been applied to, but it could not be supposed I would order diet for the patients when the doctor was giving them medicine, that it was the business of the doctor to order the diet.2029 He said they had preserves, soups, meats and a variety of comforts which they could give them provided they were admitted as patients and that they would take every care of them. On hearing this explanation I was struck with the greatest astonishment and could not help expressing my utter indignation at the inhuman treatment to which the natives had been subjected, that those aborigines whom the government had removed from their country should be allowed to perish for want of proper attention, 2030 for as I observed how could they be expected to recover or survive when no effort was made to give them sustenance or medicine! Were the people to perish because they did not believe the food or medicine would relieve them? If the medical officer considered diet and medicine requisite, surely the same means could have been resorted to oblige them to receive it as is done with insane persons in the lunatic hospitals. But the most trifling conduct that I ever met with is their not having been admitted as patients. It is 975 a matter of the deepest regret that a more experienced officer had not been appointed to the station. This morning a message was delivered to me by the commandant’s servant, namely that two natives had died and that Jarmain, a white attendant at the hospital, was infected with he same disease. When Major Baylee heard it he was extremely annoyed and sent for the doctor and asked him in my presence how he could be so indiscreet as to propagate such a story, and that the doctor of all persons ought to have been the last to have circulated it (provided it was the case, but it was a falsehood), and ordered him to immediately contradict it; that if such a report was circulated he should have every man leave his work. He said such was the conduct of Dr Dermer, that when he had a case of typhus fever he mentioned to none but the commandant. De Little denied having propagated the report and said it was the dispenser, but this was only to excuse himself. He it was that circulated the report and which must have been done with a view to throw the settlement into confusion. The doctor has the character of being a vindictive man. 2031 4 August. […] The poor afflicted lad HOY.NER.BEVE.HEN.ER, son to WYEREE, about twelve years of age, has been attended by the Sergeant (McNamara) by order of the commandant. This measure was deemed advisable in consequence of the gross neglect of the medical officer. The sergeant got the lad to take sustenance, after which he of his own accord took a little diet. Gave him also some cathartic medicine and which had the desired effect. Everything was done that was thought necessary to afford relief to the patient, yet notwithstanding all the efforts the lad grew worse and breathed his last at 4 am. The death of the poor lad was kept secret from the mother. The poor woman frequently enquired about her offspring and begged that I would have him brought to her. I felt for the poor woman and admired her strong affection. Every time I approached her she importuned me to have her son brought away. It grieved me much when I thought of the mortality, the severe and frightful mortality, that had taken place among the aborigines. The aged female NO.NE.DOE.RIC died in the course of the night. She was about forty-five years of age, native of Cape Grim and mother to PENE.NE.BOPE. She was very infirm. Today a postmortem examination was held on the body of the aboriginal youth HOY.NE.HE.BEVE.HE.NER who departed this life at four this morning, present myself and surgeon. On opening the body water was found on the chest, the right lung was diseased and the bladder was distended, which is not the case in healthy persons. The heart was also diseased. It was deemed advisable to examine this youth as being the extreme between youth and age, an aged person the first subject examined. 6 August. […] At 8 am dispatched the pilot boat with one white attendant Reid and four aborigines, viz. PEN.NE.ME.ROE.IC and wife TOIN.HE.ME.NEVE.ER; NAY.DIP, widow of WYNE, who was very ill and far advanced in pregnancy; and WYER.REE.NAY.DIP’s youngest daughter MOY.HE.NUNG I had separated from its parent and by the consent of the mother, the poor woman being dangerously ill and unable to help herself, also with a view to save it from contagion. This child I placed under the care of Mrs McElevy, a soldier’s wife in the barracks, and purposed continuing the child with her until the Tamar arrived. It was thought removing the people to the heads that they would be more likely to recover from the benefit of the 976 change, but although I believed it would do them good still this was not considered by others. Their object was to get them away, and I believe cared little to where they were sent provided they went from the settlement. The poor natives were highly pleased themselves at the prospect of going to PARLOUNDUNICK, 2032 by which name they called the point where the pilot’s house stands. WYREE asked for her son: I gave vague answers. So eager were they to get away that by day dawn they were all ready to proceed and when I appeared they gathered up their things and was in marching order. So eager were they to be off that they kept close to the gate. Their impatience would scarce allow the men to carry the things down to the boat, and shed tears from fear of their not going. When the boat was ready to receive them their joy was great in the extreme. They have a great abhorrence of the doctor whom they look on with suspicious horror. They consider he has been instrumental in causing their death. Last night he attempted to feel the pulse of one of te females, when as he approached her she screamed and shrieked and crouched beneath her blanket and tried to bite him. The poor creature was terrified. Their suspicions were so great that on being invited to the commandant’s quarters they refused tea and even water; said it was no good and grasped hold of me whenever the commandant offered to give them anything. […] 7 August. […] Yesterday and today busy in packing up and in other arrangements. am, looking out for my boat. At 2pm no signs of the boat off Liberty Point; the commandant and sergeant had been up on the hill all the morning looking out for the boat. The delay of the boats led the commandant to imagine that the pilot’s crew had seized the boat and escaped to sea. So convinced was he of this that had it not been that the settlement boats were away up the Gordon getting timber he purposed sending to the heads to ascertain the cause of delay. I confess I was under great apprehension and was fearful that some of the aborigines had escaped and was most anxious to get to the heads, and had there been any conveyance I should have gone. […] The cause of the delay was explained and especially as they had got a head wind. At 5pm the boats reached the settlement. The coxswain informed me that an aboriginal female had died on Monday the 5th: it was TEMGARERER the wife of PENEBOPE, who was in the last stage of illness when she left the settlement.[…] 8 August. […] On my arrival at the pilot’s my mind was hurt to find the strange aborigines and the invalids so badly provided for, and could not help expressing my indignation at the harsh treatment to which they were exposed. They were lying in the cold sand with only a few boards temporarily placed over them at night. They were huddled together in a small shed about five by ten feet. I was highly incensed. Indeed the indifference evinced is to be hardly credited. NAY.DIP the widow of WYNE, who was in the last stage of illness, made signs and importuned me to build her a hut. But I reproved my son for not making better provision for them […]. 10 August..[...] At 4am NAY.DIP widow to WYNE chief of Pieman River tribe gave birth to a female child. The poor infant appeared diseased and died at meridian of the same day. So soon as the child was born it was laid on a kangaroo skin before the fire, and it required one of the white attendants to watch it to keep the dogs from running over it. The afterbirth the other natives kept and when the sun had set they burnt it to ashes and rubbed it on their faces as a charm. The mother appeared much worse after her accouchement and declined all sustenance. Once she moved to the outside of the tent and got another female to wash her with cold water. I gave her boiled eggs but she did 977 not eat them. She appeared in great pain and scarcely moved. The infant I had enclosed in a box and buried in a grave adjoining that of TEMGARER, the female who died on the 5th instant. An instance of strong filial affection occurred which I can’t help noticing. The aboriginal youth I had kept apart from the invalids as a cautionary measure, but TED.DE.HE.BUR.RE.KER, daughter to NAY.DIP, finding that her mother was taken in labour she absconded from my aboriginal attendants during the night and went to her mother and watched her sufferings with the fondest solicitude. The young lads came in the course of the day and it was with difficulty that I could prevail on them to go back. TED.DE.HE.BUR.RE.KER was in tears nearly the whole time she remained with her mother. [...] 11 August, [...] At 10am NAY.DIP breathed her last. This woman was in the last stage of illness when she left the settlement, her approaching dissolution was quite apparent and I never entertained the slightest hope of her recovery. I feel happy that all the other aborigines are in perfect convalescence and trust that a final period is put to this dire mortality, and hope with the blessing of providence to embark fifteen aborigines so soon as the Tamar should arrive. These poor wretches have suffered a severe affliction and have borne it with a patience and fortitude scarcely to be believed. Whilst the malady was at its height and raging with the greatest virulence, whilst their friends and relatives were dying daily beside them, they scarcely ever murmured or complained, neither could the healthy be persuaded to leave the sick to the care of the whites, but insisted on staying with them. The wives were most assiduous in their attention upon the husbands, so likewise the husbands upon their wives. It has grieved me to see the terrible affliction to which they were subjected. Frequently the husband and wife has suffered at the same time. NAY.DIP was a great sufferer. The demise of this woman made thirteen deaths besides the infant and the woman at Sorell River. Of the sixteen persons comprising the Point Hibbs and Macquarie Harbour aborigines brought to the settlement there was five deaths, viz. Three men and two women. Of the eleven persons comprising the Pieman River tribe nine died, viz. Four men, four women and one boy about twelve years of age, among whom was WYNE the celebrated chieftain. The only survivors of the latter tribe are TED.DE.HE.BUR.ER and MOY.HE.NUNG, two daughters of the chieftain WYNE. 2033 Far from being remorseful for the aggravated deaths he had imposed on his captured detainees, Robinson seems curiously detached, more concerned with preventing their escape, more interested in blaming anyone but himself and the Government’s ethnic cleansing policies, the forced removal of Aboriginals from their land and relocating them to detention on Flinder’s Island where the high death rate continued. Arthur paid Robinson an agreed amount for clearing the country of Aboriginals in his ‘friendly mission’, surely an oxymoron. Robinson should not have been surprised by the deaths. Wherever Robinson travelled on his ‘friendly mission’ around Tasmania, Aboriginal deaths followed, beginning at Bruny Island, and continuing to Wybalenna. 978 What is more troubling: Aboriginals took up Robinson’s offer of promised sanctuary (a ruse de guerre as Robinson called it) because they feared the settler and Government violence more than detention, although Robinson was careful to call it ‘protection’. But in the end, the Palawa were merely trading one form of death for another. In the end stage of brutal conquest, the British had imposed disease as a form of Lemkinian genocide. Britain preferred to watch Aboriginals die in detention than give them their freedom. If they had given the Palawa their own land, perhaps in the northeast, the scale of genocide would have been less. After the remaining Palawa surrendered as a free people, having been made false promises, Arthur did not see the need, and nor did the settlers. Nor, in the end, did the British Government. Figure 267 John Glover: Portraits of Aborigines: Calammanea, Maccame, Wanwee, Telliacbuya, Oredia, Kikadapaula, Umarah, Nanalagura, Ludawiddia (1832) What proportion of a given population or targeted group has to die through the intentional acts of another party, in order for it to be considered genocide? In 1915, Turkey forced many of its Armenian population on a forced march towards Syria. Of a starting population of around 3 million, about 1 million died, with the death rate approximately 33%. This march has many of the aspects of Arthur’s ‘friendly mission’ except the proportional death rate was much lower for the Armenians. Some people argue that, for genocide, it is the absolute number killed that is important, and that the absolute number must be very large. If more than 60% of remaining Aboriginals died because of Arthur’s ‘friendly mission’ between 1829 and 1834 (eventually concluding with another cycle of deaths at Wybalenna and Oyster Cove), many would say ‘this is not genocide, because only a few hundred died’. But those few hundred represented the last of their tribes, making their deaths absolute. Therefore, Robinson oversaw the genocidal destruction of most 979 of the remaining Palawa, an ethnic cleansing project that was commissioned and funded by Arthur and the British Government. Others will vehemently claim that if someone dies from disease, no one is to blame. But if victims in a concentration camp die from typhus, they die from their imposed conditions, not from any ‘act of God’. Although the deaths, the killings, may be indirect, they are legally part of an intentionally imposed process. Therefore, if genocidal agency is involved, if the victim group was intentionally targeted, paragraph 2 (a) of the Lemkinian Genocide Convention will apply. For the Palawa, the proportional effect of the British Government’s genocidal policies was far greater than the Armenian genocide. The ‘friendly mission’ was the penultimate stage of a British genocidal extermination process in which Aboriginals were coerced into island detention at Wybalenna, where the percentage death rate from the poor conditions exceeded those of any WWII concentration camp. The final, irrevocable, heartless British step was to cynically dump the few survivors into a disused penal settlement at Oyster Cove where the rundown wooden buildings, earthen floors, and miserable, dank environment made Wybalenna a holiday resort in comparison. Ryan does provide us with an exhaustively compiled European death count at the hands of Aboriginals between 1800 and 1835. Her figure is one hundred and eighty-three.2034 But she does not provide a similar death count for Aborigines at the hands of Europeans. For this, we must turn to her later document, Tasmanian Aborigines, where she estimates the number of Aborigines killed in the Black War in the settled districts between 1823 and 1834 as eight hundred and seventy-eight, or over 73% of Ryan’s estimated total population of around 1,200 in 1826. 2035 We can fuss over these figures interminably, but if we step back, the more important question to ask is: If the original pre-contact population was between 5,000 and 10,000 (say),2036 and if we accept Ryan’s assertion that most of the Aboriginal deaths at the hands of the British occurred from about 1826, then we must conclude that the total Aboriginal death count, using Ryan’s arguments, must be close to around 900. So we can project a total homicidal death count between 1818 and 1833 of something just over 900. This leaves 80% to 90% of Palawa deaths for which we cannot account. What happened to them? Ryan provides no answer. Of course, we do know what caused the population decline from 1833. It was primarily disease, avoidable disease, disease caused by forcible detention, disease like pneumonia, disease that occurred in plain sight of the British tormenters, of Robinson, of Arthur, of the various commandants of Wybalenna, of a disinterested Governor Denison when he became responsible for their final removal to a damp, vermin-ridden ex-convict prison at Oyster Cove in 1847 where conditions were even worse than those at Wybalenna. From 1833, the Palawa died like flies as a proportion of their rapidly diminishing numbers. We know the symptomatic reasons because the deaths were documented. We also know the probable causes: Aboriginal overcrowding in places of detention; poor psychological health; unsanitary conditions; poor food; inadequate clothing; unsatisfactory medical treatment. No 980 effective action was taken to prevent the deaths, although the symptomatic causes were dutifully recorded in irregular autopsies.2037 For Arthur, it was ‘job well done’ as he received the gratitude of the settlers and the British Government. What did it matter to Britain if the Aboriginals were disappearing, dying. At least they were dying out of sight, under firmly managed detention, without any rights to their ancestral lands. Palawa Depopulation statistics caused overwhelmingly by disease: 1829 – 1876 Most Palawa deaths in this period were caused by acute respiratory disease, often from the complications of influenza and the appalling living conditions imposed on the detainees. Can we also argue they died of broken hearts? How many Palawa died, and where, and how? The medical records are incomplete. We know that, by the time of Robinson’s ‘friendly mission’, most of the tribes had almost no members remaining. For example, the Bruny Island tribe had one surviving individual who was removed to Wybalenna. We also know, from Robinsons journal, that the early ‘settlement’ at Bruny island saw many deaths. Ryan estimates that this group originally had 500 members, based upon Jones. Was pulmonary tuberculosis a factor? Medical diagnostic terminology No cause given poor record keeping, high probability of ARD Acute Respiratory Disorder (ARD) includes influenza, pneumonia, and all complications arising 21st century Anasurea heart failure, pulmonary (lung) oedema, excess of watery fluid in the organs, complications of tuberculosis 19th century Apoplexy Stroke, typically cerebral 19th century Contusia Some form of brain degeneration 19th century Phthisis Pulmonary tuberculosis (often combined with miliary) 19th century Pyelonephritis Kidney infection for which the bacterium Escherichia coli is often the cause, from ingesting contaminated food. Figure 268 Medical terminology used in causes of Palawa detainee death (1829 - 1876) 981 Other ‘ loathsone disease’ , haemorrhage, bone disease, heart disease, misadventure, apoplexy, pyelonephritis, misdaventure Brain Skin? Contusia, apoplexy, senility Number 131 20 3 4 12 14 10 22038 of deaths Figure 269 Records of deaths in detention, and their causes (1829 - 1876)2039 Erisapelis Venereal Syphilis Pulmonic affection, inflammation, catarrh, pleurisy, asthma, hydrothorax Influenza Tuberculosis, Anasurea, Phthisis Fever Pneumonia No cause given Bowel Lung (Acute respiratory disorder) ARD? Cause of death Peritonitis, Visceral inflammation, constipation, dysentery, ascites We now tabulate the number of Palawa deaths by disease category. 2 8 9 The medical diagnoses generally follow the pattern of disease categorisation that passed for medical knowledge at the time. For example: Henry Marshall (1838), Statistical Report on the Sickness, Mortality and Invaliding Among the Troops in the West Indies breaks down disease into these groups: Lungs; liver; stomach and bowels; brain; dropsy; rheumatism; venereal; abscesses and ulcers; wounds and injuries; eyes; skin; all other. Of these, we find that the Palawa detainees fell primarily into the disease categories of ‘lung’, with some ‘brain’ (although this may have been misdiagnosed), and a few ‘stomach and bowels’. Until 1835, causes of death were rarely recorded, but ARD appears to be the common cause. 982 Finally, we tabulate the number of deaths by year and the detention location. It shows a cruel process of late-stage Lemkinian genocide, satisfying Articles 2 (b) to 2 (e). Year Location Number of deaths Analysis 1829 Bruny Island > 17 Influenza/ ARD? Some Port Davey people were among the victims. It raises the question: what happened to the others: ca. 500+ from southeast and southwest groups before 1829. 1830 Bruny Island 2 1831 Maria Island 1 Swan Island 1 Preservation Island 1 Gun Carriage Island 8 Wybalenna 3 Mainland Tasmania 11 Wybalenna 32 Mainland Tasmania 18 13 died while being detained by Robinson at Macquarie Harbour. These were people from the west coast, which Jones originally estimates at about 1,000 people. 1834 Wybalenna >10 To this must be added 4 – 8 adults, ‘Margaret Pearson’, and two infants. Allen reports that, of 14 deaths, 12 were due to pneumonia, one to contusion and one to scofula. 1835 Wybalenna 15 Allen reports that 11 deaths due to pneumonia, one to phthisis and two to anasurea. Orphan school 1 1832 1833 Underestimated. Plomley inconsistent Hobart 1 1836 Wybalenna 4 Mannalargenna’s wife 1837 Wybalenna 30 Two were recorded with tuberculosis, 3 with pneumonia 1838 Wybalenna 14 Four with pneumonia, 9 with tuberculosis 1839 Wybalenna >8 Two others died of ‘chronic pulmonary affection’. 1840 Wybalenna >3 An additional one adult and one child died 1841 Wybalenna 3 1842 Wybalenna 3 1843 Wybalenna 1 1844 Wybalenna >1 There were around 8 others who died when Robinson took them to Port Phillip. Two were hanged. Another two died between 1842 and 1845 983 1845 Wybalenna 2 1846 Wybalenna 1 An infant also died from ‘chest inflammation’ 1847 Wybalenna 6 Another 8 adults cannot be accounted for. There are incomplete records for many of the children. 1848 Oyster Cove 2 47 people were eventually sent to Oyster Cove. The deaths of 15 are unaccounted for, largely due to Milligan’s poor record keeping. After Robinson left in 1839, the British administration had little interest in keeping records. 1849 2 Lung problems 1850 1 1851 5 1852 2 1853 - 1854 - 1855 1 1856 - 1857 1 1858 1 1859 - 1860 4 1861 2 1863 1 1864 1 1865 - 1866 - 1867 3 1868 - 1869 1 1870 - 1871 1 1872 - 1873 - 1874 - 1875 - 1876 1 There appears to have been heavy mortality from 1851 to 1855, but few deaths are recorded. Lalla Rookh, ARD Figure 270 Palawa detention death statistics: 1829 – 1876 2040 984 Cumulative Palawa Deaths from disease and other afflictions: 1829 – 1976 Cumulative mortality: 1829 - 1876 300 250 y = 61.487ln(x) + 0.5067 R² = 0.9271 200 150 100 50 1829 1831 1833 1835 1837 1839 1841 1843 1845 1847 1849 1851 1853 1855 1857 1859 1861 1863 1865 1867 1869 1871 1873 1875 0 Figure 271 Palawa mortality: 1829 – 1876 From 1829, Robinson began capturing the surviving Palawa for Arthur’s ‘final solution’, to force them into detention on Flinders Island. They were to remain on the island until 1846, when a petition to Queen Victoria shamed the British Government into allowing the few remaining individuals (around 47 although poor record keeping mean the numbers don’t reconcile with subsequent deaths) to be transported to a dank unused convict camp at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart, while remaining in loose custody. Trucanini was the last to die, in 1876. From 1829 to 1876, almost all the deaths were due to disease. A few were from old age. Who can say that despair was not also involved, that they lost the will to live? The cumulative death toll is self-explanatory. There is a logarithmic decline. The mortality between 1829 and 1846 is particularly marked, suggesting that the proportional Wybalenna death rate continued its genocidal trajectory. This time, avoidable disease was the primary categorial agency, not murder or the effects of sexual predation and bodily harm as was the case up to 1831 or so. 985 Common Introduced Aboriginal Diseases in Tasmania Description/ symptoms Lethality Likely Incidence in Tasmanian Detainees Bronchitis Acute bronchitis, like any upper airway inflammatory process, can increase a person's likelihood of developing pneumonia. If pneumonia develops, so does the possibility of death. High The initial symptoms of diphtheria are flu-like but worsen to include fever, swallowing problems, hoarseness, enlarged lymph nodes, coughing and shortness of breath; some patients may have skin involvement, producing skin ulcers. Can be fatal Unknown Bronchitis is an inflammation of the air passages between the nose and the lungs, including the windpipe or trachea and the larger air tubes of the lung that bring air in from the trachea (bronchi). Bronchitis can either be of brief duration (acute) or have a long course (chronic). Acute bronchitis is usually caused by a viral infection, but can also be caused by a bacterial infection and can heal without complications. Chronic bronchitis is a sign of serious lung disease that may be slowed but cannot be cured. Diphtheria Corynebacterium diphtheria bacterium an acute and highly contagious bacterial disease causing inflammation of the mucous membranes, formation of a false membrane in the throat which hinders breathing and swallowing, and potentially fatal heart and nerve damage by a bacterial toxin in the blood. Complications of diphtheria include heart-rhythm problems, sepsis, organ damage, and breathing problems that can be severe enough to cause death. 986 Dysentery Dysentery is defined as diarrhoea in which there is blood, pus, and mucous, usually accompanied by abdominal pain. Bacillary infections include Shigella, Campylobacter, E. coli, and Salmonella species of bacteria. The main symptom of dysentery is frequent near-liquid diarrhoea flecked with blood, mucus, or pus. Other symptoms include: • • • • • • • • • • • • There are two main types of dysentery. • amoebic dysentery or intestinal amoebiasis, is caused by a singlecelled, microscopic parasite living in the large bowel. • bacillary dysentery, is caused by invasive bacteria. Both kinds of dysentery occur mostly in hot countries. Poor hygiene and sanitation increase the risk of dysentery by spreading the parasite or bacteria that cause it through food or water contaminated from infected human faeces. Influenza Influenza virus The disease is caused by certain strains of the influenza virus. sudden onset of high fever and chills abdominal pain cramps and bloating flatulence (passing gas) urgency to pass stool feeling of incomplete emptying loss of appetite weight loss headache fatigue vomiting dehydration When the virus is inhaled, it attacks cells in the upper respiratory tract, causi ng typical flu symptoms - fatigue, fever and chills, a hacking cough, and body aches. Influenza victims are also susceptible to potentially lifethreatening secondary infections. Complications from bacillary dysentery include delirium, convulsions, and coma. A very severe infection like this can be fatal within 24 hours. However, the vast majority of infections are self-limited and resolve spontaneously without treatment, provided the victim is in reasonably good health. Common Can be highly lethal, especially if there are secondary complications such as pneumonia. Very high Can be fatal, especially in children. Unknown Highly infectious respiratory disease. Measles Rubeola virus Highly infectious Measles is spread when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or shares food or drinks. The measles virus can travel • • • • • Fever. Dry cough. Runny nose. Sore throat. Inflamed eyes (conjunctivitis) 987 through the air. This means that you can get measles if you are near someone who has the virus even if that person doesn't cough or sneeze directly on you. • Tiny white spots with bluish-white centres on a red background found inside the mouth on the inner lining of the cheek — also called Koplik's spots. Pneumonia • • • • • • Fever, sweating and shaking chills. Cough, which may produce phlegm. Chest pain when you breathe or cough. Shortness of breath. Fatigue. Nausea, vomiting or diarrhoea. Mycoplasma pneumonia bacterium Many viral infections such as influenza can lead to pneumonia. Can be infectious (walking pneumonia spread by saliva droplets) Smallpox Variola virus An acute contagious febrile disease of humans that is caused by a poxvirus of the genus Orthopoxvirus (species Variola virus), Highly contagious without immunisation After infection, symptoms may take from seven to 17 days to appear for major types of smallpox. The virus begins growing in the bloodstream 72-96 hours after infection, but no obvious symptoms appear immediately (see multimedia files below for clinical presentations of smallpox infections). • People who have contracted smallpox initially develop such symptoms as fever, body aches, headache, chills, and, particularly, backache. Over half of people with smallpox experience chills and vomiting. Some become confused. • A rash appears 48-72 hours after the initial symptoms and turns into virus-filled sores, which later scab over. The process can take up to two weeks. • Just after the rash appears, the virus is highly contagious as it moves into the mucous membranes. The body sheds the cells, and virus particles are released, coughed, or sneezed into the environment. The infected person can be infectious for up to three weeks (until the scabs fall off the rash). Live virus can be present in the scabs. After the scabs or crusts fall off (in two to four weeks), a depression or light-skinned scar remains. • Early in the course of the disease, the rash and pus-filled sores can easily be mistaken for chickenpox. Lesions occur first in the mouth and spread to the face, then to the forearms and hands, and finally to Complications of viral pneumonia can be fatal if not properly treated (antibiotics). High, a frequent complication of influenza Can be highly lethal Not present 988 the lower limbs and trunk. In contrast, rash from chickenpox progresses from the arms and legs to the trunk and rarely forms in the armpits, palms, soles, and elbow areas. Tuberculosis – miliary Mycobacterium tuberculosis contagious Tuberculosis – pulmonary Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium. A tuberculosis infection that has spread through the lymphatic system and bloodstream to other parts of the body than the lungs. Lethal Unknown A contagious disease that can affect almost any part of the body but is mainly an infection of the lungs Potentially fatal Unknown • • • • Can be fatal across large populations if not treated properly (antibiotics) Possible Not usually fatal. High. Knowingly transmitted. In tuberculosis meningitis, the meninges surrounding the brain and spinal cord are infected. These are the two most rapidly lethal forms of the disease. Aboriginals forced to live in cold, damp establishments with sedentary lifestyles and poor nutrition. contagious Typhus- endemic, epidemic Rickettsia typhi bacteria causes endemic or murine typhus. Bacterial disease spread by lice or fleas. It is usually seen in areas where hygiene is poor and the temperature is cold. Endemic typhus is sometimes called "jail fever." Venereal disease – gonorrhea Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacterium A sexually transmitted disease that can cause male and female infertility • • • • • • • • Abdominal pain Backache Dull red rash that begins on the middle of the body and spreads Fever (can be extremely high 105°F to 106°F, 40.6°C to 41.1°C) that may last up to 2 weeks Hacking, dry cough Headache Joint and muscle pain Nausea Vomiting Burning and pain while urinating Need to urinate urgently or more often Sore throat (gonococcal pharyngitis) If not properly treated (with antibiotics) the infection can make its way into the bloodstream and cause a serious (and potentially fatal) complication called 989 Disseminated Gonococcal Infection (DGI). Untreated gonorrhoea can spread into the uterus and fallopian tubes, causing pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), which may result in scarring of the tubes, greater risk of pregnancy complications and infertility. PID is a serious infection that requires immediate treatment, something not possible for 19th century Aboriginal women.. Venereal disease – syphilis Symptoms of primary syphilis are: A sexually transmitted disease caused by Treponema pallidum, a microscopic organism called a spirochete • Small, painless open sore or ulcer (called a chancre) on the genitals, mouth, skin, or rectum that heals by itself in 3 to 6 weeks • Enlarged lymph nodes in the area of the sore • The bacteria continue to grow in the body, but there are few symptoms until the second stage. Secondary syphilis symptoms may include: • Skin rash, usually on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet • Sores called mucous patches in or around the mouth, vagina, or penis • Moist, warty patches (called condylomata lata) in the genitals or skin folds • Fever • General ill feeling • Loss of appetite • Muscle aches • Joint pain • Swollen lymph nodes Can be fatal if not properly treated. May lead to chronic heart or lung disease. Common. Knowingly transmitted. 990 • Vision changes • Hair loss Symptoms of tertiary syphilis depend on which organs have been affected. They vary widely and can be difficult to diagnose. Symptoms include: • • • Damage to the heart, causing aneurysms or valve disease Central nervous system disorders (neurosyphilis) Tumours of skin, bones, or liver Whooping cough • Can be fatal in small children Unknown Pertussis bacterium • Whooping cough usually begins like a cold with a blocked or runny nose, tiredness, mild fever and a cough. The cough gets worse and severe bouts of uncontrollable coughing can develop. Some newborns may not cough at all but they can stop breathing and turn blue. • • Although rarely fatal, yaws can lead to chronic disfigurement and disability. It may confer some immunity to venereal syphilis. Common. a highly contagious respiratory disease caused by bacteria and is spread by coughing and sneezing or contact with secretions Yaws Treponema pallidum pertenue bacterium The disease occurs mainly in poor communities in warm, humid, tropical areas. It is a bacterial disease caused by Treponema pertenue, a subspecies of Treponema pallidum that causes venereal syphilis. However, yaws is a non-venereal infection. • • • Yaws is a chronic, relapsing infectious illness. Yaws first affects the skin and later possibly the bones and joints as well. Transmission is by skin-to-skin contact. The spirochete cannot penetrate normal skin but can enter through a scrape or cut in the skin. A single skin lesion develops at the point of entry of the bacterium after 2-4 weeks. If left untreated, multiple lesions appear all over the body. Overcrowding, poor personal hygiene and poor sanitation facilitate the spread of the disease. Figure 272 British introduced diseases in Tasmania2041 991 At Wybalenna, tuberculosis was a significant cause of Palawa mortality. Plomley provides a list of autopsies involving tuberculosis between 1837 and 1838,2042 and these have been tabulated by Dowling. Date Sex Age Symptoms Diagnosis2043 20- 8-37 Female Adult Adhesion of lungs to surrounding membrane and ribs; extensive diffusion of tubercles externally and internally of both lungs; liver enlarged with small caseous foci; possible meningeal involvement. Miliary tuberculosis 30-12-37 Male Adult Adhesion of lungs to surrounding membrane; both lungs indurated; diffusion of tubercles on external and internal surface of lungs; extensive dissemination of tubercles to liver and intestines. Miliary tuberculosis 12-5-38 Male Adult Extensive adhesion of lungs to surrounding membrane and ribs; both lungs indurated and dispersed with small tubercles; large purulent abscess on right lung; small intestines thickly coated with tubercles extending into peritoneum. Miliary tuberculosis with possible cavitation of right lung. 2-6-38 Female Adult Right lung extensively adhered to pleura; cavity of thorax containing effusion of colourless serum. Pulmonary tuberculosis 21-6-38 Female 2 Adhesions of lungs; both lungs hepatised and interspersed externally and internally with small tubercles; left lung with three caseous cavitations; liver and spleen indurated and interspersed with tubercles; abscessing of pancreas. Miliary tuberculosis; cavitating tuberculosis 2-7-38 Female 7 Adhesion of lungs to surrounding tissue; 2 to 3 small suppurated lesions on lungs; liver enlarged with extensive miliary involvement; spleen and pancreas indurated, abscessed and covered with small tubercles; intestines inflamed and interspersed with tubercles. Miliary tuberculosis 6-8-38 Male Adult Extensive hepatisation of lungs with a number of caseated cysts. Cavitating tuberculosis 3-9-98 Male 3 Extensive lung adhesion to surrounding tissue; both lungs hepatised and dispersed with tubercles; left lung abscessed; spleen thickly dotted with tubercles; liver enlarged. Miliary tuberculosis 29-10-38 . Female 60 Adhesion of lungs to ribs, sternum, and surrounding soft tissue; both lungs extensively hepatised with tubercles externally and internally; large purulent cysts on both lungs; liver and spleen extensively disseminated with tubercles; cause of death given as phthisis.2044 Miliary tuberculosis, Cavitating tuberculosis of lungs 992 9-11-38 Female Adult Chronic adhesion of lungs to surrounding bone and soft tissue; right lung tuberculous; left lung severely necrotised and purulent; cause of death given as phthisis. Pulmonary tuberculosis. 17-12-38 Female Adult Adhesion of lungs to surrounding tissue; both lungs indurated and covered externally and internally with small tubercles; internal tubercles larger; adhesion of liver, external tubercles; spleen enlarged and tuberculated externally and internally; extensive dissemination of tubercles along intestinal canal; cause of death given as phthisis. Miliary tuberculosis Figure 273 Summary autopsy reports involving tuberculosis at Wybalenna: 1837 - 18382045 The conditions at Wybalenna were bad in 1837 – 1838, but they were to get worse. In 1846, several residents complained to Queen Victoria about their treatment by the commandant, Dr Jeanneret: Dr. Jeanneret kept plenty of pigs in our village which used to run into our houses and eat up our bread from the fires and take away out flour bags in their mouths also to break into our gardens and destroy our potatoes and cabbage. Our houses were let fall down and they were never cleaned but were covered with vermin and not white-washed. We were often without clothes except a very little one and Dr Jeanneret did not care to mind us when we were sick until we were very bad. Eleven of us died when he was here. He put many of us into jail for talking to him because we would not be his slaves. He kept from us our rations when he pleased and sometimes gave us bad rations of tea and tobacco.2046 993 Wybalenna genocidal mortality statistics redux Year 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 1843 1844 1845 1846 TOTAL Total no. of deaths 31 9 14 4 29 14 8 3 3 3 1 1 2 1 127 Pneumonia Cause of death Influenza Other Other ARD causes 11 3 1 8 10 3 4 No cause recorded 31 9 3 18 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 18 8 1 7 30 Influenza Other ARD 8 1 1 Pneumonia Other causes No cause recorded 64 Figure 274 Total recorded deaths from Acute Respiratory Disease (ARD) and other causes at Wybalenna: 1833 – 18462047 994 Tasmanian cumulative deaths in detention: 1829 - 1876 250 200 150 100 50 1829 1831 1833 1835 1837 1839 1841 1843 1845 1847 1849 1851 1853 1855 1857 1859 1861 1863 1865 1867 1869 1871 1873 1875 0 Figure 275 Tasmanian cumulative deaths in detention: 1829 – 1876 To re-summarize, we see the now familiar part-sigmoid curve with its melancholy trailing off as the pure blood Palawa were reduced to extinction in an end-stage Lemkinian genocidal process. The statistics are worth repeating because they are so shameful, an indictment on the British Government for which they have never admitted accountability or made reparation. Year Cumulative deaths Year Cumulative deaths Year Cumulative deaths 1829 17 1845 193 1861 221 1830 19 1846 194 1862 222 1831 32 1847 200 1863 223 1832 46 1848 202 1864 223 1833 96 1849 204 1865 223 1834 106 1850 205 1866 226 1835 123 1851 210 1867 226 1836 127 1852 212 1868 227 1837 157 1853 212 1869 227 1838 173 1854 212 1870 228 1839 181 1855 213 1871 228 1840 184 1856 213 1872 228 1841 186 1857 214 1873 228 1842 189 1858 215 1874 228 1843 190 1859 215 1875 228 1844 191 1860 219 1876 229 Figure 276 Tasmanian cumulative deaths in detention: 1829 - 18762048 995 Palawa population dynamics summarized Was the pre-contact Palawa population size stable, growing, or declining? Empirically, we know that, between 1803 and 1833, it was declining. We also know that other discrete populations around the world are increasing. So, we can hypothesize that without the British invasion, the Palawa population would probably have grown until it established economic ties with Aboriginal groups on mainland Australia who were similarly untouched by violent invasion. A parallel might be Papua New Guinea today, or Indonesia, or Fiji. We then ask the question, why? What caused the Palawa depopulation? It is difficult to say with any surety, because the original Palawa no longer exist, so there is a limited amount we can now measure. This gives apologists for Britain some wriggle room for speculation, who might (and do) propose internecine warfare or other mechanisms. We can, however, make broad observations that exclude wild speculation and untested hypotheses. If the death rate (mortality) exceeds the birth rate for an indigenous population where there is no immigration effect, the population will reduce in size. If there is evidence of substantial deaths from fighting, the number of males capable of such activity will reduce, leading to a greater preponderance of elderly males and a reduced number of children. There is no such evidence from the historical record. Let us suppose the Palawa population is exponentially reducing between 1803 and 1833. That is, dP/ dt = rP or P(t) = P0 ert (1) Let us further suppose, based upon an empirical calculation, r = - 0.1 which means that the population at time t is reducing by 10% for the year. We know that the change in population size at time t = (births + immigration) – (deaths + emigration) We know that Palawa immigration and emigration were zero and that births were reducing from before 1820 becoming negligible from the 1820s. We will say that ‘deaths’ include removal of women and children from the population by various Lemkinian agencies, including abduction, sexual predation, and the effect STDs on reproductive capacity. Therefore, we can conclude that (deaths + removals) were 10% per year, an extraordinary figure. By comparison, between 1998 and 2018, the number of deaths in Australia ranged from 375 to 275 per 100,000 people, or about 0.3% pa. (r = - 0.003, excluding births and immigration) Therefore, the Palawa (death + removal) rate r was about 30 times what we would expect. That is why it was genocidal in the accepted Lemkinian sense, the result of intentional Government policy where the harmful conditions of life for a targeted group were ignored by Britain for a sustained period, until the targeted group was effectively neutralized, that is, destroyed in whole or part according to the United Nation Convention, which is all we have as an accepted measure of this collective behavioral malignancy. However, one of the few early ethnographic observers was the Baudin scientific expedition to Tasmania in 1802. Baudin’s team saw no population demographic imbalance, instead noting a happy, confident, inquisitive population that had a healthy proportion of menstrual women, young men, and children. He did not see a population unnaturally skewed towards the elderly. He did not see any skews at all. If anything, his notes indicate that the demographics were skewed towards those under 30. 996 Therefore, we can conclude that over a relatively short period, the mortality increased across all age bands and the number of births decreased, leading to a catastrophic fall in the population. This result is consistent with sudden, violent invasion and the abduction of females. It is unusual for a population to decline for reasons other than war or disease, although it can happen. Consider the Easter Island population, which almost disappeared in about 800 hundred years, possibly due to resource loss within a geographically small area,2049 and possibly exacerbated by introduced sexual and other disease from explorers such as Cook. There is no evidence of such a resource loss phenomenon in Tasmania prior to the British arrival. Food was plentiful before the settlers began competing with Aboriginals for the available game. The Palawa lifestyle was healthy, even by our standards today. Blainey has suggested that the population was decreasing through inter-tribal warfare but there is no supporting data that warfare was a significant problem.2050 If conflict did happen, it was not on a scale to cause significant deaths, where most of the population was involved. If war caught up large sections of the Palawa, who would they fight? Half the population against the other half? Warfare usually involves violent conflict between small sub-populations. Inter-tribal tensions are mostly over women or territorial incursions. The tension is often resolved through stylized conflict ceremonies, or payback transactions that have limited scope and duration. Different Tasmanian tribes regularly passed through each other’s territory without noticeable incidents. Resource contention does not seem to have been an issue, because food was plentiful until the arrival of the British. Ochre deposits and other resources were shared. Nevertheless, we do have a precise statistical record of the population size and distribution after about 1833 and until 1847 that showed a dramatic drop in the birth rate and an increasing number of elderly people. Nearly all the deaths were due to morbidity, that is, fatal disease. This is highly unusual, but it can arise in captive populations where the standards of healthcare are low. Some historians argue that the captive Palawa population was going to die anyway, so how can their imposed circumstances be faulted. The argument is illogical and, if extended, would exonerate any deaths in (say) a concentration camp as being due to natural causes. There is nothing natural about a detention facility, as we would know today. If the Palawa population dropped by around 80% in 14 years (from say 200 plus people in 1833 to 47 people in 1847), the linear annual decline is 10% per annum. This decline is still shockingly high, 2051 around 30 times what is already considered ‘very high’ today but is still better than the estimated per decade loss in the 30 years prior. The Palawa statistical annualized population decline while in captivity at Wybalenna is calculated as follows: PProjected = POriginating (1 + x) t where P is the population, x is the annualized compound growth (or decline) rate expressed as a percentage, and t is the number of years. 997 In 1833, the approximate Wybalenna population was around 200. In 1847, it had declined to around 50. Therefore 50 = 200 (1 + x)14 or a decline of 10% per annum, which is more than 30 times the rate accepted as high today. Conversely, if the birth rate (plus immigration) exceeds the death rate by 3% per annum,2052 the population size will roughly double in 23 years. 2053 If we project that the pre-British Palawa population was growing relatively slowly, say at 0.5% per annum, the doubling size is about 140 years. 2054 You may argue, ‘but the island was too small to allow a doubling of the population or an exponential increase at all’. This is to ignore that, in a century or so, the Palawa people would have changed and, without invasion, been allowed to adapt to new techniques of food production and economic development, much like other South Pacific communities have adapted. In 2020, the Tasmanian population has grown to about 524,000, 2055 from around 10,000 British in 1824, and in the 2016 Census, 23,572 people in Tasmania identified themselves as Aboriginal, around 4.5%, which is slightly higher than the Australia wide percentage of 3.3%. 2056 Who is to say that the number of Palawa people, left undisturbed, would not have grown substantially? This is the true nature of genocide, not just recognizing the number of people killed, the roll call of massacres and morbidity, but the number who were never born through the actions of a predatory culture. There has been a tendency for some historians to focus on the extraordinary death rate of Aboriginals while they were being held as prisoners at Wybalenna and subsequently as detainees at Oyster Cove. Such reframing attempts to paint the death rate as an Act of God, disease related, and therefore not genocidal, therefore Wybalenna was not an example of late-stage genocide, therefore there is doubt about the general argument of genocide being visited on the Palawa through the British invasion. What this Wybalenna analysis shows is that the Palawa death rate in captivity is a nearly equivalent continuation of the proportional death rate in the thirty years prior. The question is: have we learned anything from the targeted destruction of the Palawa for political and economic reasons? This is a question to which we will return in this paper. The evidence is that we have not learned. Genocide has become ecocide. The Lemkinian categorial agencies to ‘destroy in whole or part’ have turned their attention to the biosphere. While Aboriginal disadvantage continues, relative to the rest of the Australian population. For colonial Australia, the Imperial genocidal process metastasized to other settlements around the continent. The colonizing lessons of Tasmania were not how to avoid genocide in the future but how to make it more efficient. Arthur’s ‘roving parties’ became flying detachments of mounted military and native police. The British process of land alienation and immigration became better administered, with improved revenue collection that 998 fueled accelerated economic development. Aboriginal dispossession became an oppressive industry, applied on a mass scale, until the process was largely complete by the early 20th century. The contemporary evidence for continuing Aboriginal disadvantage and a high death rate compared with the general Australian population suggests that we remain poorly served by indifference - or even denialism - and that late-stage Lemkinian genocide is arguably with us still. Now we call it by another name, the newspeak of ‘closing the gap’, when it should be ‘chronic failure to close the gap and address Aboriginal disadvantage’. Conclusion Far from being an ‘Act of God’, most of the Palawa deaths or secondary depopulation effects from introduced diseases and kidnapped women were preventable. They generally fall into the indictable Lemkinian category of indirect killing under paragraph 2 (a), but have overlapping impacts in paragraphs 2 (b), 2 (c) and 2 (d). The test is this: Would these Palawa deaths from introduced disease, the associated physical and mental harm, the consequential accelerated cultural and societal destruction, and the catastrophically reduced birth-rate have occurred without a British invasion? The answer is no. Therefore, we conclude that introduced diseases had a genocidal effect on the Tasmanian Aboriginal population and that this particular form of genocide was wholly avoidable if the British administration had chosen a particular course of humanitarian action that allowed the Palawa free use of some portion if Tasmania, where their lives were not constantly challenged by rampant settlers and racist British policies. Britain did not change course or its punitive detention regimen and allowed the deaths in custody to continue until the Palawa genocide was almost wholly complete. But there remain some who will doggedly argue: if Britain had not invaded, some other European power would have done so. The argument is speculative and not supported by relevant evidence. Consider the population of New Guinea. It has survived and grown since first European contact. The difference is that New Guinea was not colonized and annexed as the territory of another power, although it was a close-run thing. Queensland came desperately close to taking over New Guinea, if Britain had not belatedly intervened, having seen the human carnage caused by a succession of Queensland Governments. Even for autocratic Britain, Queensland’s bloody approach to Aboriginal ethnic cleansing was too much. So, we come back to our original position: deaths through introduced disease (morbidity) on a captive ethnic population, like deaths in a concentration camp, are genocidal in 999 character and conform to the articles of the Lemkinian UN Convention, making Britain further culpable of genocide.2057 What of the Aboriginal depopulation statistics prior to captivity? There is limited evidence, but there exists a compelling hypothesis that if we weigh the proportional genocidal effect of the various primary associative agencies, the codependent effects of introduced disease morbidity, female kidnapping and sexual predation would have been high (corresponding to Articles 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d)), followed by indiscriminate killing (Article 2 (a)). The effect of removing children from their extended families would have been traumatic (Article 2 (e)) but with a constrained depopulation consequence because the practice was systemic but not did not appear to have a significant impact on Aboriginal demography,2058 subject to further evaluation of the numbers removed (kidnapping as domestic servants) or transferred to orphan school (stolen generation and labour camps). Finally, there are the genocidal effects of mental harm, starvation, reduced disease immunity, harsh imposed conditions of life, and a reduced birthrate resulting from constant harassment by settlers and roving parties under martial law (Articles (2b), (2c), (2d)). Most of the physical depopulation (mortality, morbidity, loss of women) probably happened up to 1820. If we assume the proportional depopulation is constant, at least from 1803 to 1833, with a percentage decline of about 70% per decade from various agencies, then around 3.2% of the original population remained in 1833. We know that there were between 171 and 200 Aboriginal survivors in 1833. Britain did not keep an exact count because they were dying so rapidly. It suggests an 1803 population of between 6,100 about 7,100. If we assume an 1803 originating population of 6,000 as an upper bound, with an 1833 population of about 200, the annual linear decline is 12% per annum, about 40 times what is expected in a normal population today.2059 The figure is much worse when we consider that births were concurrently falling away (through the effects on the menstruating female population of abduction, predation, killing, constant harassment, and imposed sexual diseases). After being placed in captivity from around 1833, Palawa births became negligible. It is a genocidal result. There is nothing ‘mysterious’ about it. The ‘restraining’ hand of Britain is quite absent in this horrific demographic equation. Even if the proportional decline over successive discrete periods of time is not linear, the end result is beyond doubt because we know the final numbers. By any measure, this is a catastrophic reduction that corresponds with Lemkinian genocide. It is more poignant if we remember that the loss was entirely avoidable with a different mindset: the British Government failed to value humanitarian concerns above Imperial expansionist ideology and economic development. Therefore, the hypothesis is confirmed, that introduced disease by Britain was Lemkinian in character and motivation. 1000 The role of forced detention in Tasmanian genocide: Wybalenna If any genocidal process has distinct phases, Wybalenna was close to the last, extending from 1831 to 1846. By 1831, Arthur had almost completely defeated the Palawa and, to appease the settlers, wanted to remove them entirely from Tasmania. With the remunerated help of GA Robinson much of the remnant Aboriginal population was being swept up and held in temporary detention awaiting their final disposition. On 10th November 1831, the Aboriginal detention centre was moved from Gun Carriage Island on the southwest side of Flinder’s Island to ‘The Lagoons’ on the western side. Despite its name, The Lagoons had an inadequate supply of fresh water. In 1832, seventyfive prisoners were transferred from ‘The Lagoons’2060 further north to ‘Wybalenna’, followed in 1832 2061 by another twenty-seven who had been captured by Robinson, mainly from the West. There were an additional forty-six in 1833 2062 and twenty-three in 1834, 2063 making a total number of transferees to Wybalenna between 1832 and 1834 of about 171.2064 In the same period, thirty-nine died, the chief cause being respiratory disease. Most of the deaths were in the Western tribes, who may have had less immunity than those elsewhere who had a longer period of contact with the British. But the deaths were to go much higher. In 1837, they numbered 37. Plomley records that the Aboriginals had wished to travel with Robinson to Port Phillip away from the sickness, but he ruled out that possibility, leaving them in despair, fearful that they would all soon die from the deadly conditions: The shock of the high mortality in 1837 seems to have generated a general despondency among them, so that they were coming to wonder whether there was any future for them.2065 Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, Britain carried out the relocation of remnant Aboriginal groups to island detention, where they began to die out under the imposed conditions, a form of indirect killing. In 1833 there were about 220 detainees.2066 In 1847, there were 46. Britain is therefore culpable of genocide under the following articles: 2 (a) Killing members of the group 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group 2 (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Conciliation through detention: Aboriginals as refugees and prisoners Was Wybalenna a place of exile or a place of imprisonment? Some historians (including Henry Reynolds) argue that Wybalenna on Flinder’s Island was a place of exile, 2067 not detention, ignoring that the remaining Aboriginals were under the control of a military 1001 contingent2068 and - for many years - a cruel Government appointed commandant, Dr. Jeanneret,2069 who regarded them as prisoners with few rights. Number of arrivals Origin Cumulative incoming population 1832 75 From ‘The Lagoons’ 75 1832 27 Western region natives 102 1833 46 Western region natives 146 Deaths Annual headcount (cumulative arrivals less deaths) 32, 114 mainly from West 1834 23 Western region natives 171 7 130 37 93 1835 1836 1837 Figure 277 Wybalenna mortality statistics (1833 - 1847) Robinson certainly regarded them as prisoners. Consider this journal entry for 13th October 1835. As Robinson describes their living conditions, without adequate clothing, away from their own country, with barely any game available, it is unsurprising they succumbed to pulmonary disease. [...] Those two natives had on two short jackets without any other clothing, and were in a most miserable plight. The weather was cold and they were all on a shiver. [...] He said the natives were never in a worse state of destitution for want of clothing and which the doctor said was a fair specimen of the rest. No wonder then that the natives was tired of the place. They have just and reasonable cause to be so. The doctor said that he had been out hunting with the natives for the last fortnight round the island, that the game on Flinders is almost annihilated.. [..] Said the prisoners on the settlement were in a very insubordinate state, that Mr Nickolls had no way of punishing them. That till lately he had no constable. There was no gaol at the settlement. [..] PALLUMMUCK, one of the natives with Dr Allen, came to me on the deck of the vessel and said the island was a bad place and he wanted to go to his own country. 2070 The one thing they wanted, the one thing that Robinson had offered as an inducement for their voluntary capture, was the one thing that Robinson refused to provide, a regular visit to their homelands or if not a visit, then a place they could own, free from settler harassment. Between the 3rd and 12th April 1836, Major Ryan prepared a report for the Colonial Secretary on the state of the Wybalenna settlement. In the report, Plomley records: 1002 Ryan next dealt with the housing of the natives, now dilapidated because of unsatisfactory construction: convenient and comfortable cottages should be provided for them, ”for to induce these people to become domesticated you must provide them with the means of internal comfort; indeed the Western tribes scarcely ever enter their huts”. He also thought that the illnesses of the natives were due to their wretched housing. Ryan was very much of the opinion that the natives should be decently treated and looked after, and every effort directed toward their comfort. He came to the conclusion that they had been grossly neglected, not only by the officers on the settlement but by the Government, and saw no hope for their ultimate survival. “It is in vain to attempt that great mismanagement has occurred.”2071 Commandant From To William Darling (1810 – 1847) March 1832 Early September 1834 Henry Nickolls 24 September 1834 9 November 1835 George Robinson (1791 – 1866) 17 October 1835 May 1839 Malcolm Laing Smith (c. 1790 – 1885) 24 April 1839 July 18412072 Peter Fisher ( )2073 10 August 1841 15 June 1842 Henry Jeanneret (1802 – 1886)2074 15 June 1842 21 November 1843 Joseph Milligan (1807 - 1884) 5 December 1843 Henry Jeanneret December 1845 Joseph Milligan2077 1847 2075 2 December 1845 April 18472076 1855 Figure 278 Wybalenna Commandants 1832 - 18472078 1003 Figure 279 JS Prout, Residences of the Aborigines, Flinder's Island, 1946 (ALMFA, SLT) 2079 The Palawa shared the ‘settlement’ with a number of convicts.2080 A succession of commandants watched the Aboriginals beginning to die from preventable diseases and did little to improve their conditions. Nor did the Tasmanian Government, of whom the Chief Justice firmly believed that the Aboriginals were being imprisoned as part of their ‘conciliation’ by Arthur and Robinson. The Executive Council Minutes for 23rd February 1831 reads, in part: The Colonial Secretary and Lieutenant-Colonel Logan2081 were also of opinion that it would be advisable for Mr. Robinson to renew his mission to the Native tribes, and that other persons of respectability, and properly qualified for the undertaking, should be employed in the same manner, with a view to conciliate others of the hostile Natives, and try to induce them to go voluntarily to the establishment in the Straits, and place themselves there under the protection and care of the Government. The Chief Justice2082 concurred with the other Members of the Council in advising the removal of the Natives from Swan Island to Gun-Carriage or any other of the adjacent islands which may be found adapted for their reception, and he advised the removal thither of such other of the Natives as may hereafter be captured during any hostile incursion made by them, and that they should be detained there until some satisfactory negotiation could be concluded with the tribes to which they belong; but he could not recommend the adoption of measures tending to induce the Natives, in tribes, to consent to expatriation and imprisonment, until the 1004 absolute necessity of such measures was clearly manifested; for, notwithstanding Mr. Robinson’s opinion to the contrary, that, however carefully these people might be supplied with food, they would soon begin to pine away when they found their situation one of hopeless imprisonment, within bounds so narrow as necessary to deprive them of those habits and customs which are the charms of their savage life; he meant their known love of change of place, their periodical distant migrations, their expeditions in search of game, and that unbounded liberty of which they have hitherto been in the enjoyment. Until Mr. Robinson had gone upon his mission, scarcely any hope had been entertained of opening an amicable intercourse with these people, but Mr. Robinson’s success justified a hope that was more attainable, and before his Honour could concur in the advice of the rest of the Council, he wished it to be ascertained whether some treaty could not be made with these people, by which their chiefs should engage for their tribes not to pass certain lines of demarcation which might be agreed upon, and that it should be proposed to them to allow an European agent to reside with them or accompany each tribe. He thought such agents would most materially contribute to maintain any amicable engagement of this sort which might be concluded. Up to the present moment, when aggressions had been made upon the Natives, they have not known to whom to complain, nor, had they known, could their evidence have been used to bring the offenders to justice: such agents would serve the double purpose of protecting the Natives on the one hand, and of checking any disposition towards hostility on their part on the other; and they would be constantly and usefully employed in endeavouring to reclaim the Natives from their savage state.2083 1005 Figure 280 Flinders Island and the Furneaux Group2084 1006 Figure 281 Location of Wybalenna detention centre on Flinders Island2085 Pedder correctly identified the island detention of Aboriginals as imprisonment, not exile. He was also probably the first to raise the possibility of a treaty. He was overruled at the time by Arthur. There is no recorded evidence that the Palawa agreed to permanent detention at Wybalenna, or that they were ever asked. Why would they agree to such an onerous condition? To secure protection? 1007 Pedder had suggested that they should be allowed to remain in their own country, accompanied by a white ‘protector’, but Robinson argued against the proposal. There does appear to be partial evidence that Robinson agreed in 1838, after they had been removed to Flinder’s Island, that could visit their homelands each summer. ‘It was guaranteed by me on behalf of the government that [...] as far as practicable they were in the summer months under proper protection to occasionally visit their native districts.’ 2086 It was another empty promise. It is not clear if Robinson’s admission refers to the period before they were incarcerated or after. If before, it suggests the possibility that Aboriginals had been promised domicile in some part of mainland Tasmania, from which they would be allowed annual visits to their own territory. Whatever was promised, it seems that the inducements were lies intended to secure their cooperation in removal to some unstated destination. After the Palawa were removed to Wybalenna, Arthur wrote in 1835 that ‘it was a great oversight that a treaty was not, at that time, made with the natives and such compensation given to the chiefs as they would have deemed a fair equivalent for what they surrendered.’2087 The comment seems intended more for his place in history, to protect his questionable legacy. We note that Arthur could have put the treaty into effect at the time he wrote to Spring-Rice, but chose not to, as did Britain. It must therefore be seen as another empty platitude. Wybalenna: An extermination camp? Under the oppressive cloud of sickness and death, morality began to suffer; men and women were exchanging spouses and the military and convicts were regularly cohabiting with the female Aboriginal prisoners. Such behavior was unusual in Aboriginal populations that were following their natural traditions and customs, where family units were relatively stable. Therefore, the breakdown of Wybalenna Aboriginal society can be laid at the conditions imposed upon them under forced detention where despair was prevalent. 2088 Reynolds argues that there is no evidence Wybalenna was a death camp: Many writers have suggested that Flinders Island was a particularly unhealthy environment, but one of the medical officers who worked there judged it far more salubrious than mainland Tasmania – and so it proved for the convicts, despite their hard regimen of work and discipline. Between September 1833 and May 1837 only one of the seventy convicts died of disease. In the same period forty Aborigines – men, women and children – succumbed.2089 Reynolds concludes ‘the high death rate was due to factors largely beyond the control or understanding of the European staff.’ Reynolds does not name his medical source, but it was not the observation of Austin, who replaced Allen as medical officer. Austin noted the incidence of scurvy, caused by the lack of fresh food and a predominantly salted meat diet, the despondency, and the high rate of respiratory ailments caused by the damp, cold, unhygienic conditions. Reynolds goes further, invoking second-hand (hearsay) sources for the death rate, when he writes: 1008 It seems very likely that the mortality rate on Flinders Island was merely a continuation of a catastrophic pattern of death which had begun even before the first permanent settlements in 1803 and 1804. Robert Clark, teacher and catechist at Wybalenna for almost ten years, told the historian Bonwick that the Aborigines had told him that they were originally ‘more numerous than the white people were aware of’ but that ‘their numbers were very much thinned by a sudden attack of disease which was general among the entire population previous to the arrival of the English, entire tribes having been swept off’.2090 This uncorroborated source is inadmissible in any evidentiary legal system and continues the ‘mysterious agency’ theory that was common among the colonial settlers to explain the rapid Aboriginal disappearance, given further unscientific assurance by Charles Darwin about their relative genetic inferiority making them less fit to survive before an influx of the superior British colonists. Bonwick reappraised The actual Bonwick text from which Reynolds plucks this quote is more revealing, as it includes what passes for Aboriginal demography in Arthur’s Tasmania with all its myth assertions, hearsay, and speculation. What we do know: the Palawa were vigorous, healthy, and well-nourished before the British invasion, and unhealthy, dispirited and traumatized after; and all Arthur’s Christianizing dishonest hypocrisy will not change the intentional destruction of their society: The Number of the Tasmanians was never easy to ascertain. Some good authorities placed it at 7,000 once, though Mr Melville, in his Almanack, thought it was as high as 20,000 at our arrival in the island. Mr G. A. Robinson thought in 1832 there were but 700 alive. An old man told me that he saw 300 in one mob near the Derwent in 1820; another saw 200 at once in 1819 on Mr Archer’s run; 500 have been known to assemble at a grand hunt; Robert Jones saw 200 in 1819; and another speaks of 160 at Birch’s Bay in 1825. A party of 300 tried to cut off some seamen watering at Brown’s River, in 1806. A writer in 1815 estimates the native population then at 7,000. In 1818, at Oyster Bay, 500 were seen. In October 1829 there assembled 300 near Ellenthorpe Hall, and 300 at the Tamar river. Mr Sams, Under-Sheriff, informed me he had seen 300 together. Mr Curr, in 1830, spoke of 400. Old Dutton told me he saw 400 in Governor Davey’s time. In 1831 a roving party described “a very great number of native huts”, deserted near the site of the future township of Marlborough.2091 An approximate census of six tribes, in 1830, gave a total of 450. Jorgen Jorgenson once said that the number “may, without exaggeration, be quoted from 2,000 to 3,000 souls.” Mr Hugh Hull, the Clerk of the Tasmanian Council, to whom I am under much obligation for his courtesy when searching the records of the colony, has made out the following Table of Numbers, commencing in 1824, though he estimates there were 1009 once 7,000. Old settlers have not much belief in his figures as to early times, though public records gave him statistics for later years. His numbers by no means accord with the reports of Mr Robinson, Mr Batman, and other Leaders of Parties, any more than with the word of old country settlers. Year Numbers Year Numbers Year Numbers 1824 340 1838 82 1852 1825 320 1839 68 1853 1826 320 1840 58 1854 16 1827 300 1841 49 1855 15 1828 280 1842 51 1856 1829 250 1843 1857 15 1830 225 1844 1858 14 1831 190 1845 1859 14 1832 176 1846 1860 11 (4m, 7f) 1833 122 1847 43 1861 8 1834 111 1848 38 1862 1835 111 1849 1863 6 1836 116 1850 1864 6 1837 97 1851 1865 4 (1m, 4f) Figure 282 Hull's Palawa population numbers: 1824 – 1865 Their numbers were diminished by intestine wars2092 even at the time of the Black War. When Geary took two males and one female near C. Grim, they declared that all the rest of their tribe had been destroyed one evening, when camping at their fires, by the celebrated Amazon2093 who had united a strong force out of fragmentary tribes. Mr Robert Clark, in a letter to me, said: “I have gleaned from some of the Aborigines, now in their graves, that they were more numerous than the White people are aware of, but their numbers were very much thinned by a sudden attack of disease which was general among the entire population previous to the arrival of the English, entire tribes of the Natives having been swept off in the course of one or two days’ illness.”2094 This information is third hand and cannot be relied upon. Clark did not tell Bonwick his Aboriginal source. A likely cause of death, if it occurred, was influenza, but there were no known epidemics in the five-to-ten-year period before 1803. It is possible that sealers were visiting the area ‘previous to the arrival of the English’ whom Bonwick probably means the first British invasion force in 1803, but many sealers were also British. There is some evidence that sealers were visiting the east coast of Tasmania from 1798 or so, with limited corroboration from some available sources that they were active in the area, although we can assume they were because that is where the seals were. Influenza 1010 spreads by physical contact, usually by inhaling infected droplets, and sealer contact with local Aboriginal groups was likely. Therefore, the immediate effect of an introduced calamitous viral infection would be localized within an area, say the north east coast, or some other area that had been visited by early explorers prior to 1803, and would not have suddenly involved ‘the entire population’ as claimed without significant Aboriginal movement across the island within a short time, leaving physical evidence of widespread deaths. Finally, we conclude it is unlikely that Aboriginals would have died ‘in the course of one- or two-days’ illness’; it runs contrary to the evidence from later deaths that were medically supervised by the British where viral mortality was almost always prolonged. Therefore, we must regard this report as unconfirmed and lacking in credibility, based upon what we know of disease outbreaks at the time and their morbidity and mortality. If the disease outbreak happened, we know that there is a strong likelihood it was introduced by the British; there is no reliable evidence that pandemic disease outbreaks ‘naturally’ occurred without British contact. We also know that smallpox did not occur in Tasmania but there is evidence of pulmonary disorders that were usually induced by the complications of influenza. If a disease outbreak occurred in the Break-o-Day Plains, why was it localized to this area? There is no evidence that Aboriginal ‘numbers were very much thinned’ across a much wider area. The discovery of a large collection of skulls and skeletons at the Break-o’-Day Plains many years ago attests to the fact of their being numerous formerly. 2095 The Break O'Day Plains is a coastal locality on the Lightwood Rivulet in northeast Tasmania, about 4 kms south east of St Marys and south of St Helens. There is no other record confirming the discovery of bones at this location. The existence of bones does not imply that the Aboriginal population in the area was more ‘numerous formerly’. Nor can we generalize from this unsubstantiated comment that the Palawa were more numerous across the entire island rather than in this particular area of the east coast. Nor does the existence of bones ipso facto suggest a sudden disease outbreak; the bones were not examined for signs of physical injury, such as caused by a massacre rather than disease. If the bones existed, no one, not Clark or anyone else, bothered to check the locality. Bones remain for a long period, so they would have remained in evidence thirty years and more after the event. If a massacre, the British often burned the evidence but sometimes left the bodies where they lay. If the massacre was comprehensive, there would have been no local Palawa to bury their companions in the traditional manner. But we know that the Oyster Bay tribe in this area remained relatively numerous into the 1820s and would have mourned and remembered their companions. 1011 We don’t know if the ‘bones’, if confirmed, were lying above ground or were buried and then exposed by the weather. In general, the Palawa cremated their dead or buried them about one metre below ground, depending on the soil.2096 Some historians, Reynolds included, have conflated this speculative and unverified comment passed down through Bonwick and, using excised quotes without the context, illogically concluded, along with Bonwick, that the Palawa were ‘more numerous than the White people are aware of’ and that ‘their numbers were very much thinned by a sudden attack of disease which was general among the entire population previous to the arrival of the English’. It is a self-affirming argument for which there is no evidence in support; it has been accepted in some quarters to suggest that the Palawa population drop was not caused by the British invasion but by some ‘act of God’ or even intertribal fighting. If there was intertribal fighting – see Walyer – then it was probably induced through the British invasion, where tribes were rapidly displaced by armed force and, with nowhere else to go, encroached on the territory of other tribes for their survival. Bonwick continues: Many causes operated in keeping down the population of the Tasmanians, who, having been in the island for so many ages, might have been supposed so much more numerous. They were, like the Australians, scattered over a great space in feeble numbers.2097 In no place do we find a hunting people numerous. The Indians of the forests were ever few compared to the Indians of cities. The Tartars of the nomadic kind are, similarly, a sparse population. The Arabs of the pastoral regions are much fewer than those of the central and more civilized portion. Though, without doubt, a longer period has passed with the Tasmanians in their hunting state than with any known people in a pastoral or agricultural condition, yet their numbers, doubtless, never greatly exceeded the few thousands we found in the island.2098 Bonwick then continues with the astonishing assertion that the Palawa population collapse was further caused by the lack of fecundity. This is clearly absurd, and is negated by the observations of the early French explorers. The Palawa population collapse was directly caused by Britain’s exterminatory policies and by female kidnapping and by sexual predation. Without women to conceive, the population will drop cataclysmically within a generation. And so it did. Aboriginal women were often compelled into infanticide, to remove the child they had conceived through forced miscegenation, to remove the biological stain of their British predators. But some women accepted co-habitation as a form of security, when being Aboriginal was a crime. Either way, the arrival of the British caused cultural and economic destruction for the Palawa, all within thirty years. Britain sought to civilize the Palawa by Christianizing them, where they could learn the benefits of servitude. Bonwick writes: In the process of regeneration they lost the life they had. Even the Committee of the Aborigines’ Society were at last sensible of the folly of this over-legislation; for, in their Report for 1839, they regretted that “from the first a system had not been 1012 applied more suitable to the habits of a roving people, instead of the highly artificial one whose details have been referred to” (in Mr Robinson’s report). 2099 As the genocidal conditions of life on Wybalenna ate at their hope, for as long as they could not pursue their normal way of life, as their diet became progressively poorer, as they continued to see their loved ones dying from the diseases of close confinement, yes, Bonwick could probably say with some assurance that they would not survive long as a race. But it was not because they were feeble or unfit; it was because the British destroyed them, purposefully, coldly. Sometimes, when we look, we do not see. Bonwick could not see, nor many of his contemporaries, a subject we explore separately in Context: History as a Behavioural Landscape. Bonwick continues: The Native women, as a rule, had very few children, and fewer still were, from abortion or infanticide, permitted to live. Apart from the long suckling, for three, or even four years, the period during which their powers of reproduction existed was much shorter than with Europeans. Very few of them had children after thirty-five years of age, and the majority, perhaps, were barren before thirty. Children were difficult to rear, less from the exposure of climate than unsuitability of food, harassment of travel, annoyance to parents, and the absence of effective remedies under disease. Fearful epidemics, common in all uncivilized or semi-civilized countries, would make serious inroads upon a population, and check any possible increase. 2100 This is almost pure speculation on Bonwick’s part and is substantially in error. He is commenting on what he believes he knows of the Palawa population demography primarily from the 1830s to the 1860s, when the effects of the British invasion extracted a fearful mortality on Aboriginal society, but he is trying to project what he thinks he knows to what he does not know, the period around first contact. Before the British invasion, the Palawa lived healthy lives with abundant access to nutritious food; introduced epidemics were negated or minimized by the relative tribal isolation. Before the arrival of the British, there was a preponderance of children in family groups, something which the French observed at first hand in the 1790s. Post-contact by the British, the Palawa birth rate dropped precipitously. The Tasmanians, again were bound by that law of primitive society which is ever a great barrier to increase – the young girls were given to the old men. Were virtue the rule, barrenness would follow. But, where the husband could command the virtue of his wife, and dispose of it to purchasers, or have it on loan to friends, a low state of mortality would exist. As with loose females in civilization, increase would thus be prevented. Again, young wives repressed the natural yearnings for maternity, in order to gratify their passions, administer to their vanity, or retain influence over their husbands, and did not permit the natural course of events until age was approaching, and the sphere of such labours was contracted. 1013 For such reasons, apart from their conflicts with the whites and the physical evils of contact with the other race, the Tasmanians were never numerous. 2101 This is purely speculative on Bonwick’s part. The Palawa lived sustainably with negotiated rules of access across territorial boundaries. The coastal women were expert at diving for shellfish. Game was plentiful until it was over-exploited by the British. With the exception of skin disorders, disease appears to have been rare. Some Palawa lived in semi-permanent settlements with fixed dwellings. There is no evidence that inter-tribal conflict substantially capped or progressively reduced the overall population numbers. If they had been left in peace by the British, it is likely that they may have adopted agriculture and intensive farming practices with some assistance from more humanitarian societies than the Angloworld, making larger populations possible. As it was, they lived in balance with their environment, which is not something we can claim today. Bonwick then gives us his views on how introduced disease affected the Palawa: There are strong reasons to believe that, before their connexion with the Whites, the Aborigines were a healthy, as well as a happy people. Epidemics, affecting alike the civilized and the uncivilized, occasionally spread havoc among them:2102 thus, Mr Catechist Clark was informed by the Natives, when at Flinders Island, that, before the English ships arrived in Sullivan’s Cove, a sudden and fearful mortality took place among the tribes.2103 It was viewed as the premonition of a dreadful calamity affecting the race. Such an impression appears to have dwelt upon the Mexican mind before the advent of the Spaniards. Old Ward, who came in the first convict-ship, told me in the early times the Natives were a fine healthy race, and not a cripple could be seen among them. In the Hobart Town Gazette of 1826 a notice appears of a visit paid to the Governor by a party of wild Blacks from the interior; and it is added, “They appear to be of more noble stature than those who visit the town occasionally, and are free from cutaneous eruption.”2104 Scorbutic diseases were very common among them, though the French, in 1792, saw nothing of the kind. The Rev Mr Horton, in 1823, refers to this, and remarks: “It is, perhaps, occasioned by their extreme distress and exposure to the weather. I observed that the fronts of their legs, which, in the manner they seat themselves round the fire, are mostly exposed to its heat, were most disfigured by this dreadful eruption,” It often assumed the type of leprosy. Thus, we are informed by an old record that “Black Kit, Queen of Black Tom’s2105 tribe, has died of the leprosy.”2106 In the Gazette of April 1826 there is an account of the trial of two Natives for murder, in which it is affirmed that one, the elder, was so covered with leprosy, as to be kept apart from all in the court. A sort of catarrh now and then spread among the people, as in 1827. Most of those who died in captivity were affected by consumption: the lungs were ever the weak part of their frame. Rheumatism might be expected to trouble those who camp on damp ground with inadequate covering. The evils induced by communication with our own countrymen were pitiful indeed. Indulgence in strong drink not only produced quarrels and murders in the tribes, not 1014 only destroyed the bonds of affection between husband and wife, parent and child, but, by inducing a recklessness of habit, by unwonted exposure, and by direct alcoholic action, brought serious diseases on this unhappy people.2107 Bonwick then summarizes some of the practices that derived from whaling parties and timber splitters, none of which was against British law, but all of which led to the disintegration of Palawa society, already on a slippery slope to oblivion. By this time, the Palawa were unable to resist their dispossession and Britain was unwilling to concede the smallest measure to allow them territorial independence. Imperialism demanded its Indigenous servants, dead or alive. Civilization had its price in blood. The introduction of the physical curse of civilization is well attested. A report was consequence of the vicinity of whaling parties and splitters. The same cry was heard from all parts of the country; and we can in some part excuse the ferocity of that vengeance which fell upon the troublers of the forest tribes. It is no apology to refer to the conduct of the men who were willing to prostitute their lubras for drink. It is rather a matter which should fill us with reproach as a civilized people, that, by our enslaving their appetites to liquor, we broke down their last sense of shame and honour. When hunted down in the war, being so driven about, their sufferings in the Bush from this disorder were a terrible aggravation of their miseries. A friend told me that at that time he saw a child at the breast in large holes from crawling over its diseased mother. The Government never appeared to think it its duty to provide them with medical aid. 2108 Wybalenna: a death camp We will now examine the epidemiological pattern of introduced disease in colonial Tasmania and the case histories of some of those Palawa who were afflicted, beginning with the alarming death statistics at Wybalenna. Year Total no. of deaths Cause of death Pneumonia Influenza Other ARD Other causes No cause recorded 1833 31 31 1834 9 9 1835 14 1836 4 1837 29 3 1838 14 4 1839 8 1840 3 1 1841 3 1 11 3 1 3 8 18 10 8 1 1 2 1015 1842 3 1 1843 1 1 1844 1 1 1845 2 2 1846 1 TOTAL 127 1 18 8 7 30 Figure 283 Total recorded deaths from Acute Respiratory Disease (ARD) at Wybalenna: 1833 - 1847 64 2109 Dowling summarizes the chronic prevalence of pneumonia among the detainees: Acute respiratory diseases were not confined to the epidemic events of influenza at Wybalenna. Prior to the first recorded pandemic// epidemic event of influenza in 1836-7, Allen (1837)2110 reported that between 1834 and 1837, he had treated 230 cases of new, or aggravated pneumonia at the settlement in a population that averaged 140 individuals. Out of the 140 estimated on the settlement, forty of them had not displayed symptoms of pneumonia. That leaves, according to Allen, one hundred individuals who presented 230 times with cases of pneumonia during the three year period leading up to the first influenza epidemic. A further indication of the prevalence of severe pneumonia comes from the records of death in 1835. 2111 Fourteen deaths were recorded in that year, 11 (79%) of which were recorded as due to pneumonia. Of the remaining three deaths, two were recorded as ‘anasurea’ and one as pthisis.2112 All this strongly suggests that pneumonia became an acute and chronic disease among the Aboriginal inhabitants of Wybalenna soon after its establishment in 1831 and prior to the first recorded epidemic of influenza in the colony.2113 However, Britain did little to improve the conditions of detention, which were conducive to the propagation of acute respiratory disorders, including the incubation of pathogens such as tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and the development of pneumonia (Mycoplasma pneumonia) as a frequent complication of influenza where the victims’ lungs were turned to pus. In 1836 – 1837, influenza swept through Wybalenna, part of a general pandemic. For most of the Palawa deaths, no cause was recorded. Britain would not change its detention policy. There were procedures to follow, including pointless post-mortems. Nothing was learned that was not already evident, as we will soon see. This is one autopsy finding, one of too many similar examinations that were forwarded to Robinson. Robinson, in turn, did nothing. The case notes are distressing; the death was not quick or peaceful, but typical. Allen’s Case notes: 3 year old child, ca. 1837. Diagnosis: acute pneumonia 2nd day Febrile symptoms increased with hurried respiration, and small quick pulse. 1016 3rd day Pulse small and quick, dry hot skin, tongue furred, cough accompanied with a glary expectoration which formed thick dark crusts on the lips, a wheezing noise in the chest as if the breath was passing through a fluid, a peculiar motion in the abdomen on inspiration and expiration as if respiration was carried on and not in the chest in which latter there was very little motion. Comatose. 4th day Pulse small and quick. Thirst, will take nothing but water. Skin dry and shriveled, difficult respiration, troublesome cough. 5th day Great difficulty of breathing; towards evening convulsions set in accompanied with dilation of the pupils; greatly emaciated; lingered until the morning of the seventh day when the respiration having become very laborious died. Postmortem examination The lungs and pleura were highly inflamed, extensive adhesions had formed between them in several places, the parts were joined together by thick layers of coagulable lymph, there was a considerable quantity of a serous fluid in the cavity of the thorax. The air cells were filled with a glary serum. The diaphragm was also inflamed. The abdominal viscera were healthy. Figure 284 Case notes for a child who died from acute respiratory disorder at Wybalenna in 1837 2114 We could provide an almost unending list of Aboriginal autopsy results, but the point would remain the same: Britain knew the genocidal effect of its detention policy but was unmoved to act. It allowed the conditions to continue, the deaths to continue. That is: Britain ignored the human catastrophe. We can conclude it was in their interest to do so, their commercial interest, the interests of the colonists. It was genocide in action. Victors write history. The victims merely suffer. Being voiceless became a crime. The medical imprecations and incantations outline a darker reality, racism, inhumanity, money, like the industrial mechanics and logistics of a slaughterhouse receiving sentient creatures and pushing out carcasses. On 10th September 1837, surgeon Allen writes to George Robinson about endemic and prevalent diseases among the Wybalenna Aboriginals. Allen is clear on the causes of their deaths. Robinson and his superiors take no action. It is not as though Britain did not know what was killing the Palawa. They had seen it all before, at Bruny Island, at Macquarie Harbour, at Gun Carriage Island, at other places where the Palawa had been detained against their will. Confinement in cold and wet conditions with poor food was killing them. There was nothing ‘intractable’ about it. But neither Britain nor Robinson would pull back from ethnic cleansing. The colonists wanted the Palawa removed. So, it was done. Genocide was the acceptable price to pay for the colonists’ approval. Although Allen’s understanding of disease aetiology may be suspect, he clearly understands the causes of what he is seeing. Allen advises Robinson: In reply to your request for information respecting the diseases of the aborigines, I have the honor herewith to subjoin the history of a few cases which I hope will tend to elucidate this heretofore neglected subject. 1017 When I was appointed medical officer to this establishment in 1834 it consisted of eighty-seven natives and fifty Europeans, and as it was a matter of vital importance for me to acquire a knowledge of the diseases to which the Aborigines were subject as quickly as possible (for I had been informed that they were dying off very fast, and that their diseases were of an intractable description) I enquired of the person (McLaughlin) who had the charge of the health of the natives anterior to my appointment, the nature of the maladies and te plan of treatment he had found most successful. In reply he stated that he did not know the nature of their diseases further than that they were very subject to catarrhal affections and that he had pursued the usual treatment recommended in such cases. This was all the information I could glean, and as I did not understand any of the native languages, and could obtain but very little information from themselves, I found it would be the best plan to mark down the history of each case until I had acquired a cleat knowledge of the cause and effects produced. In the prosecution of this cause, when a death occurred I opened the body and examined the abdominal and thoracic viscera, and the few cases hereafter narrated contain the particulars if my research into the varieties of this invidious malady. I have only introduced the cases that proved fatal for the purpose of showing the evident terminations of the disease and the treatment must be viewed in connexion with the circumstances under which they were placed. Since the removal of the Aborigines from their native wilds, and their being placed under the restraints of civilized habits, a variety of causes has prevented their increase, and operated powerfully against their health which has been gradually deteriorated. The application of cold has been the principal exciting cause of their diseases which are all of an inflammatory nature. Pneumonia and pleuritis has most prevailed, and they are so subject to these chest affections that it is to me a matter of astonishment so many of them should have escaped to the present day, for amongst a population which did not at any time since 1834 amount to one hundred and thirty five there has been no less than two hundred and thirty cases of pneumonia, twenty-eight of catarrh, one hundred and twenty-three of ophthalmia and sixty-two of rheumatism (as per returns forwarded to the Principal Medical Officer) also a great number of other inflammatory diseases of less moment but all originating in the same cause; and admitting the Aborigines to have been one hundred and forty in all since the beginning of 1834 and from that number deduct about forty which have not had pneumonia there will remain one hundred each of which (if a fair division is made) must have had two attacks, and a third of the number three, permitting all other inflammatory attacks which they had during the same lapse of time. And as pneumonia is a dangerous and fatal disease under ordinary circumstances, what must it be amongst these irregular and superstitious savages so subject to its 1018 recurrences, that certain winds prevailing for any length of time is sure to aggravate old cases and produce a number of new amongst them, and those who have been once affected seldom escape without either adhesions in the chest or obstructions in the lungs; they become gradually emaciated and the next winter usually closes the scene. It may be considered strange that these people should be so susceptible to the effects of cold having generally led a life of nudity in their own country, but when at large they were in the habit of covering their skin with a mixture of animal fat and carbonate of iron. This formed a protection against atmospheric changes and had also a tonic action on them, and as their country was one vast forest they generally frequented the most sheltered situations and living and exercising in the open air they were habituated to its influence. But when they first visited the white man’s habitation, blankets or other clothing was generally given to them, and to enjoy the comfort of this before unknown luxury the necessary pigment must be laid aside and when the savage laid himself down on the warm fleece, every pore of his body being freely opened, he would soon find himself uncomfortably warm. The first action would be to throw the blanket from his body now covered with perspiration, and the cold air assailing him on all sides, the relaxed exhalents on the surface if his body would instantly contract and the perspirable matter being denied access to his skin would be thrown forcibly on the lungs or other secreting surfaces. Congestion would be the first effect and if the cuticular vessels did not quickly resume their office or the lungs were insufficient to relieve the mass of blood, inflammation and its consequences must be the result, unless relief be afforded by some other means. Indeed it is not unusual for effusion to take place in a few hours, after exposure to cold, and if the fluid effused was only aqueous there would not be so much danger, but it is lymph of a gelatinous glary nature which completely and permanently closes up the aircells of the lungs. When that viscus is affected therefore, the blood being no longer oxydised by the air produces symptoms of compression on the brain, so that a person not acquainted with the progress of the disease would come to the conclusion that the brain was the part affected. But when the lymph is effused into the pleura, peritoneum or the bowels the symptoms and results will be found different as shall be shown hereafter. Thus exposure first affected these people and continues to do so to the present time, and although all the efforts of the medical officer may be directed to the removal of the disease, its prevention would be a much better course, for as he can only assist nature in removing the urgent symptoms every attack lays a foundation from which it commences again on the least provocation, and it must have been either ignorance or culpable carelessness which could induce those formerly in charge to locate them (the natives) on such exposed situations. On Gun Carriage Island they were placed on a sand bank only a few yards from the salt water exposed to the prevailing bleak westerly winds. Consequently many of them died on that island. 1019 At the old settlement opposite Green Island they were similarly if not worse circumstanced, and they were removed from it in consequence of so many deaths occurring that it was expected they would all die off in a very short time, but those in charge of them did not benefit by the effects produced at the two former settlements. Indeed it seems they were quite ignorant of the cause of mortality, for at this establishment they committed the very same error in locating them on the most exposed part of the cleared ground on which this settlement stands. Their huts were constructed of the frailest materials. In the most inconsistent manner they were ranged in line on elevated ground with the doors in the west front which is open to the prevailing cold westerly winds, so that on opening the door of some of them the fire would be swept off the hearth for nine months of the year. Under these circumstances it could not be expected that the frail constitutions of half fed half clothed inert savages could bear up against the effects of cold hunger and dejected spirits, and although since your arrival every effort has been made to place them in warm sheltered habitations, yet during the time necessary for the completion of the work with such slender means, they have been of necessity in a measure exposed to the influence of the same cause against which their previously diseased frames are no longer proof, and although they may be all placed in warm houses in a short time I am of opinion that it will be nearly at the last hour, for many of them will drop off from the effects of former indisposition. Another evident cause of disease must be found in the long and constant use if salt meat, to which they have been subjected, but as the effects of such diet is well known it is almost unnecessary for me to enter on it here further than what is necessary to elucidate the share it has in exciting inflammatory affections amongst these people; but to shew the evil tendency of restricting them to this auricle of diet it is only necessary for me to state, that some of them will not yet eat it although it has been issued to them daily for the last six or seven years, and those who use ir freely for a length of time become scorbutic emaciated and are subject to a troublesome pustular eruption. Lastly I will describe a case which very frequently occurs. A native sits down before a strong fire and eats his ration of salt meat. The heat of the fire relaxes the exhalents on the surface of his body. The perspiration flows freely from him. Thirst must be expected as a consequence and to satisfy this call of nature he walks out most probably naked to a water cask, and swallows two or three pints of water. The secretion from the skin is checked instantaneously and pneumonia or some other inflammatory attack is invariably the result. Again as most of these people when in their own country were of a strumous habit of body and all of them subject to a contiguous and loathsome species of psoriasis, which has in a great measure disappeared since they have been induced to adopt more civilized habits and a diet partly farinaceous. Yet it remains to be shewn how far this change might affect their health, for I have been informed that most of their old and infirm people have died of consumption or scrofula. Therefore it is highly 1020 probable that the suppression of this cuticular drain would tend to increase the inflammatory diathesis. In many cases which I have examined after death I found the lungs liver and spleen thickly studded with tubercles and the glands of the mesentery enlarged and indurated.2115 Wybalenna: 1834 – 1836, Darling and Robinson In June 1834, Arthur canvassed Darling’s opinion on whether the Wybalenna detainees should be relocated. There had been a considerable number of Aboriginal deaths and their remaining numbers hardly presented a threat to British settlers in Tasmania and their demands for complete sovereignty over any alienated land that had been acquired. Darling advised against relocation. His reasons are interesting. He did not believe the settlers would allow it. And Britain had no intention of fomenting anti-Government sentiment. Darling also played down the number of Aboriginal deaths, to his discredit. 24 June 1834 Sir With reference to Your Excellency’s proposal for removing the natives either to Portland Bay, or allotting them some tract of land in their own country, I now do myself the honor to lay before you my view on the subject after having more maturely considered it. I cannot under existing circumstances feel myself justified in recommending either one or the other, at all events for the present, for the following reasons - 1st as to their removal to Portland bay, it must be remembered that in all they are but a handful, and that handful comprised of the remnants of different tribes, who though they may be perfectly peaceable and friendly with one another here, have no binding tye to keep them together once they are at large, as they would be, if sent to Portland Bay - That Country abounds, I believe, like the rest of New South Wales, with hordes of wandering savages - [indecipherable] among Savages are generally about their hunting grounds or their [indecipherable]; though a great part of the natives at this Establishment evince a pleasure in cultivating the land and are more indifferent to hunting than formerly, yet it is not to be supposed that if sent to a fine Country abounding with game, they would forget altogether their favourite and natural employment, and I feel strongly persuaded that with all the precaution in the world, they would in some of their hunting excursions be all cut off by the natives of New Holland. Secondly - As to their removal to their own Country, there are no doubt many of them, who, if fed clothed, and protected by the Government as formerly, would live peacefully and quietly under proper superintendence, and naturally contribute to their support by the cultivation of the soil, while their herds of sheep and cattle would increase (though they would be as liable as those of the settlers to stray away and be stolen) but I much fear that it would be impossible to prevent them from being molested by Convict Servants and the Settlers themselves, from the remembrance of old times would be too ready to impute to them faults which they 1021 never committed; then fresh evils would break out between them and the whites, which would be productive of the worst results. There are many natives on the Settlement whom I would not think of trusting on the Main for some time to come; I allude here particularly to the Native Tribes who are now mustering strong, and who have almost all joined the Settlement at different times since I assumed the charge - I have very little doubt but they could take the first opportunity of making off to their own Country where they have never been much molested. I beg leave respectfully to draw your attention to my letter to the Colonial Secretary of this date in which I have endeavoured to point out the resources of the island and the measures that might be adopted for reducing the expense of the Establishment, which as it makes no return to the Government, is I am aware a heavy burden, though it is evident these poor savages being deprived of their own Country must be maintained by the Colony, and rendered as happy and comfortable as it is possible to make them; such at least is the aim pointed out by common justice and humanity. I shall have an opportunity of again conversing with Your Excellency on the subject when I have the pleasure of meeting you in Hobart Town. In the mean time I have the honor to remain Your Excellency’s most obedient humble servant W. I. Darling2116 In November 1835, Robinson recommended to Arthur the relocation of the remaining Palawa to New Holland: Flinders Island did not appear a suitable place for the future permanent residence of the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land. Mr. Robinson recommended the removal of the Establishment to the Coast of New Holland as a situation more eligible. 2117 Arthur ignored the recommendation; his advice to Robinson: wait and see if conditions improve. Robinson subsequently retracted his recommendation for relocation. In September 1836, Robinson compiled a list of names for those Aboriginals who still survived. There were fifty-nine males and fifty-seven females.2118 Wybalenna: 1834 – 1835, Nickolls Henry Nickolls,2119 Darling’s successor, arrived at Wybalenna in September 1834 with his wife and five children. He knew his appointment by Arthur was temporary until GA Robinson took over as Superintendent in 1835. Johnson and McFarlane summarize the appalling Wybalenna living conditions that Nickolls encountered on his arrival: The new superintendent was not spared the perpetual problem of irregular supplies. When he first arrived at Wybalenna there was only sufficient flour for four weeks and it was not known when ore would be received. On three separate occasions Nickolls was forced to send the Aborigines out on extended hunting trips to avert 1022 famine. With native game already seriously depleted, the settlement was only saved from complete starvation in the last instance by the fortuitous arrival of the muttonbirds. In December 1834 Loftus Dickenson tried to surmount the problem by ordering supplies six months in advance, only to find that while the order was received in Hobart the required stores were never sent. The quality of those which did arrive also left much to be desired. Flour was frequently riddled with weevils and hard biscuit often had to be soaked in water until it was soft enough to eat. At that time daily rations for adult Aborigines consisted of 450 grams of salt meat, 450 grams of flour, 250 grams of biscuit, seven grams of sugar and the same amount of salt. Children received half the adult ration, and all recipients received seen grams of soap.2120 Nickolls was beset with problems from all quarters: inadequate food and water, assigned convicts trying to have sexual relations with the Aboriginal women, Aboriginal resentment and despair at being detained away from their homelands and complaints from the catechist Clark to Arthur, among them, that Nickolls allowed Aboriginals to fetch water on the Sabbath. This last complaint invited a reprimand from Arthur, who placed Christian education as far more important than their squalid living conditions and sense of hopelessness. For Arthur ‘civilizing’ the Aboriginals meant Christianizing them, even if it killed them. His correspondence with Nickolls shows his unbending sense of self-righteousness where he was ultimately prepared to impose racially driven genocide on a vulnerable people for some poorly conceived greater good, all the while believing he was right, but was not able to hold himself accountable to his own professed Christian values, or was able to distort those values to maintain his self-image, or blame the consequences of his destructive behaviour on others, bush rangers, men of ill repute, but never himself. Arthur was an authoritarian despot, sometimes humanitarian, but also devious and prepared to bend the truth if it suited his purposes. We are reminded of other such figures in history, Pol Pot, Himmler and so on, who all had an almost fanatical belief they were justified in mistreating a targeted group for some perceived ideal, but in the end, it was self-interest that drove them, just as it was for Britain. As for Nickolls, he tried to improve the living conditions for the Palawa detainees but the religious intransigence of Robert Clark and Arthur’s dogged antagonism towards any practical measures – better food, relocation back to Tasmania - meant that he achieved little in his brief one-year term as Wybalenna Superintendent. It is little surprise that Wybalenna became a death camp; it did not have the gas chambers, but the imposed living conditions were perhaps just as lethal. For that, Arthur must be judged along with his superiors. Arthur was a hard taskmaster, questioning many of Nickolls initiatives to improve the conditions of Aboriginal welfare 2121 and the best way to ‘civilize’ them. Arthur preferred Christian education; Nickolls favoured more practical measures. Nickolls was particularly concerned with the unwelcome effects the convicts had upon the Aboriginal prisoners, when he wrote to the Colonial Secretary on 3rd April 1835: 1023 I will take this opportunity of suggesting the propriety of much caution being used in selecting the men for this settlement as one or two bad characters effects a great deal of mischief in this small community, as in the conduct and habits of the prisoners even it is necessary that it should be tolerably correct; as the natives are very quick observers, they are already sufficiently viciously civilized, to eradicate which it is highly important that a very judicious selection of prisoners for this settlement should be attended to.2122 There is no record of any response from the Colonial Secretary, so Nickolls followed this up with a letter to Arthur on 9th July 1835, which again failed to make an impression: I again beg to impress upon the Lieutenant Governor’s attention the necessity of very great care being taken in the selection of prisoners for this settlement, as every day convinces me the good or bad conduct of the white population has much to do with the civilization of the aborigines, they not being sufficiently conversant with the different grades of society to know the habits of the prisoners should not be followed as well as those examples set by the higher orders of society.2123 The Palawa desperately wanted Arthur to honour his promise and return them to their homeland,2124 something that Arthur refused to do now that he had them in closely managed detention. The settlers wanted nothing less. On 9th July 1835, Nickolls penned his regularized report to the Colonial Secretary, where he tactfully attempted to raise the question of Palawa despair at their effective imprisonment on an isolated Bass Strait island, in a similar manner to our treatment of refugees today. The difference is that today’s refugees in Australian offshore detention are generally escaping persecution in other countries; the Palawa were refugees from persecution in their own country. Of the men I may also add the disposition for becoming more like Europeans still continues. I have at all times found them attentive to my wishes in working in their gardens and other little portions of manual labour when called upon., They fetch in from the sawpit about two miles from the settlement over a steep hill light pieces of sawn timber, always accompanied by myself it being my established rule never to ask them to do anything that I do not myself take part in. In proof of my assertion that they are becoming more civilized, they have since my last communication evinced an ardent desire to become scholars like white men, and for that purpose have voluntarily come forward and attend the catechist, where they are taught upon slates their letters upon Bell’s system, and it is very pleasing to observe the progress some of them are making; their object is to write to their “Governor Father in Hobart Town” that is the Lieutenant Governor whom they are anxious to induce to remove them to their native land. They would be perfectly wretched were they certain they should die here. They all ardently wish to be removed, which delusion has been practiced upon them I conclude for the purpose of keeping them quiet. Since my sojourn amongst them I have carefully abstained from all promises on the subject, or even any allusion to such an event.2125 1024 Plomley summarizes the problems faced by Nickolls, problems exacerbated by Arthur who, with an interest in Christianizing the Palawa, was firmly supportive of the Catechist, Clark,2126 and less concerned with Aboriginal welfare: During the time Nickolls spent at “Wybalenna”, the settlement continued to be a place of dissension. Not only was it an isolated outpost of settlement but the conditions of life there were unpleasant, with poor accommodation, bad food and a very restricted circle of acquaintance.2127 Nickolls suggested to Arthur on 18th April 1835 the need to balance Christian education with the practical matters of Aboriginal welfare; Arthur disagreed. We show the letters they exchanged in full as they give us a window into the minds of the two men and the nature of their tense relationship, Arthur the martinet and Nickolls the practically minded subordinate: I must beg of you to attend to the supplying the establishment with the potatoes and turnip seed I have sent requisitions, as well as some tobacco seed, the cultivation of which will serve to employ the natives, as it is a plant that requires much hand labour and I do not fear of being able to bring it to sufficient maturity for their use, as their tastes are not very fastidious; at all events it will serve for employment, and that I am confident is the only and best means of civilizing them, and bringing them to a state fit for religious instruction; at present this is a topic which it s dangerous to enter upon, they seem to have a perfect horror of everything connected with religious instruction confounding all such matters as connected with the Devil; I have more difficulty in persuading them to attend the Sunday service than any other wish I have to express. So far as the short experience I have had with them I am induced to believe that much caution should be used in the endeavour to instill upon them religious instruction; it is with deference I submit it is first necessary to endeavour to shew them the use and value of labour by leading them to work in the gardens, the benefit of which they should entirely reap in addition to their rations to stimulate and reward them for their exertions; such a course if adopted and persevered in with steadiness and temper will I am of opinion do more towards rendering them a moral and religious people, than any attempts by preaching to them the use of which they do not at present comprehend; from the growth and economy of the vegetable kingdom a much more ready way may be found of instructing them, by explaining to them at convenient opportunities from whence and for what uses such things are designed; such instruction will bring home to the minds of unlettered savages the attributes of the Supreme Being as illustrations from subjects they are very conversant with and which tenders to their appetites by forming a part of their daily food.2128 Arthur’s pedantic response through the Colonial Secretary, dated 30th May 1835, gave Nickolls a sharp admonishment. Arthur had rigid views on the primary role of Christian education in civilizing the Palawa detainees. It was wrongheaded then, and it would be wrongheaded now, but Arthur was 1025 not for turning in his zealous indifference to Palawa suffering, his unshakeable belief he was right and his preparedness to bend the facts to fit his own corrupted version of reality as we saw earlier in the Emu Bay massacre and many other such instances as he prosecuted his vicious war of attrition against the Indigenous people on behalf of the settlers and the British Government, culminating in his final solution at Wybalenna: I am further to acquaint you that the Lieutenant Governor is by no means assured of the accuracy of your reasoning as to the best mode of instructing the aborigines, nor is he ware that any attempt at civilization should precede scriptural instruction, such an opinion being at direct variance with missionary experience in every part of the heathen world, in Greenland, in America, in Africa, while its practical application would be diametrical opposition to the divine command o preach the Gospel to ‘every creature’, to man in every part of the world, in every different state as regards civilization. In truth, the inculcation of the first principles of the Religion, not of nature, as it is called, but of the Bible, is the most effectual mode of introducing civilization. His Excellency conceives it, therefore, to be of the very greatest importance that every practicable facility should be given to the Catechist in the performance of his most important duties, of which preaching constitutes but a trifling part. I am to remark that individual instruction, frequently repeated, and not so prolonged as to become painful to the unaccustomed mind of the savage, should never be omitted, and the Lieutenant Governor can easily imagine that the Sunday morning service, if adapted rather to the intelligence of the white than the black population of Flinders Island, may at first be uninteresting, and therefore disliked, but His Excellency is quite satisfied that the opinion that religion is itself a matter unsuited to their present condition is quite unfounded; neither can His Excellency conceive why it may not be taught so as to relieve their minds from the terrors to which you refer, rather than excite them. It is the source of joy and complacency rather than of apprehension or alarm, to all who hear its sound believingly, and the merest savage is as likely to profit by it, in these respects and indeed in every other, as the most enlightened philosopher. I am to add that the Lieutenant Governor has directed me to express his sentiments on this subject somewhat more at large than is usual in such official communications, because he feels it to be an imperative duty to require that scriptural religion should be the grand object of attention in the education of the aborigines, and because he is convinced that patience and a judicious perseverance will, under divine providence, in the end be crowned by a success which may little be expected while the first difficulties have not yet been surmounted. I am therefore to request that you will not interfere with the Catechist in the performance of his duties, but that he may be allowed free and unrestrained intercourse with the aborigines, at all times, when convenient to him, and I am to desire that you will in every possible way expedite the completion of the building intended to be used as a School House and place for the performance of divine worship, and, if anything is required, and has been omitted, which is likely to promote the spiritual or moral welfare of the aborigines, or that may be conducive 1026 to their health, no time is to be lost in reporting such, as the Lieutenant Governor earnestly desires their welfare. 2129 Arthur’s was a strange form of ‘welfare’. He would continue the genocidal mistreatment of his Palawa captives until he left the colony in 1836, rich on Aboriginal land he had misappropriated, flushed with the approbation of the settlers and his superiors in clearing Tasmania of its Indigenous owners. Wybalenna: 1836, Robinson In September 1836, Robinson wrote a ‘periodical report’ to the Colonial Secretary, talking up the Wybalenna ‘settlement’, in reality a detention centre, to his own advantage. Plomley annotates this self-serving but revealing correspondence, which admits that the number of Palawa births had fallen because of the unceasing harassment of family groups by armed parties intent on their destruction, something to which we will return in the Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide, Appendix (massacre database). Robinson also admits that the advantages to the European settlers of the removal of the Aborigines had been incalculable. The advantages to the aborigines by their removal have been manifold and many of them of the highest order. In their native forests they were without the knowledge of a God hence but little removed from the brutes themselves; their mode of life was extremely precarious... The sanguinary tribes had seldom any progeny and which could only be attributed to their harassed mode of existence. Plomley notes: GAR considered that the greatest gift they had received from the government was not the benefit of protection, food, clothing and shelter, but to bring them to a knowledge of God and the principles of Christianity, and he submitted examples of the quarterly examinations in catechism in support of his contention. GAR also pointed out that the advantages to the European settlers of the removal of the Aborigines had been incalculable.2130 Wybalenna: 1836, the colonial administration’s view of the ‘peaceful mission’ In October 1836, Montagu (the Colonial Secretary) delivered his report on Wybalenna to Arthur. He portrayed the Wybalenna detention facility inmates as happy and ‘contented with their condition’, partially based on Robinson’s glowing feedback. It seems, by this time, nobody was prepared to confront the truth. The public order was more important than a ‘few’ Aboriginal deaths in captivity. No one would ever know the true situation. Wybalenna was far away. Best to keep it quiet. But the dead would not be silenced. Eventually they spoke through Walter Arthur’s petition to Queen Victoria, when he complained of their treatment as prisoners and the number of fatalities. 1027 The worsening conditions of the captives would not be addressed for another eleven years. But the action taken in 1847 was possibly more punitive than at Wybalenna. Britain had won its war with the Palawa. It could afford not to make any concessions. The public would support authoritarian actions. Let them die. This is Montagu’s hagiographic letter: Colonial Secretary’s Office 15th October 1836 Sir, I have the honor in obedience to Your Excellency’s Command to submit the following statement explanatory of the measures adopted by this Government, for the Comfort and civilization of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of this Colony, from the period of the first formation of an Establishment on Bruni Island in the year1828 up to the present time. This statement has been prepared with considerable labour and attention, from the very voluminous documents in my offices. From the earliest period of this Colony becoming a British possession until within the last Three or Four years a feeling of hostility has existed on the part of the Original Inhabitants of the Island towards the European population, but how that feeling was first engendered - whether by aggressions on the part of the first Colonists or fostered by the Chiefs of the different Tribes with a view to the expulsion of those whom they might deem to be intruders upon their native soil - or whether activated alone by a warlike and ferocious disposition common to most Savages - it is at this distance of time impossible to determine, but it is certain that whatever might have been at first their leading motives, they continued their aggression and outrages upon the Colonists for the sake of obtaining by plunder those articles of luxury such as Tea Sugar Flour and Blankets which they had acquired a taste for by having received small quantities as conciliatory presents from the Europeans. Grievous and destructive as were the outrages consistently committed by The Aborigines to the property and lives of the Settlers, yet did the Government and indeed the European population generally with some few exceptions in all their operations for the prevention of these calamities act on the defensive only, and the most conciliatory measures were not only adopted by the Government but particularly recommended to be pursued by the Colonists and in many instances have the means by the distribution of presents amongst them been given to the Settlers to accomplish so desirable an object - and in no instances is it on record that the Government ever sanctioned an outrage upon these benighted people. Proclamations were issued from time to time to inculcate upon the British population the desire of the Government that the mildest possible measures should be pursued towards the Aborigines - and at the same time setting forth the liabilities they would incur not only in a moral but in a legal point of view by an opposite course of proceeding - and every inducement was held out to the Natives to put themselves under British protection - to accomplish which end liberal offers were made to any person who could accomplish a conciliatory intercourse between them and the Government. 1028 In the year 1828 an Establishment was formed on Bruni Island for the purpose of domesticating those Aborigines who had placed themselves under the protection of the Government or who might afterwards do so - here they were made as comfortable as circumstances admitted and were supplied with full rations Blankets and other necessaries. In March 1829, Mr G.A. Robinson applied for the appointment of Superintendent of this Establishment in consequence of the Government advertising for such a person, and his services were engaged to take charge of the Stores, and to Superintend the general concerns of the Station. It was however soon found that Bruni Island was not calculated to answer the intentions of The Government in civilizing the Natives in consequence of its proximity to the Whaling Stations, as the Europeans engaged in this employment endeavouring to entice the Native women away disturbed the harmony of the Establishment besides producing an immoral effect upon the rest. The ravages committed by the Aborigines upon the Settlers becoming more frequent and destructive as the Colony became more thickly populated the whole energies of the Government were called in requisition for the purpose of putting a stop to what must ultimately have proved the utter destruction of this Territory as a British Colony - A Committee was therefore appointed consisting of some of the principal Officers of the Government to suggest such measures as they might deem most advisable under the circumstances of the absolute necessity there existed of by some means ending the outrages then daily committed by these people. About this time Mr G.A. Robinson and several other individuals undertook to open a friendly intercourse with the hostile Aborigines and their services having been accepted by the Government a selection of well conducted men was made to accompany them, and they were provided with every necessary to enable them to undertake a journey through the more unsettled parts of the Colony, and Beads and other Trinkets were also furnished them as conciliatory presents to any Natives with whom they might fall in. The object the Government had in view in despatching these several missions was to convince if possible those unfortunate Beings of the friendly disposition entertained towards them by the white population if they would but cease their destructive and murderous attacks upon the lives and property of the Settlers, and to endeavour to induce them to put themselves under the protection of the British Government in which case they would be provided with every comfort and also those articles of luxury which they then obtained only by pillage and rapine - and on the other hand to shew them the absolute necessity there existed for the Settlers to protect themselves by any means in their power should these people still continue their aggressions. In order to facilitate these communications there were attached to each party several of those Aboriginal natives who had in a considerable degree been civilized by a residence at the Establishment on Bruni Island under the protection of the local Government and the concerns of which had been Superintended by Mr Robinson this Officer having made a considerable progress in learning the Native language during his residence on that Island, and being of a persevering disposition 1029 successfully accomplished a friendly intercourse with some of the Tribes, and indeed several to place themselves under his protection - these with the others that had already been conciliated were removed to Swan Island in Basses Straits, and the charge of that Depot and the mission generally was given to Mr Robinson. Upon this Island the Natives (as reported by Capt. Welsh who visited them shortly after their arrival) lived most happily, there being plenty of Birds, nearly their whole time was employed in catching, smoking, and cooking them, and when not so engaged they were dancing their native dances, and, in fact appeared to enjoy themselves in the greatest degree. This Island however was not of sufficient extent for their comfort after their numbers had been increased by Mr Robinsons successful mission, it was deemed advisable to remove the Establishment to another Island in the Straits called Gun Carriage Island. Here a temporary Superintendent was placed in charge during Mr Robinson’s absence on his excursion into the interior and a Medical Attendant was also sent Tea, Sugar, Flour, Meat, Blankets, and other articles were abundantly supplied to the Aborigines by the Government and a Colonial Vessel was almost solely employed in this service in order that the Natives might not feel those necessities to which in their original state they were very frequently driven to. So comfortable were they in this new abode that they evinced no desire to return to their former habits and haunts - Mr Robinson who visited this Island frequently during his campaign in search of the Natives reported that he had heard that some malicious and unfounded reports had been spread abroad to the prejudice of the Aboriginal Establishment to the effect that the Natives had been short of provisions but he positively denied that such an occurrence had ever taken place and affirmed that they had always had an ample supply of every necessary. The Committee before mentioned as being appointed as a Superintending body over the affairs that related to these people were unremitting in their exertions for the comfort and happiness of those thus placed under their charge all requisitions for utensils implements and other necessary articles were without delay submitted for the Lieutenant Governors approval who upon all occasions exhibited the most lively interest in the welfare of this uncultivated race and directed the supplies to be furnished with every possible dispatch. At the end of the year 1831 the aboriginal Establishment was again finally removed to a still larger Island in the Straits called Great Island or Flinders Island in consequence of the advantages it offered as the Superintendent reported that there was great quantities of game on the Island, and what was of equal importance, a sufficiency of water. The Establishment was then placed upon a more respectable footing - an intelligent officer of the Regiment stationed in the Colony was sent as Commandant and mechanics of different Trades were also sent in order to construct the necessary Buildings for the health and comfort of the natives. A Store Keeper was also appointed, and small gratuities given to the Soldiers wives to attend to and teach the native women the rudiments of domestic economy and 1030 management. About this period Mr Robinson who had been to visit the Establishment at Flinders stated that in the progress of his conciliatory mission he feels most materially the beneficial effects of those plans which had been adopted by the Government towards these people. The knowledge of the kind manner their brethren had been treated being carried to the natives still at large in the Colony rendered them anxious to meet him in order that they might be placed where they would experience similar kindness. Mr Darling the Commandant in his reports stated that he considered the Island they were then on peculiarly adapted to the purpose to which it was then assigned - as the game was abundant and of fresh and good water there would always be a plentiful supply. The natives amused themselves by hunting and were in excellent health and spirits. Shortly after this report Mr Darling sent another equally satisfactory, at the same time requiring some articles for the use of the natives; these things were sent directly and on their receipt, Mr Darling reported that the supplies were ample. It had been the practice some years previously for the men engaged in the sealing Trade on the Island in the Straits to possess themselves of Native women and it was considered by the Lieutenant Governor that many of these women were detained by these men against their inclination. The Commandant was therefore directed to ascertain that fact and in every case where the women were forcibly detained, to release them and take them to the Establishment. Several women were thus added to the number and great joy was manifested on these occasions by those who were already under the protection of the Government, particularly if any of their relatives (which was frequently the case) happened to be amongst those restored. The reports of Mr Darling the Commandant were generally favourable as regards the health of the Natives, altho’ several deaths had occurred. Amongst them they were moreover getting gradually more civilized in their habits they left off using the grease and clay to their hair and Scotch Caps were given them in place of such filth - and what was a still greater proof of their advancement was the fact of Natives of different Tribes who in their natural state had been most deadly foes were then associating together in the greatest harmony and conducting themselves towards the Europeans with the utmost cordiality - Mr Darling also reported that he considered the Natives were capable of great improvement and that they had already considerably advanced in civilization. That they took great pleasure in assisting in building their new homes, which were nearly completed, and would be warm and comfortable, and also, that they would be supplied with Chairs and Tables, the comfort of all of which they duly appreciated - Just at this period Mr Darling reported that there was likely to be a scarcity of provisions at the Settlement as the usual supply had not arrived and urged the necessity of a Vessel being immediately dispatched - Upon the receipt of this communication the Lieutenant Governor immediately wrote over to the Port Officer himself to give the requisite instructions and directed that the Assistant Commissary General should be furnished with such Returns as would enable him to supply all their wants beforehand, and to supply them by every opportunity. 1031 Mr Darling, on receipt of these supplies reported that the promptness with which his demand had been answered had entirely obviated the difficulty he had apprehended from being short of provisions. The Establishment about this period was increased by a number of Aborigines who had been brought in by Mr. Robinson and others attached to the conciliatory Mission, but unfortunately the increase was soon much lessened by a great mortality to the amount of twenty four amongst those that had recently arrived in consequence of the diseased state they were in before they joined the Establishment, which was clearly proved by the death of thirteen immediately after they had joined Mr. Robinson and before they were placed under the protection of the Government.2131 Those however who had been for some time domesticated at Flinders Island with a few exceptions remained in good health. A Catechist was appointed to the Establishment in order to instruct these poor Savages in the principles of Morality and Christianity and to teach them and invite those that were inclined to read and write and the Commandant took considerable pains to instruct them in the mode of Cultivating the Ground, and after some time they fenced in a considerable portion of Land and planted it with potatoes;- in fact no opportunity was omitted by the Commandant of leading these people into the civilised habits of Europeans, and from his reports it would appear that he was not by any means working on an unproductive Soil. Mr. Robinson recommended that the domesticated Aborigines who had accompanied him in his Expedition should receive some Reward as well as the Europeans, it was suggested that it should be made in Sheep and Cattle, which were to be sent to Flinders Island and there remains as a Stock from which, in future, Might be derived the principal supplies required for the support of the Establishment. This the Lieutenant Governor very highly approved and gave directions for the purchase and transmission of the Animals to Flinders. Mr. Darling frequently reported upon the state of the Establishment and although some few deaths occurred yet the natives generally enjoyed a considerable Share of health and Comfort and seemed perfectly contented with their Condition. Upon one or two occasions however a want of Flour was experienced which the Lieutenant Governor was perfectly at a loss to account for after the repeated and strict directions he had given to have a good supply constantly kept up - but it was ascertained that the Returns directed to be transmitted from Flinders Island had been omitted to be sent;- this however was remedied and the Lieutenant Governor’s former directions repeated, to keep the Establishment constantly and Regularly supplied with provisions. In September 1834 Mr. Darling being obliged to join his Regiment which had proceeded to India was relieved from the Charge of the Aboriginal Establishment;and a Mr. Nichols sent in his place, as a temporary Commandant, until Mr. Robinson should be able to take it under his charge. This Officer suggested several improvements in the buildings and other matters that related to the comfort and happiness of the Natives, and the Lieutenant Governor, in approving of them remarked that, every thing that was necessary to the health 1032 or comfort of these people was to be immediately carried into effect. Mr. Nichols remained at this Station until Mr Robinson having completed his Missionary duties in the Interior took charge in November 1835. 2132 On Mr. Robinson’s arrival at the Settlement he reported very minutely upon its condition its wants, its resources and its capabilities. By the first of these reports it was made to appear that altho the Natives were at that time in good health yet that they complained of having been obliged at times from a shortness of provisions to proceed to the neighbouring Island in search of food which they did not find without encountering much fatigue and hardship - that the water procured on Flinders Island was of such an unwholesome description as materially to affect the health of the Aborigines as also did the Salt Provision to which the Natives had a great dislike added to this the exposed situation in which the Settlement was formed and the wretched state of the houses wherein they resided might be considered as the leading causes of the Mortality which had taken place amongst these people, and the report concluded by stating that as Flinders Island did not appear a suitable place for the future permanent residence of the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land. Mr. Robinson recommended the removal of the Establishment to the Coast of New Holland as a situation more eligible. In reply to this report it was remarked that it was the first time the Lieutenant Governor had heard of the want of a plentiful supply of good fresh water, and His Excellency much regretted that the Natives had to complain of having been at any time short of provisions which could never have been contemplated as likely to occur after the repeated directions that had been given upon that subject desiring that a constant supply should be kept up at the Station, but that the direction would be again repeated, and, as Mr. Nichols, the late Commandant, had reported the building used as a Store fit for the purpose of containing such as Stock, a Six Months supply should always be furnished; so as to deep a Constant Supply on hand. With respect to the ineligibility of Flinders Island as a Station for the Aborigines the subject would be further considered after Mr. Robinsons should have had by a longer residence a better opportunity of judging upon that point - and that the Lieutenant Governor was most anxious for the welfare of the natives and would give the most attentive consideration to any measures that Mr. Robinson might suggest for their additional Comfort and happiness, and which might also tend to their civilisation. Mr. Robinson in such a subsequent report stated very fully the measures he had adopted for the purpose of domesticating and rendering still more comfortable the people committed to his Charge, and also his proceedings in order to produce mortality and good order amongst them. In this, as well as in a subsequent report made in answer to certain questions that were submitted to him by the Government, Mr. Robinson stated that upon further consideration and observation he was of opinion that Flinder’s Island might be made available as a permanent residence for the Aborigines, - for with respect to the water he had found out a place near the spot where the Settlement was then formed where a Tank could easily be constructed to contain the water which fell from a neighbouring Hill, and which during the rainy Season flowed in such abundance as to make the securing of a 1033 sufficient quantity to answer all the purposes of the Establishment, a matter of certainty - as regarded the houses and the position in which they were placed he conceived that that inconvenience might be remedied by Building neat and Substantial Brick Cottages which would resist the effects of the weather, and requested that Mechanics might be sent for the purpose of erecting such Buildings. With respect to the Salt Provisions the importation into the Island of more Sheep and Cows would soon remedy that Evil. Mr. Robinson also reported that the natives had much improved both in health and Morals, only one death had occurred and Three Births had taken place, and he anticipated when the plans he proposed were carried into effect that the results would be still more favourable. Mr. Robinson also stated that the Aborigines seemed to evince a great desire to be instructed in the Arts of Civilized life - they no longer had recourse to their wild Native dance, called a Corroberry, for amusement: they were teachable to their teachers and great cordiality existed among themselves. In consequence of this favourable report of the Capabilities of Flinders Island as a Settlement for the Aborigines the necessary Mechanics were sent to erect New Buildings and every facility given to Mr. Robinson for him to continue his exertions in completing the improvement he had thus commenced - and to add still more to the peace and comfort of these people, a number of Sheep and Cows were purchased for their use and sent down as opportunity offered. The further reports of Mr. Robinson were of a most satisfactory description, for by them it appeared that the Natives were making very visible advances towards a degree of Civilization which before the Government first formed the Establishment for their reception was thought impossible for them to attain. They were taught and seemed to understand the leading principles of Christianity - they respected the Sabbath and attended with great regularity and apparent pleasure the Public Worship which was celebrated by the Catechist - Schools were established to teach them reading and writing - and several of the Native Youths acted as teachers - They cooked their own provisions after the manner of Europeans, made their own Bread, and took great pains in keeping their New houses, (the comfort of which they much enjoyed) in neatness and order, and their minds were gradually opening to the Knowledge of those institutions so essential to the well being of a Civilised Community - Such as the right of property. The Women also were becoming more neat in their persons and attended to the domestic economy of their houses, in which occupations they exhibited considerable Skill. Mr. Robinson also reported that they appeared perfectly contented and happy in the condition in which they were thus placed, and never seemed to pine after, or expressed any wish to visit their former haunts. I have also the honor to attach copies of the two last Reports, upon the Settlement at Flinders Island, by Mr. Robinson together with a Statement shewing the quantity and cost of the provisions and Stores which have been forwarded to Flinders Island from the first formation of the Settlement there in 1831 up to the present time - as well as the scale of Rations allowed to the Natives. 1034 I have the honor to be, Your Excellency’s Most obedient humble Servant John Montagu 2133 Figure 285 Furneaux Group from space, 19932134 Wybalenna: 1837 The after-effects of Martial Law were evident in the bodies of the detainees. In 1837, when Robinson was belatedly inspecting the inmates of Wybalenna, he wrote: 22 July 1837 Ill treatment of the VDL aborigines – there is not an aborigine on the settlement2135 nor an aborigine that has been at the settlement but what bears marks of violence perpetrated upon them by depraved whites. Some have musket balls now lodged in them such as Adolphus. This man has also a scar on the front of his abdomen done by a man at Ritchie’s farm with a butcher’s knife. This is the same man that was referred to Captain Smith police magistrate at Norfolk Plains. The convict at Ritchie enticed the man towards him by the shew of a piece of bread, and the promise of giving it, and when the man was in the act of taking it the barbarian rushed towards him with the knife and cut him in the abdomen. The man succeeded in getting away. Some of the natives have slugs in their bodies and other contusions, all inflicted by the whites.2136 In June 1837, Robinson returned to Wybalenna from Launceston: 24 June 1837 [..] The natives returned to the settlement all in good health, not one died during the long interval of absence. This is a singular fact when the aborigines 1035 at the settlement have suffered so much from affliction, seventeen having died within the last six months. [...]2137 Plomley records a more detailed report to the Colonial Secretary (the report was completed 5th September 1837) [...] The only thing to be deplored is the mortality that has taken place, and which induces me to ardently desire that H.M. Government may accede to the removal of the present establishment to the adjacent coast of New Holland and where the Flinders Island aborigines would not only be found efficient but willing auxiliaries in aiding the work of civilization so urgently needed by the numerous tribes inhabiting that vast continent [There had been sixteen deaths at Flinders Island since December 1836. More would follow that year]. [..] I have no hesitation in stating that the race in a very short period of time will be extinct [...]2138 Conditions at Wybalenna continued to deteriorate, with scurvy evident. 26 June 1837: [..] The children’s dormitory as excessively damp and cold and its cleanliness was not sufficiently attended to. Their diet was sufficient but a liberal supply of vegetables should be allowed them at all times, as also the adults.2139 Austin, the medical doctor who replaced Allen, provides a report on Aboriginal sickness between 30th June 15th August 1837 as their health is constantly eroded. Plomley provides us with the observations on their deteriorating health, as Britain witnessed their slow and deadly decline, with poor food, damp unhygienic housing and little exercise. The sickness was suffered by real people, so we show their names. Statistics do not always properly convey the real story, the personal story of sickness and despair. Austin appears to have been more attentive than Allen but could do little to improve their general health when their conditions of detention mitigated against it. 2 July 1837: Susan gave birth to twin boys. One died the same day; the other was accidentally smothered by the mother on 7th July. 17 July 1837: Austin informs Robinson that the female children are still sleeping on the brick floor at the catechist’s 20 July 1837: Major Ryan was asked by Stephen why the Aborigines, ‘now well looked after’, were not reproducing. Ryan put it down to earlier promiscuity at the settlement and the constant diet of salt meat. Ryan also says that, because of the salt food and poor water, the natives suffered from scurvy, and ‘pustulous eruptions’, the skin becoming dried up and scaly, and they ‘appear emaciated and desponding’. 2140 16 August 1837: Andromache dies of pneumonia. 1036 Alexander , Catherine Numernucia Alphonso, Tippo Saib, Davy, Agnes, Sabina, Susan Pleuritis Pneumonia Opthalmia Gastritis Fracture Febris Epilepsia Constipatio n Cephalalgia Abscessus 30-Jun Christopher 7-Jul Walter Andrew Agnes, Susan, Rose, Achilles George Robinson Thomas 14-Jul Walter Andrew Agnes, Susan George Robinson Thomas 21-Jul Walter 31-Jul 7-Aug Henrietta's child Joseph, Agnes, Rhineroop Lucy Agnes, Brune, Rhienhoop, King George Brune, Margaret, Hector Jane, Rose Margaret, Hector Rose 1037 14Aug 15Aug Henry, Geo Robinson, Mohanna, Andromache Andromache Figure 286 Wybalenna health reports, 30th June to 15th August 1038 Summary: Wybalenna 1835 - 18472141 Wybalenna was not so much an event than the end-stage of a genocidal process intentionally carried out by the British Government from the moment it first invaded Tasmania in 1803. In 1835, Lieut. Governor Arthur removed the pitiful last 112 Aboriginals from the so-called ‘settled areas’ a mere thirty years after first settlement and placed them in isolated captivity at Wybalenna on Flinders’ Island, together with a number of convicts.2142 More Aboriginal stragglers were rounded up from mainland Tasmania and removed to Wybalenna shortly after, making a total of about 200. Compare this with the estimated original population of between 6,000 and 10,000 in 1803. 2143 Figure 287 Thomas Bock: Mathinna (1842)2144 At Wybalenna, the conditions were harshly unsuitable for the Palawa lifestyle. They began to die out under the extreme conditions, their food inadequate, their clothing unsuitable, their plight monitored by a Commandant, before the British Foreign Office belatedly intervened in 1847, perhaps realizing that a great wrong had been committed for which they might be judged. Arthur did make representations to the British Government that, in future colonisation across Australia, some form of token treaty should be offered. 1039 Reynolds writes: While reflecting on what had gone wrong in Tasmania, Arthur urged the Colonial Office’s officials to negotiate treaties and arrange for the purchase of indigenous land in all future colonizing ventures. He pushed this policy in 1832, 1835 and 1837. 2145 But this was after he had successfully dispossessed the Tasmanian Aboriginals, an example of ‘do as I say, not as I do’. The British Government rejected the treaty policy in Australia, as it did the humanitarian policy to set aside lands for Aboriginal use, if it ever gave them more than momentary consideration. Britain believed they only needed such policies if they could not easily overcome the indigenous people by force. Although the Tasmanian Aboriginals understood the British Government’s representatives had offered them a treaty as an inducement to relocate, it never eventuated. Arthur did not see the need after he had secured what he wanted. Nor did the British Government. Such a treaty would go some way towards healing relationships, even today.2146 So what did happen at Wybalenna and why? Could Britain have handled this late-stage Lemkinian genocidal process differently? Yes, but they chose not to. Victors dictate the terms of surrender. The terms were harsh: removing children, destroying culture, indirect killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing conditions of life that caused its physical destruction, and imposing measures that prevented births. These intentional Government acts should now be familiar. They are the article 2 paragraphs of Lemkinian genocide. For Arthur, Wybalenna was ‘out of sight, out of mind’, at least as far as the physical removal of Aboriginals to remote detention, a system still favoured by Governments today. But he did expect regular reports from the commandant of the time on the progress of Christianization. The problem was that the detainees had no purpose for their existence. When Milligan tried to help them build a vegetable garden, Arthur discouraged the attempt. The Aboriginals were badly let down by Robinson and Arthur, who had connived on a ruse de guerre to coerce their detention: none of their promises were kept, not the promise of their own land or the promise of adequate housing and healthy food. Because the Aboriginals were domiciled in the same ‘settlement’ (in reality an open prison patrolled by armed military personnel) as a number of convicts, ‘fraternization’ was inevitable, which reduced the number of pure blood Palawa births to a negligible amount. Arthur attempted to force marriage partners, against the wishes of the women. Reynolds chronicles the death rate, but justifies the outcome: While it is difficult to draw definite conclusions, it seems that the Aborigines were better provided for than Tasmania’s other welfare recipients. In 1845 the colony’s orphans cost the government 7d per day, the infirm and destitute paupers 8d, convicts 1040 10d, paupers in hospital 1/- and the Aborigines on Flinders Island between 1/3d and 1/5d.2147 Reynolds then compares the Aboriginal rations with those of the convicts: The convicts and the Aborigines received similar rations. The Aborigines were provided with a daily ration of 1 lb beef, 1 lb flour, ½ of biscuits, ¼ lb of tea, 2 ozs of sugar and ½ an oz of soap. Provisions and clothing for the Aborigines cost more than for the convicts. In 1838 providing for 95 Aborigines cost £1900 at £20 per head 2148 and for the 34 convicts £514 at £15 per head. The Aborigines were even better off because they were able to supplement their diet with bush food having the freedom, time and knowledge to acquire it.2149 But Reynolds is overstating the case, as we will see. Reynolds seems determined to selectively quote, and in some cases misquote, primary sources in order to bolster his thesis that Arthur was a devout humanitarian and that the Aboriginals at Wybalenna were well cared for with good food, clothing and housing. The reality was very different, as Major Ryan was to discover, when he conducted a review of the settlement in 1836 for Governor Arthur, after some complaints about mismanagement. Reynolds stresses ‘of greater concern to the white staff were the sexual relations between the women and some of the male convicts’ as though to misdirect our attention from the poor living conditions, which are highlighted by Ryan. He selectively annotates from Major Ryan: ‘who conducted an enquiry into the community in 1836, believed that there were “nightly appointments between the parties”.‘ 2150 Cassandra Pybus is more truthful and accurate, based on Robinson’s journals. She eloquently summarizes the life-threatening conditions, including Aboriginal malnutrition, something that Reynolds wants us to ignore: Wybalenna was dependent on cruelly inadequate ration supplies, which caused frequent famine when they failed to arrive and chronic illness from the high salt content [...] They complained: ‘Why keep us here to starve? We don’t want to live here. Let us go again to our own country so we can live.’.2151 With the departure of Robinson from Wybalenna, ‘conditions there deteriorated very much because the policy of the government from that time was to provide the Aborigines with the bare minimum of subsistence. This policy, introduced by Franklin, was continued by his successors.’2152 What of the Aboriginal death rate at Wybalenna? Reynolds catalogues the catastrophic population decline, but fails in a step of adequate critical thinking: One hundred and thirty-two people died between January 1832 and October 1847. There were several moments of demographic crisis when large numbers succumbed in a short space of time. Twenty three people died between 5 June and 24 August 1833, thirteen during the first three months of 1837, eight were struck down with influenza over a five day period in February-March 1838.2153 1041 Reynolds dismisses his own evidence and concludes: The common perception has been – and for which there is little evidence – that the Aborigines lost the will to live; that it was a case of cultural collapse and psychological failure. [...] These writers have usually overlooked the dynamism which allowed the community to maintain its identity and to launch, in recent decades, a powerful challenge to the consequences of those events which unfolded one hundred and fifty years ago.2154 In reaching this conclusion, Reynolds ignores all the paragraphs of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, each of which was implicated in the avoidable deaths and mistreatment at Wybalenna. His reflexive judgment attempts to impose the mindset of Palawa mixed blood descendants on the horrific situation in which the Wybalenna prisoners found themselves. They are not comparable.2155 Reynolds then asks the question: ‘Did the Tasmanian government intend this outcome? Was it a consequence of neglect? Could it be construed as the final act of genocide.’2156 He opines: ‘the high death rate was due to factors beyond the control or understanding of the European staff’, 2157 and then makes a contrarian conclusion that ignores the evidence: In the draft convention put together by the UN secretary-general, it was determined that in cases where victims were placed in concentration camps with an annual death rate of 30 to 40 per cent, the intention to commit genocide was unquestionable. Clearly the death rate on Flinders Island puts it well within the range of such death camps,2158 but there is no available evidence at all to suggest that it was the intention of the colonial government to effect the extinction of the Tasmanians.2159 Plomley gives us more details of the causes of death, which included catarrh, influenza, congestion of the lungs, pulmonary affection, apoplexy, debility, asthma, dysentery, heart disease, senility, intestinal haemorrhage, inflammation of the lungs, peritoneal inflammation, syphilis, erysipelas, constipation, pneumonia, tuberculosis, phthisis, and dropsy. Many deaths gave no cause.2160 Not all Aboriginal deaths from 1829 were at Wybalenna. Some mortality was recorded on mainland Tasmania, at the Hobart orphan school, Bruny Island, Maria Island, Swan Island, Preservation Island, and Gun Carriage Island.2161 A very small number of Aboriginals were considered to be of no threat to the public order and allowed to live on the Tasmanian mainland. As to births, there were very few, around 10, and most died after a short time. 2162 However, almost all surviving Aboriginals were detained at what was euphemistically called the Flinders Island ‘settlement’, in effect a penal settlement, where a large percentage of the population were convicts. It does not really matter what some ignorant doctor diagnosed in a time when medical practice was little removed from quackery. It is sufficient to know that the Wybalenna Aboriginal detainees died, and they died in considerable proportional numbers. They died because of the imposed conditions. They died as a result of being dispossessed. They died in detention, in full view of Arthur’s administration and that of the British Government, who sat by until it was too late. 1042 It was end-stage genocide, within the Lemkinian meaning. Plomley then provides us with details of Major Ryan’s March 1836 report to Governor Arthur on the state of the Wybalenna settlement. His report is at odds with Reynolds’ account, which attempts to play down the inadequate diet and housing as the primary causes of Aboriginal deaths. Plomley notes: Ryan next dealt with the housing of the natives, now dilapidated because of the unsatisfactory construction; convenient and comfortable cottages should be provided for them, “for to induce these people to become domesticated you must provide them with the means of internal comfort; indeed the Western tribes scarcely ever enter into their huts”. He also thought that the illnesses of the natives were due to the wretched housing. Ryan was very much of the opinion that the natives should be decently treated and looked after, and every effort directed toward their comfort. He came to the conclusion that they had been grossly neglected, not only by the officers of the settlement but by the Government, and saw no hope of their ultimate survival. “It is in vain to attempt to deny that great mismanagement has occurred”. In another part of his report, Ryan commented upon the convicts, whom he found to be a particularly reprobate lot, and he considered that many of them had been sent to FI to be quit of them, but that in any case the employment of convicts at the settlement was highly objectionable. He also noted that the water supply at “Wybalenna” was unsatisfactory and that the ration was unsuited to the natives, and unhealthy because the meat was salted. Ryan also drew attention to the neglect in keeping the settlement supplied with provisions, which in the past had led on three occasions to semistarvation, the natives being obliged to take to the bush to forage for themselves.2163 Ryan did not get the support he expected from Arthur; he preferred to believe Henry Nickolls, whom Arthur appointed as Wybalenna commandant in September 1834.2164 Aboriginals continued to die. Compare Reynolds’ view with that of James Calder: At the time of their surrender they numbered about 250, of whom about fifteensixteenths have died in only 20 years, a most fearful mortality. A few births added a trifle to their numbers. There now remain only 16 of pure-blood and one half-caste – a woman. The boys are about 15 years of age, and must have been born since the surrender of the race. So there remain, of all that Robinson gathered together, only 14. There are now no births, though some of both sexes have not passed the prime of life. What a melancholy state of things these facts disclose. But passing these over, it is impossible to help inquiring what causes could have led to the premature decadence of that portion of this people who survived the calamities of war, and what reason can be assigned for their infertility since falling into our hands. To the first of these questions I have often thought it might be replied, forcing on them too suddenly our own habits, as if the savage could at once adapt himself to the ways 1043 of civilised life; in fact, requiring a people whose whole lives had been passed in the open air, to dwell as we dwell, and live as we live. Into this error Robinson himself fell, for when he first drew the Bruny Islanders together around his dwelling, several died almost directly.2165 He housed, or rather huddled them together in warm rooms, and required them to wear clothing. But doubtless, and the too sudden restraint of the free use of their limbs, were wholly unsuited to their habits and constitutions, and, of course, when divested of these fatal comforts, colds, and the endless train of disorders that spring from them, sent them rapidly to the grave. That so few births have happened since their captivity commenced (and even these appear now to have ceased) may perhaps be traced in some measure to the above causes, particularly to the entire change of habits. But if it is true, as I have repeatedly heard, that prostitution is commonly practised by the women, the chief cause of course lies here.2166 [...] we cannot by mere maintenance of life repay the debt we owe a race whom we have forcibly dispossessed of everything but mere existence. Other duties we are bound to take on ourselves, to improve the condition of the remnant whom time, war, and disease have left to our care, and by careful supervision to arrest the evils that are fast working out their extinction.2167 In February 1846, Walter Arthur and other detainees made a written petition to Queen Victoria, with the help of Robert Clark, the catechist. It stirred the Foreign Office into belated action. Grey was anxious to escape domestic criticism for the almost complete failure of any humanitarian Tasmanian Aboriginal policy, perpetuated by Arthur and a succession of later Governors including Franklin and Denison: The humble petition of the free Aborigines Inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land now living upon Flinders Island ... That we are your free children that we were not taken prisoners but freely gave up our country to Colonel Arthur after defending ourselves. Your petitioners humbly state to Your Majesty that Mr Robinson made for us with Colonel Arthur an agreement which we have not lost from our minds since and we have made our part of it good. Your petitioners humbly tell Your Majesty that when we left our own place we were plenty of people, we are now but a little one. Your petitioners state they are a long time at Flinders Island and had plenty of superintendents and were always a quiet and free people and not put into gaol. Your Majesty’s petitioners pray that you will not allow Dr Jeanneret to come again among us as our superintendent as we hear he is to be sent another time for when Dr Jeanneret was with us many moons he used to carry pistols in his pockets and threatened very often to shoot us and make us run away in a fright. Dr Jeanneret kept plenty of pigs in our village which used to run into our houses and eat up our bread from the fires and take away our flour bags in their mouths and also to break into our gardens and destroy our potatoes and cabbage. Our houses were let fall down and they were never cleaned but were covered with vermin and not white-washed. We were often without clothes except a very little one 1044 and Dr Jeanneret did not care to mind us when we were sick until we were very bad. Eleven of us died when he was here. He put many of us into jail for talking to him because we would not be his slaves. He kept us from our rations when he pleased and sometimes gave us bad rations of tea and tobacco. He shot some of our dogs before our eyes and sent all other dogs of ours to an island and when we told him that they would starve he told us they might eat each other. He put arms into our hands and made us to assist his prisoners to go to fight the soldiers we did not want to fight the soldiers but he made us go to fight. We were never taught to read or write or to sing to God by the doctor. He taught us a little upon the Sundays and his prisoner servant also taught us and his prisoner servant also took us plenty of times to jail by his orders. The Lord Bishop seen us in this way and we told His Lordship plenty how Dr Jeanneret used us. We humbly pray your Majesty the Queen will hear our prayer and not let Dr Jeanneret any more to come to Flinders Island.2168 The Palawa clearly understood that Arthur and Robinson had entered into an agreement or treaty arrangement with them. The terms of the agreement were not written down. They were verbal promises or undertakings. Whatever their substance, it is evident from Walter Arthur’s letter on behalf of his people to Queen Victoria that they did not believe the inducements made to them for their cooperation were honoured. From the letter, it is clear that they believed they were a free people but had been treated as prisoners by Britain. Governor Denison complied with Grey’s request to relocate the Palawa, but he carried out his instructions on his own terms. Palawa suffering would continue. Conclusion We conclude that the British Government’s confinement of the surviving Palawa at Wybalenna conforms to articles 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d), and 2 (e) of the UN Genocide Convention. Therefore, the hypothesis is confirmed. 1045 Summary of depopulation vectorial agencies So, what happened to the Palawa people from 1803 to 1847, when only a handful remained from an original population that spread across Tasmania? We have only seven possibilities: a) there were far more homicides against Aboriginals than Ryan, Plomley, and others have been able to determine b) child kidnapping, female abduction, sexual predation, and venereal disease caused significant intragenerational depopulation2169 c) there was a mysterious pandemic before 1803 d) the effect of introduced disease during the ‘friendly mission’ and later exacerbated by excessively harsh detention conditions, was far greater than we have allowed e) there was misadventure through warfare, accidental injury, and natural attrition2170 f) there was the insidious effect of introduced alcohol and other drugs2171 g) immunity was lowered through a nutritionally poor introduced diet (flour, sugar, salt, salted meat) Discussion Of these possibilities, any of which may occur in combination, we will now explore option (c) further, although (b) and (f) played their part. The most common, potentially fatal, introduced diseases were: Bronchitis; Diphtheria; Dysentery; Influenza; Measles; Pneumonia; Smallpox; and Tuberculosis. Of these, the great Aboriginal killer - smallpox - was unknown in Tasmania. However, viral respiratory infections could easily spiral downwards into secondary bacterial complications such as pneumonia if the imposed living conditions were potentially lethal. And they often were, as we will see. But venereal disease such as gonorrhea, against which there was little Aboriginality resistance, had the potential to render the victims infertile or incapable of procreation. The demographic consequences of sexually transmitted disease could, and would prove to be, profound. When Baudin visited D’Entrecasteaux Channel in 1802, he noted their generally excellent health apart from a few leg ulcerations: He wrote: seem to be subject to a type of yaws, for several had ulcerated legs. We discern no trace of smallpox on their faces or bodies, and they are possibly fortunate enough as well not to know syphilis.2172 To understand the nature of any disease process, we must first know its description, aetiology, and effects. 1046 For this, we have the sketchy medical case notes for the detainees that may help us infer how the general population health and wellbeing was compromised, the pattern of disease both before and after detention. We must also remind ourselves that the treatment of any disease in the 19th century was ‘hit and miss’, with adequate care and attention in healthy surroundings offering the best hope of recovery. We must also remember that most of these potentially lethal diseases were introduced by settler society, so there was little natural immunity within the Indigenous population. It was far better for them not to catch the disease at all. Disease was more preventable if the natural resilience of Aboriginals was encouraged through their traditional way of life, with healthy food, constant exercise, a nurturing culture and ongoing mental stimulation. When Aboriginals were held captive by Britain, they were also hostage to a disease-causing environment. As detainees, they were entitled to a reasonable standard of care from the British Government. They did not receive it. Nutritional food, proper clothing and clean accommodation might have helped. Not holding them in detention would have helped more. If Aboriginals had been allowed to roam freely over their own land, under protection, with constraints placed upon settler expansionism and violence, if that arrangement was set out in a form of treaty, the Palawa future would have been much more assured. But settlers would not give up their sovereignty and Britain would not stop its expansionist policy, which was led by the massive alienation of land and accelerated immigration. The genocidal result was entirely predictable. Sadly, it was also intentional. Although disease pathogens were unknown at the time, miasma (or bad air) transmission being favoured until the late 19th century, what was known were the effects of dirty, cold, damp environments in the prevalence of certain kinds of respiratory malaise. What was known by direct observation was the melancholy evidence of sadness and despair, a breakdown of social cohesion arising from a loss of hope. Far from being an ‘act of God’, disease was often the consequence of Government policy and its failure to uphold the law. Britain could have curtailed the predatory sexual activities of sealers and stockkeepers but chose not to. Chronic sexual diseases resulted. When Aboriginal women were kidnapped, families were broken apart and mental harm was the result. The natural birthrate dropped below population replacement. Britain could have stopped the practice of kidnapping but chose not to. Britain could have provided adequate food and shelter for its detainees but chose not to. Malnutrition and respiratory diseases resulted. When Aboriginals were kept in captivity, mental disorders resulted. Self-medication through alcohol and tobacco became an ongoing temptation. 1047 Britain chose to ignore their despair. When the status of Aboriginals changed from a free people to trespasser to fugitive to detainee, their humanitarian support became an expense on the public purse, an expense that it was tempting for administrative bureaucrats to cut to a minimum, just as it is today. Conclusion 1048 PART 4: Semantics, Methodology, Referents, and Use Case Terminology Aboriginal I prefer the adjectival noun ‘Ab’original’ to the proper name ‘Ab’origine’, which has accumulated inexcusable and derogatory connotations as a result of British Imperial contact history, associated with being ‘subhuman’ and ‘vermin’ and ‘dogs’ and ‘snakes’. Even gentle Darwin subscribed to this racist view of Aboriginal inferiority, 2173 as we see from his writings while he was travelling with the Beagle and recording his observations in the 1830s, gathering evidence for his nascent theory of Natural Selection. This document will use the term ‘Aboriginal’, and ‘Aboriginals’ will collectively refer to the Aboriginal peoples or nations or societies across Australia. The Macquarie International English Dictionary (complete and unabridged edition) defines Aboriginal as (noun) a descendant of any of the indigenous peoples who inhabited Australia before the arrival of European settlers. I would agree except for the qualification of European. More correctly, it should read British. To say otherwise is to obfuscate. Massacre The editor’s use and definition of the term ‘massacre’ require some explication in the Aboriginal context for colonial pastoral society:2174 The Macquarie Dictionary defines massacre as ‘the killing of large numbers of people or animals’, that is, a mass killing. But it is more. When we examine the etymology of the word ‘massacre’ we find it derives from maḉacre (French), which is adapted from maslakh (Arabic), meaning: ‘slaughterhouse’ (Old Norse, slatr ‘to slay’) or ‘abattoir’ (French abatre ‘to fell’). An Aboriginal massacre, as used here, is: the indiscriminate and/ or deliberate murder (whether ‘lawful’ or unlawful retribution or simply homicide) of two or more Aboriginals (whether or not they were able to adequately defend themselves) in a single incident or the indiscriminate and/ or deliberate murder of one or more Aboriginals (whether ‘lawful’ or unlawful retribution or simply homicide) in separate but linked incidents. For example, soldiers, police or squatters travelling around any area such as the Bathurst or New England regions in New South Wales, or the Upper Dawson or Warrego/ Maranoa in Queensland or Coniston in the Northern Territory, or Tasmania or the Kimberley in Western Australia or any other. This can be over a period of days or weeks as part of a planned and coordinated party, with the intention, to exterminate some or any Aboriginal encountered (man, woman or child), using means both 1049 direct (stabbing, shooting, poisoning, clubbing, drowning, forced or coerced suicide – for example by forcing Aboriginals over a cliff) and indirect (starving, infecting, chaining up, incarceration, torture, sexual predation, segregation, forced removal of children, withholding reasonable standards of nutrition, housing and health care, abuse of human rights, preventable disease) leading to avoidable death. These methods of patterned extermination fall into the categories of Aboriginal genocide and ethnic cleansing, for which massacres are the structural bricks and mortar. Government land policy was the purposeful and greatest instrument of ethnic cleansing. The consequence of British land policy was Aboriginal extermination and displacement on a significant scale, described by one historian as a ‘melancholy footnote to (anthropological) Australian history’, 2175 something we are embarrassed to acknowledge and generally prefer to politely ignore with ‘the great Australian silence’.2176 Can a determination of ethnic cleansing and its overlapping variants be a retrospective judgement on official British policy, that is, before the act of ‘ethnic cleansing’ had a name? Yes, when the historical record clearly shows that successive governments in Britain (and later in Australia) knew they had conducted a terrible wrong against an ethnic group, the original inhabitants, but justified the wrong as being in the national economic interest, which for a considerable time was the pastoral interest. Governments were aware of wrongdoing but were implacably determined to continue with the same policies until the problem ‘disappeared’. Governments were determined to quash any Aboriginal resistance through a policy to exterminate (‘disperse’, extirpate) as many Aboriginals as possible, driven by an economic imperative for settler sovereignty. Governments, the military, police (and certainly squatters) deliberately kept few or no records of direct killing operations or the body count. From 1788 to 1928, there were a negligible number of charges or convictions for murdering Aboriginals, which might provide documented legal case histories. Therefore – apart from declarations of martial law - we rely on other evidence, such as police deployment and service records, first-hand anecdotal accounts (both British and Aboriginal), letters between colonial authorities, letters from squatters to their families and others, letters to newspapers, personal journals, blanket distribution counts, and so on, the liminal hints and whispers of violent conquest across a multiplicity of separate events. Aggregated above all murderous case instances or their surrounding myths, we note the incontrovertible evidence of massive Aboriginal depopulation from 1788 to 1928 because of the prolonged land war, obdurately unrecognized by the Australian War Memorial for its damning implications. The depopulation statistics are readily available with some small effort, providing us with a limiting summation or boundary condition or nett effect over a discrete period of 140 years, amounting to well over 90%. 1050 We remind ourselves that it does not matter how Aboriginals (as a group) died. They died, and they died as a result of British invasion and occupation, for which there was a spectrum of reasons associated with their dispossession. If mass killing was beyond abhorrence, the repression and subjugation phases of British occupation were arguably far worse, where the white oppressors often used opium and alcohol as a form of payment for Aboriginal labour or sexual favours, and malnutrition, detention and disease became endemic, creating an even more fearful mortality. Diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhoea also did their loathsome work, often on young children, and often deliberately infected by whites, some of whom believed it was a cure for their venereal infection in much the same way that some African males believe they can cure AIDS by sleeping with a virgin. Sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis were unknown among Aboriginals before the British occupation. It was rare for Aboriginals to receive any reasonable medical treatment after.2177 Starvation and chronic ill health became common, along with other preventable diseases; and pervasive, lingering, trans-generational despair, where hope is too often at the end of a bottle or the point of a needle. In the last decade, there has been a certain amount of intensive and ongoing discussion, between some historians, on what constitutes a massacre. For example, Windschuttle2178 claims there were no Aboriginal massacres whatsoever, only legitimate and justifiable homicides against Australian citizens, Aboriginals, who broke the law and were resisting lawful apprehension and punishment, in which category he would include fleeing women and children. He also argues that without criminal prosecutions, there is no case law, and, therefore, no legally acceptable evidence of widespread wrongdoing against Aboriginals. Bill Thorpe2179 proffers that if one side is armed with guns, and the other with spears, it cannot be a ‘battle’, which implies ‘a more or less equivalent struggle between contending forces’. He further suggests that any action in which one side’s casualties are much higher than the other cannot be a ‘battle’. However, Connor (a military historian) reminds us that when British soldiers, mostly armed with Martini-Henry rifles, killed many Zulu warriors armed with no more than stabbing spears during the Zulu War of 1879, few disagree that it was a ‘battle’, 2180 although horribly onesided. In a ‘battle’, so the argument goes, protagonists do not have to be evenly matched; a ’battle’ presumes the rules of ‘war’.2181 Generals deliberately attempt to make conflicts as one-sided as possible. Thorpe extends his thesis in an article with Raymond Evans, where they note that a ‘battle’ can quickly turn into a ‘rout’ then a ‘massacre’, 2182 irrespective of how we may define these stages. Their distinction helps us identify the difference between an event and a process, especially when an event can comprise a process, and a process may comprise many events. The rapidly evolving process dynamic of a ‘battle’ is typical of confrontations between firearms and pieces of wood. 1051 Richard Broome2183 defines a massacre as the ‘mass killing of defenceless people.’ By this definition, killing unarmed civilians or disarmed prisoners of war is a ‘massacre’. Myall Creek then was a ‘massacre’, one of many. This definition assumes the massacre happened in a single event, which was rarely the case in Australia. ‘Massacres’ often took place over days or weeks as tribes were hunted down across their territory, and often had no witnesses, just the mute evidence of missing Aboriginals. The definition also lacks precision on what ‘mass killing’ or ‘defenceless’ might mean. Is a woman ‘defenceless’ when she raises a waddy against a revolver? Jacques Semelin, who has carried out extensive studies into understanding the causes and effects of ‘genocide’, defines ‘massacre’ in sociological terms as a form of action that is most often collective and aimed at destroying non-combatants.2184 Is an Aboriginal, with a hunting spear at hand - who is trying to protect his family while armed men on horseback surround his camp at dawn - a ‘combatant’? Alternatively, can an aggressor lawfully shoot a victim because he ‘feared for his safety’? Is a child a ’combatant’ because he or she is attempting to escape on foot before a pursuing mounted police officer, or can the child be ’lawfully’ shot because they were ‘evading arrest’. If so, the Semelin definition implies, like Connor’s, that notional ‘combatants’ cannot be ‘massacred’ but are ‘lawfully’ killed within the rules of war or policing. The terminological imprecision suggests we need a typology, which separates the conceptual overlap between ‘war’, ’battle’, ‘criminality’, ‘massacre’, ‘genocide’, ‘ethnic cleansing’, and ‘homicide’, both lawful and unlawful. It was more confused at the pastoral frontier, or simply more brutal, where killing did not need any justification. Police and pastoralists generally carried out the undeclared ‘war’ against Aboriginals, and the ‘law of the bush’ prevailed. Witnesses were few. Connor argues2185 from a militaristic perspective that, while the British killed ‘noncombatants’ at Pinjarra, it was not a ‘massacre’ but part of a ‘battle’. I disagree. When unarmed people are indiscriminately shot while bobbing up and down in a river, it is a ‘massacre’, although it may have started as a one-sided ‘battle’. The consensus, summarised by Barker, 2186 seems to be that a ‘massacre’ is the one-sided indiscriminate killing of a group of people (two or more) in a single short event or the onesided indiscriminate killing of one or more people in a systemic and ongoing process of killings around some extended event. I have extended this definition to include homicide in its various legal forms. Conclusion Today Aboriginal massacres would be unthinkable to most Australians, but pervasive Aboriginal disadvantage continues, with many resulting deaths. There is a cynical form of pervasive Government mistreatment and neglect. It leads to high levels of punitive incarceration, systemic poverty, malnourishment, excessive policing, and alienation for many 1052 Aboriginals, particularly those living in remote camps and reserves with generally poor housing, sanitation, food, and water supplies. In Australia, being black amounts to a crime, with gaol, prevailing disadvantage and preventable disease the punishment. That is, there is an officially sanctioned policy across all levels of Government of massacre by another name: the toleration of early and avoidable Aboriginal deaths. This has been the case for the last one hundred years and followed the process of colonisation and closer settlement. There is increasing evidence that the many Aboriginal problems of alcoholism, petrol sniffing, youth suicide, domestic violence, malnourishment, trachoma, diabetes, kidney disease and so on, may be symptoms of an epidemiological problem. It could be characterised as a collective, persistent, and heritable post-traumatic stress disorder, where Aboriginals as a marginalised group continuously and helplessly relive the ‘killing times’, the ‘stolen generations’, and violent dispossession, effecting a sense of numbness, apathy, and hopelessness. Aboriginals, like the unfortunate transportees of yesterday, remain excessively condemned by social disadvantage into abject poverty, ill health and punitive incarceration. Unlike the transportees, for Aboriginals, there is as yet no hopeful sign of a ‘ticket of leave’, particularly for those living in remote communities. They want to get on with their life, and quietly manage their hurt, but continuing racism holds them back in relative social disadvantage. To our nation’s shame, the proud descendants of Australia’s First people persist in unconscionably large numbers as victims of repressive Government policies that perpetuate the cycle of disengagement and despair. Genocide2187 In Australia, we equivocate over the use of the word ‘genocide’. The overall argument, supported (it must be said) by many historians, is that ‘genocide’ is something that happens elsewhere. There is an element of denialism involved in rejecting the facts of history. But genocide did happen here, within the UN meaning as we shall see. Yet we collectively continue to ignore it, as though the act of ignoring or denying will somehow make any uncomfortable facts go away or allow them to be replaced with a more comfortable interpretation, a revisionist myth to palliate our collective conscience. Our moral dilemma is that genocidal behaviour exposes our values as a society, and potentially makes us think less of ourselves. The temptation is to put aside or reject the past, especially anything unpalatable that may reflect negatively on our self-image as a nation. We will convince ourselves that genocide can only happen in the future, and somewhere else, and that the past is immune from criticism because it occurred before the UN Convention was agreed, a form of reframing. The semantic difficulty is that different people also understand different things when they use the term. But many fail to remember that the word ‘genocide’, which has a precise and internationally recognised legal definition that only came to be resolved in the 1940s, when Lemkin was trying to articulate certain classes of mass violence and destruction, in order to have them made a criminal offence under a proposed United Nations Convention. 1053 The Convention on the crime of genocide includes, but is not limited to, targeted mass killing. It recognises there are many ways for human lives to be taken away, and not just by the physically violent act of massacre. Dispossession is equally effective, and more so when accompanied by heavily armed policing and overtly racist legislation. All methods are part of the genocidal process. Why is the term ‘genocide’ limited in the public mind to the mass killing of a particular targeted population? The misconception no doubt derives from Nazi death camps, where Jews were horribly exterminated on an industrial scale. But that is not what ‘genocide’ means, under the UN Convention. Many historians perpetuate the misconception, among them, Alison Palmer in a wellresearched book on Queensland Aboriginal massacres. She writes ‘Genocide refers to the intention to destroy a whole or substantial part of a group physically, because they are members of that group.’ 2188 The definition is incorrect, as we will see in a few pages. Alison then goes on to examine what happened to Queensland Aboriginals, within the narrow terms of her definition, and concludes: ‘The structure and resources of the Queensland government were so limited during this period that any plan to systematically annihilate the Aborigines would have failed.’ Having rejected that ‘genocide’ occurred, as she has defined it, she then reminds us how the Queensland Government imposed conditions of life intended to bring about the physical and cultural destruction of Aboriginals. But this is exactly what the Convention defines as genocide in Article 2 (c): Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. Alison writes: ‘Despite efforts of the government to absolve itself of any responsibility towards Aborigines at the frontiers, its intentions are revealed – the subjugation of Aborigines through violence and death. This was accelerated by starvation which forced Aborigines into the territory of other groups and incurred intertribal violence, the spread of venereal disease which prevented reproduction, and of other diseases such as measles, and the demoralisation and denigration of the survivors.’ 2189 Even this summary understates what happened to Aboriginals at the hands of police and pastoralists. Alison does not say the venereal disease was introduced through infected whites, who predated on Aboriginal women. She does not mention the ‘stolen children’ in the Bringing Them Home report (discussed earlier) that asserted Removal of children with this objective in mind [absorption or assimilation into the wider, non-indigenous community so that their unique cultural values and ethnic identities would disappear] is genocidal because it aims to destroy the cultural unity which the Convention [Genocide Convention 1948] is concerned to preserve. 1054 Alison does not mention Government eugenic efforts to ‘breed out the colour’. In Queensland, Aboriginals fearfully called these Government genocidal programmes ‘living under the Act’.2190 Other states introduced ‘The Act’ in variant forms as an effective Aboriginal ethnicity eradication programme. Finally, Alison does not mention the key enabler for Article 2 genocide, the deliberate, planned, and intentional alienation (theft) of Aboriginal land. The British Government began the legalised theft from 1792 when the Governor first made land grants, but arguably commenced with the first settlement at Sydney Cove in 1788. The ongoing process of invasive British occupation left Aboriginals increasingly without a home, as they were often ‘removed’ at gunpoint by pastoralists and settlers, many of whom had their emigration from Britain subsidised. If Aboriginals continued to resist, at first the military were called in, where necessary, to effect the usually violent removal of any unwanted ‘trespassers’. As settlement consolidated, the enforcing role of the military was taken over by the police and sometimes the judiciary. In a recent work, 2191 the expatriate Australian and British-based lawyer, Geoffrey Robinson argues, I think wrongly, that genocide is a matter for judges, not historians. In fact, genocide as defined by Lemkin is a matter for ethicists, for how we should live, for those who passionately believe in human rights, a journey that would demand we unravel the circumstances of Australian genocide and logically lead us to an Australian Bill of Rights, not just human, which we are as far from as ever. It would certainly require us to introduce domestic legislation to make genocide a crime, for which the proposed Commonwealth Act lapsed in 2008. 2192 While Robinson focuses on Turkey, he is curiously silent on Australia, a place we might assume was closer to his roots. The New South Wales parliament recognised Armenian genocide in 2013, but the Abbott Government refused to do so because it might upset the Turks and lead to their restrictions on Australian travel to Gallipoli, a holy site for one of our enduring myths. Unless we confront our own murderous past, Armenian genocide becomes academic. Perhaps Robinson believes, like so many lawyers, that genocide is limited to the large-scale mass killing of a targeted group, usually ethnic, with the intent to remove them entirely from a certain geographic area. This is to miss the point of Lemkin’s definition, which clearly understands that a people can be destroyed in many ways: by destroying their culture or prohibiting cultural activities; by causing the group mental harm; by imposing measures to prevent births within the group (in the early 20th century, most Australian Governments had a eugenics policy that was intended to breed out the aboriginal traits); by forcibly depopulating their homelands; or through imposed starvation and disease; or by stealing their children and their land; or by disrupting social cohesion; or by relocating them to detention centres where the inhospitable conditions reduce their urge to live; or by using oppressive policing; or by systematically taking away hope; and finally, by mass killing as the pastoral frontier rolled across the continent. This is what Lemkin meant, when he obtained the resolution of the United Nations in 1948 that genocide means acts committed with an intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, for which the Genocide Convention would introduce criminal penalties to punish those who perpetrated such genocidal acts. 1055 When does ‘massacre’ become ‘genocide’? In summary, ‘genocide’ is sometimes (incorrectly) defined as the intentional, sponsored and systematic killing of a group of people based on race, culture or religion with the objective to remove that group of people from an entire area.2193 If we accept this definition for the moment, then this was the case in Australia, although Government intentionality and sponsorship are often - I think wrongly - disputed. Circumspection about motives is sometimes wise, but not if it leads to equivocation and discourages critical examination. For example, Jonathon Richards, a highly respected historian, provides the following dialectic: Did genocide take place in Colonial Queensland? Genocide is perpetrated not only by states but also groups of individuals. In recent years it has been argued that genocidal extermination took place in Queensland, but there is debate over the term genocide and its applicability to situations where Indigenous people were murdered and their manner of living assaulted by colonisers. The difficulty with using genocide in a technically correct way arises because there must, according to the commonly understood definition, be clear evidence of government intention. Aboriginal people in Queensland and other Australian colonies were killed for their land, but there were no official orders for this action.2194 Parliamentary debates following critical newspaper articles are illuminating, showing that senior politicians knew the colonial government was complicit in racial violence. The Queensland government was like a parent who covers up their offspring’s regular murderous sprees, culpable according to the law of the time. All murder was illegal. There are references in the primary sources to activities with genocidal outcomes in other places. Some settlers in Queensland remarked upon violence in other Australian colonies. Even the Executive Council noted this, reporting ‘blacks were shot down’ in Tasmania, and ‘almost exterminated in the settled districts of New South Wales and Victoria – often by wholesale massacres’. Pioneer North Queensland grazier Edward Palmer agreed, writing in the Queenslander of 25 July 1874 that the history of North Queensland in connection with the Blacks was similar to that of New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria and ‘perhaps if the truth were spoken the means of getting rid of them are similar too.’ The use of the term genocide is clouded by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of genocide of 1948, which specifies that intent is a prerequisite. It is, at this point in time, quite difficult for many citizens of former settlercolonies to recognise that their societies are built on the violent theft of Indigenous land and other resources. Until that historical injustice is acknowledged, colonial formations such as the Native Police, and the important part they played in the colonisation process, will continue to be misunderstood. Quite simply, without the use of armed force and the cooperation of Indigenous people, colonisation would not have succeeded in many parts of the world. The true history of the Native Police cannot be separated from an admission of the violence that underwrote Queensland’s occupation by European squatters and miners. The Native Police was not the only dirty tool; a number of squatters also organised their own murdering parties. 1056 According to genocide scholar Colin Tatz, ‘almost all historians of the Aboriginal experience avoid the word ‘genocide’, and he argues that this reluctance demonstrates ‘the place of morality in Australian politics’. In cases such as this, suppressed historical guilt may have superceded all other ethical issues. Not all agree with his assessment: different historians arrive at a range of conclusions. Dirk Moses, using the work of Alison Palmer and Henry Reynolds, says the Native Police was a form of governmentsponsored genocide. Evidence cannot be found to conclusively prove that the Queensland government was directing or even condoning the killings performed by the Native Police. What this really means is that we need some other terminology to express dramatically and honestly what some agents of colonisation and their hirelings did to Aboriginal people. And we need language to describe a government that did not go on the record as intending to exterminate Aboriginal people, but certainly was relieved when the men of the Native Police escaped murder charges. Genocidal acts were committed when opportunities arose. Like a suspect who cannot be brought to trial for want of evidence, the government escapes a decisive historical verdict. Morally, though, it is clear that successive Queensland governments conducted themselves with a repugnant disregard for the lives of Aboriginal people. Historically, the momentum for extermination came mostly from the periphery. There were people at the centre (i.e. Brisbane) who agreed, but the historical evidence shows that there were far more people in the metropolis who didn’t support the killing. The frontier is a different (but not unconnected) realm. In the Queensland context, genocide is an inadequate word, and the United Nations declaration too narrow to allow the term to stick. Raymond Evans’ approach is more appropriate and accurate: Private individuals illegally accomplished more genocidal outcomes than did the state via its military, police and native police forces, but the state was complicit, via its failure to prosecute Europeans for the killing, kidnapping or injuring of Aborigines.2195 It is true that ‘genocide’ is a recently confected term that, perhaps unsurprisingly, absolves all members of the United Nations Security Council from retroactive prosecution. But, contrary to Richards’ assertion, there is evidence from documented records2196 that the Queensland Government had a deliberate policy of ‘dispersal’ that was stated to include the meaning of mass killing. What is not in question is that military personnel, pastoralists and police conducted ‘mass killings’ of Aboriginals in a politically driven programme of ‘dispersal’ operations to remove Aboriginals from large parts of the country where they might interfere with pastoral and other commercial activities. First, there were the violent homicides and indiscriminate mass killings. Then there were the quiet deaths, the unseen deaths, the deaths from starvation and disease, the despairing deaths that followed dispossession and loss of hope. Over a period of one hundred and fifty years, only a handful of individuals were ever convicted for Aboriginal murder across Australia. Criminalising the dispersal policy would have made the Government culpable, along with the police. But ‘dispersal’ was official Government policy, as we shall see. And British settlers were enthusiastic collaborators in the process. Events like Murdering Creek were the characteristic and coldly intentional result. The Government policy of ‘dispersal’ involved, at different times, killing, removal of children from their families, 2197 and removal of adults to detention centres. The ‘dispersal’ process 1057 conforms to its modern incarnation, ‘ethnic cleansing’, 2198 through means that crossed over into ‘genocide’. Dispersal was also official, written and sanctioned Government policy, that it, it was intentional. In this protracted land war 2199 where the firearm and horse were decisive tools, land legislation, police operational procedures, predatory pastoralists and a racist criminal code proved the most potent weapons of all. So did ‘genocide’ happen in Australia? First, we must address the misconceptions. To reprise: Genocide2200 is often thought of as a calculated game of numbers, relative numbers, reducing the numbers of a targeted group within a designated area to zero if possible and through various categorizable behaviours within some loose interpretation of the UN definition of genocide, including mass killing, cultural destruction and eugenics. It is plausible, but is it correct? ‘Genocide’ is a legal term within an agreed United Nations Convention, and has a precise definition. Yet there is still great misunderstanding over the meaning of the word genocide. For example, some aver that the Convention fails to mention whether a ‘state’ can be culpable if in fact it needs to. Some also argue that the Convention allows for the possibility of state complicity in the use of the term ‘sponsored; but although the verb ‘sponsored’ appears in some definitions, it is not mentioned in the only important legal definition, which is the UN Convention. However, the efforts of the nation states in word-smithing the agreed definition of ‘genocide’ allow the criticism that the UN Convention is badly compromised because it excludes (or fails to mention) genocide specifically carried out by a nation-state and fails to reflect general community understanding of accountability.2201 There is an argument that the UN Security Council members wished to avoid being prosecuted themselves, as many member states had already committed genocide, or could reasonably be accused of such, and might do so again or want to have that option in pursuing their perceived national interests. Certainly, the apparatus of the UN Security Council allows the right of veto. Finally, there is a misconception that retroactive prosecution is not possible because the convention does not allow it. To correct the misunderstanding, we must refer to what the UN Genocide Convention actually says. The word genocide2202 was created by Raphael Lemkin in the 1940s, following WWII, to categorise and criminalise certain types of mass murder and ethnic destruction, and give them worldwide focus. That is not to say that there was no equivalent behaviour to what we now call ‘genocide’ before the UN Convention was realised. There are far too many examples in the last two hundred years, including - we will argue - what happened in Australia and is still happening today. 1058 So how did we get to the formal UN concept of genocide? What are the facts and how do we separate the facts from misconceptions? The pattern of genocide - or its broader variant, ethnic cleansing - was recognized in the early 19th century, and probably much before, whenever one group of people sought to exert their authority over another; but it was not until the United Nations was established that a Convention was formalized, through the exertions of Lemkin, 2203 to set out the expected and normative behaviours of its member states or nations. Under the Lemkin 1948 UN Genocide Convention, the term ‘genocide’ refers inter alia to the ‘deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or majority part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group’. The Convention was adopted by resolution 260 (III) of the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948. Australia became a signatory to the Convention in 1949 but did not introduce specific domestic legislation to make genocide a crime. In 1999, genocide was still not an Australian crime and was so ruled by justices Whitlam and Wilcox in Nulyarimma v Thompson 1999 2204 that customary international law did not form a part of Australian law and therefore genocide was not a crime under Australian law in the absence of legislation declaring genocide a crime. This remains the case fifteen years later. The proposed anti-genocide legislation by the Commonwealth Government has lapsed since 2008.2205 In 2000, the Commonwealth Government passed legislation to prosecute crimes against humanity, but not genocide. Nor is ethnic cleansing a specific crime, arguably because it uses the methods of genocide to achieve its objectives. Until 2000, war criminals could find a safe haven in Australia, among them Konrad Kalejs (involved in the Arajskomando killings in Latvia during the Holocaust and Ervin Viks (responsible for thousands of Estonian deaths). In 1961, Attorney-General Garfield Barwick refused a Russian request for Viks’ extradition. The political attitude seemed to be that genocide was (and is) unthinkable in Australia because we are a ‘moral’ country and that Australian citizens deserved the protection of Australian law. Clearly, politicians had a limited grasp of our history. 2206 Henry Reynolds examines the question of intent in relation to genocide by arguing: Was the killing of indigenous people done with the specific intention of destroying particular groups, or did it happen as a consequence of action that had other motives, such as the taking of land, the imposing of a new order or the pacification of a violent frontier? 2207 However, if a natural disaster occurs, such as a tsunami or a category 5 tropical cyclone or volcanism, can I argue that the disaster did not also cause the destruction of houses, the loss of crops, the degradation of water quality, the loss of life due to starvation and disease, that these were secondary. No, the destruction was part of the one event process. I cannot logically separate the trigger from the associated actionable components that are defined by the type trigger. There was some triggering condition, and the outcome was predictable 1059 within the process envelope, which encloses some specifiable and predictable pattern. It is predictable because it is repeatable. We have seen the pattern before and know what to expect. And if I intentionally take someone’s land with the intention to shoot them indiscriminately as a group if they return, then we conclude intentionality is embedded in a bounded and patterned process of actionable steps, with conditional triggers for the procedural actions forming a nested hierarchy of intent. And if I am encouraged by my Government to take land where I please, without restriction other than the possible impost of some Government fee, and if I am free to kill Aboriginals without any real fear of punishment because the Government is fearful that any restrictions or punishment might cause an assault to public order and generate a backlash that might put the Government and civil society at risk, are my actions any less egregious. And if homeless Aboriginals begin to starve, families begin to break up, Aboriginals women are preyed upon, and Aboriginal society begins to tear apart, can I really argue that these were an unexpected consequence of actions that had other motives, such as the expropriation of Aboriginal land, and were not an intended result of measured genocide? Within this hierarchy of intentionality, we cannot meaningfully separate primary causes from expected outcomes or consequences. The process of forcibly expropriating land will lead to a continuing process of shootings (and other violent actions proscribed by the Lemkin convention), of starvation, of family dissolution, of cultural destruction, until all the land is occupied by non-Aboriginals, a result of intentional Government policy that cannot legally or logically be distinguished from Lemkinian genocide. Reynolds’ argument is that the Aboriginal killing was an unintended consequence of land expropriation. The logic only holds true if pastoralists did not intend or foresee the consequences, when evidentially those consequences were both intentional and measured, as part of a protracted and one-sided land war that saw a catastrophic reduction exceeding 90% in the Aboriginal population over a period of 120 years. 2208 In his 1999 paper, Colin Tatz observes: We have to look to the philosophy inherent in the legal wording of Article II, namely, that genocide is the systematic attempt to destroy, by various means, a defined group's essential foundations. In this tighter legal sense, Australia is guilty of at least three, possibly four, acts of genocide: first, the essentially private genocide, the physical killing committed by settlers and rogue police officers in the nineteenth century, while the state, in the form of the colonial authorities, stood silently by (for the most part); second, the twentieth-century official state policy and practice of forcibly transferring children from one group to another with the express intention that they cease being Aboriginal ; third, the twentieth century attempts to achieve the biological disappearance of those deemed "half-caste" Aborigines; fourth, a prima facie case that Australia's actions to protect Aborigines in fact caused them serious 1060 bodily or mental harm. (Future scholars may care to analyse the extent of Australia's actions in creating the conditions of life that were calculated to destroy a specific group, and in sterilising Aboriginal women without consent.) 2209 I would agree, except for the assertion about ‘essentially private genocide, committed by settlers and rogue police’. At the beginning of settlement and up to 1838, the killings were carried out by the British military, supported by armed settlers. After 1838, colonial police were involved, acting on the instructions of the various state governments, and were hardly ‘rogue’. Nor were the killings ‘private’. Government had a policy of pastoralists’ armed self-protection, to augment the police, and there were almost no prosecutions for Aboriginal killings, apart from the notable exception of the 1838 Myall Creek massacre. Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide reads: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent 2210 to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: 2211 a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 2212 In British jurisprudence and for most western jurisdictions, intent separates a planned from an unplanned act. It is incorrect to assume that all consequences of some planned act are unplanned acts, conferring diminished responsibility. An act is to do something because of something, to execute an actionable component or components because of some triggering condition. If I cause you serious disadvantage on the basis of your race and colour that impact upon your conditions of life, if I kill you, and steal your land, and remove your children, and impose eugenics, and move you to a detention centre, the acts are intentional and the evidence is a matter of record, although I may submit mitigating arguments of self-defence or that I was acting in good faith according to the standards of the time; but if you die as a nation in consequence, can I reasonably argue that I intended no lethal harm and the consequences could not be foreseen? If I point a gun at you and then shoot you, or if I give you poisoned food to eat, the act is intentional; but in Criminal law, if there are no witnesses, the evidence may be circumstantial, the consequences of my act arguably becoming unintended in the unlikely event that I am prosecuted for my act. 1061 Yet if I blow up a railroad track (or dispossess you) and hundreds die in a subsequent train crash (or its equivalent), can I reasonably argue that the deaths were an unintended consequence of my act? British-derived law is forensic in attacking individual acts for their violent behaviour, but almost mute in criminalising patterned acts of mass murder and oppression, particularly if the state itself is implicated. This is not the whole story. Articles 3 and 4 then prescribe accountability. Article 3 states that: The following acts shall be punishable: a) b) c) d) e) Genocide; Conspiracy to commit genocide; Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; Attempt to commit genocide; Complicity in genocide. Australia, by this clear definition, is accountable for genocide through its legislation and Aboriginal policies, which are a matter of public record. To dispel any remaining doubt, Article 4 further clarifies those who may be accountable and makes clear that the state can be culpable by default. It specifies: Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals. The UN Convention, through Article 4, makes clear that the State Executive Councils and their legislative bodies, along with police commissioners, certain Aboriginal protectors and many squatters are directly accountable for the UN crime of genocide, provided that the crime is recognised and can be prosecuted in Australian Law. While it is true that the wording of Articles 3 and 4 do not mention the state or nation-state as a potentially culpable entity, it is not ruled out if a cross-section of those who are potentially prosecuted comprise ipso facto the state. Many people still believe (wrongly) that genocide is the sole domain of article 2 (a) within the Convention. Lemkin clearly understood and explained that genocide embraced both physical and psychological (including cultural) destruction. He wrote: Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, 1062 and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group. Genocide has two phases: one, the destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed population which is allowed to remain or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and the colonisation by the oppressor’s own nationals.2213 No clearer exposition can be given for the reality of Aboriginal genocide, where the Murdering Creek massacre was a small but determinable instance.2214 What the Convention also makes transparent is that genocide is not limited to intentional, state-sanctioned massacres. The failure to act (omission) also makes us criminally culpable as a state or as a civilian. In 2004, the International Criminal Court ruled that retrospectivity is applicable. ‘It happened sometime in the past' is not necessarily a defence.2215 Many of us assume that genocide and ethnic cleansing are solely comprised of massacres, with the state required to be implicitly or explicitly involved in a deliberate culture and official practice of racially targeted killings, and that there must be a burden of legal proof, through official orders and court judgments and death records, that massacres were intentional and directed. This is not correct, as the United Nations Lemkin definition for genocide makes quite clear. Ethnic cleansing – genocide when sufficient numbers and a larger proportion of the unwanted racial (or cultural) group have been removed from (or destroyed within) an area – is not constrained to massacres alone. For Australia in general, and Queensland in particular (since we are examining the political context for Murdering Creek), Government ‘dispersal’ policy, supported by armed pastoralists, did some of the loathsome work; but Government legislation (supported by racist policies and practices), and an intentionally biased criminal justice system did the rest. Specific domestic law still does not prohibit acts of genocide within Australia, although we remain a ‘model litigant’ and signatory to the Lemkin Convention. This is the double speak of legal obfuscation when the rights of oppressed minorities are legally denied in the national (commercial) interest. Nevertheless, in 2002 the Australian Government did ratify the ICC Act (with amendments in 2004)2216 on the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity more generally. Colin Tatz reminds us that the UN legal definition of genocide is quite broad and allows few prosecutions, perhaps through a lack of will on the part of the Security Council. Nevertheless, the UN Convention is now fully adopted (in 2002) by the International Criminal Court into Article 6 of the Court’s statute. Colin carefully and methodically analyses the evidence for Australian genocide, using each article of the Lemkin Convention as a logical and legal sieve.2217 1063 He concludes: Aborigines were killed, were the victims of bodily and mental harm, had birth-control measures imposed upon them and had their children forcibly transferred because of who they were. It does not matter that the killing or the harming did not always succeed: ‘success’ is not a factor in adjudging the commission of the crime.2218 In 1999, the High Court asserted that, consistent with the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy, there was no constitutional restriction on Section 122 of the Constitution not to authorise acts of genocide.2219 Australia refuses to legislate specifically against the crime of genocide as prescribed by the 1949 UN Convention, preferring to keep its options open.2220 However, it has introduced legislation that prohibits crimes against humanity in accordance with International law, not quite the same as genocide, but with a degree of overlap where there is mass killing, yet not other forms of destruction, and not retroactively because of the pernicious (and largely wrong) ‘standards of the time’ argument which we have reinvented as reflexivity. Nor does the argument hold scrutiny that Governments mistreated Aboriginals with ‘the best of intentions, for their common good’, when there is clear evidence of mass killing, legislated oppression, eugenics, stolen wages, stolen children, and theft of Aboriginal land. How can it be ‘well intended’ to dispossess tribe after tribe, break up families, massacre those who resisted, and submit the remnant population to forced detention, subjugation and repression? In 1999, following the High Court decision on genocide, an Anti-Genocide Bill was proposed by the Australian Parliament, which would amend the genocide Convention Act 1949 to implement Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to ensure genocide is unlawful in Australia. The progress was inexcusably tardy and inconclusive, with the Government delaying as much as possible. On 13 October 1999, the amendment was introduced and read the first time. On 13 October 1999, a second reading was moved. On 5 April 2001, there was a second reading debate, but on 13 February 2002, it was restored to the Notice Paper, and on 16 November 2004, it lapsed at the end of Parliament. On 17 November 2004, it was restored to the Notice paper,2221 but on 12 February 2008, it lapsed once more.2222 So Australia still does not have any specific domestic legislation2223 that makes genocide a crime, in accordance with fully enacting all articles of the 1949 UN Convention, although it has now ratified the International Criminal Court’s enactment on crimes against humanity, which includes the crime of genocide. The Australian Government has ruled out any retrospective culpability.2224 1064 When we compare the 1949 UN Genocide Convention with the Australian Government’s 2002 legislation, we immediately notice that Article 2 of the UN convention has been incorporated into Australian domestic law. But Articles 1 and 3 to 8 have been excised.2225 There is no reason for Australia not to comprehensively criminalise the internationally recognised crime of genocide unless the Commonwealth Government is worried that it may be culpable with terms of extradition, with complicity, with retrospectivity, and with omission. They may be right. 1065 Crimes against humanity As we are reminded (but not by Australia):2226 There are two federal statutes in Australia that refer to proceedings involving crimes against humanity: • Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth),2227 available at http://www.comlaw.gov.au/ComLaw/ Legislation/ActCompilation1.nsf/0/5423704BFDAC4386CA2576EA00129C E7/$file/CriminalCode1995_WD02.pdf. • The relevant provisions in this legislation were inserted by the International Criminal Court (Consequential Amendments) Act 2002, available at http://www.comlaw.gov.au/ComLaw/Legislation/ActCompilation1.nsf/0/ 640800730D340CE5CA256F7100563577/$file/0422002.pdf. • International Criminal Court Act 2002 (Cth), available at http://www.comlaw. gov.au/ComLaw/Legislation/ActCompilation1.nsf/0/FA56268B62FE5347C A256F7100563077/$file/0412002.pdf. The Criminal Code Act 1995 provides that Australian courts can have jurisdiction in cases involving crimes against humanity, even if the offences are also crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.2228 Jurisdiction is available, whether or not the offence was committed in Australia.2229 The Attorney-General must give permission for charges to be brought under these provisions.2230 There can be no double jeopardy, where a person has already been tried for the same offence in the International Criminal Court.2231 The International Criminal Court Act 2002 sets out the procedural requirements relating to Australia’s cooperation with, and provision of assistance to, the International Criminal Court.2232 And there the issues must rest for a time, or at least until a process of Aboriginal recognition and reconciliation introduces its own morality into any public discussion and constitutional amendments, perhaps even a belated Bill of Rights, that must, or should accompany our journey into cultural pluralism.2233 1066 Methodology2234 Much of our history is in the form of oral narrative and myth. Can myths be analysed for their historicity? We live in an information-based society. Information around some subject area derives from a set of facts, each fact comprising data (nouns), operations or actions (verbs) and constraints: ‘{In the 1860s}, party of type stockmen {at} location of type Yandina homestead [shot at] party of type Aboriginals as they [made their way to] the location of type bora {near} location of type Yandina Creek’. We can verify or discount such facts when they comprise testable assertions, based on locations or events or dates. Fact based analysis2235 therefore becomes a useful tool in examining any narrative history, often mythical, a yarn or tall tale which can otherwise too easily be dismissed. We will use this tool among others when we come to our investigation into the myth of Murdering Creek. Theoretical system models are also a powerful investigative tool, rarely used by historians, who tend to rely upon the power of verbal arguments and theses, supported by selective quoting from various sources, weaving a certain threaded logic that may, or may not, adequately represent past reality. But what is reality? Human history, broadly speaking, is a picture of what happens in a certain delineated and circumscribed social system, say the contextual and reported history of the Murdering Creek event on the Sunshine Coast in the 1860s. Historians and social theorists often ignore detailed modelling for such systems, preferring to use words, photographs, selected quotes, and tables to attack the data and give it some kind of form.2236 There is also the general caution to avoid reflexivity, that is, to avoid judging the past from a modern perspective or with an observer bias. For this reason, we can often dismiss myths as a contextual referent or as non-testable folklore. Yet hard sciences routinely use analytical methodology as a potent means to develop coherent models from messy and conflicting data sets, which we then use to test theories against the data and make predictions that are potentially falsifiable. The same approach is possible for us to enquire systematically into historiography (or meta-history), and the associated historicity. The investigative model proposed here is system based and graphical. It forms two primary levels of abstraction: the meta-model (or type model) and the case instance (or type instantiation), although other levels are available as may be required by the forensic analysis. For any information system, we can structurally and relationally map data and functions (taking certain actions against data, such as ‘form shooting parties at Yandina homestead’) into a hierarchy, against which there are many possible and consistent logical views; processes (‘shoot Aboriginals’ , or ‘destroy evidence’ or ‘distribute poisoned flour’) each in the form ‘do this, then this’. For example, ‘aim, fire, re-load’ or ‘burn bodies’) can be ordered by generic organisational structures and responsibilities (‘remove Aboriginals from their land’) into specific taxonomic instantiations, from (‘disperse Kabi Aboriginals from the Mary Valley’) to (‘massacre a particular group of Aboriginals on the Mortimer property at Manumbar in 1861’). The typology conforms to a policy hierarchy, which specifies functions and data at different levels of abstraction. This hierarchy follows naturally from the politics of occupation and subjugation as an ordered set. We can also determine the relationships between data (and between data types). For example ‘form shooting parties at Yandina homestead’ can be normalised as a binary relationship, involving the entity ‘party’ with the attributes ‘type of’, ‘multiplicity’ and ‘conditional trigger’, and the entity ‘Homestead’ with the attributes ‘type of’ and’ location’, 1067 with the bi-directional entity relationship ‘form at’ or ‘forms’. This kind of semantic precision is often required, albeit in a less analytic form, by the legal process. Any information system that seeks to automate the historical documentation and discovery process mandates such precision, perhaps as part of some future historiographic project. Such a system can go beyond basic searching and retrieval, to accelerating the process for establishing historicity, for which there are now proven software tools available. These tools include data mining that can look for patterns in a daataset, genetic algorithms that can evolve a dataset based upon a set of initial rules (or triggering conditions) to simulate the observed behaviour and emergent properties of complex systems, and neural networks that learn by example, such as ‘Watson’, which we recently encountered in the game of Jeopardy as a dominant competitor. Processes and their underlying workflows and events intersect functions and data in specific methods and services (‘establish flying detachments of mounted police’). However, I do not believe historians or social theorists have attempted this precursor modelling because of disputes over methodology. My introductory examples have some licence,2237 but the merits of testing narrative assertions for verifiable facts seem clear enough. Fact based analysis is a very straightforward first step for separating confirmable events from embellishment and hyperbole, particularly when anecdotal and narrative history assumes a larger importance against official and usually sanitised Government despatches, and where there is a relative absence of case law. The analytical framework allows us to determine the evidence for whether an event happened or did not happen. If it did happen, for example, was there a Yandina Station? Where was it located? What is its history? Who were the lessees? Was there a bora at Yandina Creek? Who discovered the bora, and when? 2238Did the Government take any steps taken to protect its cultural significance? What was the effect of specific land legislation on settler behaviour? What was the status of Aboriginal British relations as Aboriginal land was being expropriated? What happened to homeless Aboriginals, their families, and their society? Was the rule of British law upheld for all citizens, including Aboriginals? Were settlers prosecuted for killing Aboriginals? Was the settler land invasion curbed by Government or was it encouraged? What politicians and Governors were in power at the time of the Murdering Creek massacre, just after Queensland separated from New South Wales in 1859? Who was involved in the Murdering Creek event (including the chain of command), how and where? What were the triggers? What actually happened at Murdering Creek? How and when did it receive its name? Such unofficial history, based on a set of ‘myths’, is often a more truthful reflection of collective behavioural psychology, usually apparent in 19th century letters or biographies, in building up a consistent historical picture of an event or events, particularly where there is no independently witnessed or recorded case history. The evidence is often circumstantial, such as the mysterious disappearance of entire groups of Aboriginal people from an area they had occupied for thousands of years, and their sudden replacement over twenty or so years by settlers and squatters, a complicit pas de deux. The kernels of testable assertions in narrative history are often discounted or ignored on the basis of adjectival ‘noise’, or quaint yarns, or racist twitter, or unsupportable (though generalised and endemic) hearsay, when they should be a rich mine of historical data and meta-data. 1068 The historical evidence for intentional Australian genocide is complicated and relatively contentious, because there may be misconceptions on the nature of genocide,2239 or the facts may be denied, or the legal corroborative material may be sparse. There is a temptation to simplify an historical investigation, and to examine individual events in isolation from larger patterns. Such examinations tend to rely on Government dispatches, official Government reports, and Government published land policies and legislation, all of which are readily available from the public record with the investment of a little time. However, gazetted legislation and Government correspondence should not replace the abundant narrative and oral history, myths, which lie sprawling all around us, not significantly or sufficiently analyzed, not, that is, by the reasonable standards of modern historians. Myths are different from factual history. They are generally fractal in nature, each reflecting an entire context, and require different analytical tools. By examining any one myth, we can access the whole range of myths that encompass our narrative history. Much of this history is slowly becoming entombed or crumbling away, because it is old, or is not available online due to cost constraints or lack of interest. Cultural amnesia2240 is the inevitable result and a degraded and less-informed society our common loss, our contrived and imagined memories - a mythical 19th century British version of the dreamtime - the legacy for our children. But it need not be.2241 As a key part of our investigative method, we will use process models as a diagnostic and analytic tool to understand the behaviours and events that drove a specific actionable component within ethnic cleansing and led to its melancholy outcome. A process is a set of events or actionable components that are related by some shared triggering condition and work together for some defined outcome. For example, ethnic cleansing and its associated processes and activity strings (actionable components) occurred area by area, case by case, each case unique, but when each case is analysed against the same diagnostic model, we find the independent variable (pattern of oppression for a specific case instance) correlates closely with the dependent variable (analytic model for all case instances). Therefore, we conclude that the theoretical model is potentially falsifiable when it is instantiated with specific cases, where we can identify case exceptions that might cause us to amend or reject the model. Alternatively, we can confirm our hypothesis if the case instance (say the Murdering Creek event) can be mapped to the proposed case type (the type occupation process), which then means that all such events conform to a larger directed pattern. Type Process verification We wish to verify that the proposed type occupation process, as set out in this paper, is a mapping of a particular case instance, such as Murdering Creek. Any mapping from one space to another involves some functional relationship between a specific object, for example an event or case, and a target space that we have defined by a reference model, say the type occupation process or the Lemkinian type genocide process. 1069 If we can show that some event or case such as Murdering Creek can map to or instantiate the type process, then we have verified that the hypothesized type process is a necessary and sufficient mapping of observed or reported reality, prescribed by some level of fact-based analysis. In terms that are mathematically more rigorous, a function is the relation between two sets. The relationship can be either a mapping or a transformation. The functional relationship is a set of ordered pairs, x and ⨍(x). If we write y = ⨍(x), then y is the value for the argument x, where x = x1, x2, x3,.. xn and di represents some actionable component domain over x. In our Murdering Creek example, we can hypothesize the event as a type instance of the occupation process. That is, the relationship between the Murdering Creek event (if verified) and the occupation process is that it is potentially a type instance or mapping of the occupation process. If we can verify the (mythical) Murdering Creek event and that it can instantiate the occupation process, then we can also assert that there is a direct mapping relationship between the occupation process and almost any Aboriginal homicide at the pastoral frontier, including many purported myths. Therefore, we can no longer treat such massacres in isolation from an overall pattern of belligerent intent, directed by the Government of the time and its functionaries. The homicidal event becomes a contextual referent, where the context is the occupation process and its variant forms. It leaves us with the question: How do we verify the architecture of the occupation process? The answer is that the occupation process comprises event types that we can verify from welldocumented legislation, Government gazettes and historical records, such as Government despatches. Until now, the process architecture or case typology has been somewhat neglected. We are left with isolated myths and disparate conflict records that tend to ignore the chain of accountability. 2242 The occupation process is set out in this paper as a model or directed graph, which in our discussion means the ordered set of relationships between certain types of event that are bound together (or related) by shared triggering conditions.2243 The set of triggers and their associated events form the pattern of intentionality within a subject area. We will specify the case instance (Murdering Creek event) of this occupation process (expressed as a generalised case type) as a key part of the overall conclusion, at the end of this document. We will later represent the case type at different levels of abstraction within a typology.2244 In mathematical terminology, a directed graph (or digraph) is a set of nodes connected by edges, where each edge has an associated direction. Therefore, the edge is equivalent to a conditional trigger (with corresponding weighting), which controls the flow direction through a set of actionable components, or nodes. A set of ordered pairs of nodes can comprise directed edges, or may comprise a multiset, with iterations. A simple directed graph has no iterations. In our analysis, we will encounter multisets, also called a directed multigraph. A weighted digraph is called a network, but for our purposes, we will refer to it as a process. There are 1070 many practical applications for graph theory, in particular, the modelling of social networks such as the occupation process. An extension of graph theory is the Petri net, a mathematical modelling system that provides a graphical representation for multi-step processes that include choice, iteration and concurrent execution of actionable components. It is a directed bipartite graph, where the nodes are transitions (or possible events) and places (or event conditions). It is therefore useful in more rigorous system modelling and analysis, and we will use a simplified form of Petri nets in specifying our process typology. Events and causality By event, we will mean something that originates (is caused to happen) at a certain time or within a certain period, and usually takes place in a particular area within some defined set of contingent acts and with some defined outcome. It may happen in such a manner that it catches our attention with its apparent significance, something that is unusual or out of the ordinary, for example a mass killing, or the introduction of some important land legislation, or the enactment of accelerated immigration through a policy process, or a public enquiry into certain homicidal police methods such as ‘dispersal’. Underlying this definition is the notion of causality, that events can be related in some way, for example, Government alienation of Crown land was intended to facilitate (directly caused) land sales and thereby increase Government revenue, or British invasion, occupation and closer settlement inevitably and intentionally led to Aboriginal displacement and ethnic cleansing. In this sense, an event can be the outcome of some cause or causal chain (triggering conditions) that is deterministic in its effect, that is, if x occurs then y follows, where y can also be an event. In some cases, the causal chain can be probabilistic, depending upon how we express the description of the event. For example, mass killings at the expanding frontier increase the likelihood of further mass killings. But this is usually an artefact of the way the event is characterised: that is, if the event is not discrete (for example, the statistical aggregation of the set of mass killings in a generalised area over a certain period), then the consequences are also expressed probabilistically. This seems to be the way much of the non-quantum world behaves, even if the event is socially catastrophic (that is non-linear) in its effect, according to some measure, for example, the destruction of Aboriginal society with significant associated population loss. If we reduce events to behavioural quanta, then although individual responses may not always be predictable, nevertheless, collective responses seem determinable, for example: pervasive societal racism (that is, collectively shared behavioural dysfunction) or racially discriminatory Government social policy will generally lead to victimisation of the target group, although some individuals may not conform to the statistically normative behavioural dysfunction. In this collective sense, behaviours are predictable and conformable. Civil society and behavioural shaping Civil society in any period of history is a human construction. It finds shape within a found environment and is like niche adaptation for biological systems. Civil society (a collection of 1071 individuals and non-Government bodies within a nation state) shapes Aboriginal marginalisation (or income inequality or market forces or ethnic cleansing and so on) but Governments (a collection of policy makers and their agencies) shape civil society. The reverse can also apply, as the influences between Government and civil society are co-determinate. Considered as a system dynamic, behavioural shaping is the sum of specific legislation, prevailing societal values (such as a frenzy for land, no matter the human and social cost), and rules of legal conduct. To avoid normative imprecision, the legal system in general, and British jurisprudence within our area of interest, attempts to identify when a specified factor was involved in a particular phenomenon (event). The legal procedure determines an individual’s involvement through evidence of behaviour.2245 For example, Lieutenant Morisset commanded a police detachment, which killed a number of Aboriginals on a Manumbar property in 1861. Of course, if we can manipulate the rules of evidence, the relative precision sought by the legal method becomes irrelevant. For example: Aboriginals are not allowed to provide witness testimony; or Burn the bodies to destroy the evidence; or Use poisoned flour to give to Aboriginals (or allow them to steal) as this provides plausible deniability of involvement; or I felt threatened and was acting in self-defence; or They were evading arrest, so I shot them. The British system of laws became its own cause and effect, in service to Imperial policies, where evidence and their associated events could be (and were) made to legally disappear through a politically agreed set of rules, loosely based on British jurisprudence, which could be used to countermand other rules. We will see that all of these noxious and cynical practices were on display under the proclaimed British ‘rule of law’, when Aboriginal resistance was criminalised and settler sovereignty was protected through an evolving, far from impartial, juridical and political process that continued well into the 20th century. 1072 Australian Toponymy 2246 A quick glance at any good Australian atlas will show placenames that beg to tell us their story. They are generally names bestowed by the early pastoralists, settlers and politicians as they battled the environment and the First Australians for possession of the land. They are a living testament to our history, those we chose to honour, and how we perceive the landscape. It’s through their eyes that we now identify much of what we see in our found landscape. The provenance of many placenames is lost. Others have been sanitised, for example, The Leap, 20kms north of Mackay, originally known as Black Gin’s Leap, which was one of the many areas where flying detachments of Queensland Police did their loathsome work of dispersal in the 1870s. Other names have been removed entirely as though to excise our shame, places such as Murdering Lagoon in Queensland which was the site of an horrific massacre.2247 Or Fighting Hills in Western Victoria, in 1840, where the Whyte brothers massacred a reported 51 Aboriginals who had taken shelter.2248 Or Cutthroat Creek2249 near Chinchilla where a wealthy land owner and speculator called Matthew Goggs was implicated in a series of violent massacres in 1848.2250 Some original names still remain though, places such as Murdering Creek near Noosa in Queensland, which we’ll come to later in these pages as an extended case study, an evocative name which some local upmarket property owners sniff with distaste while they press the local council for its change, in the hope that removing a name can erase an event. Considerably more eponymous placenames have an honorific connotation where the persons involved have quite bloody and questionable records, places such as Foelsche2251 Headland in the Northern Territory, or the Henty2252 Highway in Victoria, or Dangar2253 Island in New South Wales, or Forrest2254 in Western Australia, or Jardine2255 in Queensland, but there are many others, far too many to list here. With further examination, there are very few people in our history who are deserving of the places named after them; they were too intimately involved in the bloody society-wide process of Aboriginal repression and depopulation. Of what we can be more certain: all these particular placenames had no random origin, but were conferred for a meaningful reason, carrying a story on their shoulders that we have now mostly forgotten. It won’t escape our attention that, in this derived and by no means exhaustive list, we are seeing overt racism on proud display.2256 The act of renaming a place is an attempt by an invader to own a found landscape, and by displacing the original names of the first inhabitants, results in cultural dispossession and further indigenous societal destruction; for the forcibly imposed erasure of memories is almost as violent in its effect as homicidal repression, an act of Lemkinian genocide to weaken the viability of another race. So it was for Aboriginal society at the hands of the British. It still continues today. What is significant in the bloodied placename list: the relative absence of Tasmanian toponymy. We conclude that Palawa dispossession was so violent, so swift, so secretive, so mobile, that the sharp conflict at various massacre sites barely had time to have a name bestowed by the invaders. But Victoria is similarly placed to Tasmania in its comparative 1073 paucity of racist toponyms. Conversely, the most horrific ethnic cleansing was perpetrated in WA, NT and Queensland where the listed placenames reflect the genocidal pastoral assault. It leads us to ask the questions: Were there multiple putative rolling genocides across Australia or was there only one? Within the morphology and morbidity of Australian genocide, can we identify Lemkinian phases by area and state? Can we rank the comparative genocidal impact by state? Does Australia have an aleph algebra of genocide, where some states were worse than others? Does each state have a key architect of genocide, perhaps like Himmler or Pol Pot or Stalin? 2257 Was each colonial area learning from another in how best to solve the Aboriginal problem through its most efficient eradication? Did similar Government policies define the genocide for each area? Therefore, did Australian genocide have a unique pattern arising from a distinctive origin: racism and the war for land? In a general sense, the demographical genocidal impact is related to Aboriginal population density within an area, for which Queensland pre-contact was about 35% of Australia’s total, with Tasmania about 1%. We can further rank the genocidal impact according to the prescriptive Lemkinian characteristics. From this, we conclude that Tasmania was far from the worst, but it is one of the best known. The distinctive elements that contributed to Tasmanian genocide – armed invasion, Aboriginal resistance, extermination, deportation, subjugation – were to play out across all colonised areas, with over 95% of Aboriginals ‘disappearing’ by 1911. We observe that the peak Aboriginal killing for a state-sized area was completed within thirty to forty years, after which the survivors were rounded up for further processing. For over a century, Australia was a war zone. It was a war for land, the longest war in our history, and Aboriginals were in the way.2258 A firestorm of massacres defined the pastoral frontier as it advanced across the continent. Many of these massacres have achieved the element of myth, untested, insufficiently examined, often ignored or discounted, having the elements of social folklore, discredited by some as fictitious or imaginary, with the imputation of a false belief; or proudly asserted as settler sovereignty, of the right to take the land by force, of heroic triumphalism, of feigned societal indignation if there is resistance. Most massacres escape our notice because there were almost never any convictions (apart from Myall Creek in 1838 under Gipps),2259 a genocidal process that saw the Aboriginal population across Australia drop catastrophically from various imposed causes by an occupying power within a hundred and forty years, which is the period between 1788 and 1928, the date of the last major massacre at Coniston in the Northern Territory.2260 As for massacres, so for their agents, the people responsible. Many biographies are defined by what is not said, as well as said. It is a form of myth making perpetrated by the victors where historicity is hostage to hagiography, to revisionism. The Australian Dictionary of Biography entry for George Arthur is an example, or nearly everyone else involved in Austraia’s colonization, the British Government and its functionaries, the local administrators, wealthy pastoralists, the hordes of self-interest, all painted in hues that generally hide their past misdeeds. 1074 In 1865, in Tasmania, the genocidal extermination of the Indigenous population was a generation in the past; in Queensland, it was just beginning. AUSTRALIAN BLACKS. It is not only in America that there is a "Black" question. That which hangs like a millstone about the neck of America and has drowned her fields with blood, exists for us too, but infinitesimally in degree. In America the negro is not only a nuisance but an institution; in Australia the native occupier of the soil is simply a nuisance which we get rid of as soon as possible. The ways of doing it are various. Sometimes the native is shot, sometimes he is stabbed, occasionally he is poisoned, but generally he is allowed to die of neglect. The roads differ and he is improved variously, sometimes by the dispensation of Providence, oftener by the devilry of man; but the end is the same. Disease of course does the chief work and murder the rest. First comes consumption of the lungs. These wretched fellow creatures of ours, who hang upon the fringe of advancing civilisation, vibrate between the luxury of cast-off clothes and occasional rum, and the ultra savagery of the desert. In one or other they might live, but men and women, even Australian natives, are not amphibious, and the attempt to combine the two is fatal. In Queensland things got on better, where a man under and subject to the authority of Sir George Bowen, her stabbed upon the indictment of his skin. Some thirty or forty years ago, unless history tell lies, which is not impossible, the approved way of getting rid of the aboriginal aristocracy was by arsenical flour and water. Taking it on the whole, the Christian English have improved upon the Turks, and are any length in advance of the Russians. There are, however, a few benighted individuals who are homoeopathically given, and disinclined to deal with extermination except in small doses.One of these, Mr. Lang, who has lived among them for years, and can handle a pen as well as a rifle, has taken up the former implement anent this question, and uncommonly queer tales he tells us. His chronicle, drawn from life, has matter enough to set up a dozen sensational novels. His short book is just a story book, and we will jump at once into the stories. There can be no doubt that in the conduct of the settlers to their swarthy neighbors there is plenty of excuse. They are certainly not pleasant. Here is a specimen— "On the occasion of the murder, by three blacks, of a young girl, and of her father in defending her, the murderers were pursued by three squatters, two of them friends of my own. These gentlemen abominate the system of indiscriminate slaughter, but they knew that, as the law could not reach the murderers, the whites would satisfy their vengeance by a wholesale massacre. They therefore went on the track themselves, guided by a black boy, who on the third day announced that they were close upon a large native camp, and that the three murderers were in it. They told the boy to go to the edge of the scrub in which the camp lay, and to say that the whites wanted the three, naming them, for murder, and none others. They then at once went among the tribe, seized their men, and, after a desperate struggle, tied them each to a 1075 sapling and fired a volley upon them. The blackfellows declared this to be a just vengeance, and in no way molested those who carried it into effect. Another case was that of a beautiful goldenhaired, blue-eyed little girl, the daughter of a quiet respectable man, a blacksmith, on the Castlereagh, who was carried off by the blacks, murdered with circumstances of brutal atrocity, and eaten. The father, assisted by the neighbors and some friendly natives, long sought his child, "hoping against hope," till one day he accortained all the particulars. He abandoned home, business-everything; and, night and day, for many a month, hunted the murderers like a bloodhound, till, with some assistance from Dick Walker, he killed every man in the party-thirteen. The last was disposed of by my friend Walker, then a constable in the border police. Having discovered where this fellow was, Walker dashed into the camp, calling out to the natives, numbering about 200, to keep quiet, as he intended to harm nobody except one, naming the murderer. Every one sat still, while Walker rode up to the murderer's gunyah, dismounted, and told him to "stand up and meet his death like a man," which he did, and Walker shot him through the heart. The blacks expressed themselves satisfied that it was a just vengeance; but were careful to explain that every man of the party had been now killed, and that no more should be shot. No more were shot, nor, on the other hand, was the father of the girl ever afterwards molested. Even if the tribe did not give a murderer up, he would be compelled to go away if they knew that they would suffer great inconvenience on his account. "The obstinacy and persistency with which the blacks will pursue an individual for the purpose of revenge, are very extraordinary. A remarkable illustration of this occurred in the Maranoa district. A man was engaged in one of the metropolitan registry offices to go up to Mount Abundance station as shepherd. The first day this man went out with the sheep he was attacked by a party of the blacks, when he fired and killed one. Seeing that he was armed with only a single-barrelled musket, they attempted to rush him; but being an old Waterloo man, he was loaded again and ready in an instant. They went off at once, but some of the friendly natives told the old shepherd that the others were determined not to allow him to leave the station alive. His enemies never afterwards came within his sight, but watched him keenly and perpetually; while he, during twelve months, out on those scorching plains, close under the tropics, never stood below or against a tree, never sat down, and never laid his musket out of his hand. The close of his twelve months having arrived at last, he proceeded to the home station to deliver up his sheep. His son, who acted as horse-boy, came out to meet him; and they stood together, conversing upon a small knoll, studded with a few trees, and surrounded by open plain. The old man happening to look toward the ground saw that his boot-tie was loose, and knelt down to fasten it. That instant he was pierced by three spears; the boy instantly wheeled round, galloped to the home station, about 400 yards off, and gave the alarm, whereupon M'Enroe mounted his horse and galloped to the place, but found the old man dead, with a spear through his heart, and the blacks nowhere to be seen. M'Enroe stuck the spear down the side of one of the myall trees, where he pointed it out to me when he related this story. I glanced 1076 all around to see where it was possible for the savages to have concealed themselves, but I could perceive nothing capable of hiding even a terrier. They must have crept up among the sheep so stealthily as not to disturb them, a feat I considered impossible, even to the blacks. When I visited the station, it had been abandoned, most of the white men having been killed. " On another occasion, two stockmen left to meet two others at a certain point for the purpose of mustering the cattle, leaving the hut-keeper by himself. According to arrangement, if they met the other two, the party was to be absent a couple of days; if not, they were to return, and would be home at two o'clock. The hut-keeper lay in his bunk reading, with his loaded musket beside him. Suddenly he saw the muzzle disappear from the side of the bunk, and on jumping up,found that it had been seized by a blackfellow, who then sprang up from the ground, and handed it to two others, who simultaneously rushed in through the door. Having derided and worried the unfortunate man in their usual style, the savages ordered him to get dinner ready, adding that they intended to burn him afterwards. He made a large damper, delaying its much as possible, then boiled and served up the meat, and when the blacks were satisfied, they compelled him to make an enormous fire for the purpose of burning himself. He began to sing, dance, and go through various performances in order to amuse them, and while away the time till two o'clock. At length the hour came and passed, and he was just beginning to despair, when he saw his two white friends riding round the stockyard. He then began to fear the blackfellows would see them, and murder him before they could interfere, so he sang at the top of his voice, and with violent emphasis and gesticulation, the song ' Helen Macgregor's Gathering,' and so continued till his friends rode up to the door. He put his mouth to the slabs, and cried out, "Dismount, I am in the hands of the blacks!" The men dismounted in an instant, so rapidly, indeed, that they rushed into the hut without any weapons but their knives. There they stood, three against three, and all knowing that no quarter would be asked or given, and that the first man killed on either side was death to all his companions. For a time they eyed each other silently, each singling out his man; and then they grappled. They were soon on the floor, rolling over and over— then up again, then down--all fighting desperately, and in silence. The whites had the advantage of steel knives over stone weapons ; but the blacks were naked, and thus able to avoid being grasped, while they could better fence and twist about. For a long time, it was very doubtful which party would be victorious; but at length one of the whites seized his man by the neck with his teeth, and grasped the black firmly round the waist with one arm, while with the other he passed the knife into his back, below the shoulder-blade. He then jumped up and killed another; the third blackfellow attempted to escape up the low wide chimney, but was stabbed, and fell back into the fire which he and his comrades intended for the hutkeeper."2261 Like biographies and tall tales with an undercurrent of distasteful truth, of virulent racism, placenames are also implicated in this revisionist history: we may see a multitude of places bearing the names of sometimes unworthy forbears – Hobart, Sydney, Brisbane and so on; 1077 but we may also see the bloody underbelly of our society in the names of places such as Murdering Creek as it went about its brutal purpose of racial denigration and violent dispossession, of racism. State Placename Lat. Long. State Placename Lat. Long. NSW Blackboy Tank 32 55 141 25 Q Blackboy Creek 23 50 145 15 NSW Blackfellows 32 46 142 39 Q Blackfellow 18 36 142 59 NSW 29 45 152 01 Q Blackfellow Creek 27 45 152 13 NSW Blackfellows Mountain Disaster Bay 37 16 149 58 Q Blackfellow Creek 16 10 144 45 NSW Gin Gin 31 55 148 05 Q Blackfellow Creek 21 20 144 42 NSW Misery, Mount 33 53 149 01 Q Blackfellow Creek 28 40 145 49 NSW Mount Trooper 36 51 148 25 Q 17 08 142 41 NSW Myall Creek 29 47 150 47 Q Blackfellow Waterhole Blackfellow Yard 13 43 142 47 NSW Myall Lake 32 26 152 24 Q Blackgin Creek 13 08 142 26 NSW Myall River 32 18 152 11 Q Blackgin Creek 22 35 138 35 NSW 29 37 150 14 Q Blacks Creek 21 20 148 47 NSW Slaughterhouse Creek Terrible Creek 31 30 148 45 Q Blacks Creek 25 53 145 02 NT Attack Creek 18 59 134 12 Q Carbine Creek 23 13 147 54 NT Battle Creek 16 10 131 19 Q Coffin Hill Creek 18 28 142 22 NT Battle Creek Yard 16 11 131 19 Q Dead Man Gully 26 43 151 00 NT Blackfellow Creek 20 35 134 57 Q Deadman Creek 20 24 145 45 NT Blackfellow Creek 16 15 129 16 Q Desolation, Mount 20 31 144 10 NT Blackfellow Hole 22 13 137 47 Q Despair, Mount 23 48 150 49 NT Blackfellow Yard 16 14 129 17 Q Disaster Inlet 17 39 139 56 NT Blackfellows Knob 17 22 130 49 Q Dismal Creek 17 47 142 41 NT Blackgin Bore 17 14 130 41 Q Downfall Creek 25 30 150 16 NT Blackgin Hill 17 19 130 39 Q Fighting Waterhole 21 50 144 38 NT Blackgin Waterhole 17 18 130 45 Q Gin Arm Creek 17 39 139 23 NT Blackgin Yard 17 15 130 43 Q Gin Creek 21 44 140 22 NT Fight Hole Yard 20 23 135 24 Q Gin Gin 25 00 151 57 NT 15 53 129 13 Q Gin Gin Creek 24 57 152 00 NT Hungry Billabong Yard Nigger Creek 16 42 129 31 Q Gunpowder 19 42 139 22 NT Poison Creek 15 57 136 32 Q Gunpowder Creek 19 18 139 54 1078 NT Revolver Creek 17 55 130 08 Q 16 16 142 01 Q Little Black Gin Creek Lonesome Creek NT Revolver Yard 16 22 130 12 NT 14 43 134 30 NT Roper Bar Police Station Skeleton Creek 24 46 150 10 Q Lubra Creek 21 40 144 02 16 20 137 28 Q Lubra Point 11 49 130 12 NT Skull Creek 15 50 130 41 Q Massacre Inlet 16 45 138 20 NT NT Skull Island 15 36 136 48 Q Misery Creek 18 34 144 19 Skull yard 15 43 130 45 Q Misery, Mount 23 02 147 42 NT Spear Creek 17 17 135 51 Q Misery, Mount 15 53 145 14 Q Attack Creek 13 27 143 10 Q Mistake Creek 22 09 147 03 Q Battle Camp 15 17 144 42 Q Mistake, Mount 27 52 152 20 Q Battle Camp Range 15 18 144 45 Q Mosquito Point 12 21 143 11 Q Black Creek 21 17 147 19 Q Murdering Creek 22 29 142 16 Q Black Creek 20 55 139 20 Q Myall Creek 27 11 151 18 Q Black Gin Creek 20 55 148 17 Q Myall Creek 21 15 147 15 Q Black Gin Creek 24 30 149 10 Q Myall Creek 25 13 145 49 Q Black Gin Creek 23 29 144 20 Q Myall Creek 26 19 146 57 Q Black Gin Creek 18 31 143 06 Q Myall Creek 12 36 142 15 Q Black Gin Yard 15 42 142 13 Q Native Creek 21 22 144 50 Q Blackboy Creek 24 15 149 25 Q Native Wells 18 08 145 04 Q Nigger Creek 19 20 142 43 WA Battle Hill 22 44 120 06 Q Nigger Creek 18 11 143 55 WA Battlement Rocks 20 06 123 18 Q Nigger Head 11 48 142 56 WA Black Gin Rocks 29 42 121 43 Q Piccaninny Creek 13 20 142 34 WA Blackboy Hill 34 33 118 38 Q Poison Creek 17 08 144 10 WA Blackboy Rocks 27 54 123 15 Q Police Creek 21 22 147 22 WA Blackfellow Creek 16 34 126 55 Q Police Creek 17 26 143 23 WA 18 09 127 06 Q Police Creek 19 12 139 01 WA Blackfellow Creek Yard Blacks Lookout 26 09 126 33 Q Police Lagoon 16 00 142 49 WA Carnage Lake 30 24 120 52 Q Police Mountain 22 44 146 50 WA Carnage, Mount 30 22 120 58 Q Policeman Creek 22 43 146 40 WA Deadman Hill 23 48 119 25 Q Policeman Creek 16 19 141 28 WA Desolation Hills 25 51 121 59 Q Policeman Waterhole 22 49 139 34 WA Destruction, Mount 24 33 127 58 1079 Q 24 39 140 48 WA Q Policeman Waterhole Revolver Creek 25 47 113 55 32 08 120 56 23 30 122 40 WA Disappointment Beach Disappointment Rock Disappointment Lake Disaster Bay 19 23 139 26 WA Q Skeleton Creek 20 55 144 32 WA Q Skeleton Yard 17 10 138 41 16 53 123 10 Q Skull Creek 24 02 Q Skull Hole Creek 18 33 149 51 WA Disaster Water 19 29 124 16 141 55 WA Disaster, Mount 16 38 Q Skull Islands 124 19 22 18 150 14 WA Hangman Well 18 42 127 13 Q 23 19 143 32 WA Haunted Hole Creek 21 59 119 22 Q Slaughterhouse Creek Spear Creek 19 30 141 20 WA Heartbreak Ridge 32 04 122 23 Q Spear Creek 18 21 143 46 WA 29 03 120 58 Q Troopers Bluff 24 13 146 54 WA Last Chance Outcamp Misery, Mount 16 15 128 48 Q Troopers Lagoon 24 14 142 08 WA Mistake, Mount 22 21 115 16 Q Winchester 22 08 148 11 WA Native Rocks WA 32 18 119 33 SA Black Camp Hill 30 51 134 40 WA Nigger Hill 15 54 128 48 SA Coffin Bay 34 28 135 19 WA Piccaninny Creek 17 32 128 25 SA Coffin Hill 27 32 130 28 WA Poison Creek 28 16 120 39 SA Coffin, Mount 30 31 138 31 WA Poison Hill 28 18 114 40 SA Deadmans Creek 31 01 138 13 WA Poison Rocks 28 42 118 31 SA Desperate, Mount 33 34 136 34 WA Police Camp Bore 17 24 124 45 SA 31 08 131 15 WA 116 15 30 58 134 30 WA Police Station Woolshed Revolver Creek 24 44 SA Disappointment Cave Heartbreak 16 20 128 27 SA Last Resort Hill 31 12 135 50 WA Salvation Well 25 15 121 48 SA Myall Creek 30 48 137 18 WA Skeleton Gully 28 35 114 42 SA Native Well 26 57 133 01 WA Skeleton Hill 18 31 125 02 SA Policeman Dam 27 18 140 47 WA Skeleton Point 16 32 123 00 SA Skeleton Bore 29 55 139 55 WA Skeleton Rock 31 51 119 28 SA Skull Camp Tanks 31 37 135 26 WA Skeleton Lake 17 53 123 42 Tas Blackboy, Mount 41 23 147 53 WA Skull Creek 28 37 122 27 Tas Misery, Mount 42 59 147 00 WA Skull Rock 29 57 120 34 Tas Piccaninny Point 41 42 148 18 WA Spearhole Creek 23 32 119 25 Tas Skeleton Bay 41 15 148 19 WA Spearhole Well 23 30 119 22 Vic Misery , Mount 36 50 147 57 WA Wailing Rock 29 27 120 22 1080 Vic Piccaninny Creek 36 25 144 25 WA Axe Hill 26 23 126 47 WA Winchester 29 46 115 56 Figure 288 Placename toponymy across Australia 1081 Genocide and its morphology In the Australian past, it was common to assert ‘Aboriginals are no better than animals; they are a lower form of humanity’, following the logic of misplaced Darwinian supremacist thinking. It was then a small extra step to conclude, ’if Aboriginals are no more than animals, it is okay to exterminate them as feral pests’. And so, it was done. Many times. As the frontier expanded and consolidated its gains. The Emu Bay massacre near Tasmania’s Cape Grim by employees of the Van Diemen’s land Company is an instance, one of a multiplicity, of what became targeted ethnic cleansing using the sharp edge of genocide. We will use the Emu Bay massacre in Part 2 as a case instantiation of our proposed theoretical framework for Lemkinian genocide. The Semelin model as a referent Which brings us to Semelin’s genocidal problematics or questions that can intersect the multiple guises worn by different genocidal cases within some potentially definable process. Jacques Semelin is a professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris and research director at the Centre for International Studies and Research. Jacques prefers the more neutral term mass violence to genocide, which he believes is too bound up with the Holocaust. He is trying to redefine genocide away from legalisms, the UN Genocide Convention and lawyers, which I think is a mistake. Within his ‘problematics’, Semelin defines mass violence as: human phenomena of collective destructiveness that are primarily due to political, social, religious or cultural causes, committed against non-combatant populations.2262 However, the terminology and ‘problematics’ methodology introduce their own definitional challenges: How many is mass? How can the dead speak? How reliable can memory be for the survivors? To what degree is the violence a cultural artefact? Is violence the same as killing? Who is a non-combatant? How do we determine the number of victims? Can we access the killing site or the relevant documents or witnesses? Does ‘mass violence’ include a multiplicity of related killing events, each of which had (say) less than ten victims? How is intentionality prescribed along an abstraction gradient with a corresponding chain of involved parties? To what extent do his ‘problematics’ overlap the articles of the UN Convention? How do we understand and construct the process characteristics and the pattern of violence from the ‘problematics’? How do we identify the process structure and purpose from any intersecting ‘problematic’, each of which is like a CAT scan image, where the diagnostician must use acquired skill to hypothesise the pathology and the imbedded disease process? Semelin argues that mass violence has 50 or more victims and that his key aim is to examine ‘how we speak of the dead in the present’. Jacques is developing a peer reviewed mass violence database for the 20th century.2263 We will use his question set to evaluate Australian (and Tasmanian in particular) ethnic cleansing and test its relevance, for any tool tends to define its own use but can also provide new insights into how a problem is addressed. Jacques focuses on recent history because he asserts the evidence is harder to establish with anything older. For this reason, Oceania is excluded. I don’t agree. 1082 Investigating any massacre is mostly bottom up, but genocide is both an emergent property of a number of massacres, involving certain collective and predatory behaviours; but is also procedural, emanating from policies, practices and learned behaviours. Those behaviours – like dogs of war – are mostly called to their purpose by political resolve, purposes such as genocidal land expropriation and acquisition, or racial antipathy, or malignant ideology. To establish normative behaviour as a collective dysfunction, an aberration of what ought to be in civil society, we must be able to proffer a pattern against which each massacre can be investigated and assessed over a sustained period, and for which a common set of behavioural triggers can be identified. The problem with any crime scene investigation, as Semelin highlights, is that the crimes are often carried out in secret, with few witnesses, where evidence is deliberately destroyed as routine procedure. Semelin’s focus is on each case instance of massacre (or mass violence), but genocide is the pattern of cases, or the pattern that causes the shape of any massacre, or the pattern containing but not limited to just massacres, or the pattern of cumulative statistics of mass killings, or the pattern of dysfunctional behaviour that targets (in whole or part) the mental or cultural destruction of some group. Each spectrum of normative or collectively shared dysfunctional behaviour for an area of study is different, but the pattern can be defined by type characteristics. In Australia, the genocidal pattern was defined by the British Government’s unilateral declaration of sovereignty and presumptive land expropriation, leaving Aboriginals with nowhere to go, and if they refused to go, they were removed (often violently); or if tolerated on the outskirts of some white community, they were reduced to abject poverty, until their circumstances encouraged governments to introduce legislation that allowed their incarceration in detention centres or segregation from the white community, a discriminatory system of controlled apartheid which continued well into the 20th century. Genocides and patterns of mass violence are often induced from the top, and they may have a political and economic motivation, as was the case in Australia, where land was the prize. Individual killings within genocidal behaviour are usually reflective of some normative disorder condoned and promoted by government, and include the deliberate use of the military, police and paramilitary groups, such as armed settlers, supported by racist legislation and a heavily biased legal system, where general human rights are ignored in favour of some preferred group. The questions we are left with, as we apply the Semelin problematics: Can the investigation of any mass killing be scaled up to a possible genocide, otherwise we are left with a spate of individual massacres with no definable and conformable architecture? And is cultural and societal destruction excluded? Is enforced poverty excluded? Or resource expropriation generally? Or introduced disease, such as STDs and pulmonary disorders and smallpox? Or imposing conditions of life which are intended to bring about the physical and emotional destruction of a group? Can the chain of command be identified and held accountable for their policies, for which genocide had a political and economic purpose: to push the Palawa aside and confiscate their property for the greater good of Empire? Here we present Semelin’s questions (problematics) and provide answers in the Tasmanian context, but we generalise the answers across Australia where this identifies a more general pattern of behaviour. 1083 Semelin ‘problematic’ Response 1) Police, settlers and the military carried out the killing. They were acting on behalf of the government or themselves in expropriating land from the Aboriginals. Their activities were encouraged by the British Government, which introduced land legislation to improve revenue generation and hasten Aboriginal dispossession. Governments were driven by economic motivations. For settlers, land unencumbered by Aboriginals had greater value. Early Australia was motivated and consumed by a land rush. Land speculation was rife. Some individual properties were around a million acres. Apart from land, there was a contest for water. Aboriginals and the game on which they depended were driven off. Aboriginals were either treated as civilians (subject to British law), or enemy combatants (subject to martial law). Sometimes the men were separated from the women before being killed. At other times, the killing was indiscriminate. Both tribes and individuals were targeted. By the 1911 census, over 95% of the Aboriginal people had disappeared for a variety of reasons, all of which could be ascribed to the British invasion. The massacres accompanied the spread of the pastoral frontier. 2) 3) Who has done the killing? a. Can we establish the killer profile in greater detail (age, sex, social origin)? b. Motives: Are they acting with a view to territorial conquest, political domination or ‘purification’? c. To what extent will the massacre procure political benefits for some of the perpetrators? d. What economic stakes might be involved in the massacre? Targeted Victims a. Are civilians killed at random or in a discriminatory fashion (for example, from lists of names, professional categories, according to political, religious or ethnic criteria)? b. Are men separated from women before being killed? c. Are the women systematically killed? Similarly, are the children and the elderly systematically killed? d. How can we assess the number of victims, by age, gender or occupation? e. Is it possible to produce a cartographic description of the massacre? Constructing the figure of the enemy a. What are the representations of the ‘enemy’ slated for destruction? b. What universe – ideological and of the imaginaire – do the killers inhabit? c. How would one set about analysing the themes of the propaganda that preceded and accompanied the massacre? d. What importance should be attributed to fear and the collective feeling of insecurity in relation to a worsening economic situation? 4) Modus operandi a. Can we break down the criminal procedure into clear-cut stages (preparation, decision and implementation)? Aboriginals were derogated as ‘vermin’ who could be killed as pests. Sometimes, their disappearance was called a mysterious ‘law of nature’ where they were ‘unfit to survive’. Darwinian pseudo-science was used to justify the racist violence. Pastoralists, driven by the possibility of self-enrichment, often set out into unknown lands and were forced to defend themselves. Settlers regarded their activities as a war for the land. Governments protected the right of armed self-defence. Mass killings followed an overall procedure. First was invasive occupation of a new settlement beach-head. Then followed Aboriginal removal, using various means including shooting, poisoning, starvation. Sometimes the victims 1084 b. Description of ‘methodology’ (massacres occurring directly on-site, deportationabandonment, death camps?) c. What can we learn from the nature of the weapons used? d. Are the victims killed coldly and rationally or with savagery/ e. Are sexual rituals associated with the act of massacre? Is a systematic policy of rape associated with it? 5) Time frame of the massacre a. Premonitory signs: what indicators, if any, are there of a break in the social tie between future victims and their immediate environment? b. Is there a ‘time’ or ‘opportunity’ for the massacre in relation to the political situation in the country, or in relation to the international situation? c. Is there a context of war or collapse of an empire? d. Postures taken in the local community and further afield: is there tacit consent or are there gestures of protest, or even actions taken to protect victims? 6) Political and media effects a. Was there a desire to hide the massacre or to make it public? Under the same heading, were attempts made to cover up the existence of bodies or to display them publicly? b. Does the event exert a political influence on the conflict in progress, and in what way? c. Does the massacre procure new legitimacy or some of the actors? d. How does news of the massacre spread? e. Will the massacre remain undiscovered for a certain length of time, or will it be revealed straight away? f. Was the massacre committed in order to frighten potential victims? Or to make them flee a coveted territory? Or to foment political instability? were killed coldly and methodically. At other times, they were killed in a frenzy of bloodletting. Next came systemic subjugation: sexual predation, rape, stealing women and children, miscegenation, enslavement, incarceration in detention centres, accompanied by repressive racist legislation. Finally came stolen wages, apartheid, heavy policing, enforced poverty and ill-health, alcoholism, alienation, excessive suicides, high (preventable) death rates. Aboriginals continue to live in third world conditions and as a group they remain severely disadvantaged. Massacres commenced from just after very first settlement in 1788 and continued until at least 1928. Aboriginals were targeted from the beginning, as soon as the contest for land and resources began. British Imperialism drove a sense of entitlement or manifest destiny that overrode Aboriginal rights. Settler sovereignty was given tacit consent by Government, who had no plan for where the aboriginals were to go when they were displaced. The opportunity for massacres correlated with the spread of the pastoral frontier. Prosecutions were few. There was tacit agreement between society and state that Aboriginals must be ‘removed’. In general, the massacres were kept quiet. If they were brought to public attention, there was usually settler justification. Any condemnation was reserved for those who highlighted the killings. Governments gave tacit acceptance to the mass killings. No white was ever convicted for killing an Aboriginal until well into the 20th century (apart from the isolated example of Myall Creek, where there was such a public reaction that Governments backed down from future convictions in the interests of public order). Few massacres were ever properly investigated and many are only now coming to light. No Government was ever held accountable: not British, or Australian. Many notable figures involved in the mass killing are now lauded in Australian history: Arthur, Phillip, Macquarie, Brisbane, Bigge, La Trobe, Macalister, Seymour, Forrest, Stirling, Bathurst, Sydney, Hobart, and many others. Massacres were intended as punishment for killing livestock or as reprisal for killing a shepherd (or other trespasser) or simply to remove them as vermin. Sometimes the body parts of Aboriginal victims were kept or sold as trophies. 1085 7) Aftermath narratives a. On the part of witnesses: who knows ‘what really happened’? Structural analysis of journalists’ accounts, and of the accounts of non-governmental organisation members. b. On the part of any survivors: Who can speak? Who can recount the horror? How best to separate reality from distortion, or sheer fabrication? c. On the part of the perpetrators of the massacre: negation and denial or justification for the crime? A guilt that is impossible to bear? Evidence was routinely destroyed: bodies were burnt and belongings were destroyed or confiscated. Aboriginal witness testimony was disallowed. All white juries usually pronounced ‘Not Guilty’ on white murderers of Aboriginals. Records went missing (for example Police Commissioner DT Seymour’s files in Queensland). Police were encouraged not to keep operational notes. There has never been a public enquiry into the sustained killings. Britain has never accepted any responsibility. Australians are now encouraged to forget or ignore the past as ‘a black armband view of history’. Figure 289 Semelin ‘Problematics’: Investigative Questionnaire for Genocide Analysis 2264 We conclude that the Tasmanian experience in general meets Semelin’s mass violence criteria, but his ‘genocidal like’ problematics sieve cannot easily distinguish different colonial outcomes by geography, or the embedded State driven intentionality along an abstraction gradient, or the chain of accountability, or the nested levels of well-worn bureaucratic processes involved. Nor can it easily scale up an event to reflect a pattern of events. It is too word laden, too unstructured, too revisionist. It cannot work to any larger scale without losing the sense of overarching structure and purpose that carved the morphology of British collective dysfunction. In rejecting the legal articles of the UN Convention on genocide, in redefining genocide in his own terms as ‘mass violence’, Semelin confuses the debate on an important subject. What we need is a conceptual schema, a semantic typology, a representational pattern, that will allow us to parse any process involving Lemkinian genocidal precepts and type events and determine, for any specific event, the mapping to the type procedural architecture, the triggering conditions, the instantiated process flow, the persistent data, the involved parties, and the potential mapping falsifiability as to genocidal conduct. In Part 1 of Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide, we set out this architecture. Levenian Genocide Model Mark Levene has carried out considerable contemporary research into the defining characteristics of genocide.2265 To misquote Tolstoy: every genocide is unique in its own way; but each shows a similarly unhappy pattern. Levene argues that genocides share certain common features which are different from those in the UN Genocide Convention. Levene seems to focus on mass killings, whereas Lemkin asserts that cultural destruction, enslavement and forced removal are also important. I tend to agree with Lemkin. There are many ways to destroy a group of people (or a species or an ecosystem) and they don’t all involve killing. 1086 Levene compares a number of genocides, including Armenian and Rwandan, against certain attributes he specifies.2266 The question then is: Do Levene’s proposed typifying qualities exclude the Australian experience or give further support to the thesis that Australian colonisation was genocidal in its character and outcome? To find out, I’ve extended his comparative methodology to include the Australian colonisation process (the consequence of which was Aboriginal destruction) and also patterned Australian ecocide, which appears to be another more generalised form of Lemkinian genocide but possibly involving much greater destruction, as it doesn’t just target another race or culture, but destroys the basis for biological survival, for the ability of humanity and other species to live sustainably, perhaps to live at all. The common elements for multi’cide (sustained killing and/ or lethal subjugation of any group or race or species or ecosystem) seems to be human initiated disruptive change caused by invasion, occupation, war, revolution, forcible subjugation, and one-sided exploitation. When we draw these elements back to primary causes, the common motivation seems to be innate or learned human behaviour which can reveal itself in certain circumstances with tragic results for the targeted group or species. These potentially dysfunctional behaviours become pathological when collectively encouraged and expressed, particularly when they are inadequately regulated or controlled, and are usually in response to some commonly shared stressor across a certain population and with the support of the state. The behaviours appear to be excessive tribalism and racial prejudice, the desire for selfenrichment, the need for self-protection in unstable socio-political environments, the propensity to take advantage of an asymmetric power balance, the attempt to develop social cohesion in an emerging nation state by manufacturing an internal or external threat, and the pursuit of power in any form (political, financial, commercial) especially when harmful exploitation of the other party carries no real cost to the perpetrator in any balance sheet of financial, legal or moral accounting. Mass killing seems to have been a systemic characteristic of all colonial conquests. Certainly, it was true of Britain’s territorial ambitions. The difference with the Australian experience was that a greater proportion of the Indigenous population ‘disappeared’ than for any other country which was subject to Imperial subjugation. Not the southern part of Africa, nor India. Nor for that matter North America. Although more may have died in these countries as a result of invasion and occupation, nowhere was the proportional loss greater than in Australia, which suffered over a 95% decline in Aboriginal numbers between 1788 and 1910. The decline was due to a number of reasons, all associated with the invasion, including what some of the settlers openly called extermination 1087 Comparing recognised genocides with antipodean genocide and ecocide Armenian Genocide Rwandan Genocide Australian Genocide Australian Ecocide Timespan 1915 – 1916, eighteen months of near continuous killing. April – early July 1994. 1788 – 1928 1788 – present Geographical Range Areas of Armenian population concentration in eastern Anatolia and southwards into the Syrian desert. All areas of central and southern Rwanda under control of the Hutu regime. Across the continent, following the pastoral frontier. Across the continent. Organizer of Genocide An inner committee of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) in the governing regime. New Hutu regime including elements of the previous MRND government. Other party leaders, senior military leaders and a palace clique. The British Government through racist land policies, military campaigns, and sale of lethal arms to pastoralists, police and settlers. Governments and pastoralists. Mining. Industry. Agriculture. Perpetrators Military and para-military forces of the state as well as auxiliaries from other Ottoman populations like Kurdish tribes. The Presidential Guard, the Rwandan army and police, militias and specially enrolled Communist party cadres, aided by local party activists (including poor peasants). British Government through its local representatives, British soldiers up to 1840, paramilitary pastoralists and settlers, police. Targeted Population as Defined by Genocide Organizers Armenian religious and political collectivity. Tutsis were characterized as a racially alien population from another part of Africa. Anyone who was identified as Tutsi Aboriginals of any part of Australia were targeted if they ‘trespassed’ on expropriated land. Any and all Australian species are affected by invasive occupation, both plant and animal, 1088 by identity cards, who looked Tutsi or were suspected of trying to protect Tutsi were targeted. Targeted Population Self Defined Status A native, linguistically and religiously distinct population. A growing sense of nationhood created links to Armenian populations across the Russian border and in the Diaspora. and their supporting ecosystems. The Great Barrier Reef is dying through ocean acidification, rising ocean temperatures, and toxic runoff, and with it up to 9 million distinct species will be harmed. Australia has one of the fastest rates of species extinction in the world. Many of them were victims of pastoralism, including the Tasmanian thylacine. Unsustainable mining, logging and agriculture also cause ecological damage. Australia has one of the largest carbon footprints per capita in the world. Unclear. Tutsi were identified as distinct under Belgian colonial rule along the lines of caste, lineage and wealth. Tutsi and Hutu share a common language and culture and intermarriage is common. 1089 Targeted Population Status as Defined in Laws Armenians were entitled to full Ottoman citizenship alongside other national groups. Historically one of two tolerated but inferior selfgoverning Christian groups within the Ottoman Empire. Tutsis had full Rwandan citizenship but were ethnically identified by a universal identity card system introduced under Belgian colonial rule and maintained by Hutu controlled governments. Warning Signs (Genocidal Process) Violence against Armenians in the eastern regions by Kurdish tribes went unpunished by the Ottoman state. Ottoman state increasingly responded violently to Armenian revolutionary groups. Extensive state-sponsored massacres in 1894-6. CUP coup in 1908 lead to further massacres. CUP became more stridently nationalistic (Turkish) and entered WW1 on the side of the Central Powers in late 1914 and the situation with the Armenians worsened. By 1915 eastern Anatolia was reduced to a largely lawless zone. Many Tutsis fled to neighbouring Uganda and Burundi following the fall of Belgian colonial rule (which supported Tutsi dominance) Between 1959 and 1962. Tutsis who remained were removed from office and subject to sporadic violence from the government (often in response to Tutsi violence against Hutus in Burundi). In 1990 the Tutsi dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RF) invaded northern Rwanda from Uganda when the country was already in economic crisis. The RFP invasion had already dislocated as 1090 many as 1 million people. Trigger or Immediate catalyst Several events between April 20 – 25 1915. AngloFrench troops landed at Gallipoli the same time that Armenians in Van mounted an armed insurrection. Turkish interior minister, Talaat Pasha authorized mass deportation of Armenians into the Syrian desert. On April 6, 1994, Rwandan President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down. Hutu elements hostile to an internationally brokered accord with the RPF seized power and began a preplanned program to eliminate internal opposition. Wider Context Life and death struggle of Ottoman empire to survive. CUP attempting to transform the country to a modern “national” state within total war conditions. The RFP had cancelled a ceasefire and resumed advancing on Kigali. Hutus feared not only losing the control they had gained in the 1959 revolution, but also feared that they would face the same antiHutu violence they had seen in Tutsi controlled Burundi. The UN made no serious effort to stop the violence. Nature of Genocide Repeated massacres of whole communities in eastern Anatolia. Most ablebodied Armenian soldiers were killed Initial liquidation of opponents to Hutu power gave way to a grass roots killing spree which included murder at roadblocks with machetes 1091 simultaneously in their army units. The remaining population was subject to death marches into desert camps where many more were killed. and blunt objects. Participants often violated, disembowelled and murdered neighbours, friends and fellow churchgoers. OrganizerPerpetrator Defense Rationalization Armenian revolutionary aims were already evident. Actual or projected general Armenian uprising in favour of a Russian or Allied invasion.. The CUP argued that extermination was not the goal of forced deportation, but was rather to remove Armenians from the eastern theatre of war. Rwandan Tutsi could not be trusted. They had attempted an invasion from Burundi in 1960 and if the RFP took Rwanda then the Hutu expected to see the kind of antiHutu massacres they saw in Burundi. The Hutus had to strike Rwandan Tutsi before they became victims them selves. Target Population Actual Danger to State Debatable, Armenian groups had carried out terrorist attacks against the previous regime and could pose a threat by supporting Allied or Russian forces in eastern Anatolia. However, much Armenian resistance appears to have been localized, desperate and reactive in the THE RFP was a threat to the Rwandan Hutu government. However, the RFP was primarily an exile organization and had little connection to Tutsis in Rwanda. The ability of Rwandan Tutsi to stage an insurrection was negligible to the point of nonexistence. 1092 face of liquidation. Exemptions Many young women and children escaped killing through forced conversion to Islam and reduced to slaves and/ or property. Most Armenians in metropolitan communities like Constantinople (Istanbul) or Smyrna escaped killing. A few prominent genocide organizers were Tutsi by birth and were not killed. Hutu husbands sometimes tried to save their Tutsi wives. Other Related Killings Smaller sectarian Christian communities in eastern Anatolia (the Nestorians) were also targeted. Hutu who were opposed to Hutu power or were willing to protect Tutsi were also killed. Members of a smaller minority group (the Twa) were also killed. Termination of Genocide From late 1916 as Armenian society and culture in eastern Anatolia were destroyed. Genocide in the south stopped with the invasion of French troops in June. The genocide came to a full stop when the RFP won a complete military victory over their Hutu power adversaries. Some 2 million Hutu fled to neighbouring Zaire. Estimated Deaths Of the estimated 2 million pre-war Ottoman Armenian population. Between 500,000 and 800,000 primarily Tutsi, out of a total Rwandan The estimated Aboriginal population pre1788 is between 750,000 and a 1093 800,000 to 1 million were estimated to have been killed. population of about 8 million. possible 1 million. At the 1911 census, the recorded full blood population was 31,000. Figure 290 Levene use case (worked example) Evidentially, the primary stressor or trigger is some threat or opportunity that uniquely presents itself, for example the possibility of collective material gain from a land rush, where the owners or occupiers of the land could easily be dispossessed with few societal consequences for the aggressor and general societal approbation (pastoral triumphalism), those from whom the land was stolen being voiceless, that is, not able to vote or appear as a witness or own property or exert any political power or exert any real resistance. The destruction of Aboriginal society is a clear example. So is ecological destruction, which includes determinable and avoidable species extinction. Levene then finds a number of features which, in his analysis, appear to be shared across each genocide. Although Levene’s analysis illuminates a dark subject, a problem with this methodology is one of unintentional bias, where the selection criteria (the characteristics) tend to narrowly select the common features, which are then used to challenge the Lemkinian convention. To quote Levene’s findings: 1. In each case we see a government or regime in control of the state that is committed to eliminating one or more groups for political purposes. In each case, the regime had the resources and logistical capacity to carry out direct physical extermination. 2. There was no real threat of outside interference in these cases. 3. The government or regime believed it was in extreme danger and that crisis was looming. 4. The killing was extended over time sand did not happen in one or a few episodes of mass murder. 5. Victims were killed regardless of gender or age. 6. The killing was spearheaded by the military and paramilitary organized by the state. Other elements of the dominant population participated. 7. The victim groups were in no position to protect themselves or fight back. They had no way to halt or impede the killing. 8. The government or regime had a palpable sense that the targeted group was a present and future threat to the state or dominant society regardless of whether the victim group was a cohesive or even coherent unity. 9. The targeted group was identified based on the perpetrators’ perception of reality, not on any sort of essential feature of the targeted group. Levene asserts that the main criticism of the Lemkinian Convention is that it does not mention the role of the state. He also argues that genocide cannot occur if the targeted group can fight back or can present a threat to the state. 1094 Finally, he says that targeted groups are not always easily defined by themselves as belonging to some group and that what constitutes a group may be more fluid and subject to the whims and beliefs of the perpetrator. That is, if Nazis believed someone looked Jewish, therefore they were a Jew, even if the targeted individual did not subscribe to that belief. While sympathetic to Levene’s argument, I can’t agree with it. Not entirely. It is correct that the Lemkinian Convention inexcusably excludes the role of the state, in terms of possible accountability. But Levene seems to miss or deflect the point of culpability through misleading semantic constructions and questionable selection filters. Primary state involvement is often but not always the case with persistent mass killing and the related persecution of a target group, but state directive involvement (through explicit systemic policies and legislation, which encourage implicit - tacit and structural - societal acceptance of racially divisive behaviours) is almost always present. Genocide often suits a political purpose. What seems to be more important is that we are given the cognitive and Constitutional tools, for example a Bill of Rights, to understand and delineate when something very bad has occurred and that it was carried out by one group against another group over a sustained period, and that we are able to recognize its moral depravity and can give appropriate words to that depravity so that it can be identified, both legally and morally, perhaps allowing the perpetrators to be prosecuted or made accountable, and that understanding the procedural nature of the depravity allows us to take early steps to prevent its recurrence. We should not force an horrific event or related series of events into some construction that constrains our ways of seeing, of how we perceive things. The ‘greater good’ argument is an example of such pathological reframing. A broader definition of genocide would include Lemkinian and Levenian genocide, as well as Moses (et al) indigenocide, ethnic cleansing and even ecocide. In other words, in a more general sense: • ‘Genocide’ (or for that matter mass biological destruction of any kind) involves one group, no matter how defined or constructed, who believe themselves to be a ‘group’ whose interests are threatened by some other ‘group’ (whether or not they can fight back), or that the other ‘group’ can be exploited in some way, and that the other ‘group’ must therefore be destroyed, subjugated, or forcibly relocated over a certain period sufficient to ensure the desired outcome. • The process can be both systemic and structural, one feeding the other. • Destruction is not restricted to sustained mass killing and not just by the state, but can include other forms of destruction which can bring about the physical harm to that group, denying the conditions and quality of life. • The destruction is predominantly one sided, that is, there is an asymmetric power advantage in favour of the perpetrator group. 1095 • Subjugation may include sexual predation, miscegenation, eugenics, stealing children, exploitation, cultural destruction, and environmental destruction (removing the means of livelihood or sustainability). • The ‘group’ is not limited to civilians, but can include the state (and also other biological systems, especially for the targeted group). • ‘Intent’ is important (that is, evidence of planning or deliberate policy or legislation), but is subsumed by motivation, which includes the full range of behaviours, both individual and collective, embracing racism, greed, selfenrichment, the pursuit of power, and simple hatred. In general, Governments shape the behaviours of civil society through policies and legislation. But societies can also set their own rules, for example the unrestrained rush for land beyond the ‘limits of occupation’ in early Australia, a process called ‘squatting’, which the British Government was unable or unwilling to control. Britain had convinced itself that the entire country of what was to be called Australia was unoccupied, therefore there could be no victims of the colonisation process, and the land was consequently free, free of inhabitants, free for the taking, a deceit it later regretted if we accept the evidence of despatches to and from the Home office. But the regret was unconvincing. Britain had practised the policies of colonisation and subjugation in many theatres of operation before Australia and was well experienced in the homicidal persecution of target groups, as it sought to impose its control on far flung territories for Imperial advantage, both geo-political and commercial. By the end of the 18th century, the practice of British colonisation had become a patterned process, a state-controlled business, made possible through the force of arms and efficient Government administrative procedures, and it was to continue into the middle of the 20th century. On Levene’s point that the UN Convention does not mention state involvement, he is of course correct. The omission was a consequence of the insistence of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, who believed that they could be culpable if the Convention was formally adopted. These members included Great Britain, the United States, China, France, and Russia. Genocide is certainly not motivated by love (nor is ecocide), although some of its practitioners, politicians, Government representatives, pastoralists, and police, probably had common human aspirations, to work hard, to bring up a family and have a good income. Within those objectives there were (no doubt) mutually supportive families, friends, and colleagues, many of them God fearing, most of them probably regarding themselves as honest and upright citizens. So what went wrong? Anything outside that circle of self satisfaction becomes an ‘other’, an object potentially to be removed or exploited or avoided or derogated. ‘He’s an animal’ is an all-too-common expression, ignoring that we could all do well to emulate the values of our fellow creatures. 1096 The horror of genocide (and ethnic cleansing) is that it is self-perpetuating until its aims have been met, or preventive intervention is taken by some third party. That is, Aboriginals could be driven aside until there was no more ‘aside’ remaining for them as a refuge. Aboriginals became no more than a ‘feral’ pest 2267 to be removed, or a resource to be exploited, as the cancer of colonisation moved across the land. Ecocide follows a regrettably similar process. Ultimately genocide is a moral question with legal and geo-political implications: it’s a question of what ought to be rather than what is. And on this, we should all be able to agree. The Lemkinian model as a referent With genocide, we will find that the United Nations model allows ‘killing members of the group’ to inevitably result in bodily or mental harm, and cultural destruction, and so on. The behaviours aggregate, like orbiting satellite behaviours around a gravitational attractor, 2268 such as the alienation of Aboriginal land and violent dispossession of the indigenous owners. Physical and mental harm follow, with other pernicious Lemkinian dysfunction, such as sexual predation and kidnapping and eugenics and early avoidable deaths and indentured labour where workers were lucky to see any money. For some historians such as Reynolds to argue that genocide was the unintended consequence of dispossession2269 is to misunderstand the fundamental intentional nature of any directed process such as invasive occupation. In Tasmania, Britain intended to take Aboriginal land. They intended to impose martial law. They intended to ethnically cleanse Aboriginals from the expanding ‘settled areas’, through war, through the judiciary and magistrates, through violent settlement, through the ‘Black Line’,2270 through fortified sentry posts, through island detention. They intended to use ‘force to oppose force’. They intended to arm convicts as a paramilitary force. They intended to disallow Aboriginal witness testimony. They intended not to prosecute a single white person for any number of criminal acts against Aboriginals as a targeted group. They intended to hang Aboriginal resistance fighters as an example to their fellows not to resist the occupation of their land. They intended to accelerate immigration, knowing that this would cause further demand for land and greater commensurate harm to the Palawa, knowing that it would inflict conditions of life that would bring about their continuing destruction. They intended not to prosecute any white for abusing or killing an Aboriginal. They intended to destroy the Aboriginals’ sources of food. They intended to predate on Aboriginal women. They intended to kidnap Aboriginal children. They intended to treat Aboriginals as trespassers on their own land. They intended to force Aboriginals to the ever-increasing margins of the ‘settled areas’ until the margins no longer existed. They intended to harry and persecute Aboriginals until they could no longer light a campfire at night without fear of being ambushed at dawn. They intended to prevent Aboriginals from owning any land. They intended to indiscriminately murder Aboriginals without fear of prosecution. They intended to cause cultural destruction, by preventing Aboriginals from pursuing their traditional lives as a group, by destroying the tools they needed to sustain their lives, by killing group members. They intended to mentally harm the Palawa, by breaking up families and groups, by using the murder of family members, 1097 and by systematically employing other means of ongoing oppression. They intended to prevent Palawa births, by allowing the kidnap of Aboriginal women and children. They intended to physically destroy the Palawa, completely if they could. They intended to impose harsh and oppressive conditions of life, where even their sources of food became scarce, the game driven off or over-exploited, and access to the usual food sources denied. There was no ‘in part’ about it. They wholly succeeded. The British Government’s policies were intentional, the practices genocidal. It was a one-sided war of extermination. The Palawa fought until the end. Contrary to Reynolds, there were almost no unintended consequences in the targeted destruction of the Palawa. If Britain showed some measure of official regret after the genocidal deed was completed, they were merely crocodile tears as the administration and settlers congratulated themselves on a Tasmania free of an Aboriginal presence. Charles Darwin commended the result as ‘great advantage’, 2271 for the economy to be unencumbered by an indigenous population. Many agreed. Britain would use similar strategies as were employed for Tasmania in the process of violent continent-wide occupation, when it metastasised its reach across Australia, according to British Government policy and practice. First, there was invasion of an area, the beach-head settlement, then consolidation behind an armed force, then came the killing and ethnic cleansing, the alienation of land, the paramilitary spread of pastoralism, the use of racist laws as a blunt instrument of oppression, a tsunami of settlers through accelerated Government led immigration, forced detention for remnant survivors and finally the crushing subjugation. Aboriginals had almost no rights. . 1098 Killing members of the group Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group Intention to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction In whole or part Targeted destruction of the Palawa completed Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group Figure 291 Lemkinian model for the British intentional genocide of the Palawa This is the summary process model for Lemkinian genocide, showing how the characteristic behaviours can happen in parallel as a result (or planned consequence) of the intent to occupy an area such as Tasmania. Each sub-process can iterate within itself or trigger another subprocess within the genocidal process. We can visualise the instantiation of the process model at different levels of detail, conforming to an abstraction gradient within an intentionality envelope defined by British Government policies. For Tasmania, armed invasive occupation was the primary trigger for a genocidal process that would not complete until settler sovereignty was achieved and all Palawa resistance was destroyed. A similar pattern would play out across Australia. Lemkinian genocide is a process, with embedded triggers (or policies) and a predictable outcome for a discrete set of categorial activities. For this reason, if we wish to understand the root causes and dynamical process behaviour, the contextual dependency of repeatable activities, it is less interesting to reductively 1099 investigate each genocidal instance, laboriously tabulate the carnage in some database, and then calculate an estimated total number of deaths. The inherent problem with this ‘bottom up’ approach is that there is little way to associate this raw derived number with any particular normative cause because the context has been lost in the modality of the calculation. It is of greater interest to examine the ‘top down’ outcome of the British colonising process, the sum over history, the population loss, the cultural destruction, the alienation and systemic disadvantage that still persists today. We can do this by examining the hypothesised genocidal pattern of activities for falsifiability: Do the activities conform to the characteristics of Lemkinian genocide, or do they not? Was there catastrophic Aboriginal depopulation, or was there not? With this approach, each individually proposed Lemkinian event becomes a potentially falsifiable instantiation of the Genocide process. We are left with the macabre poetry of genocide, the promise of a clean slate, a scorched earth policy. Was this what drove British policy? If not, it was certainly the inevitable and melancholy price of continuing indigenous resistance. There is little argument that the Palawa were a targeted group. What is unconscionable, some historians argue it was done with the best of British humanitarian intentions: to appear to restrain settler violence (while allowing it to continue); to promote the rule of law (while denying Aboriginal witness testimony); to talk of conciliation (while proclaiming martial law and assenting to paramilitary force of arms); to relocate Aboriginals to Flinders Island for their ‘protection’ (while allowing many of them to die in detention); to consider a Palawa treaty after it was no longer necessary; to identify the genocidal consequences of British policy as an ‘indelible stain’ on Britain (while giving approval for the arming of convicts). And if these British intentions were ostensibly amicable, conciliatory and based on religious goodwill, so the often-repeated argument goes, how could they be genocidal? The argument is flawed. Judges punish offenders with the best of intentions, for the good of society. The Young Turks were acting with what they believed were the best of nationalistic motives when over a million Kurds died. For Arthur, economic considerations outweighed any humanitarian concerns, as they did for Imperial Britain. Would the antipodean Aboriginal population have grown and survived as a flourishing 21st century nation if Britain had not imposed its own political and economic aspirations for the land? I think the answer is ‘yes’. Genocide does not mean the total destruction of a group; it means intentional destruction in whole or part through various means, as we saw earlier in the Figure ‘Lemkinian model’. Therefore, if some part-Aboriginals survive in Tasmania, we cannot argue (as Henry Reynolds asserts) that Lemkinian genocide did not occur. To do so misstates the meaning of the Genocide Convention. If we attempt to redefine the legal meaning and wording of Lemkinian genocide, we may be attempting to revise history or excuse it, but in so doing, we are refusing to accept it. Instead, we are imposing our own myths, our own form of historical whitewash. Reynolds is particularly adamant at refuting all possible arguments for Tasmanian genocide while appearing to be logical and reasoned. He redefines the Lemkinian genocidal meaning, denies that the Palawa were imprisoned on Wybalenna, denies that genocide can happen 1100 during a war or conflict, denies that genocide occurred because some mixed race descendants remain, denies that what happened in Tasmania was intentional, either by the Government or settlers and denies retrospective accountability. Finally, he denies that any particular Aboriginal ethnic group was targeted for genocide because there was no collective ‘group’, only disparate tribes and nations who communicated with each other through totems and message sticks and trade routes and kinships defined by ‘skin’. We will counter all of Reynolds’ arguments a little later. Certain other historians back up Reynolds to varying degrees, including Clements and Clendinnen. But we will see that Reynolds tends to support his arguments by misquoting his sources, or by setting out the evidence and developing a contrarian conclusion that is not evidence based. For example, we cannot argue, as Reynolds does, that genocide cannot happen within any war or conflict, but can only apply when a defenceless non-combatant target group is rounded up and exterminated. To do so redefines the Lemkinian Convention. The genocide debate is poorly served by revisionism. Reynolds writes: Killing of group members must result from a clear and ultimately provable intention to destroy the targeted group in whole or in part. If the killing is conducted to win a war, enforce submission to an invasion or consummate conquest the essential element of intent is missing. It is not the amount of killing that matters but the reason behind it. 2272 This argument reconstructs and emends the meaning of Lemkinian genocide, as defined by Article 2, which does not refer to excluding from genocide all war or invasion or enforced submission. Reynolds refines his argument by concluding that no ethnic ‘group’ in Australia was targeted because Aboriginals did not exist as a collective ‘group’, but as disparate ‘groups’ (or what we now refer to as nations). And if they were targeted, Reynolds asserts we cannot retrospectively apply the conditions of Lemkinian genocide. 2273 Nor can we argue, as Reynolds does, that if Aboriginals died from disease while detained at Wybalenna, the deaths were an act of God or were associated with an act of kindness, an ‘unintended consequence’ that was not related to their detention. 2274 This argument is simply disingenuous. When Jews died from disease at a concentration camp, they died from genocide as much as those who were gassed. Between 1833 and 1847, the Wybalenna detainee numbers dropped from around 220 to 46, a catastrophic fall of 80%, enough to qualify as genocide for this act of ethnic cleansing alone. Yet Reynolds persistently argues that Wybalenna was a place of exile rather than detention, to support his contention that Arthur did not intend to cause Aboriginal destruction. He writes: Having been warned by his chief justice about the likely consequences of forced expatriation, Arthur became increasingly anxious to keep the exiles alive as well. 2275 However, Reynolds misquotes the chief justice, who actually said he 1101 could not recommend the adoption of measures tending to induce the Natives, in tribes, to consent to expatriation and imprisonment, until the absolute necessity of such measures was clearly manifested. 2276 The chief justice presciently goes in to say: However carefully these people might be supplied with food, they would soon begin to pine away when they found their situation one of hopeless imprisonment, within bounds so narrow as necessarily to deprive them of those habits and customs which are charms of their savage life. 2277 Reynolds ignores this originating evidence because it does not support his thesis of wellintentioned humanitarian ‘exile’. Such errors of fact, emendation or omission occur often enough to suggest apprehended bias. What might that bias be? Perhaps to give the surviving part Palawa people a sense of dignity, a sense that they not only fought and fraternised with the British but also created a descendant mixed blood community that proudly proclaims its origins. Yet there is no dignity in denying history. It damages us all. The war of extermination should never be forgotten. We should all remember the shame, not absolve ourselves through denial and whitewash. These contrived arguments against genocide are falsifiable, as we will see in Context. For the moment, there are many counter examples. Importantly, we have the holocaust as an instance of genocide within a war. In addition, we have the Armenian genocide, which Turkey still claims as an accident of war, with Kurds as actual and potential combatants whom Turkey wished to neutralise as a group. Clendinnen takes the exclusionary Reynolds argument further, by limiting genocide to the holocaust and Armenia in particular, or at least a very small number of case instances. She argues what Lemkinian genocide ought to be, not what it actually is. She does not see Australia in the revisionist genocidal category she has defined. Therefore, Reductio ad absurdum. She writes, whilst objecting to the Bringing Them Home 2278 report, a widely requoted paragraph that presents a commonly held attitude: [...] when I see the word ‘genocide’ I still see Gypsies and Jews being herded into trains, into pits, into ravines, and behind them the shadowy figures of Armenian women and children being marched into the desert by armed men. I see deliberate mass murder. 2279 Nevertheless, not all genocides are the same or have similarly weighted characteristics, where there is a misplaced focus on stereotypical mass murder as happened in the holocaust. A stereotype is not the same as any particular instantiation, which can have all the idiosyncratic variability of local circumstance played out in a collective behavioural dysfunction that is structured through the pursuit of power and exploitation. We have the case instance of Tasmania, and by extension, other parts of Australia, where Britain conducted a patterned process of violent occupation. There was an identifiable pattern of genocidal intentionality defined by Government policies: land, settlement, immigration, military, paramilitary (police and pastoralists) and juridical. The racist2280 policies drove a lawless genocidal process. Invasion and dispossession caused resistance. Resistance led to targeted extermination and ethnic cleansing, with paramilitary dispersal, stolen 1102 children, cultural destruction, mental and physical harm and all the characteristics of Lemkinian genocide, some of which remain evident today. The destructive process played out along the invasion frontier as it swept across the continent from various beachheads. From 1788, in a mere 140 years, the total Aboriginal depopulation for full bloods exceeded well over 95%.2281 In Tasmania, it was far worse. This places the overall catastrophic population reduction squarely in the category of Lemkinian genocide. It is immaterial whether the deaths were due to mass killing or disease or eugenics or any other subordinate reason; they resulted from a primary cause of invasion. Ultimately, the population loss was due to the process of dispossession and the accompanying intentional violence orchestrated by Government policy and practice. Britain would not tolerate any resistance to their policies or brook any impediments to economic development, which had a priority over humanitarian concerns, however laboured. The result was rolling Lemkinian-type genocide across the continent, area by area, for which Tasmania provided an early blueprint: militarized beach heads, pastoral expansionism, febrile land alienation, accelerated immigration, roving death squads, armed dispersal, enforced deportation, non-recognition of Aboriginal rights, eugenics, cultural destruction, sexual predation, labour racketeering, and misuse of the law. Conclusion An analytical framework must be standardised if it is to provide reliable measurements for a subject area under study. It serves no one if a researcher uses a metric system and another an Imperial system if they are to agree on what they measure. Differing definitions of key terms such as genocide or massacre merely confuse observers and lead them to say, there is a range of opinions on the matter. It is a similar story with global warming where some find a handpicked opinion that there is no such warming, allowing the unconvinced to say, well, there is no consensus, so it is unproven. Semelin’s framework is well intentioned but it is unhelpful because it introduces new definitions that are inconsistent with any Lemkinian meaning. For this reason, with any discussion about genocide the UN Convention – with all its known flaws – should be our preferred template. 1103 Case Instance: Arthur’s declaration of martial law 1828 - 1830: the massacre at Emu Bay 1829 A case is an event or set of related events that conforms to (or can instantiate) some process. There is a multiplicity of cases (or events) that can instantiate the Occupation Process. We will use Arthur’s declaration of martial law as one such case or contextual referent that will delineate the Process Flow decomposition and reveal the Lemkinian Genocide characteristics. It is possible to develop and contextually explode similar case instances for any (and all) massacre events that define the process of violent British occupation in Tasmania. We will use the 1829 killing of an Aboriginal woman at Emu Bay in the north-west as a contextual genocidal referent within the declaration of Martial Law and the over arching British process of Palawa targeted destruction. Contextual Timeline for the Emu Bay massacre The Emu Bay massacre took place in August 1829 on land owned by the Van Diemen’s Land Company. VDLC employees carried out the massacre. The immediate circumstances leading up to the massacre were made possible by the calibrated policies, edicts, and actions of Governor Arthur and his superiors in the Foreign Office. Martial Law was one of his final acts of genocidal agency, as he continued to pacify the settlers and protect his Government position. Ethnic cleansing was his last, when he developed policies and strategies to forcibly remove or expel the Palawa from the ‘settled districts’ 2282 and then relocated the survivors of his war of extermination to Island detention, eventually deciding upon Flinders Island in Bass Strait. Arthur often spoke words of conciliation, but his actions told differently. He was an authoritarian who introduced a rush of public executions, while he became one of the wealthiest men in the colony from his land dealings. He promoted the need for ‘conciliation’ through a ‘friendly mission’ after his policy of extermination was almost complete. He anguished about the need for a treaty with the Palawa after he had destroyed their society. He shared with his superiors that the adoption of any line of conduct, having for its avowed or secret object the extinction of the native race, could not fail to leave an indelible stain upon the British government was unconscionable, but then did just that, with the support of Murray. Britain promoted the rise of settler supremacy and British economic advantage. The rights of the indigenous population were secondary. 2283 In his numerous despatches to the Foreign Office, Arthur sought to engage the support of his superiors in his war of extermination against the Palawa, a war that settlers overwhelmingly approved. 1104 During Arthur’s thirteen-year term of office, there was a multiplicity of murderous instances on both sides. Britain would not resile from its forcible takeover of Palawa lands while espousing ‘conciliation’. Aboriginals fought desperately against their dispossession. For Britain, ‘conciliation’ meant that the indigenous people should exhibit gratitude for their dispossession and embrace Christian education. It can be a pointless exercise to adumbrate each confrontational event, as it can lead to a ‘slicing and dicing’ of reality until the shards become almost meaningless, if we are to understand the over-arching pattern. What is more important: we can observe the result of the process, and the result was the destruction and eventual extinction of the pure bred Palawa. What is more revealing: we can take one of the case instances (such as the chillingly cold-blooded Emu Bay incident) and analyse it as a contextual referent for the substantiation of a genocidal process, in which all such case instances are confirmed through a mapping induction, or through a verification of the type reference occupation model. In the end, at the conclusion of his term of office in Tasmania, a grateful Britain rewarded Arthur with further promotions. It is therefore clear where Britain’s priorities lay. In 1835, James Stephen wrote: Of all the Governors which this department has employed in my time, you have enjoyed the most uninterrupted reputation for all the qualities which a Governor ought to possess and the strongest hold upon the favourable opinion of your official superiors.2284 Timeline 1803 Britain invades Tasmania, primarily to prevent the influence of the French in the area. 1804 British Military massacre a number of peaceful Aboriginals at Risdon Cove. There is no investigation. 2285 1805 In July, the New South Wales Judge-Advocate Atkins, in advice to Governor King, deems it is lawful to kill Aboriginals in ‘reprisal’ operations, and that their witness testimony is inadmissible. Britain does not amend this ruling.2286 1806 – 1807 Period of drought. Conflicts between settlers and Aboriginals over competition for game.2287 1807 – 1813 Around 600 colonists arrive from Norfolk Island, taking up farming land in the best portions of the Island, and beginning sealing operations. The new arrivals begin a process of slaughtering, child abduction and sexual predation. Violence intensifies.2288 1807 – 1823 Britain exponentially increases immigration and land expropriation. The Palawa are pushed aside from their ancestral lands. If they resist, they are killed.2289 1824 In May 1823, Britain appoints Arthur as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land. He takes office in May 1824 1105 1824 In June, Arthur issues a Proclamation that anyone killing an Aboriginal will be charged. The Proclamation is widely ignored. During Arthur’s term, no one is ever charged for homicide against Aboriginals. Aboriginal resistance to invasive occupation continues, although their situation is becoming hopeless.2290 1825 Britain (Lord Bathurst) instructs Arthur to ‘oppose force by force’2291 1825 Van Diemen’s Land Company received a royal charter for a group of London merchants to operate as a single legal entity. Britain granted the company 250,000 acres in North West Tasmania at Circular Head, under the management of Edward Curr.2292 Arthur appoints Curr as magistrate for the area. Curr oversaw extrajudicial killings. No one was ever charged.2293 1826 – 1832 Arthur responsible for the ‘Black war’ period, when targeted destruction of Aboriginals accelerates under his land and immigration policies. 2294 1826 Arthur hangs two Aboriginal resistance leaders as an example.2295 Palawa resistance increases. 1826 – 1828 Arthur allows Aboriginals to be lawfully killed in the ‘settled districts’, citing Bathurst’s 1825 edict.2296 1827 In November, Arthur despatches more troops into the interior, as a result of eleven ‘incidents’ between January and April. It has little effect. Aboriginal resistance escalates. 1828 In January, four VDLC shepherds along with the captain of the Caroline and four of his crew murder twelve Aboriginals at Cape Grim.2297 1828 In February, four employees of the Van Diemen’s Land Company are involved in a massacre of around thirty local Aboriginals at Cape Grim.2298 1828 In April, Arthur makes a ‘demarcation’ proclamation, which requires Aboriginals to have a passport under his seal to travel around the island.2299 In attempting to enforce his proclamation, Arthur establishes a line of military posts around the ‘settled’ districts, where entry is prohibited without Government permission and all Aboriginal trespassers are to be forcibly driven out. The plan fails. Violence increases.2300 1828 In November, Arthur proclaims martial law, allowing Aboriginals to be legally shot.2301 1828 - 1830 Arthur maintains martial law; ‘roving parties’ are authorised to kill with impunity.2302 1829 – 1834 Arthur appoints George Robinson to coerce Aboriginal survivors to move to Island detention, where they would be away from all the settled areas. 1829 Case: In August, employees of the Van Diemen’s Land Company committed a cold-blooded murder at Emu Bay, which was noted by George Robinson.2303 The murder was investigated by Edward Curr, the local magistrate and manager of the Company, but he took no action. Curr was ordered to conduct a formal enquiry, but concluded that the murder was justified, under Arthur’s declaration of martial law, a view that was supported by the Solicitor General Sir Alfred Stephen, with the caveat that ‘prisoners’ cannot be killed. Both 1106 Stephen and Arthur ignored the evidence that the woman had been axed to death while in custody because it might expose the illegality of widespread violence under Martial Law. The murders then continued around the state with legal immunity.2304 1830 Arthur appoints Aborigines’ Committee to help justify his genocidal policy.2305 1830 In February, Arthur proposes to offer a bounty for any captured Aboriginal. 2306 1830 In April, Arthur proposes that convicts be armed as a paramilitary force against the Aboriginals. 1830 Britain approves Arthur’s request to arm convicts2307 and the offer of a bounty for capturing any Aboriginal.2308 1830 In October, Arthur proclaims martial law again, following the release of the Aborigines’ Committee report and Britain’s endorsement of his harsh policies. 1830 In October and again in November, Arthur orders a ‘black line’ to attempt a final solution across the entire state. 2309 It is organised like a wild game hunt, with ‘beaters’ attempting to drive the ‘game’ into entrapment on the southeast Tasman Peninsula, where they can be isolated and neutralised. It is unsuccessful. The ‘black line’ is too porous, and the few remaining Palawa evade it easily. 1832 In January, Arthur revokes Martial Law. He terminates the bounty in May. By this time, few Aboriginals survived. 1835 Arthur completes the relocation of the Aboriginal survivors to detention at Wybalenna on Flinder’s Island. 2310 It is a form of ethnic cleansing and leads to further cultural destruction, within the meaning of the Genocide Convention. 1836 Arthur leaves Tasmania a wealthy man for a new British post and a promotion from a grateful British Government. Case structure The structure of any case shows the cascading nature of intentionality as it achieves its measured purpose across one or more events. It allows us to understand the patterned nature of genocide, which can otherwise appear arbitrary and therefore lacking in formal culpability. Each case can represent a single massacre event, but it can also show the nested decomposition of any and all such events within an intentionality envelope, with multiple possible levels of abstraction along some gradient of purposeful activity devolving, in Tasmania, from British policies for land and emigration and the use of armed force to secure sovereignty and authority for the Imperial colonization process, using the methods of genocide. On case Process Process trigger 1107 Process events Sub-process Sub-process trigger Component Component trigger Sub-component Sub-component trigger Event condition Instantiation Involved parties Outcome event trigger(s) Component iteration Data stores End case Emu Bay Case Instantiation On Case August 1829, Emu Bay, part of the Van Diemen’s Land Company grant in the North West. Alexander Goldie, the superintendent of the Hampshire Hills and Surrey Hills establishments of the Company, and two of his men, Nathaniel Russell and Richard Sweetling, killed a native woman and her child. Goldie claimed it was self-defence: Process Occupation Process Trigger Impose settler sovereignty on occupied land through armed force. As settlers invaded the pastoral districts from 1807, almost all the best land is occupied by 1830. Process Events 1803 Britain invades Tasmania to stop the influence of the French; 1804 British military massacre a number of peaceful Aboriginals at Risdon Cove; there is no criminal investigation; 2311 1805 Judge Advocate Atkins deems it lawful to kill Aboriginals in ‘reprisal operations; Britain endorses the policy; 2312 1806 – 1807 Period of drought; conflict with Aboriginals over competition for game; 2313 1807 – 1813 Around 600 settlers arrive from Norfolk Island to take up land; 2314 1807 – 1823 Britain accelerates immigration and land expropriation; 2315 1824 Arthur takes up his appointment as Lieutenant-Governor; 1108 1824 In June, Arthur issues a proclamation that anyone killing an Aboriginal will be charged; there are no prosecutions; Aboriginal resistance increases; 2316 1825 Britain (Lord Bathurst) issues an instruction to ‘oppose force by force’;2317 Sub-Process Consolidation; northwest Tasmania was being consolidated by the VDLC from 1825 to 1830; Sub-Process Trigger 1825 VDLC grant by Royal Charter for an initial 250,000 acres at Circular Head;2318 Edward Curr was both VDLC manager and the local magistrate; VDLC asserts authority through policing, self-protection policy and (later) martial law. By 1830, few Aboriginals remain in the northwest, victims of ethnic cleansing; Curr oversees extrajudicial and judicial killings. No one is ever charged. 2319 Component Closer Settlement 1826 – 1832 Arthur initiates ‘Black War’; 1828 In April, Arthur makes a ‘demarcation’ proclamation, which requires Aboriginals to have a passport under his seal to travel around the Island; 2320 1829 – 1834 Aboriginals removed from the settled areas’ and detained on Flinders Island. Component Trigger(s) VDLC is granted land by royal charter from the British Government; Arthur legalises targeted destruction of Aboriginals; Arthur increases the alienation of land for settlement; Arthur increases the amount of British immigration; Aboriginal resistance increases. Sub-Component Dispersal Remove Aboriginals (Ethnic cleansing) through deliberate Government policy; 1826 Arthur hangs two Aboriginal resistance leaders to set an example to other Aboriginals on the price of resistance; 2321 1826 – 1828 Arthur allows Aboriginals to be lawfully killed in the ‘settled districts’, citing Bathurst’s 1825 edict; 2322 1827 In November, Arthur despatches more troops into the interior, as a result of eleven ‘incidents’ between January and April; 1828 Arthur proclaims Martial Law; 1830 Arthur re-proclaims Martial Law; 1109 1826 – 1832 Arthur authorises ‘Black War’; 2323 1829 – 1834 Arthur removes Aboriginals from all ‘settled’ areas and detains them on Flinders Island; Sub-Component Trigger(s) 1830 In February, Arthur authorises bounty on captured Aboriginal heads;2324 1828 Arthur issues a ‘demarcation’ proclamation, which requires Aboriginals to have a ‘passport’ under his seal, to travel around the Island; 2325 1828 Arthur attempts to enforce his proclamation by establishing a line of military posts around the ‘settled districts’, where entry is prohibited without Government permission and all Aboriginal trespassers are to be forcibly driven out. The plan fails. Violence increases. 2326 1828 Arthur proclaims Martial Law, allowing Aboriginals to be legally shot;2327 1828 – 1830 Arthur maintains martial law; ‘roving parties’ can kill with impunity;2328 1829 – 1834 Arthur appoints George Robinson to coerce Aboriginal survivors of martial law to move to Island detention, where they will be away from all the ‘settled districts’; Use roving paramilitary groups (settlers, police, convicts, military) to ‘disperse’ Aboriginals; Legalise paramilitary killings by pastoralists to remove ‘vermin’; 1830 Arthur appoints Aborigine’s Committee to help justify his genocide policy through martial law; 2329 1830 Britain refuses Arthur’s request to send more military personnel to deploy against the Aboriginals; 2330 Britain approves Arthur’s request to arm convicts against the Aboriginals; 2331 1830 In October and again in November, Arthur orders a ‘black line’ to attempt a final solution to the Aboriginal problem across the entire state. It is organised like a wild game hunt, with ‘beaters’ trying to drive the ‘game’ into entrapment on the southeast Tasman peninsula, where they can be isolated and neutralised. It is unsuccessful. The ‘black line’ is too porous, and the few remaining Palawa evade it easily. Around 4,000 heavily armed troops, settlers and prisoners went out, but only two Aboriginals were shot, with two captured. 2332 Event condition Cape Grim massacre In February 1828, VDLC employees massacre a number of local Aboriginals at Cape Grim. No one is charged. 2333 Instantiation 1110 1828 – 1830 Roving paramilitary parties were conducting ‘dispersal’ operations across the Island. A contest for the land was in progress across the claimed pastoral districts of Tasmania. 1826 – 1830 George Arthur was issuing proclamations to make Aboriginal dispossession have the force of law, where Aboriginals could be shot as trespassers. Following the 1823 Bigge report, Arthur had not yet put in place legislation for the sale of alienated land. Britain was encouraging its Australian colonies to be focussed on revenue generation from Government land sales. It was not so much that the Government ignored the rights of Aboriginals, although the evidence was quite clear; it was that Government and settlers did not believe Aboriginals had any land rights at all. Land legislation was not introduced until after Arthur’s departure in 1836, by which time Britain had solved the Aboriginal problem in Tasmania. It would replicate the New South Wales and Tasmanian solution to other parts of the continent as the pastoral frontier advanced. The same event trigger or justification – invasive occupation – was to be used innumerable times over the next few years or more, up to the early 20th century, as pastoralists pushed for sovereignty over the land and waves of repressive force cemented the gains with a jackboot on the neck of Aboriginal society. The trigger associated with invasive occupation was to ‘remove the vermin’ to gain unencumbered use of the land. Where the displaced ‘vermin’ were to go was never properly considered, not by pastoralists, not by Government, until sometime in the early 1830s when the Aboriginals no longer presented a threat and they could simply be mopped up and removed to an island detention centre. Involved Parties VDLC employees. Direct: William Gunshannon (Gunchannon), Charles Chamberlain, John Weaver and Richard Nicholson. Indirect: Edward Curr (VDLC manager); Alexander Goldie (superintendent); Tasmanian Government (Executive Council), George Arthur (Lieutenant Governor), JT Gellibrand (Attorney General), Alfred Stephen (Solicitor General), John Pedder (Chief Justice); the British Government, (Sir George Murray (Secretary of State for War and the Colonies in the Duke of Wellington’s Government from 30th May 1828 to 22nd November 1830. He was replaced by The Viscount Goderich in the Earl Grey Government from 22nd November 1830 to 3rd April 1833.) Outcome Event Trigger(s) 1111 The place where the massacre took place is called Cape Grim. It still carries that name. Although Robinson was told of the massacre, including the names of the perpetrators, there was no investigation. No one was ever charged. VDLC had a culture of Aboriginal killing, as did most of the pastoralists. The Cape Grim incident became widely known at the time but was slowly buried in myth where it largely remains today. Massacres and ethnic cleansing had become normalised as acceptable behaviour for settler society, in order to solve the problem of Aboriginal resistance and achieve unencumbered possession of the land. Aboriginal tensions increased in the northwest as VDLC continued its ethnic cleansing policy. Edward Curr was the local magistrate. By the early 1830s, few Aboriginals of the populous northwest tribes remained. VDLC continued the pattern of violence. The massacres at Cape Grim and Emu Bay were no isolated. VDLC also deliberately attempted to corrode Aboriginal society by offering rum, tobacco and poor quality food in exchange for access to women and cheap labour. Arthur’s Government refused to prosecute criminal settler behaviour (as did Governors before him) and denied Aboriginals the right to own any of their land. The government treated Aboriginal use of their county as trespass, with lethal consequences for entire tribes, particularly if any stock were killed or a settler was speared. The oppressive pattern was irrevocably being set, with no sign from Government that it would change from its planned course in alienating (confiscating) more land for the colonists. The British genocide in Tasmania happened so quickly, within 30 years, that Government policies were still being determined by the Governor, usually through an edict or proclamation. It was not until the Executive Council began to play a greater role through legislation, tat land and immigration policies were enacted in law. However, the catastrophic effect on Indigenous populations was no less severe. It simply became more formalised. Britain began to take a back seat as colonial self-government took over. From the 1830s, as a result of the 1823 Bigge report (commissioned by Lord Bathurst), increasing amounts of revenue were being generated through the sale of ‘Crown’ land. This money was used to subsidise immigration and public works. Comparative history: In 1868, the Crown Lands Alienation Act (Queensland) introduced by Macalister paved the way for closer settlement, 2334 making the Aboriginal situation far more vulnerable. A casual reading of the Queensland land Acts show they were focussed on generating revenue; and with the Aboriginals beaten and subjugated, they rated no mention whatsoever in most land legislation, certainly not their rights, which were presumed simply not to exist. The Queensland pastoral frontier began to move north, where it became a killing field until the end of the century. Police and pastoralists mercilessly destroyed tribe after tribe. 1112 The Government introduced more blackbirded Kanaks as indentured labour, after their successful use in the Mary Valley. The Government continued to alienate Aboriginal land for sale, with no plan for where Aboriginals were to live, the eventual solution being to round up the survivors and forcibly remove them to detention centres, where the Government rigidly controlled their lives under the 1897 Queensland Aboriginals Act.2335 Summary During Arthur’s period of martial law, the Tasmanian pastoral districts were a killing field, where heavily armed groups (roving parties, field police, military, convicts, bushrangers and settlers) mercilessly destroyed tribe after tribe. The Government continued to alienate Aboriginal land for granting to settlers, with no plan for where dispossessed Aboriginals were to live, the eventual solution being to round up the survivors and forcibly remove them to a detention centre at Wybalenna on Flinders Island, where the Government rigidly controlled their lives. Many died in detention from the conditions. In 1847, the British Government belatedly ordered the removal of the few survivors back to Tasmania, but it was far too late. Event Condition Emu Bay massacre In August, a VDLC reprisal party ambushes some Aboriginals at Emu Bay. One woman is shot while trying to protect her child and is then finished off with an axe blow to her neck. 2336 Instantiation In August 1829, two Aboriginal women and a child were walking along a beach when they were ambushed by Goldie and his party. One of the VDLC men shot the woman, who was trying to protect her child. Another of Goldie’s party then chopped the woman across the neck with an axe, killing her. There was no remorse. The remaining woman and child were taken into custody, to collect a bounty under Martial Law. Involved Parties Alexander Goldie (superintendent of the Hampshire Hills and Surrey Hills establishments of VDLC). Two other VDLC employees: Nathaniel Russell and Richard Sweetling. Another VDLC employee, John Palliser, may have been present, but seems not to have taken part. Outcome Event Triggers Arthur’s martial law policy continues unchanged until Aboriginals are defeated and Arthur achieves settler sovereignty. The legality of martial law remains unchallenged. Arthur’s genocidal policies survive. There was a multiplicity of killings under martial law. The Emu Bay killing was quite well documented, unlike the majority of other such cases. 1113 No one is charged for the Emu Bay killing. Arthur and Stephen contrive a defence that is supported by Britain. Although martial law was in effect at the time of the killing, there were still notional rules for ‘prisoners of war’: if someone is killed while they are a prisoner, it is murder; but if someone is shot before they are taken prisoner, and subsequently die from their injuries, the murder is deemed lawful So Stephen trivialised the axe blow and argued that the gunshot caused the death. Arthur agreed to this deception, as it exonerated him and his administration from blame. If the axe blow caused the woman’s death, Arthur’s martial law policy would be jeopardised along with his career. Arthur did not reveal all the circumstances of the killing to his superiors. 2337 Component Iteration Armed occupation, then consolidation, then dispersal, with further occupation of other areas, followed by more dispersal, then closer settlement, then more dispersal, then more consolidation, and so on, until settler sovereignty is completed.2338 The genocidal process in Tasmania was quite rapid, having completed its objective – to achieve settler sovereignty over Aboriginals – in a generation. During this Lemkinian process, Arthur was the key architect and enabler of genocidal policy; but he was always supported in his actions by the British Government. Data Stores Massacre events, Actors (Involved Parties), Policies (land and immigration), Proclamations and Edicts (martial law, judicial advice), Jurisprudence (Aboriginal witness testimony disallowed by British Law), Locations, Primary Sources, Events, Place Names, Tribes (Range, Location, Culture), Case Scripts Primary Sources HRA Series 3 (ed. Peter Chapman); 1830 Aborigines’ Committee Report; Henry Melville (1835), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 to 1835; Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all Correspondence between Lieutenant Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the colonies on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land (ed. AGL Shaw); AOT; Trove digitised newspaper clippings. Other (see bibliography) Secondary Sources See bibliography. End case. 1114 Emu Bay massacre: event flow diagram Emu Bay massacre Contextual History and Event Flow Diagram 1800 Britain invades Tasmania Risdon Cove massacre Atkins ‘lawful to kill Aboriginals’ Drought, competition for game Colonists arrive from Norfolk Island Britain accelerates immigration and land alienation Arthur appointed Governor Arthur continues immigration and land policies Bathurst orders ‘oppose force by force’ Britain grants VDL Co 250,000 acres in NW Tas Arthur commences ‘Black War’ Arthur hangs two resistance leaders as an example Arthur allows Aboriginals to be lawfully killed in settled districts Arthur despatches more troops into interior Cape Grim massacres by VDLC (Jan, Feb) Arthur’s Aboriginal passport proclamation Arthur declares martial law 1 Nov 1828, and again 1 Oct 1830 Arthur appoints Robinson on ‘friendly mission’ Emu Bay massacre by VDLC Arthur appoints Aborigines’ Committee of enquiry Britain approves arming convicts as paramilitary force Arthur orders Black Line to ethnically clear settled areas Arthur absolves VDLC of Emu Bay murder Arthur relocates surviving Aboriginals to Wybalenna 1810 1820 1830 War on Aboriginals made British policy X Figure 292. Emu Bay massacre - contextual history and event flow diagram 1115 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Conclusion Britain’s genocidal invasion of New Holland began with first settlement at Sydney Cove in 1788 and did not end until Australia was claimed as property in one form or another. Aboriginals were excluded from the table, forced to survive on any dropped crumbs. They were a people without rights, not land rights, not rights in law, not voting rights, perhaps not the right to exist, until well into the 20th century. Britain and its increasing army of emigrants violently dispossessed the Aboriginal people, family by family, group by group. Any survivors were rounded up, as for Wybalenna, to be detained under harsh conditions. Through a juridical process over the 19th century, settler sovereignty became legalised, and the extreme genocidal excesses forgotten, buried in a barely acknowledged footnote to history. It could have been and should be different. Britain was clearly aware that its process of armed dispossession was having a fearful effect in Aboriginal genocide. Other people told them, Baudin included. Its Governors told them. In 1837, The Aborigines’ Committee told them. Britain chose to put economic considerations above humanitarian concerns. Britain chose genocide. It was cheaper and far more profitable. By 1911, the Aboriginal population across Australia had dropped catastrophically, the preinvasion population falling well over 95%. No one seemed to care. In Tasmania, it was far worse. The Palawa were annihilated. The purpose of Tasmanian genocide by Britain and its functionaries was to suppress Indigenous opposition to the colonizing process and ultimately, when Palawa resistance continued, to remove or ethnically cleanse their presence entirely. Britain successfully drove its genocidal policy in Tasmania, a policy it was to repeat for its other points of settlement around the continent, a policy that was triggered by invasive armed occupation but was driven by politics and economics. What the British Government brought to Tasmania was patterned resolve, of exploitation and of practised destruction. It began in 1803 with a British carceral population, a small number of settlers, and unregulated sealers operating along the Tasmanian coastline.2339 By the mid 19th century, it ended with uncontrolled Government land alienation, a flood of British immigrants, and the destruction of Palawa society. Britain showed a cruel disregard for the Aboriginals it displaced through an invasive and metastatic pattern of occupation that was to replicate across the continent, conciliated by the gun. We conclude that the British Government and later Australian Governments are responsible for a major indictable crime against Aboriginal society but have never been found accountable or admitted liability. They and we are responsible for the projected loss of millions of Indigenous lives in Australia, through racist land and emigration policies, unrestricted settlement, discriminatory legislation, uncontrolled racial warfare and other late phase genocidal actions that caused rapid Aboriginal depopulation from the time of the 1788 invasion until 1911. For Tasmania, depopulation was far more severe, well over 95% of the Palawa disappearing within thirty years. The hypothesis for Tasmanian genocide across multiple co-determinate behavioural agencies initiated and fostered by the British Government is therefore confirmed. The long tail of Lemkinian genocide in Australia continues today, under UN articles: 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; and 1116 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part. Although we respond in pride to our national anthem, For We Are Young and Free, many Aboriginals are still suffering through a late-stage Lemkinian process where they are among the most disadvantaged ethnic groups on Earth, inexcusably prey to poor health and education, with unconscionably high levels of incarceration dogging their footsteps. As for the descendants of the ancient Palawa, they still struggle for recognition and land rights. Beyond changing or expunging the inappropriate racist clauses in Australia’s 1901 Constitution,2340 perhaps a treaty that the duplicitous Arthur and his superiors in the Colonial Office denied the Palawa two centuries ago would go some way towards healing and a little reconciliation. We may attempt to rewrite history, or ignore it, but until we accept that the past is not another country, until we acknowledge the genocidal process of invasive occupation, we must remain a nation without honour, building our most treasured myths upon the military ineptitude of the British high command at Gallipoli where our soldiers fought a heroic and misguided war of Turkish containment,2341 or the conflated heroic settler triumphalism for a supposedly benign process of pastoral occupation and Aboriginal dispossession. Bureaucratic procedural rigidity and limbic emotion often shape history as we bumble into the future. We have shown how such agency drove Australian genocide in all its instances across the expanding frontier, where the Tasmanian Palawa were an early victim of British territorial and hegemonic ambitions. Lest we forget. 1117 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited PART 5: Analytical Framework It is the usual prerogative of the victor or dominant cohort in some asymmetric struggle – economic, environmental, ideological - to dictate the terms of engagement over some contested space and set out the preferred facts of history in a belligerent form of historical revisionism. It is both the strength and failure of social systems that they are tribal, whether a political party, or landed class, or history’s gatekeepers, or any other defined group. We form clubs of common interest, self-interest, with staked territories and borders, a Kuhnian landscape, enclaves of us and them, domains of inclusion and exclusion that reinforce our territorial interests, our ownership of things, a proprietorial behaviour that gave us slavery and other forms of unsustainable exploitation including the misuse of fellow species and entire ecologies. We are told what to think and coerced in what to believe, blind to ecocide, ignorant of genocide. While economic determinism may have been the British motive in Tasmania, what we now call Lemkinian genocide was the means. In colonial times, it was called extirpation, but different names do not expunge common agency. We will set out the patterned agency – the aetiology and logistics - of violent Palawa dispossession by the British Government that replicated to all other parts of Australia, leaving Aboriginal society to become refugees in their own land, group by group. It was a pattern that was to repeat across the continent in a practised modality, the procedural mechanics of slaughter. Across the continent, by the time of the 1911 census, more than 90% of Aboriginal people had ‘disappeared’. There was little comment on their passing, and an amount of measured relief. Pastoralists and the political class could finally claim juridical and economic sovereignty over the land. Legitimacy was another question. Has anything changed today? We now have those with capital and those without, the 99%, the working poor. Within this disadvantaged group, Aboriginal society is now less than 3%, their voice lost in rising multiculturalism and the empty doctrine of prosperity theology. Criminogenic intent remains with us still, embedded in our rule-based order. State culpability for crimes against past inhumanity have passed into a tortuous history, protected by the British doctrine of laches. We have retreated into unreason, buoyed by Blainey’s argument that we should not – as an imposed society - feel guilty. The story of Palawa Lemkinian extermination is inevitably bound up with the roles of Governor Arthur and George Augustus Robinson. Both claimed to be devoutly religious; both claimed to be humanitarian. Neither claim was true, not if acts outweigh personal beliefs. Each enriched themselves at Palawa expense while the British Government nodded its approval on the progress of economic development, tut-tutted about the futility of Aboriginal resistance and their mistaken belief that they owned the land, and the final militarized - then duplicitous - removal of the Palawa threat, Arthur’s ruse de guerre. Arthur employed Robinson for a ‘friendly mission’ to ethnically cleanse the remaining Palawa on a false promise of a treaty and land; the survivors of asymmetric and unpunished British violence were induced into exile at Wybalenna on Flinders Island where they pined and died. Arthur went on to enrich himself with corrupt land dealings. Robinson purveyed his genocidal experience into the role of Aboriginal Protector for the colony of Victoria, where he watched Aboriginal extermination and dispossession while enjoying a Government sinecure. As for Arthur, a grateful British Government gave him a promotion for his services. He sailed from Tasmania a wealthy man. 1118 Commented [rg2]: Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Xavier Herbert called Australians a community of thieves. This is too gentle. It suggests surreptitiously taking something – land – that does not belong to us. In practice, we were armed burglars or worse - coldly calculating killers, taking what we wanted through the callous Government-led misuse of power. We will flesh out the Lemkinian typology to sub-type the British process for predatory and displacive land acquisition in New Holland, what became Australia. We will use the Lemkinian displacement of the Tasmanian Palawa people as a case example of the patterned process. It will become evident why the occupation process was – or quickly became - genocidal. Each sub-type, say ‘displacive’ within ‘predatory’, has a unique set of characteristics that contextually depend on Government policies and agency. It should be no surprise that the sub-types are behavioural, reflecting British normative dysfunction, although Britain may have had another perspective: the glory of Empire; or perhaps the self-interest of its privileged governing-class. The typology shows us that Britain could have chosen an alternative path to ‘exploring’ new territory but was overwhelmingly driven by political and economic self-interest in an urge, a compunction, for complete and exclusionary control, where Imperialism demanded Indigenous racial subservience and where Indigenous rights to land and cultural identity, even life, were generally ignored. If Aboriginal subservience and acquiescence was not forthcoming, if there was resistance to the displacement process, the British punishment of Aboriginal society, group by group, was brutally destructive. Britain would not countenance Indigenous opposition to the land heist, to the rise of pastoral triumphalism and settler supremacy. In this genocidal occupation process, area by area, deliberate and implacable, it is exceptionally difficult to sustain the argument that there were no unintended consequences of British racially discriminatory and genocidal policies, although some historians and political theorists and economists try. In this violently displacive process, the voice of Aboriginal protest is lost, drowned out by the language and mechanics of Lemkinian conquest in the interest of economic determinism. 1119 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited British genocidal land acquisition2342 We will flesh out the dispossessory typology to sub-type the British process aetiology for predatory and displacive land acquisition in New Holland, what became Australia. We will use the Lemkinian displacement of the Tasmanian Palawa people as a case example. It will become evident why the occupation process was – or quickly became - genocidal. Each sub-type, say ‘displacive’ within ‘predatory’, has a unique set of characteristics that contextually depend on Government policies and agency. It should be no surprise that the sub-types are behavioural, reflecting British normative dysfunction, although Britain may have had another perspective: the glory of Empire; or perhaps the self-interest of its privileged governing-class. The typology shows us that Britain could have chosen an alternative path to ‘exploring’ new territory but was overwhelmingly driven by political and economic self-interest in an urge, a compunction, for complete and exclusionary control, where Imperialism demanded Indigenous racial subservience and where Indigenous rights to land and cultural identity, even life, were generally ignored. If Aboriginal subservience and acquiescence was not forthcoming, if there was resistance to the displacement process, the British punishment of Aboriginal society, group by group, was brutally destructive. Britain would not countenance Indigenous opposition to the land heist, to the rise of pastoral triumphalism and settler supremacy. In this genocidal occupation process, area by area, deliberate and implacable, it is exceptionally difficult to sustain the argument that there were no unintended consequences of British racially discriminatory and genocidal policies. In this violently displacive process, the voice of the language and mechanics of conquest. Aboriginal protest is lost, drowned out by To understand this process, we now develop a land acquisition typology, where we will link British policies and behaviour with Lemkinian agency through a classification schema. It is this collective behavioural pattern or schema that will inform our deconstructive analysis through a potentially falsifiable hypothesis for the destruction of Aboriginal society. A process is a pattern of connected event types, of patterned purpose across a network of actionable components. Within our analytical framework, a process is a defined and repeatable series of actionable components, forming a directed graph with a specified (intentional) originating trigger and sharing a planned or expected outcome. A direc A directed graph is a network of nodes within some process, or across a set of processes, each node representing an actionable component. There can be many paths through the network, depending on the conditional trigger for any node. However, any graph has a consistent and uniquely identified input and output condition, which together define intent for the process. Therefore, if we are to understand the Lemkinian genocidal process as a set of instantiations, we should work from the pattern, rather than examine individual events, where it can be difficult to see the overarching regular order of things, the cause-and-effect chain, the structure of normative dysfunction. 1120 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Put another way, it is difficult to establish evidence of genocide from an event; it is easier to find evidence of genocide if an event is verified as an instance of the genocidal process. Of particular interest in our study are the processes of Indigenocide, Lemkinian genocide, ethnic cleansing, invasive occupation, colonization, settler sovereignty, mass killing (along with its variant terms), and ecocide. The extent to which these processes overlap is determined by their shared or common actionable components. 2343 Such hypothesized process models are potentially falsifiable, within the scientific meaning, if we find an example where we cannot map - or functionally relate - any case instance (or event) to the specific contextual model. By ‘hypothesis’ we will mean a testable conjecture, or an assumption used in an argument without being endorsed, a tentative explanation for a phenomenon, used as a basis for further exploration. Consider our hypothesis for the geometry of the Occupation process. Let us call this hypothesized geometric manifold the dependent variable, say space A. Let us now consider a specific event (space B) comprising a potential instance (triggering condition, role, and agency) of a sub-class in space A. We want to establish if the mapping between space A and space B is falsifiable. Any mapping from one space to another involves some functional relationship between a specific object, for example an event or case, and a target space that we have defined by a reference model (dependent variable), say the type occupation process or the Lemkinian type genocide process. If we can show that some event or case such as Murdering Creek2344 or any other can map to or instantiate the type or referent process, then we have verified that the hypothesized type process is a necessary and sufficient mapping of observed or reported reality (ontology), prescribed by some level of fact based analysis (epistemology). In terms that are mathematically more rigorous, a function is the relation between two sets. The relationship can be either a mapping or a transformation. The functional relationship is a set of ordered pairs, x and ⨍(x). If we write y = ⨍(x), then y is the value (or dependent variable) for the argument x, where x = x1, x2, x3,.. xn and di represents some actionable component domain over x. 1121 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Lemkinian Genocide 2345 Under the Lemkin 1948 UN Genocide Convention, the introduced term ‘genocide’ is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group, and carries a moral and legal obligation for the UN to take preventative action under international law, which means that if the United Nations determines that genocide has occurred, it cannot legally be ignored. However, preventative, or retrospective action is rare. The Rwandan genocide was carried out in full view of the UN and no intervention was taken. The Lemkin Convention was watered down to remove any reference to the state, at the insistence of the UN Security Council. Nations with the right of veto - nations such as China, Britain, France, Russia, or the US - consistently refuse to recognize any specific occurrence of genocide which may implicate a state, because they themselves may be culpable in certain instances. Consequently, the Convention focuses on an individual’s accountability, which can be problematic if there is a dearth of incriminating evidence showing the individual’s involvement, often the case in the confusion of war or a generalized breakdown of the rule of law, when many genocides tend to happen. But individual accountability is also addressed by international legislation for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, although it is rarely prosecuted, even when there is clear and compelling evidence, usually because of the unwillingness of the nation state’s ruling class to participate. Under the UN 1948 Act, genocide is further defined as … any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, such as: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. [Article 2] Clearly, under this UN definition, the Aboriginals were the victims of genocide at the hands of Britain and its settlers. But under the Convention, Britain (as a nation state) is absolved, and the individual perpetrators are long dead. Consider generally recognized instances of genocide in Rwanda (against the Tutsis), Bosnia (against the Muslim minority), Iraq (against the Kurds), Turkey (against the Armenians), Germany (against the Jews), Cambodia (against its own people), the Dafur region of Sudan (against the native Africans), America (against the native Indians), Australia (against the Aboriginals) – almost nothing was done to prevent each genocide until the political and economic aims had been achieved, and any punishment was usually selective, discretionary, and after the event, if it occurred at all. Individuals involved in the Australian genocidal process were almost never charged and if charged they were rarely convicted, apart from the isolated exceptions of the Myall Creek miscreants and one or two other accused who were found guilty over a period of around one hundred and fifty years. 1122 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited In sharp contrast, many Aboriginals were hanged for their resistance activities. 1123 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Lemkinian genocide as a process Killing members of the group Iteration through different process instantiations Triggering condition Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group Intent to destroy or complicit in destroying Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group Figure 293 Simplified Lemkinian genocide model. Each of these actionable components can be reduced to detailed sub-processes and repeatable activities. 1124 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The United Nations definition of genocide (genocidal process) means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. In Australia, all these Lemkinian defined acts were carried out by both Government and settler society, and all were both intentional (planned) and systemic (structural): 2 (a) Killing members of the group: declarations of martial law; settlers openly spoke of extermination and a ‘war of the races’; systemic massacres; policy of ‘dispersal’; indiscriminate homicides; poisoning, imposed starvation. 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group: sexual predation; stealing children; introduction of drugs and disease; destruction of hunting equipment, dogs, totems and sacred sites; destruction of water holes and hunting grounds. ‘Dispersal’ was Government policy. 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical and mental destruction: As Government policy, children were removed from their families, and remnant Aboriginal populations were forcibly moved to detention centres where they were expected to become extinct; derogation as ‘vermin’. 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group: Australian Governments carried out a policy of eugenics towards the end of 19th century, in an attempt to ‘breed out the recessive Aboriginal traits’; sexual predation was condoned; repressive legislation meant that Aboriginals had to seek permission just to marry and all aspects of their lives were Government controlled. 2 (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group: This was Government policy, enacted in legislation, what we now know as the ‘stolen generation’, also a characteristic of the eugenics policy, which was intended to encourage the extinction of full bloods. The policy was preceded by the common practice of child abduction by pastoralists and settlers and police, usually for child labour. 1125 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Type Occupation Process, showing Actionable Components (Classification Schema) A Invasion commenced for an area B Invasion Extermination Closer settlement Cultural Destruction Establish Beachhead Dispersal Dis Enfranchise ment Detention (Reserves) Early death Declaration IInvaiova as ‘nonInhabitants’ sioInvasi Inability to I testify Enslavement Stolen wages Endemic preventable disease Removal of children Land alienation Marginalisation Systemic disadvantage Legislation for Crown Land sales Repressive Aboriginal legislation Forced labour onnvasio Sovereignty IInvaiova declared sioInvasi Rampant Squatting Exploration Expropriation Land grants Inveigle indigenous cooperation A Initial Occupation, replication Introduction of drugs, diseases Excessive Incarceration Sexual Predation Unequal justice Forced dependency Police victimisation Punitive expeditions Selfgovernment Segregation (apartheid) Drug dependency Military campaigns Land sales B Protection Aboriginal protectionism Coerce collaboration Accelerated immigration Living Under The Act Consolidation Occupation completed Deaths in Custody Subjugation Repression Figure 294 Actionable process components in type Occupation process 1126 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Overlap of Lemkinian Genocide Process with Occupation Process A Invasion commenced for an area B Invasion Extermination Closer settlemen t Establish Beachhead Dispersal Dis Enfranchise ment Inability to testify Enslavement Stolen wages Land Marginalisation Declaration as ‘nonInhabitants’ Sovereignty IInvaiov declared Removal of children asioInva alienation Legislation for Crown Land sales Cultural Destructio n Detention (Reserves ) Repressive Aboriginal legislation Excessive Incarceratio n Early death Endemic preventable disease Systemic disadvantage Rampant Squatting Introduction of drugs, diseases Exploration Sexual Predatio n Unequal justice Forced dependenc y Police victimisation Punitive Selfgovernment Segregation (apartheid) Drug dependency Expropriation Land grants Inveigle indigenous cooperatio n A Initial Occupation , replication expeditions Military campaign s Land sales B Protection Aboriginal protectionis m Accelerated immigration Coerce collaboration Consolidation Repression Living Under The Act Occupation completed Forced labour Deaths in Custody Subjugation Figure 295 Overlap of Lemkinian genocide with the type Occupation process 1127 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Processes as a nested decomposition Massacres on the pastoral frontier were not isolated, nor were they simple. If we expand the Murdering Creek or any other massacre event to show its relationships within the Occupation Process as a contextual referent, it becomes clearer that we cannot separate the event from Government policy and practice. Figure 296 Process Flow decomposition for Australian Lemkinian genocide 1128 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Massacre event summary: Actors and Agencies This is a simplified model for the British occupation process, inducing a pattern of massacres at Murdering Creek and elsewhere, a century long tsunami of racially based killing, showing the Involved Parties and their roles, as settler sovereignty tightened its grip, from de facto to de jure. The ethnic cleansing process repeats, area by area, like a shaped wave, as it sweeps the Aboriginal population away in an orgy of violent settlement, in response to primary forces. The North Maroochy area and Murdering Creek were no exceptions. The occupation process presents a pattern that is universal in its application; it is often successful, which is probably why it is frequently used. For a start, it is clearly intentional and by its state-sponsored procedural nature, it is deterministic with a defined outcome or strategic objective, usually to achieve political and economic hegemony over a certain geographical area. Without supra-national restraints, there is little to stop the aggressive violation of human (and other) rights by one powerful belligerent against another less powerful party. 1129 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Occupation Process - Simplified Sovereignty declared Occupation completed Land legislation, assisted immigration, ‘dispersal’ policy, British jurisprudence Government Land grants, sales Revenue de facto Squatters and settlers Squatting de jure Lease hold ‘Dispersal’ begins Para-military, military and police Freehold Aboriginal removal accomplished Aboriginal subjugation, apartheid, repression, forced detention, ‘protectionism’, cultural destruction, eugenics, stolen children. Armed force RJGibbons Figure 297 Simplified system model of the Australian occupation process, showing the role of Involved Parties in Lemkinian agency. Compassion does not normally carry a ‘gun’ (that is, some kind of coercive force such as the use of weapons or counter-repressive legislation), but greed and self-interest often do. Because of the violent political methods typically employed to enforce the occupation process, it can wear the appearance, the outward characteristics, the normative phenotype of structural and systemic genocidal behaviour. It is difficult to ignore the neuroepigenetic implications. Britain presumed territorial Sovereignty, the right of occupation and the right to impose British law. 1130 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited All land was claimed for the Crown through a legislative process of alienation, leaving Aboriginal society homeless. Invasive occupation included official and unofficial (but condoned) mass killing, imposed malnutrition and disease, sexual predation, intentional relocation, eugenics and forced assimilation. 1131 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Lemkinian genocide – Australian typology Figure 298 Preliminary behavioural typology for Australian settlerism 1132 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 299 Typology of Lemkinian Genocide in Australia: Acquisitive, Predatory, Displacive, Genocidal 1133 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Lemkinian genocide – Australian phases Figure 300 Queensland Occupation Process, showing Genocidal Phases 1134 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We hypothesize, through induction by concomitant variation, that, for example: If variations in Land Alienation (A) are correlated with variations in Immigration (I), then: 1. 2. 3. A causes I, or I causes A, or some other factor X causes variations in both A and I, which are co-determinate. This analytical approach is widely used in scientific investigations. If we further assert ⨍ (A) = ⨍(B) we mean that if we separately plot ⨍ (A) and ⨍ (B) on the same graph, then we are interested in where the functions intersect. Using the case example of Queensland’s occupation, the genocidal phases overlap,2346 with the far north and north west Indigenous people the last to face a predatory racial purge by white settlerism. The south west succumbed between the early 1860s and 1890. For the Kabi, speculative pastoral invasion of their territory began in the late 1830s, with the period of maximum societal destruction between 1840 and 1880, followed by repression post 1880 that included forced deportation of now homeless Aboriginal people to detention centres. In 1900, very few Kabi survived from a pre-invasion population of possibly several thousand, commensurate with the original pre-invasion Tasmanian Palawa population. For this reason, we will use Tasmanian genocide to compare and contrast the destruction of the Kabi, and then – by induction – infer a similar mechanism for the collapse of all other language groups in Queensland and across Australia. Induction is an elementary logical rule of the form: if A is true, and A implies B, then B is true. The occupation process can be seen in equivalent biological terms as a type of predatory constrictor that processes its prey in one end, moving the victim’s body down its length in defined stages until it is expressed as excrement, without form and identity, almost all its essence removed. The occupation process in Australia comprehensively destroyed Aboriginal culture and identity, a genocidal period from which Aboriginal society is yet to recover. 1135 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 301 Australian Occupation Process, showing Pre-Genocidal Phase 1136 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Land Alienation/ Immigration: Lemkinian agencies 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d). We hypothesize that invasion of an area, together with its unilateral expropriation in the name of the Crown, caused concomitant and measurable correlative variations between Land Alienation (A) and Immigration (I) that are subject to regression analysis. The pre-genocidal phase was the triggering condition for subsequent genocide within each invaded area. For Tasmania, we show empirically that there is a strong correlation (0.96) between the Total Free Male immigrant population (excluding the military) and the Cumulative Total Acreage Granted for areas less than 500 acres, between 1824 and 1833 inclusive.2347 For Queensland, we empirically determine that there is a strong correlation of 0.92 between Population Size and Cumulative Land Alienation between 1860 and 1900 inclusive. 2348 We can infer, by induction, that a similar concomitant variation applies to all other Australian regions, including Queensland. This dispossessory agency had the effect of causing bodily and mental harm to the targeted group (2b), harrying the group with the intention to destroy it in whole or part (2c), and imposing conditions that made it difficult for the group to create and raise families (2c). The invasion of any area caused almost immediate conflict, resulting in targeted killings (2a). 1137 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 302 Australian Occupation Process, showing Genocidal Phase Dispossession/ Resistance: We might similarly conjecture an algorithmic relationship between dispossession and resistance, measured quantitatively, which is outside the immediate scope of this book.2349 These co-determinate Lemkinian agencies were determined by the conditional trigger arising from: Invasion/ Resistance → Land Alienation/ Immigration. Dispersal/ Extermination: Lemkinian agency 2 (a): Evans and Ørsted -Jensen analyzed Native Police and settler dispersal operations in Queensland and identified a strong correlation between the number of operational sorties (around 6000 dispersal attacks) and the total number of Aboriginals killed (extermination), which they calculate as 61,680 homicides over 40 years. However, their dataset is fragile because many of the relevant police operational records have disappeared, presumably destroyed to avoid culpability.2350 The size and stability of the data bundles does not allow easy regression analysis. 1138 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited These homicidal sorties necessarily caused bodily harm to the group (2b) and were intended to bring about the disruption and destruction of the group (2c) along with reducing the group’s ability to create and maintain a family (2d). The concomitant variation between dispersal/ extermination was conditionally triggered by the outcome of dispossession/ resistance. Predation/ Population Collapse: Lemkinian agencies 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d). If we exclude Evans and Ørsted –Jensen numbers of those killed under Article 2 (a) between 1860 and 1900, we are left with a Queensland Aboriginal depopulation figure of over 200,000 between 1788 (1824 Queensland invasion) and 1911. The primary cause is likely to have been a drop in the birth rate that resulted in an intragenerational population collapse. See this document for the section: Modelling Lemkinian Genocide, which sets out the categorial agencies and their enumerative demographic effect. The population was not replaced because of ongoing sexual predation (2b), enslavement (2b, 2c, 2d, 2e), the inability to raise a family (2c), gonorrhoea and infertility (2d), introduced disease (2b, 2c, 2d), cultural destruction (2b, 2c), lack of food (2b, 2c, 2d), poor food such as flour, sugar (2b, 2c, 2d), homelessness (2b, 2c, 2d, 2e), and the introduction of drugs such as alcohol and opium (2b, 2c). Predation/ Population Collapse was conditionally triggered by the outcome of Dispersal/ Extermination. Britain refused to withdraw from primary areas of invasion but persisted in its colonizing activities, no matter the human cost to Indigenous society. Britain’s obdurate expansionist policy inculcated a normative behavioural ethos (shared values or axiology) among settler society that resolved itself as overwhelmingly racist and violently dispossessory. Removals/ Mortality: Lemkinian agencies 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d), 2 (e). In this document2351 we show empirically that Barambah Removals and Mortality between 1905 and 1939 are strongly correlated (0.88) and hypothesize that other State detention centres (including those across Queensland) will show a similar correlative variation though inductive inference. 1139 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We show that the Queensland Government’s removals programme, culminating in the 1897 Act and its subsequent amendments, caused bodily and mental harm to the group (2a), with the lethal conditions knowingly causing the cultural and physical destruction of the group (2c) and initially causing a low birth rate (2d). The programme also forcibly transferred children away from their families (2e) and encouraged eugenics to ‘breed out the colour’. The eugenics programme was adopted by other states. The objective of the programme was stated to be one of ‘protection’, presumably from white predation; it was further assumed that the race was becoming extinct because – in Darwinian thinking - it was biologically unfit to survive the invasion of a superior culture. But the self-serving assumption ignored the evidence – including that of the 1837 Report of the Parliamentary Committee on Aboriginal Tribes - that catastrophic depopulation was being caused by white supremacist aggression. Homeless, they became trespassers on the own land and refugees in their own country, subject to internment and segregation in what the Government thought would be a final solution, with all of its emotive connotations. The Removals/ Mortality co-determinate Lemkinian agencies were conditionally triggered by the preceding Predation/ Population Collapse period. Just as Aboriginal society comprised a number of groups across Australia, so the methods of Lemkinian repression showed a common and repeatable agency architecture across each contested space, fractal-like but not fractal, as a horde of pastoralists expanded the frontier, urgently driven by the possibility of quick financial reward. 1140 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 303 Australian Occupation Process, showing Post-Genocidal Phase in context2352 Repression/ Incarceration: The co-determinate agencies of Repression/ Incarceration are conditionally triggered by the outcome of the genocidal phase. The post-genocidal phase is one for which we see lingering evidence today in: targeted policing (2b, 2c); excessive rates of incarceration (2b, 2c, 2d); continuing deaths in custody (2b, 2c, 2d); slow reparation for stolen wages and stolen children (2b); the efforts to obstruct a treaty and first people’s recognition in the Constitution (2b); the failure to amend the Constitution by removing its racist elements (2b); the continuing struggle for post-Mabo land rights (2b); systemic indigenous ill-health (2b, 2c); the sub-standard accommodation, water supply and sanitation, especially in remote communities (2b, 2c, 2d); continuing marginalization, family violence, family breakup, and despair (2b, 2c, 2d, 2e); and the pernicious presence of white supremacists, particularly in right wing Queensland politics. 1141 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Tasmanian Genocidal Roles: Actors and Agency The jurisprudential system of almost any country – and this includes Australia - has and continues to have a focus on individual crimes against person or property. White collar and corporate crime are rarely punished. Crimes of entire societies or countries are usually above the law because they are the law. So it was for the British administration in Tasmania. The business of Palawa dispossession and extermination required an army of bureaucrats, civil servants, and private citizens who, together, were responsible for the mechanics of Tasmanian genocide. Obedient to the authority of the Crown, they viewed their toil as righteous and praiseworthy; any Palawa resistance to the land heist was an ‘outrage’ punishable by destruction and death. The hypothesized genocidal patterns of Tasmanian meta-history are falsifiable, whereas an individual event can have multiple perspectives, any of which may be inconsistent with another. It gives rise to apparent type event contradictions such as invasion (from the Palawa view) to settlement (from the British view). The structural patterns of the imposed Tasmanian social complex for the period of Palawa extermination conform to a collective diagnosable spectrum disorder that reflects different levels of intentionality along an abstraction gradient. These levels range from State driven political-economic policies (including constraint rules for land and immigration), 2353 to State driven practices (including constraint rules such as the British rules of evidence and the legal right to protect one’s ‘property’), to constraint rules for individual behaviours that are defined by self-enrichment and self-preservation. The system dynamics, both behavioural and procedural, are further shaped by these constraint rules. The more detailed instances, the contextual referents, the actors and their agency, and the dynamics are statistically predictable within an intentionality envelope. For example, ‘killing members of the group’ may only have a limited effect for a single incident but, if the State condones the behaviour and thereby perpetuates it, the outcome is more conclusive, particularly if the State is actively and intentionally involved in targeted killing through its various instruments of projected power, the police, military, legislation, proclamations, and judiciary. Such was the case in Tasmania. Mapping of Tasmanian targeted destruction to Lemkinian genocide We are interested to map the intersection of the articles of the UN Genocide Convention, particularly the paragraphs of article 2, with the roles and agency (behavioural categories or categorial agencies or faceted classifications) of the broad executable components of the Genocide conceptual schema, as previously specified. These behavioural patterns, because they repeat, can be prescriptively modelled. Therefore, we must develop an analytical vocabulary for key terms such as Involved Party and Agency. This will allow us to understand the nature of cascading intentionality in the behavioural 1142 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited pattern of Tasmanian genocide, from the role of the British Government down to that of a field policeman or colonist and provide a rigorous - or as rigorous as possible - framework for the case instances. Agency is the capacity and manner in which an individual or organisation (Involved Party) may act in a given environment or social structure. Agency corresponds to an ‘object class’, or the manner in which an object such as Involved Party is implemented (instantiated) within a found environment such as the type Occupation Process. Therefore, agency is bound up with the concept of Involved Party, which was introduced on page 18 and cited thereafter. An Involved Party (or the Involved Party concept) represents all the participants that may have contact with the type reference model (or subject area conceptual schema) and about which the model wishes to maintain information, for example, case instantiations for the occupation process. The definition and characteristics of the ‘Involved Party’ are independent of the party’s involvement (or agency) with the subject area. Types of Involved Party are individuals, organisations, functional areas, and roles. Examples (or type instances) are: British Government; Secretary of State; Governor; Land Commissioner; police; military; colonist-settlers; sealers; landowners judiciary; Executive Council; Aboriginals; Tasmanian Lieutenant-Governor. The Involved Party ‘types’ (or more strictly, ‘classes’) can form a classification taxonomy or schema, corresponding to the labels for nodes on a directed graph: for example, the class ‘British Government’ includes the role (or sub-class) of ‘Lieutenant-Governor’, which can be instantiated with the name of a particular Governor, say ‘George Arthur’. Each level of the taxonomy can be instantiated at varying more levels of nested abstraction. Involved Party types can also be sub-typed: for example, the Executive Council includes Colonial Secretary, Colonial Treasurer, Chief Justice and so on. Sub-types are instantiated with case instances such as John Pedder (in the case of the Chief Justice on the Executive council at a certain period of time). An Involved Party (object class) can have many types, as we saw, but an object such as ‘sexual predation’, although it can exist in different sub-classes (such as the occupation process, or genocide process), can have the same type (settler-colonist, or military officer, or other specific type of Involved Party). We have a conceptually similar Involved Party cohort today, drawn together by vociferous self-interest, determined to deny or delay action on climate change or species extermination or ecosystem destruction if it affects our short-term standard of living or impacts upon our GDP or questions our preferential ideology. A typology focuses on the often-dynamic type relationships between nodes, whereas a classification schema (or taxonomy in its simplest form) is based upon the properties of real objects in a static hierarchy. For this reason, typologies and taxonomies can often – and do -overlap. We will refer to our referent type models as classification schema that can be instantiated at different levels of abstraction, forming a nested decomposition. 1143 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Our models can also be sub-typed within a behavioural envelope determined by imposed constraint rules (or type agencies) that modify the operation of a specific object class and are contextually dependent. A classification schema can be faceted, that is, the view or facet of the schema can reflect different behavioural criteria. Facets can apply to different types of models, including data and process models. A faceted data classification shows the uniquely peculiar data uses of a particular data view, such as: Occupation typology/ Tasmanian genocide/ Martial Law Proclamations/ ‘roving’ ‘pursuing’ parties/ extermination/ massacre events/ Involved Parties. We note that these ‘views’ are procedural and are facets of the type genocidal process; they show the various categorial behaviours (facets) and how they intersect the classification schema in a patterned (or faceted) manner. We will argue that behavioural agency (or categorial behaviour) can be deterministic to some measurable degree within any system of social rules and constraints - including Government legislation, systems of criminal law, policies, proclamations, notices, and edicts - but is subject to value judgments that impose agency responsibility for any and all consequences. The argument ‘I had to kill him’ is not necessarily a reasonable moral or legal defence. But for colonial Tasmania, the defence was almost never required, being overtaken by the larger utilitarian argument ‘It was a war of the races’ or ‘I was protecting myself’ or ‘I was protecting my property’ or ‘I was using force against force, so my actions were sanctioned’. We then have to consider how the ‘war’ started, a war imposed by Britain on an increasingly desperate Aboriginal population, a war that employed the methods of Lemkinian genocide for the ‘greater good’ of Empire but justified itself as a counter-insurgency measure against Palawa ‘outrages’, when Aboriginals resisted the British occupation process of their country. This conspective analysis becomes the basis for categorial conformable mapping, to determine if Lemkinian genocide occurred in Tasmania within the balance of reasonable legal and behavioural probability. The conclusion is yes. Each point of intersection by some agency (or categorial behaviour or type sub-process) with one or more Lemkinian Articles has a variable aggregate weighting, which lends the analysis to a statistical assessment. For example, the type behaviour ‘indiscriminate killing’ may, in a specific case instance, have certain weightings of Articles 2 (a) to 2 (e) that may be different to the weightings for other instances. The type behaviour or categorical agency is therefore contextually dependent, as we would expect. That is not to say that the conformable mapping is invalid.2354 The type behaviours (or categorial agencies) are extensible. They are not meant to be exhaustive, but in their progressive application can reveal the overall genocidal picture in increasing levels of detail, like a low-resolution photograph that is successively filled out into an ultra-high-definition picture, representing the cumulative view of a number of overlapping representations. 1144 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Weighting of Lemkinian categorial agencies Weighting of categorial agencies with Tasmania as a use case example Subjective weighting is on a scale: 1 to 10, where 10 is highly important in the genocidal outcome. Based on the subjective weights, we determine that all the type behaviours (agencies) had a significant effect (with high importance) on Palawa genocide at different times during the genocidal process, which overlaid the type schema for the Occupation process. The agency subjective weight (importance) together with the agency extent (the range of UN genocide articles 2(a) to 2(e) invoked by the agency; scale is 1 to 5) determines the genocidal impact of a type behaviour. Quantitative analysis: If we plot importance against extent, we find that all the genocidal type behaviours fall within the top right quadrant, that is, high genocidal impact. For example, the agency ‘British Government’ (colonizing policies) has the coordinates (10, 5) on the graph of genocidal impact, and so on for the other agencies. It begins to suggest why the British invasion of Tasmania was so destructive of the Palawa. The proportional number of Palawa impacted by any one agency (including but not limited to proportional depopulation) varies according to the phase within the genocidal process over time. 1145 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Roles and Agency Subjective (type behaviour) Weighting 2 (a) 2 (b) 2 (c) 2 (d) 2 (e) British Government (politics) 10 x x x x x Economics 10 x x x x x Indiscriminate killing 10 x x x x Armed oppression 10 x x x x x Kidnapping 10 x x x x x Ecocide 8-9 x x x x Dispossession 10 x x x x Settlement 10 x x x Cultural destruction 10 x x x x x Pastoralism 10 x x x x x Immigration 10 x x x x British Law 10 x x x x x Arthur's 'final solution' 10 x x x x x Martial Law 10 x x x x Sexual predation 10 x x x x x x x Introduced disease UN Genocide Articles 9-10 x Friendly mission: Conciliation 9 x x x Forced detention: Wybalenna 9 x x x x x Subjugation and repression: Oyster Cove 9 x x x x x Figure 304 Intersection of Tasmanian Roles and Agency with Lemkinian Article 2 paragraphs2355 It is also the characteristic of any categorial behaviour that it can intersect other such behaviours in specific ways. For example,’ indiscriminate killing’ can (and usually does) intersect ‘armed oppression’, with the point of intersection defined by activities that are shared between the agencies. In a verifiable sense, this means that the agencies are codeterminate. The specific intersection is contextually dependent. An instance of the type agency ‘indiscriminate killing’ may reveal a contextually based association (shared activity) with some related instance of ‘armed oppression’. Within the context of the type ‘occupation process’, Arthur proclaimed Martial Law that established and legalized death squads to pursue, capture and in many cases kill any Aboriginals who were found. The Emu Bay massacre, which we will examine later as a case study instantiation, took place within this contextualized behavioural landscape (type occupation process), including the type agencies (behavioural sub-processes) of ‘indiscriminate killing’ and ‘armed oppression’, each of which were triggered by Government policy (Martial Law). More detailed modelling can expose the nested referents.2356 We note that an instance of ‘armed oppression’ may or may not include an instance of ‘indiscriminate killing’. The point of intersection between the two categorial behaviours is where an instance of killing or murder is involved. The homicide can be judicial or extrajudicial, depending on the triggering referents. 1146 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We can group these agency functions and map their group relationships in a form that can allow us to construct a layered typology. The functions subscribe to a type process flow for the Tasmanian Occupation process that overlaps the Lemkinian Genocidal process, an intentional process that was driven by British Government policy. In Australia generally (and more specifically in Tasmania), Lemkinian genocide cannot be separated from systemic racism, which was the corollary to violent British exploitation and expansionism. Figure 305 Agency relationships (un-normalised) and their type vectors (or vectorial associations) for Tasmanian genocide When a party takes something by force, the theft is more acceptable if the perpetrator can derogate the victim, or otherwise specifically target the victim as a member of some pilloried group unworthy of what was stolen from them. 1147 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The result is racism, a dysfunctional behaviour that can infect an entire society, and we still see the effects today in Aboriginal disadvantage. Within this associative network of type agency relationships, we note that: • • • • • • • • • Government political and economic policies drive land and security policies that drive enhanced immigration that accelerates the alienation of more land that increases the rate of settlement and expanded economic development through pastoralism that increases the alienation and location of more land, that increases greater Aboriginal dispossession that increases indiscriminate killing and cultural destruction, that is enhanced through a juridical and legislative process of martial law and ethnic cleansing (‘friendly mission’) and so on. The vectorial agencies are interconnected in a complex pathological system dynamic that has only one purposeful outcome: the targeted destruction of the Palawa through the policies, methods and behaviours of Lemkinian genocide. Beyond racism, vectorial agency for Lemkinian genocide embraces persistent type triggers such as strategic, legislative, administrative, operational and displacive. These type triggers can also be instantiated at multiple levels of abstraction. For example, in the context of Tasmania, the type trigger strategic (political and economic) is sub-typed as: • • • • • • block the influence of the French in Tasmania; extend sovereignty for the claimed area of East New Holland (or New South Wales) to include Tasmania; establish a beachhead settlement in Tasmania, at first with a predominantly carceral population; protect the early settlement by military and paramilitary force from Aboriginal objections to the invasion; expand the area of settlement through immigration; promote economic self-sufficiency; and so on. All other referent type triggers can be sub-typed in a similar way, each creating a typology, and each typology interconnected.2357 1148 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Strategic Uses Uses Uses Invasive Administrative Legislative/ Juridical Operational/ Displacive Coercive/ Repressive Destructive Figure 306 Vectorial associative directed graph network for level 0 (type) triggers The type triggers also exist as a coplanar associative network, with Governmental strategic policies as the root segment or agency group, corresponding to a node on a directed graph for which the categorial trigger is British Imperial intentionality to claim sovereign possession of New Holland. For any specific trigger, each level of abstraction carries its own associative network 2358 against other sub-typed referent triggers. Along with behavioural constraint rules,2359 this typological network (or type trigger classification and association schema) further defines Tasmanian genocide as a complex bounded dynamical behavioural system. The sub-typing schema for any type trigger logically follows from the British Government intentionality to claim sovereign possession over an area and deny the rights of the original inhabitants to their traditional lands. Genocide was the result. Palawa lives were taken, then their culture, and finally their identity, leading to the mental and physical destruction of the targeted group. Britain employed its own system of laws to ensure that any Aboriginal resistance was deemed criminal and that crimes against Aboriginals were left unpunished. If we are to understand the Lemkinian process as it played out in Tasmania, we must understand who, how and why. This will involve an examination of roles and agency along with evidentiary arguments (what and when) that will support (or falsify) our hypothesis for Tasmanian genocide. 1149 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Lemkinian behavioural schema For our analysis, each paragraph of Article 2 of the UN Convention on genocide defines a specific and actionable Lemkinian sub-process, where: 1. Any Lemkinian behaviour or agency can action one or more Lemkinian subprocesses. Example: The role of the British Government (Involved Party) through the agency (behaviour) of British Government Imperialism carried out all Lemkinian subprocesses (Article 2 paragraphs) in Tasmania. 2. Any Lemkinian sub-process can be used for one or more agencies (behaviours). Example: Article 2(a) defines a Lemkinian sub-process that can be carried out by agencies such as indiscriminate killing, or enforced detention, or the ‘friendly mission’, or sexual predation, or introduced disease. 3. Any Lemkinian sub-process can be actioned by one or more roles (Involved Parties). Example: Article 2(a) defines a Lemkinian sub-process that can be carried out by roles such as the British Government, or field police, or the military, or settlers, or sealers. 4. Any Lemkinian role (Involved Party) can have one or more agencies (behaviours). Example: The British Government (role) carried out indiscriminate killing and enforced detention (behaviours). 5. Any Lemkinian agency (behaviour) can have one or more roles (Involved Parties). Example: Indiscriminate killing (behaviour) was carried out by more than one Involved Party or Role, including paramilitary groups, settlers and the military. 6. Any role can contain one or more other roles. Example: The role of the British Government contains the role of George Arthur. 7. Any Lemkinian agency (behaviour) can contain one or more other agencies (behaviours). Example: The agency (behaviour) of indiscriminate killing can contain introduced disease. 8. Any role can action one or more agencies (behaviours), where each agency can action one or more Lemkinian sub-process. Example: A settler (role) can engage in sexual predation, or indiscriminate killing, and so on, where the agency (behaviour) of indiscriminate killing invokes paragraphs 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), and 2 (d) of the Convention. Similarly, sexual predation invokes multiple Lemkinian sub-processes. Other roles show a corresponding extension, using the same logic. 9. Any sub-process can contain one or more repeatable activities2360 that can be shared by other sub-processes. Example: The sub-process ‘causing serious bodily or mental harm to the group’ can contain the activity ‘sexual predation’, which can also be shared with the sub1150 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited process ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical and mental destruction’. ‘Sexual predation’ is a repeatable activity, but it can also be an agency (categorial behaviour). This is best shown through a diagram. We can see that where Lemkinian agencies (patterned behaviours) overlap, they are sharing Lemkinian sub-processes (or paragraphs of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention) or, in some cases, the repeatable activities within sub-processes. Figure 307 Lemkinian agencies (behaviours) overlap through shared Lemkinian sub-processes Where there are repeatable activities, say sexual predation, the triggering conditions will vary depending on context. Sexual predation can be an agency (behaviour) or an activity within a Lemkinian sub-process. If we tag Lemkinian agency sub-processes with assigned roles, we define an accountability matrix corresponding to a process flow across Involved Party responsibilities. Together, roles and agencies form a bounded behavioural system within the meaning of Lemkinian genocide, where triggers connect any agency or sub-process with another in order to achieve some purposeful outcome. An example of such a purposeful (or intentional) outcome is the completion of Palawa ethnic cleansing (the removal of the Palawa from the island of Tasmania) through the agency of Arthur’s (Involved Party) ‘friendly mission’ (behavioural agency) by Robinson (Involved Party). The ‘friendly mission’ intersects multiple politically driven Lemkinian sub-processes, including dispossession, extermination, deportation, and lethal repression. 1151 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Role 1 Role 2 P4, P5 P1, P2 P2, P3 Figure 308 The relationship between roles, agencies, and Lemkinian sub-processes. Legend: 1. A role is equivalent to an Involved Party. In some cases, an Involved Party can take many roles. 2. A sub-process is equivalent to a Lemkinian paragraph within Article 2 of the Convention. 3. Each rectangle represents a specific agency comprising one or more sub-processes. 4. pn is sub-process n (paragraph n) within Lemkinian Article 2. 5. Agencies can interact in a behavioural flow that corresponds to a bounded process flow. 6. The boundary condition for a Lemkinian sub-process is determined by Government policies and intentionality. 7. In the diagram, we see that Lemkinian sub-processes can be reused by different agencies. For this example, P2 is shared between two agencies. 8. The Lemkinian Convention specifies five ‘sub-processes’ or paragraphs for Article 2, any of which can overlap through reusable shared activities within a sub-process. That is, reusable Lemkinian activities (say ‘kill Aboriginals’) can be repeated in different Lemkinian sub-processes and each instance becomes a contextual referent for that sub-process. Another way to understand the relationship between categorial agencies and Lemkinian subprocesses is by examining their intersections. For example, following the invasion and colonization of Tasmania, the prescribed agencies of pastoralism and immigration share a common type sub-procedural link in articles 2 (b), (c) and (d) of the United Nations Genocide Convention. The instantiation of that common link is a contextual referent that depends on the circumstances of associated events. The axes are ‘Time’ and ‘Involved Party’ bands. We have examined the pattern of Australian mass killing, using summary information from the destruction of the Palawa. We have determined that the pattern and its mechanics conform to Lemkinian genocide.2361 1152 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Agency 1 Agency 2 Agency n Figure 309 Categorial agencies intersect at shared Lemkinian sub-processes In some cases, we will simplify the analysis by equating a role with agency, unless otherwise stated. For example, the behaviour (agency) of Imperialism is logically equivalent to the role of the British Government (Involved Party). Each categorial agency had an economic and political momentum that was incompatible with a continuing Palawa (or - across the continent - Indigenous) presence. Britain would not resile. Nor its later vassal states. The die was cast for the Australian Indigenous population. They would go the way of the Palawa, subject to Lemkinian displacement through a practised formula. History would not judge because it was blind to the past, having been written by the invader. The collectively shared mantra would be economic development, no matter the humanitarian and environmental cost, and this, we will argue, became the basis for our emergent values, of self-interest, of greed, of cold economic determinism. It also became the seed for ecocide. Lemkinian Genocide articles and mapping to the conceptual schema for the Tasmanian ‘Type’ Occupation Process Each Lemkinian paragraph of Article 2 in the United Nations Genocide Convention intersects, in specific ways, the components of the conceptual schema for the generalized Occupation Process. The pattern of intersections reflects the characteristic circumstances of Britain’s invasion of Tasmania. Tasmania was different from other invasion fronts in Australia, but also similar. Britain obliterated the Palawa presence within a generation. The Tasmanian genocidal difference is reflected in the speed of Aboriginal dispossession, which meant that the end stage Lemkinian process, including repression and subjugation, barely had time to take effect, unlike the rest of the continent. But in a key respect, Tasmania was similar, if we consider that, for each invaded region, whether at Moreton Bay, or the area around Melbourne, or the Kimberley, the displacive rout was completed in around three decades. For Tasmania, in the 1830s, the juridical process that transformed settler sovereignty from de facto to de jure had just begun. Child kidnapping was yet to morph into eugenics and the ‘stolen generation’ that entailed the forcible breaking up of families in other states and a system of racially oppressive apartheid, where Aboriginals were forced to live separate lives. 1153 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The succession of land and immigration legislation that tightened its legal grip on Aboriginal land would only arrive as Tasmania became self-governing from 1856. By this time, the pureblood Palawa were almost no more. Within Lemkinian Terminology, ‘killing members of the group’ can be direct or indirect. It does not matter how an Aboriginal person died, from disease, or poisoning, or wounds inflicted, only that they died because of the British occupation of Tasmania (or elsewhere in the continent). Nor can we equivocate, as Reynolds does, that the continental wide ‘group’ does not exist in Australia because there were multiple ‘groups’ involving different languages and territories. Group: set of people or things (Macquarie). With more mathematically rigorous logic, the type process of Australian genocide is a generator set, whose operations can generate a larger set of genocide objects. This larger set defines a manifold or Lie Group, which is basic to our understanding of symmetry. In our case, the type occupation process is a manifold of all possible genocidal instances, conforming to a pattern of Lemkinian genocide. Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain?: 20, 119 – 121. Reynolds argues: The paradox is that the smaller the group to be considered, the greater the likelihood that genocide did actually take place, that many – and sometimes most – members of local groups were killed by settlers or by Aboriginal troopers or trackers and that there was an intention to do so. Reynolds then concludes: Considered in this way, genocide would be judged to be more common but less momentous, in that the numbers involved in each incident would be quite small and the perpetrators may have had no idea that their local adversaries represented a distinct group. [p.120]. This is like arguing that the Jews were multiple groups, with different language and cultural backgrounds, and therefore the extermination by the Nazi administrative machinery was less momentous. No, the ‘group’ is the set of Aboriginal people who came into conflict with the invading British no matter where the point of the invasion originated. Across Australia, there were multiple militarized invasion fronts as armed British occupation metastasized across the country, the invaders also behaving as a ‘group’, responding to the British Government’s territorial aspirations, edicts, and policies. The killing of Aboriginal people became regularized, accepted, almost judicial, the price for taking over the land by all necessary force. Crimes against humanity were condoned. Britain has never apologized. 1154 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Article 2 (a) mapping Figure 310 Article 2(a) ‘Killing members of the group’ as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process 1155 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Article 2 (b) mapping Article 2(b) 'Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process 1156 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Article 2 (c) mapping Figure 311 Article 2(c) 'Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process 1157 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Article 2 (d) mapping Figure 312 Article 2(d) 'Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process 1158 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Article 2 (e) mapping Figure 313 Article 2(e) 'Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group' as type instances of the conceptual schema for the Occupation Process 1159 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Comparative Barambah and Wybalenna mortality statistics2362 Originating regions for Barambah removals: 1908 – 1936 Originating Region No. of Removals No. of Removals Percentage Darling Downs Darling Downs 17 1.2 Central West Central West 66 4.5 North West North West 75 5.1 North 75 5.1 Far North 124 8.5 South West 150 10.2 Moreton 157 10.7 Wide Bay 285 19.2 Central West 301 20.5 12502363 85.02364 North Far North South West Moreton Figure 314 Originating regions for Barambah removals: 1908 - 19362365 Wide Bay includes the Kabi, Wakka territories, and the Barambah ‘settlement’ near Murgon. By the turn of the century, there were few Kabi survivors. Removals to Barambah came from across the state and approximately reflected the size of the remnant Indigenous population for an area. 19% came from Wide Bay, the territory of the Kabi and Wakka. Although the Queensland Government allowed some people to remain in their locality if their labour was required by pastoral stations as stockmen or as domestic servants or if they were part white, the relatively low numbers indicate how few survived from the original population 1160 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited after a half century of genocide. As we saw earlier, about one third of dispossessed Aboriginals were living on missions under the ‘protection’ of religious institutions. 1161 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Barambah genocidal mortality statistics: 1905 to 1939 2366 1200 Death Rate/ 1000 1000 250 800 200 100 (34) 1938 (31) 1935 (28) 1932 (25) 1929 (22) 1926 (19) 1923 0 (16) 1920 0 Death Rate/ 1000 (13) 1917 50 (1) 1905 (4) 1908 (7) 1911 (10) 1914 (13) 1917 (16) 1920 (19) 1923 (22) 1926 (25) 1929 (28) 1932 (31) 1935 (34) 1938 200 (7) 1911 Death Rate/ 1000 (10) 1914 400 150 (4) 1908 Total Population (1) 1905 600 Figure 315 Barambah normalized mortality statistics: 1905 – 1939 1162 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 140 120 100 80 60 Births 40 Deaths 20 (1) 1905 (3) 1907 (5) 1909 (7) 1911 (9) 1913 (11) 1915 (13) 1917 (15) 1919 (17) 1921 (19) 1923 (21) 1925 (23) 1927 (25) 1929 (27) 1931 (29) 1933 (31) 1935 (33) 1937 (35) 1939 0 1911: Altogether 151 deaths were reported, of which 48 occurred on the Barambah Settlement and 5 at Taroom, the causes given being: dysentery, 42; pneumonia, 23; bronchitis, 2; senile decay, 13; venereal, 7; phthisis, 7; accidents, 7; blood poison, 1; epidemics, 3 ; children's complaints, 15; general and unspecified, 31.2367 1919: Dr. Junk, visiting medical officer at the Barambah Aboriginal Settlement, has supplied a telegraph report to the Home Department emphasising the state of panic and the dire effects of the epidemic among the natives at the settlement. The report states that 596 natives were affected, and only 10 remained unaffected. Sixty-nine deaths occurred, including 45 males and 22 females. Eleven males and two females died from beri-beri complications, and two males and five females had syphilitic complications. Five males and one female died from senility, one male died from Bright’s disease,2368 and three males and one female from tuberculosis. Twenty-nine of the deaths took place among the aged, infirm, and diseased. Of the remainder, it is thought that a great many died of simple “funk”, while some through grief and panic made little resistance, and courted death.2369 Figure 316 Barambah actual annualized birth and death statistics 1905 – 1939 1163 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Cum births (34) 1938 (31) 1935 (28) 1932 (25) 1929 (22) 1926 (19) 1923 (16) 1920 (13) 1917 (10) 1914 (7) 1911 (4) 1908 (1) 1905 Cum deaths 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 Cum deaths Total population (1) 1905 (4) 1908 (7) 1911 (10) 1914 (13) 1917 (16) 1920 (19) 1923 (22) 1926 (25) 1929 (28) 1932 (31) 1935 (34) 1938 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 Figure 317 Barambah cumulative birth and death statistics by year 1905 - 1939 1164 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 Barambah causes of death, 1910 – 1936 250 200 150 100 50 Births Deaths 0 Barambah child mortality, births v deaths, 1906 - 1938 Figure 318 Barambah mortality statistics 1165 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited For Barambah, Thom Blake calculates: In the period 1905 – 19, an average of one out of every eight inmates died each year.2370 In 1920, the death rate peaked at over 120.2371 Compare this with Wybalenna. Reynolds writes: Between September 1833 and May 1837 only one of the seventy convicts died of disease. In the same period forty Aborigines – men, women and children – succumbed.2372 He continues by denying that the conditions were genocidal: In the draft convention put together by the UN secretary-general, it was determined that in cases where victims were placed in concentration camps with an annual death rate of 30 to 40 per cent, the intention to commit genocide was unquestionable. Clearly the death rate on Finders Island puts it well within the range of such death camps, but there is no available evidence at all to suggest that it was the intention of the colonial government to affect the extinction of the Tasmanians. 2373 But intentionally caused extinction is not the meaning of Lemkinian genocide, which specifies destruction of a targeted group in whole or part, along with other categorial agencies specified by Article 2. Conversely, it was within the power of the British Government to shut down Wybalenna and allow the Palawa their own territory, perhaps in NE Tasmania as was originally considered. They did not do so. The settlers would have complained. Britain did not want civilian dissent. Appeasement was their preference. Better that the Palawa die out of sight and out of mind than allow them back into their own country while their numbers were still in the low hundreds. They would not be allowed to travel their own country as though they owned it. How would they be kept from travelling outside map boundaries? Eventually, with the Palawa population reduced to 47, all old and frail, they were relocated to a squalid unused convict camp at Oyster Cove, well away from the good people of Hobart. Even there, they were abused, with inadequate food and shelter. A small, mixed-race group survived in Bass Strait, and from these sprang the proud descendants of the Palawa today, still fighting for their rights. 1166 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Barambah epidemic disease outbreaks: 1905 – 1939 Year Epidemic Cause 1907 1937 Measles 1910 1919 Multiple 1910, 1931-32, 1936, 1938 Whooping cough2376 1915 Dysentery Polluted water, poor sanitation 1915 Typhoid Polluted water 1918 1919 Influenza, pneumonia Overcrowding, ‘removals’ programme 1920 1929 Tuberculosis Mortality Comments Ten outbreaks of measles occurred between 1907 and 1937.2374 The most severe measles epidemics were in 1913 and 1916 when seven fatalities were recorded. Overcrowding and the deportation to Barambah of ill inmates for whom there was inadequate medical treatment. Barambah also operated as a labour camp, so there was constant coming and going of inmates. An average of 67 deaths pa, or a total of around 670 deaths for the period. Over the period, removals (deportation) to Barambah peaked at an annual average of eighty-one and there was an average of sixty-seven deaths per year. Significantly, after 1920 both the death rate and the number of deportees arriving on the settlement decreased sharply.2375 The group most vulnerable to whooping cough were children aged two years and under. An epidemic of whooping cough in November 1931 resulted in the deaths of no less than eight infants. In the 1936 epidemic there were two fatalities, one seven months old and the other eighteen months.2377 Typhoid fever appeared more spasmodically than other infectious diseases. Epidemics were reported in 1915 and 1926 and a small outbreak occurred in 1935. On each occasion the number of fatalities was small. The 1915 outbreak claimed three victims while in 1926 two deaths were reported.2378 200 people died Pneumonia and influenza accounted for more deaths than any other single cause. Eleven major influenza epidemics were reported between 1907 and 1939.2379 68 people died In the period 1920 – 29, there was a total of sixtyeight deaths from tuberculosis compared with 1167 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited thirty-two in the previous decade. In 1922, out of a total of forty-five deaths on the settlement, eleven were attributed to tuberculosis. It was an endemic problem which affected not only the older inmates. Of the fifteen cases reported between January 1936 and July 1938, eleven were under thirty and almost half the victims were eighteen years or younger.2380 1926 Typhoid Polluted water Figure 319 Barambah disease epidemics: 1905 - 1939 Categorial cause of death Pneumonia/ influenza Tuberculosis Venereal disease Other Deaths Infectious diseases 632 Organ-related diseases 121 Paediatric 115 Deaths % Pneumonia/ influenza 253 40.0 Tuberculosis 130 20.6 Venereal disease 105 16.6 99 Bronchitis Senility/ old age Other 49 7.8 Enteritis/ diarrhoel Diet related 62 Bronchitis 45 7.1 Paediatric Other 43 25 4.0 Accidents 19 Enteritis/ diarrhoeal Unknown 16 Paediatric 25 4.0 1107 Barambah infectious disease mortality, 1910 - 1936 Infectious disease aetiology Ranked mortality, 1910 1936 632 Ranked infectious disease mortality, 1910 - 1936 1168 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 320 Barambah disease aetiology and ranking, 1910 – 1936 1169 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Pathogenesis: Diet-related disease – around 10% of mortality - included beriberi, a product of vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency due to the lack of wholesome food. ‘Enteritis/ diarrhoeal’ included dysentery and typhoid fever, primarily caused by the polluted drinking water and poor sanitation. Venereal disease initially resulted from contact with predatory unscrupulous whites. Acute Respiratory Disorder (pneumonia/ influenza, tuberculosis, bronchitis) accounted for 67.7% of all Barambah infectious disease mortality between 1910 and 1936 inclusive, the consequence of close confinement, poor diet, unhealthy living conditions, distressed mental outlook and compromised immune systems. The lethal dangers of close confinement were known from the catastrophic number of Wybalenna deaths a half century earlier, but were ignored, and not only by Queensland. It is unclear why bronchitis was listed as a cause of death in 7.1% of Barambah mortality; usually pneumonia can be a complication of a viral infection that induces bronchitis, and it is pneumonia that can cause death, not bronchitis, although bronchitis can cause breathing distress. It suggests that the Barambah medical aetiological evidence is unreliable, just as it was for Wybalenna. With this Barambah dataset, the only reliable statistic is that someone died and that their death may have been avoidable with better conditions for the inmates: more nutritious food, clean water, proper sanitation, less confinement, making white sexual predation a criminal offence, and providing the circumstances for a better mental outlook, all of which was available if Aboriginal people had been allowed to remain undisturbed on areas of their country and accorded humanitarian respect. Aboriginals became a ‘dying race’ under the Queensland 1897 Act because they were made to die through their lethal conditions of life, not because they were ‘less fit’. Successive Chief Protectors attributed the high Barambah mortality rate to old age and infirmity, which – they claimed - predisposed the inmates to illness; the assertion was demonstrably untrue as we will show. There are strong parallels between Wybalenna and Barambah genocidal conditions: the types of infectious disease, the high rate of mortality, the overcrowding, poor food and sanitation. 1170 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Wybalenna genocidal mortality statistics Wybalenna 1833 – 1846: The leading cause of Palawa mortality at Wybalenna was acute respiratory disorder, the consequence of close confinement. There was little reported incidence of heart disease or suicide and none of syphilis. Year Total no. of deaths Cause of death Pneumonia Influenza Other ARD Other causes No cause recorded 1833 31 31 1834 9 9 1835 14 1836 4 1837 29 1838 14 1839 8 1840 3 1 1841 3 1 1842 3 1 1843 1 1 1844 1 1 1845 2 2 1846 TOTAL 11 Influenza Other ARD 3 1 3 3 8 18 4 10 8 1 127 Pneumonia 1 1 2 1 18 8 7 30 64 Figure 321 Total recorded deaths from Acute Respiratory Disease (ARD) and other causes at Wybalenna: 1833 – 18462381 1171 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Common Introduced Aboriginal Diseases in Tasmania Description/ symptoms Lethality Likely Incidence in Tasmanian Detainees High Bronchitis Bronchitis is an inflammation of the air passages between the nose and the lungs, Acute bronchitis, like any upper airway inflammatory process, can increase a person's likelihood of developing pneumonia. If pneumonia develops, so does the possibility of death. The initial symptoms of diphtheria are flu-like but worsen to include fever, swallowing problems, hoarseness, enlarged lymph nodes, coughing and shortness of breath; some patients may have skin involvement, producing skin ulcers. Complications of diphtheria include heart-rhythm problems, sepsis, organ damage, and breathing problems that can be severe enough to cause death. Can be fatal Unknown Bacillary infections include Shigella, Campylobacter, E. coli, and Salmonella species of bacteria. The main symptom of dysentery is frequent near-liquid diarrhoea flecked with blood, mucus, or pus. Other symptoms include: • sudden onset of high fever and chills • abdominal pain Complications from bacillary dysentery include delirium, convulsions, and coma. A very severe infection like this can be fatal within 24 hours. However, most infections are Common including the windpipe or trachea and the larger air tubes of the lung that bring air in from the trachea (bronchi). Bronchitis can either be of brief duration (acute) or have a long course (chronic). Acute bronchitis is usually caused by a viral infection, but can also be caused by a bacterial infection and can heal without complications. Chronic bronchitis is a sign of serious lung disease that may be slowed but cannot be cured. Diphtheria Corynebacterium diphtheria bacterium an acute and highly contagious bacterial disease-causing inflammation of the mucous membranes, formation of a false membrane in the throat which hinders breathing and swallowing, and potentially fatal heart and nerve damage by a bacterial toxin in the blood. Dysentery Dysentery is defined as diarrhoea in which there is blood, pus, and mucous, usually accompanied by abdominal pain. There are two main types of dysentery. 1172 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited • • • • • • • • • • • amoebic dysentery or intestinal amoebiasis, is caused by a singlecelled, microscopic parasite living in the large bowel. • bacillary dysentery is caused by invasive bacteria. Both kinds of dysentery occur mostly in hot countries. Poor hygiene and sanitation increase the risk of dysentery by spreading the parasite or bacteria that cause it through food or water contaminated from infected human faeces. Influenza Influenza virus The disease is caused by certain strains of the influenza virus. Highly infectious respiratory disease. Measles Rubeola virus Highly infectious Measles is spread when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or shares food or drinks. The measles virus can travel through the air. This means that you can get measles if you are near someone who has the virus even if that person doesn't cough or sneeze directly on you. Pneumonia Mycoplasma pneumonia bacterium Many viral infections such as influenza can lead to pneumonia. cramps and bloating flatulence (passing gas) urgency to pass stool feeling of incomplete emptying loss of appetite weight loss headache fatigue vomiting dehydration self-limited and resolve spontaneously without treatment, provided the victim is in reasonably good health. When the virus is inhaled, it attacks cells in the upper respiratory tract, causing typical flu symptoms - fatigue, fever and chills, a hacking cough, and body aches. Influenza victims are also susceptible to potentially lifethreatening secondary infections. Can be highly lethal, especially if there are secondary complications such as pneumonia. Very high • • • • • • Fever. Dry cough. Runny nose. Sore throat. Inflamed eyes (conjunctivitis) Tiny white spots with bluish-white centres on a red background found inside the mouth on the inner lining of the cheek — also called Koplik's spots. Can be fatal, especially in children. Unknown • • • • • Fever, sweating and shaking chills. Cough, which may produce phlegm. Chest pain when you breathe or cough. Shortness of breath. Fatigue. Complications of viral pneumonia can be fatal if not properly treated (antibiotics). High, a frequent complication of influenza 1173 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Can be infectious (walking pneumonia spread by saliva droplets) • Smallpox Variola virus An acute contagious febrile disease of humans that is caused by a poxvirus of the genus Orthopoxvirus (species Variola virus), Highly contagious without immunisation After infection, symptoms may take from seven to 17 days to appear for major types of smallpox. The virus begins growing in the bloodstream 72-96 hours after infection, but no obvious symptoms appear immediately (see multimedia files below for clinical presentations of smallpox infections). • People who have contracted smallpox initially develop such symptoms as fever, body aches, headache, chills, and, particularly, backache. Over half of people with smallpox experience chills and vomiting. Some become confused. • A rash appears 48-72 hours after the initial symptoms and turns into virus-filled sores, which later scab over. The process can take up to two weeks. • Just after the rash appears, the virus is highly contagious as it moves into the mucous membranes. The body sheds the cells, and virus particles are released, coughed, or sneezed into the environment. The infected person can be infectious for up to three weeks (until the scabs fall off the rash). Live virus can be present in the scabs. After the scabs or crusts fall off (in two to four weeks), a depression or light-skinned scar remains. • Early in the course of the disease, the rash and pus-filled sores can easily be mistaken for chickenpox. Lesions occur first in the mouth and spread to the face, then to the forearms and hands, and finally to the lower limbs and trunk. In contrast, rash from chickenpox progresses from the arms and legs to the trunk and rarely forms in the armpits, palms, soles, and elbow areas. A tuberculosis infection that has spread through the lymphatic system and bloodstream to other parts of the body than the lungs . In tuberculosis meningitis, the meninges surrounding the brain and spinal chord are infected. These are the two most rapidly lethal forms of the disease. A contagious disease that can affect almost any part of the body but is mainly an infection of the lungs Tuberculosis – miliary Mycobacterium tuberculosis contagious Tuberculosis – pulmonary Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium. Nausea, vomiting or diarrhoea. Can be highly lethal Not present Lethal Unknown Potentially fatal Unknown 1174 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Aboriginals forced to live in cold, damp establishments with sedentary lifestyles and poor nutrition. contagious Typhus- endemic, epidemic Rickettsia typhi bacteria causes endemic or murine typhus. Bacterial disease spread by lice or fleas. It is usually seen in areas where hygiene is poor, and the temperature is cold. Endemic typhus is sometimes called "jail fever." Venereal disease – gonorrhea Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacterium A sexually transmitted disease that can cause male and female infertility • • • • • • • • • • • • Abdominal pain Backache Dull red rash that begins on the middle of the body and spreads Fever (can be extremely high 105°F to 106°F, 40.6°C to 41.1°C) that may last up to 2 weeks Hacking, dry cough Headache Joint and muscle pain Nausea Vomiting Burning and pain while urinating Need to urinate urgently or more often Sore throat (gonococcal pharyngitis) Can be fatal across large populations if not treated properly (antibiotics) Possible Not usually fatal. If not properly treated (with antibiotics) the infection can make its way into the bloodstream and cause a serious (and potentially fatal) complication called Disseminated Gonococcal Infection (DGI). Untreated gonorrhoea can spread into the uterus and fallopian tubes, causing pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), which may result in scarring of the tubes, greater risk of pregnancy complications and infertility. PID is a serious infection that requires immediate treatment, something not High. Knowingly transmitted. 1175 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Venereal disease – syphilis A sexually transmitted disease caused by Treponema pallidum, a microscopic organism called a spirochete Whooping cough Pertussis bacterium a highly contagious respiratory disease caused by bacteria and is spread by coughing and sneezing or contact with secretions Yaws Treponema pallidum pertenue bacterium Symptoms of primary syphilis are: • Small, painless open sore or ulcer (called a chancre) on the genitals, mouth, skin, or rectum that heals by itself in 3 to 6 weeks • Enlarged lymph nodes in the area of the sore • The bacteria continue to grow in the body, but there are few symptoms until the second stage. Secondary syphilis symptoms may include: • Skin rash, usually on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet • Sores called mucous patches in or around the mouth, vagina, or penis • Moist, warty patches (called condylomata lata) in the genitals or skin folds • Fever • General ill feeling • Loss of appetite • Muscle aches • Joint pain • Swollen lymph nodes • Vision changes • Hair loss Symptoms of tertiary syphilis depend on which organs have been affected. They vary widely and can be difficult to diagnose. Symptoms include: • Damage to the heart, causing aneurysms or valve disease • Central nervous system disorders (neurosyphilis) • Tumours of skin, bones, or liver • Whooping cough usually begins like a cold with a blocked or runny nose, tiredness, mild fever and a cough. • The cough gets worse and severe bouts of uncontrollable coughing can develop. • Some newborns may not cough at all, but they can stop breathing and turn blue. • Yaws is a chronic, relapsing infectious illness. • Yaws first affects the skin and later possibly the bones and joints as well. possible for 19th century Aboriginal women. Can be fatal if not properly treated. May lead to chronic heart or lung disease. Common. Knowingly transmitted. Can be fatal in small children Unknown Although rarely fatal, yaws can lead to chronic disfigurement and Common. 1176 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The disease occurs mainly in poor • Transmission is by skin-to-skin contact. The spirochete cannot communities in warm, humid, tropical penetrate normal skin but can enter through a scrape or cut in the areas. It is a bacterial disease caused by skin. Treponema pertenue, a subspecies of • A single skin lesion develops at the point of entry of the bacterium Treponema pallidum that causes venereal after 2-4 weeks. If left untreated, multiple lesions appear all over syphilis. However, yaws is a non-venereal the body. infection. Overcrowding, poor personal hygiene and poor sanitation facilitate the spread of the disease. Figure 322 British introduced diseases in Tasmania2382 disability. It may confer some immunity to venereal syphilis. 1177 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 20 18 Histogram: Number of deaths by age range (after 1835) 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Figure 323 Palawa deaths by age range (1835 to 1876)2383 1178 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The cause of the Palawa/ British conflict was a ‘tribal’ contest over territory and who should own Tasmania, along with its food resources such as kangaroo. Before 1824 the quality of Government records was ‘uneven’ as Plomley describes it, and it was not until George Arthur’s arrival in 1824 that public records were maintained more efficiently. We note that the cumulative number of clashes grew rapidly between 1826 and 1830 before levelling off. It is a typical sigmoid pattern. By 1831, Plomley shows a total Palawa population of 190, falling from 340 in 1824, down from his estimated pre-contact population of around 5,500.2384 He ascribes Palawa depopulation to: European diseases, ‘affrays’ with settlers, the removal of women from the breeding population for slavery, the disruption of social life, and so on. The key question is: what caused the loss of more than 90% of the Palawa by 1824, at which time the British population numbered about twice the Palawa pre-contact population and recorded racial clashes were yet to spike? In this paper,2385 we will argue the loss of fertile women as the primary cause of the Palawa population collapse before 1824. Mortality from introduced disease and asymmetric violence played their part thereafter. Plomley notes that the rate of increase in the invasive population, ‘driven by transportation and by free migration, was very high after 1817: from 3,114 in 1817 it increased to 4,411 in 1819, 7,400 in 1821, and 10,000 in 1823. Thereafter it went up in leaps and bounds, reaching 26,640 in 1831.’2386 We would demur. The lure of rapid land alienation together with an exponential increase in immigration were the primary co-determinate factors in rapid British population increase. Year Cumulative number of recorded Tasmanian clashes 800 700 Cumulative recorded clashes 1824 11 500 1825 25 400 1826 54 300 1827 126 1828 270 1829 418 1830 640 1831 706 600 200 100 0 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 Figure 324 Cumulative number of recorded Tasmanian clashes by year: 1824 - 1831 2387 1179 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1180 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The role of sexual predation in Aboriginal depopulation Could sexual predation - with a corresponding collapse in procreation - have been the smoking gun for massive intragenerational depopulation, as it was for the Tasmanian Palawa where there was a catastrophic fall in births over a few decades? ‘Black velvet’ was a prized commodity in the bush. For each invasive beachhead, whether Tasmania (Palawa) or southeast Queensland (Kabi) or any other demographic area in Australia, the local Aboriginal population suffered over a 90% collapse within about thirty years. With limited demographic data, is it a hypothesis we can test? Perhaps it can be modelled? A model would allow some verification against known facts. Clearly, if there were no births, then the entire Indigenous population would disappear within a generation or so, depending on co-morbidities such as reduced lifespan through poor diet, general induced ill-health, sexually transmitted disease such as gonorrhoea, and the imposed effects of dispossession, psychological depression, and targeted racial repression. What if there were catastrophically reduced births due to indiscriminate murder, sexual predation, female kidnapping, miscegenation, STDs, infertility, genocidal displacement, loss of territory, starvation, homelessness, and destruction of family groups along with their polity and moiety, their cultural traditions and memories? How might we calculate the demographic effect, given the variables? Can a potentially falsifiable model explain intragenerational population collapse for a defined group, say Aboriginal society and all its different people, the Kabi Kabi, Palawa, and so on? The first order population growth or decline r – without lags or constraints - is given by the exponential sigmoid logistics function, where r can be positive or negative. The growth/ decline pattern is distinctive, following an s-curve, with three discrete phases. For the middle phase, where population growth (either positive or negative) is near exponential, we can postulate that: d P / d t = r P, where P is the population size at time t and the population at time t+1 is a function of the population at time t. Therefore, the Population change from Poriginating to P new is: originating ∫ new (d P / P) = originating ∫ r dt or ln ( P / Poriginating ) = rt , where P originating = P (t) , (t = 0). Exponentiating, we determine the population at time t: P (t) = P originating e r t In this model, where r is negative, we have an exponential decline in population over some defined period t. The rate of decline is proportional to the negative constant r. 1181 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited But suppose the rate of depopulation r varies after some time interval tn. This can arise if the compulsion towards extermination reduces as the size of the remnant targeted population reduces below the ability for effective resistance. We can model this by adding a constraint against r such that d P / d t = r P (1 – (P / K)) , resulting in a negative s-curve.2388 Let us consider the cases of Kabi Kabi depopulation in southeast Queensland, which pre-contact had a similar population size to the Palawa in Tasmania, If we divide the Queensland Indigenous depopulation s-curve into thirds, each third is called a tertile. We are particularly interested in the shape of the s-curve: how the value of r varies over time; and the value of r in the second tertile when r had its maximum value. If the overall value of r between 1845 and 1885 was around -12% pa (from the estimated Kabi depopulation evidence), then we can hypothesize an approximate tertile distribution for r, say: 9%, -18%, -9% for the periods: 1830 to 1845; 1845 to 1885; 1885 to 1900. We will examine this falsifiable hypothesis in Modelling Lemkinian Genocide, based upon our preliminary modelling work in Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa and Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Queensland Genocide the massacre at Murdering Creek as a contextual referent. We assume, based on the demographic depopulation data across Australia, that similar patterns of Indigenous mortality and depopulation applied for each Aboriginal group across the continent, leading to an official depopulation figure well in excess of 95% between the time of first invasion of an area to the 1911 Census, a maximum period of 123 years in the case of NSW, although depopulation peaked there much earlier, perhaps form the 1810s to 1840s, slightly before the period of maximum Kabi depopulation between the 1850s and 1870s. These tertiles for the estimated pre-contact Queensland Kabi population correspond to the time periods: 1840 - 1855; 1855 - 1870; 1870 – 1885. Preliminary calculation: Suppose this is the total Kabi population loss by tertile: 1000; 4000; 600 for which the tertile depopulation distribution is -17%, -70%, -10% (similar to the Tasmanian Palawa). For the moment, ignore the population effects of the first tertile. Assume zero births within the second tertile, that is, a female born at the beginning of the second tertile will not reach reproductive age until halfway into the third tertile. Assume half the population in the second tertile were women and of these, a quarter were able to reproduce. Assume linear depopulation per second tertile. 1182 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We can then calculate that a 10% annual reduction in such potentially child-bearing women is a mere 50 per year over the fifteen year second tertile, or a modest one per week across the Kabi language territory, about the same as for the Tasmanian Palawa and for a similar originating pre-contact population size. The consequent 70% population reduction over the tertile (assume a loss of 4,000 Kabi people) can be caused by removing Aboriginal women from the reproductive pool by various means: killing, psychological and physical trauma, kidnapping, disease (gonorrhoea in particular), infertility, sexual predation, family breakup, homelessness, loss of hope, and so on. It shows how sensitive the demographics model is to reducing fecundity, when the ability to procreate and raise a family is severely impacted by the invader. It is sufficient to account for the cataclysmic generational population loss. Given the parametric transparency, this logistics model is readily adapted.2389 We see a similar logistics model for each invaded area across Australia, the process in each instance taking about three decades. Therefore, in our first-order depopulation logistics model, we begin to understand the brutal mechanics of Queensland Lemkinian-type genocide, including imposed demographic collapse and physical extermination which, at the time, was called ‘dispersal’ or ‘taming the country’ or ‘keeping the blacks quiet’ or ‘smelling the gunpowder’ or ‘a picnic with the Natives’ or a ‘nigger hunt’. We are left with the observation that, under British law, Aboriginal women had almost no rights over how their body could be used; there were no prosecutions whatsoever against white malfeasance. Aboriginal women were mere chattels, to be used as the invader chose, with no redress. Even when successive Governments saw the result of frequently predatory miscegenation,2390 with unwanted pregnancies and an STD epidemic, the official reaction was to do nothing against those whites responsible and allow the mistreatment to continue.2391 This official indifference to female oppression is therefore ascribed as genocidal under Lemkinian article 2. 2392 Tens of thousands died or were predated upon sexually, but no records were kept. All we know is that a large percentage of the Aboriginal population ‘disappeared’ by the turn of the 20 th century. 1183 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The role of ecocide, resource loss and starvation in Tasmanian genocide Was Australian ecocide a facet of genocide? We consider the use case of Tasmania and the role of environmental dispossession (categorial agency) in the Lemkinian displacement of the Palawa. 2393 The destruction of Tasmanian Aboriginal society was in direct proportion to the degree of colonists’ encroachment on Aboriginal homelands. Tribal group structures began to dissolve, along with cultural identity, as Palawa dispossession increased. It happened quickly. Dispossession became absolute within a generation. Loss of habitat, loss of resources, loss of country invited a desperate resistance. The numbers deployed against them were too great. At the final accounting, after 1830, Arthur and Britain could contemplate their victory in human and economic terms. They had won. But at what cost. The cost was genocide. Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through its practice of expropriating Aboriginal food resources, Britain is culpable under the following articles: 2 (a) Killing members of the group 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group Ecocide Ecocide is a relatively new term in the lexicon of our evolving language, but in the early invasion of Tasmania between 1803 and 1833 was simply the unsustainable exploitation of Nature’s resources for personal gain. It means, destruction of the natural environment.2394 In Tasmania’s early foraging economy, competition for food and imposed starvation became a weapon against Aboriginals, the cause of further genocidal depopulation. The colonial historian, Borwick, writes of this: One great source of mischief was the liberty given to the prisoners, about the year 1806, to disperse themselves in search of kangaroos, during the season of famine. We can readily imagine the effect of letting loose in the Bush a number of reckless bad men, who had been previously subjected to the rigour of prison discipline. At first kindly treated by the dark men of the forest, they repaid their hospitality by frightful deeds of violence and wrong. Shrieks of terrified and outraged innocence rose with the groans of slaughtered guardians, in the hitherto peaceful vales of Tasmania. One 1184 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited wonders not at te quotation of the Rev. John West, from the Derwent Star newspaper of 1810: ‘The Natives, who have been rendered desperate by the cruelties they have experienced from our people, have now begun to distress us by attacking our cattle’. One extract from the Star of the same year, 1810, painfully illustrates the subject: ‘The unfortunate man, Russell, is a striking instance of Divine agency, which has overtaken him at last, and punished him by the hands of those very people who have suffered so much from him; he being known to have exercised his barbarous disposition in murdering or torturing any who unfortunately came within his reach.’ The indignation of honest old Governor Davey was strongly excited, when in 1813 he penned these words: ‘That he could not have believed that British subjects would have so ignominiously stained the honour of their country and themselves, as to have acted in the manner they did towards the Aborigines.’ Governor Arthur was much shocked at the barbarity of his people, and unable to prevent the evil. Immediately after his arrival in the colony, a tribe applied to him for protection, and it was readily granted. All that personal attention and kindness could do was done to retain them near Hobart Town, and to secure them from insult and injury. They settled at Kangaroo Point, a tongue of land separated from the town by the broad estuary of the Derwent. There they stayed quietly and happily for a couple of years, when a savage murder was committed by some of their white neighbors, and the camp broke up immediately for the haunts of the wilderness.2395 Of course, the one course of action that a succession of Tasmanian Governors could have taken was to stop the uncontrolled spread of settlement, to stop the excessive exploitation of kangaroos, and to punish any white who was guilty of sexual predation and willful murder. That Britain did none of this made the eventual unfolding genocide inevitable. Resource loss By 1824, with Arthur’s arrival, Aboriginal resistance was becoming more desperate. Melville writes: In this year the aborigines of the Island began to annoy the settlers to a degree that required some active measures of the Government to allay the outraged feelings of this ill-fated race of human beings. 2396 These poor bewildered creatures had been treated worse than were any of the American tribes by the Spaniards. Easy, quiet, good-natured, and well-disposed towards the white population, they could no longer brook the treatment they received from the invaders of their country. Their hunting grounds were taken from them, and they themselves were driven like trespassers from the favorite spots for which their ancestors had bled, and had claimed the conquest. The various tribes which formerly were at war with each other, about this time seemed to forget their private differences, and their great aim was to protect themselves from 1185 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited slaughter, and to be revenged! The stock-keepers may be considered as the destroyers of nearly the whole of the aborigines – the proper, the legitimate owners of the soil; these miscreants so imposed upon their docility, that at length they thought little or nothing of destroying the men for the sake of carrying to their huts the females of the tribes; and, if it were possible in a work like this to record but a tithe of the murders committed on these poor harmless creatures, it would make the reader’s blood run cold at the bare recital. In self-defence were these poor harmless creatures driven to desperate means, their fine kangaroo grounds were taken from them, and thus they were in want of their customary food; and when every other means of obtaining a livelihood was debarred to them, necessity compelled them to seek food of their despoilers. Colonel Arthur pitied them – he no doubt was made fully acquainted with the aggressions of the civilized portion of the population; and much to his credit he caused a General Government Order2397 to be issued, commanding that the aborigines should be protected, and that outrages against these much injured people should be punished as if perpetrated against the white population; unfortunately the order could not have the effect anticipated by the Lieutenant Governor, for the evil was far too rooted, and it was “war to the knife”.2398 Some historians, including Geoffrey Blainey, argue that internecine ‘war’ was the major cause of Aboriginal depopulation, an argument that ignores: a) a relatively stable Palawa population over millennia b) most conflict was of a ritualistic nature with few deaths c) as armed settlers began expropriating Aboriginal territory and decimating the local tribes, the survivors were pushed into the territory of neighbouring tribes that may have caused some friction. The evidence is that inter-tribal disagreement was not the major cause of depopulation, but violent conflict with the British, miscegenation and the effect of introduced disease. The nature of the Aboriginal collective epidemiological process gradually changed from respiratory pathology (resulting from British contact in the early stage of invasive occupation) to respiratory viruses and bacterial infections, nutritional inadequacy, and bacterial dysentery (resulting from imposed living conditions in late-stage Lemkinian genocide). By 1830, under Arthur’s authority, Britain had alienated all the prime grazing land. It had been taken over by sheep and cattle, with armed stockkeepers on constant watch. In many areas claimed by the British, Aboriginals were desperately short of traditional game, their usual sources no longer available, with once plentiful kangaroos now becoming scarce. 2399 Settlers, police, and military, who saw the gun as a form of ‘conciliation’, constantly harassed Aboriginals as trespassers, an outcome defined by the British laws of property. Aboriginals responded as best they could in defense of their homelands, their numbers always dwindling through the unceasing conflict, where Imperial authority was judge and jury. 1186 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The law was no protection for the Palawa, who had no rights to land or life. Increasingly, as their food resources dwindled, they became dependent on grudging handouts around the towns and settlements. Sometimes, they projected their anger through spearing the encroaching livestock. Charity was in short supply. Determined resistance against the invading settlers had not worked. The British Government would not change course in its genocidal process. Aboriginal numbers were rapidly falling. Capitulation and detention became the answer. With Robinson’s ‘friendly mission’, resignation set in. The problem of resource loss for the Palawa was real enough, but it was yet another issue that Arthur and Britain chose to ignore. On 19th March 1830, the Report of the Aborigines’ Committee found: it would be proper that the Government should cooperate by renewing, and with augmented strictness, the prohibition to destroy Kangaroos, by hunting, shooting, or other means, within the limits prescribed to the Natives. So great is the injustice of this proceeding on the part of the Whites, and so apparent the injury suffered by the Natives through the destruction of this their principal source of sustenance, that the Committee would deem it expedient, if other modes of prevention fail, to make this a legal offence to be visited with severe penalties. 2400 In November 1830, Sir George Murray, in a response to Arthur’s voluminous dispatch No. 19, dated 15 April, 1830, 2401 denies that the scarcity of kangaroos is causing much of the violence. For Murray to admit to this reality would call into question Britain’s land and immigration policies. From his armchair over 17,000 kms distant he writes: I cannot, however, refrain from adverting especially to the measure proposed by the Committee, of prohibiting the Settlers from destroying the Kangaroos by hunting or shooting them within the limits prescribed by the Natives, in order that this grievance may be immediately removed, although I am happy to find that no Injury has been sustained on this head, in consequence of there appearing to be no real scarcity of these animals in the Districts which these People most frequent. 2402 Nature was never on Britain’s balance sheet. For Palawa society, it was front and centre. This is the partial story of British ecocide and resource depletion as it unfolded in Tasmania, destroying one way of life while introducing another much poorer version of sheep and open pasture. 1187 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The ecological destruction did not stop at Aboriginal food sources. There were no laws against such unsustainable exploitation,2403 or accountability for driving species to the brink, then or now. Nor was there any real concern for the welfare of the Indigenous people who depended upon the wild game and certain types of seafood for survival. Kangaroos Macropods were a primary source of Aboriginal food and clothing, along with other native animals such as possums. Certain species, including Forester kangaroos and emus, preferred to live on the open grasslands created by Aboriginal firestick farming. After the asymmetric contest for land, food resources became the line of competition between Aboriginals and the British invaders. Lyndall Ryan writes of the primitive British foraging economy in the early settlement: The best kangaroo hunting grounds were at Risdon, Pittwater, and Browns River at the Derwent and the west bank of the River Tamar at Port Dalrymple. A dozen kangaroos a week was considered a good catch. In the fifteen months between the end of August 1804 and October 1805 at the Derwent, over two hundred kangaroos and five emus were killed by the convict servants of one civil officer alone, and between August and October 1805, the commissariat received 7,740 kilograms of kangaroo meat. Between 1804 and 1808 kangaroo became the major source of fresh meat for the Europeans. In response to this invasion of their hunting grounds, the Aborigines at first avoided the hunters, then tried to take the kangaroos the hunters had caught. Then the Aborigines killed the hunters’ dogs. Finally they took the dogs as payment and found them important and useful assets to their own society. The first European was killed by the Aborigines in 1807. By 1808 conflict between Aborigines and Europeans over kangaroo had so intensified that twenty Europeans and a hundred Aborigines probably lost their lives. Kangaroo hunting became a lucrative business for the civil and military officers, bringing more profitable returns than agriculture. It also led to a healthy European population, for the only deaths during this period were from misadventure or old age. But by the end of 1808 kangaroos had become a scarce commodity. The kangaroo hunters had to move further from settlements to find kangaroos, which created carriage and storage problems, so that the slowly increasing European population could no longer be guaranteed fresh meat from this source. More importantly, kangaroo hunting encouraged convicts to forsake farming for bush ranging.2404 Noel Butlin, the eminent economic historian, identified the genocidal consequences of resource loss. He writes: 1188 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Killing and resource loss were, however, often intimately related, sometimes as two sides of the same penny. Aboriginals were often killed to obtain their resources. Sometimes they were killed during efforts to limit their access to their resources. On other occasions they were killed judicially, having committed ‘offences’ in efforts to protect such access. Resource taking did not necessarily depend on violent killing. Sometimes Aborigines were simply forced off their lands and may have ended up in colliding with other tribes. Quite often, remnant Aborigines were employed on colonial properties, but under conditions that limited their access to former resources. In the latter case, the outcome to colonists appeared inexplicable – Aborigines simply died. […] So far as Van Diemen’s Land is concerned, there is little point in making complex modeling efforts. The dominant colonial attempts to withdraw resources and to kill Aborigines were concentrated within one decade after 1820. By the beginning of the 1830s very few Aborigines remained. There can be little doubt that combined and integrated efforts at resource removal and killing dominated the destruction of the Van Diemen’s Land Aborigines.2405 Louisa Meredith also records the disappearance of the kangaroo around her home at Swanport on the east coast in 1852, while failing to recognize her own agency in the destructive process: I commence with the largest, the Great or Forest Kangaroo (Macropus giganteus), the “Forester” of the colonists, which I have not yet seen in its wild state. Many years ago they were very numerous, and might constantly be observed feeding in the day-time on the open country in groups of from five to twenty. 2406 As the kangaroo food resource became depleted, only a few years after first settlement, the effect was extreme for Aboriginal society, who began to challenge the occupiers for their destructive foraging habits. Oxley2407 describes the kangaroo crisis for the Palawa best, by exposing the economics: Upon a scarcity arising it has been the constant practice to endeavour to remedy it by receiving kangaroo into the store and issuing it nearly in the proportion 2 lbs for one Salt Beef or Pork; by this method the evil was increased for not only double expence was incurred by the Crown, but all the laborer who might have been usefully employed in tilling the Ground were now sent out to hunt by their employers who found it infinitely more beneficial to their interests to receive One shilling per pound for the Game they procured than to wait for the distant contingency of a plentiful harvest … It would have been well for the Colony if the evil arising from receiving kangaroo into the Store had terminated with the necessity that had induced it; but that was not the case. Men who had been used to the rambling unsettled life of a Hunter could never be brought to endure the labour requisite to raise grain. No sooner was that Scarcity 1189 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited of Meat removed by Fresh Supplies than those men betook themselves to the woods living upon the Game they afforded, and receiving occasional supplies of dry provisions and ammunition from their friends in Town … It was for a length of time supposed they would become tired of the wandering dangerous life they lead. And would voluntarily return to their labour; but those expectations were in vain … some of them have forced the native women after murdering their protectors to live with them and have families.2408 When settlers destroyed or expropriated the Aboriginal food sources, starvation and destitution followed for the Palawa. Until the 1840s, the Tasmanian settlement was close to a foraging economy, with settlers competing against the Palawa for wild game and other food resources. Angasi oyster The Aboriginals of the Great Oyster Bay tribe (Paredarerme) had lived semi-permanently and sustainably in the area of Oyster Bay on the East coast for tens of millennia, where there was a ready supply of food. When the British fishermen moved into the area, they wasted no time in harvesting the native Angasi oyster as Tasmania’s first shellfish export industry. The period of greatest exploitation was between 1860 and 1870 after the Palawa had been mostly destroyed, when the British shucked, pickled and shipped back to England over 90,000 tons and 22 million of the indigenous oysters, and the supply quickly collapsed through over-exploitation in a mere decade, the oyster beds stripped bare. The oyster shells also provided lime for building mortar. While Britain saw natural resources with covetous eyes, the Aboriginals saw an enlightened coexistence with Nature, where time was measured in millennia, not a person’s lifetime. Only one view was sustainable, and that view was prosecuted with weaponry. For Britain, sustainability was measured in the proclivity to violence, in how to make opposition succumb through force, in extracting the maximum value from a resource as quickly as possible. For as long as Nature was reduced to a form of property, we live with the results today.2409 Black swans (Cygnus atratus) had used the important breeding ground at Moulting Lagoon near Oyster Bay since time immemorial, with Aboriginals making sustainable use of their eggs and meat. With the arrival of British pastoralists from the early 1820s, the swan population was almost wiped out by 1840, with eggs, meat and down being sent to the colony in Hobart. Fortunately, they are now a protected species and numbers are slowly recovering in the sanctuary of the Lagoon, eponymously called Moulting Lagoon, which looks across to the indescribably beautiful Freycinet Peninsula. 1190 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited In 1839, Louisa Meredith wrote that in eponymous Great Swanport, where she lived: the swans were nearly all gone and we rarely see more than a few wild ducks or teal in a season, although formerly every lagoon teemed with them, and with legions of bald coot, but the latter are now so rare, that I have not yet seen one. 2410 The absence of swans is unsurprising. Meredith writes: The general custom was, to take the birds in large quantities in the moulting season, when they are most easily captured and extremely fat; they were then confined in pens, without any food, to linger miserably for a time, till ready to die of starvation, because, whilst they are fat, the down can neither be so well stripped off nor so effectually prepared. Troops of people make a trade in the eggs, taking them in immense quantities from all the known haunts of the swans, so as very nearly to exterminate them; and, in proof of this, I had been above two years at Swan Port before, in any of my numerous rides or drives, my desire to see a wild black swan was gratified, though, formerly, thousands frequented every lagoon.2411 Southern Right whales (Eubalaena australis) can weigh between 47 and 80 tonnes, making them just ‘right’ for shore-based whalers. Whaling began in 1804. Britain gave little thought to sustainability, only profit. Collins wrote enthusiastically to the Colonial Office: THE River Derwent is most advantageously situated for the Establishment and carrying on of a South Sea Whale Fishery, for which Purpose it is requisite there should be a resident Agent the works and People that are necessary, and have the direction of the Ships and Vessels employed; the following is a Plan I conceive most eligible, and as it is attended with a certainty of success, less risque is run than in the Pursuit of a Fishery immediately directed from England. Two or three Ships, not exceeding 250 Tons each, should be fitted out with every Article that has been found necessary for the pursuit of a South Sea Sperma Whale Fishery; and as it is intended these vessels should continue and be employed in the Country, solely for the purpose of fishing and bringing their Cargoes to the Factory in the Derwent, they should be supplied with all Stores and Provisions necessary for three or four Years, has many Staves and Hoops as would set up Casks to contain 800 Tons of Oil, with forty or fifty Try-Pots and other materials necessary to produce it in a pure state; the following extra Artificers should be sent out for the Shore Service, with every material for the use of their respective employments, Vizt., 3 Carpenters, 2 Blacksmiths, and 2 Coopers. As every Person employed in such a of the Fishery, it would be necessary for these points to be settled previous to the Ships leaving England; as such People may have to continue some years in the Country, a different Establishment than the common one may be found necessary. I would also recommend that every Material except wood should be 1191 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited sent out for the purpose of building a Schooner of 60 or 70 Tons, to be employed in landing People in different Islands, for the purposes of Sealing, and killing the Sea Elephant for its valuable Oil. Ships fitted out in the above manner, and intended to put Whale Fishing Ground, so as to be there the first of the Season, which commences in December and continues till April; by the time of their return everything might be got ready at the Factory the Black Whale Fishery, which commences here early in July and continues till September. Storm Bay, Storm Bay Passage, Frederick Henry Bay, and the River Derwent abound with Black Whale, or Right Fish, during these Months, and, by having the means, Oil enough may be procured on the Spot to freight home a dozen Ships yearly. I point out this as one of the great advantages that a concern fixed here would derive, as every opportunity might be taken of killing Black Whales, having frequently seen them out of the regular season in considerable numbers. During the Months of great Numbers of them in the Shoal parts of the River Derwent, and I have seen 50 or 60 Fish at a time from the present Settlement. Independent of the great profits that may accrue by means of the abovementioned Plan, there is a second opening that will prove highly advantageous to a concern that speculates this way. The Ships fitted out for this expedition should be supplied with those European Articles that will sell to advantage in this Country, of which I have herewith annexed a List. As Ships must be employed between this and England, to carry Home the produce of the- Fishery, everything might be sent in them (on advice from the Agent) that may tend to the good of the Concern, and there is no doubt but that two, if not three, Ships may be kept constantly going. The River Derwent is as particularly well adapted for the purposes of Ships, or carrying on a Fishery, as the Greenland or any other London Dock. It produces plenty of fine Timber for all purposes of Building, and good Spars to answer for Masts and Yards, etc., and on application a sufficient Quantity of Land may be obtained for producing such supplies as all people employed in this Country must stand in need of.2412 Between 1828 and 1838, Tasmanian whalers killed around 3,000 southern right baleen whales, without any regard to sustainability. The once pristine waters of toponymic Wine Glass Bay, a perfect arc of white sand near Cape Tourville on the Freycinet Peninsula, were blood red.2413 The port of Hobart thrived with whale and related commerce. By 1838, the whale population collapsed. It is beginning to recover slowly, with an estimated total population in 2008 of about 10,000. Although Aboriginals did not use whales as a resource, the example is further evidence of the British destructive behaviour that faced Palawa society, which eventually resulted in their extinction as a pure race. 1192 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Tasmanian fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus) are mostly located on the islands of Bass Strait, where they were hunted by sealers from the late 1790s. By the early 1800s, seals did not exist on the Tasmanian mainland. Small populations persisted on remote islands, including those in Bass Strait. The sealers also predated on Aboriginal women, 2414 and it is from this descendant population that almost all mixed-race Tasmanian Aboriginals now originate, the unique Palawa full blood race having been forced into extinction by 1905. The expropriation and destruction of traditional Aboriginal food sources and the competition for land created a crisis that could only be resolved by conflict. For Aboriginals, starvation and death were the alternative to resistance, but their numbers were too few and spears were no match for guns. The British saw the ecosystem as a resource that they could exploit to exhaustion, the tragedy of the commons. Aboriginals had lived sustainably with the environment for millennia. The British won the conflict, but in destroying the Palawa, they lost their integrity and any claim to a superior culture, merely one that was driven by economic motivations and self-interest, a culture we have inherited today. Aboriginal starvation In December 1830, the Hobart Town Courier chronicled the role of starvation in exacerbating Aboriginal resistance to the British occupation of their tribal grounds. In the process, they write vehemently of the need for a final solution, something to which Arthur was soon to accede in order to placate public feeling and maintain his authority and civil order. Arthur went further. In order to complete a concerted push of ethnic cleansing, he obtained the support of his superiors in arming convicts.2415 If there was ever doubt about the outcome, the die was now cast for the remaining Palawa. In the article, the Courier presented the fanciful notion that ‘Blacks’ could be captured without bloodshed. They were being disingenuous. In answer to the question so frequently put to us, ‘what is now to be done with the blacks? We should try every method that presents itself, until one succeeds. Send numerous roving parties with skilful and expert leaders to guard and protect certain districts – to station as many outposts as possible on the plan we have recommended, and to let them be visited occasionally by proper persons entrusted with the duty, to see that they are constantly at their post, - above all, to let every one be well armed and constantly prepared for them – round certain huts to erect such a sort of log fence or stockade as will enable the inmates to see before the blacks can come close upon them unawares – to train dogs to give the alarm, and to track and pursue them into their haunts – to attempt if possible some method of rapidly communicating information when they appear, either by messengers 1193 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited or signals, so that the surrounding parties may act in unison – to shackle or chain those who are caught, and compel them to lead the parties to the haunts of their tribe, and above all, to continue applying the mind and attention to the sad but imperiously important subject until the grand object is accomplished. As to the strict security of those who may be already in custody, or may afterwards be caught, we trust we have already said enough to supersede the necessity of again urging so essential a point. We are not yet aware of what immediate steps the Government are about to take to put an end to their atrocities, nor perhaps would it be proper for us to divulge them if we did, seeing the certainty of white men being amongst them who might gain information of the plans, and so take measures with the Blacks to frustrate them. We are, however, aware that the Executive is much engaged with the subject, and in the meantime we would urge the adoption, in part at least, of the method we recommended only two months ago, namely, that of stationing parties, sufficiently strong, of 4 or 5 each, in such remote stock huts as the Blacks are likely to attack, and by two of the men on their approach seeming to run from it and to leave it defenceless, while two or three remain behind in ambush within, ready to inclose and secure them the moment they got inside. In this way we think many might be taken, and although entirely a matter of accident, great care and circumspection will be necessary – especially not to allow it ever to appear to the Blacks that more than 1 or 2 at most inhabit the hut. This also shews that in the matter of publishing rewards the Executive will have much to consider, because where so much depends on chance and situation, no one can tell who may succeed, and he may have as much merit who remains vigilant at his duty and never has an opportunity to capture a single Black, as he whom fortune may throw many into his hands. Nothing we conceive will tend so much eventually to lead the Blacks into the hands of the parties as driving them to seek the means of support from stock-huts. They are already in many parts it is well-known quite disappointed of their usual supply in this respect. The extension of the settled districts upon their usual hunting grounds has either driven them entirely from them or removed the kangaroo. If it is true that white men be among them, and they should eventually acquire a taste for mutton or beef, they would easily have it in their power to provide themselves. A Black native would hide behind a tree or a stone in the usual tract of cattle, and transfix one with the greatest ease, and certainly whenever he liked. But we have never yet heard that they had at any time been known to eat the flesh of either sheep or cattle. No doubt the flavour of both is to them strange and disagreeable, and eating all their animal food as they do in a half raw state must add to their disrelish of it in this respect. The quantity that they devour also is so enormously great, that the difficulty of finding it must gradually become almost insurmountable, unless they rob the huts, or have recourse to such change of food. It would therefore we think be a good plan, as we formerly hinted, to place a depot of bread, flour, potatoes, sugar, and so forth, of which they are known to be fond, 1194 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited in some hut on a hill or other place where they would be seen by the neighboring parties, would be a very feasible experiment, and not at all unlikely to succeed.2416 Among the other beneficial results of the late campaign, may be mentioned what we consider one of no small importance, namely, the strong and convincing proof it affords of the progress of reform in the prisoner class, and the order and discipline to which they are now reduced, both in the employment of government and with the settlers. This has been evinced in the strongest light by their conduct in the field on the late occasion. In no one instance that we know did they take advantage of their situation, though armed with guns and with opportunity had they been so disposed to misconduct themselves.2417 We must leave the last grittily honest word to George Robinson. Although he has been criticised by some historians as ‘self-serving’ (presumably because he sought remuneration for his Aboriginal work) and despite being misused by Arthur in his ‘friendly mission’ of ‘conciliation’, Robinson did more to document the process of Palawa genocide than almost any other person. His reports of atrocities were ignored. Arthur did nothing to uphold the law against Aboriginal murder. Britain did not insist. No one was listening. In the end, nor was Robinson. The Government and upstanding settler society wanted the Palawa gone. The targeted process continued. In Arthur’s final solution from 1828 to 1832, murder was legalised under the provisions of martial law. Robinson could only watch the genocide in despair, although it was a process in which he was a willing and paid participant, a process of Lemkinian ethnic cleansing, a ‘friendly mission’, nevertheless a mission without which we would know considerably less of Palawa culture, so quickly were they destroyed.2418 In tracing causes to their primary source an indubitable fact presents itself which occurred upon the first colonisation of this dependency, the circumstances of which are too well known to be adverted to. It is very certain that the natives to this hour foster in their minds a remembrance of this wanton massacre of their fellow beings, and are anxious to atone for this aggression by the blood of their enemies. This amongst many other similar disgraceful transactions must necessarily tend to engender and promote that bloodthirsty temper amongst the aborigines which we cannot say has unjustifiably led to such pernicious results. It must also be considered that this colony has imported the joint depravity of the three united kingdoms, men in whom the common feelings of humanity are deadened and the voice of reason suppressed by the machinations of sin. What can be expected from such characters but a continuation of sin, an utter callousness of the dictates of Christianity. Yet how many of these wretched beings have been and still are employed in the remote parts of the interior as shepherds to the resident settlers! These are the sort of men who have ravished the wives and daughters of these unbefriended people, and when provoked by resistance have massacred them with impunity and set up their children as targets to shoot at. Some have even been so barbarous as to cut off the ears and noses of their 1195 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited murdered victims, which with horrid complacency they have exhibited to their depraved associates, and even gloried in their diabolical achievement. This is a notorious fact: Mr D recollects the circumstances of a man receiving corporal punishment for carrying the ears and noses of those whom he had slain in his pack and afterwards exhibited them as trophies. What can be more unjust, what so inhumanly selfish, as to aim at a monopoly of their only means of subsistence, to offer a reward for the skins of kangaroos, which are slaughtered wholesale for the sake of their produce. Individuals who ought to have been actuated by more generous feelings, have encouraged this traffic and made a business of this outrageous plunder. What else than plunder! Are not these animals the exclusive property of the aborigines, and as such should they not be deemed sacred and inviolable? Certainly! But in this instance and in many others which impel mankind to the most absurd as well as unjust inconsistencies, the overwhelming love of money deluges all other considerations. As men in all stages are actuated in a greater or lesser degree by the same evil passions, let us refer this matter to ourselves. Let us suppose that we possessed a herd of cattle on which we placed our chief dependence for a support. Let them be placed before our eyes in good condition and thriving on the rich pasture with which the neighboring land is blessed. Then let us behold a banditti of fierce and savage barbarians rush in upon our precious stock, and heedless of our cries or remonstrances slay them in open defiance, drag them to our homes and then consecrate by a public feast the mischief they had done and the public ruin they had spread amongst their adjacent enemies. Doubtless a vindictive sense of their predatory incursions would prevail, and we should be strongly urged to wreak our vengeance upon such lawless aggressors. If such would be our feelings who vainly aspire to the subjection of our passions to the shrine of reason and humanity, what can or ought to be expected from the uncontrolled depravity of a savage. This is one of the manifold wrongs to which these poor creatures have been exposed, and it cannot be surprising that they should retain a strong sense of their injuries. It is well known that it is very usual for a number of aborigines, when assembled by their fireside under the open canopy of heaven, to recount the sufferings of their ancestors, to dilate upon their present affliction and to consult upon the best means of being released from their cruel and bloodthirsty foe. They have a tradition amongst them that white men have usurped their territory, have driven them into the forests, have killed their game and thus robbed them of their chief subsistence, have ravished their wives and daughters, have murdered and butchered their fellow-countrymen; and are wont whilst brooding over these complicated ills in the dense part of the forest, to goad each other on to acts of bloodshed and revenge for the injuries done to their ancestors and the persecutions offered to themselves through their white enemies. 2419 Summary and Conclusion Along with the Government sanctioned killing of family groups, sexual predation and imposed disease, British ecocide in Tasmania was a potent Lemkinian agency in Palawa rapid destruction. 1196 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited When any group is cut off from its food supply, it begins to starve. We may suffer the same consequence as Australia continues to dry, water becomes scarcer, firestorms erupt, and crops begin to falter. We can see it coming, the catastrophe. But our mantra remains, show us the money or she’ll be right or if you have a go, you’ll get a go, all variations on the gospel of self-interest that has led to our present predicament. We appear unable to change our destructive behaviours, not even to save ourselves. It is a crisis of resolve. Individually we feel powerless, collectively we have other priorities, economic development, internal and border security, and an international rule-based order that depends on trade arrangements and security treaties. We are ill-equipped for the existential challenge of planetary ecocide. We could learn, if we chose, from what happened to the Palawa. But we are blind and deaf, almost catatonic, while our politicians continue to mislead us with their fairy tales of unending prosperity where there are few losers in economic development, where any criticism of our humanitarian or environmental behaviour from any quarter is rejected on the basis of nationalism and ugly selfdetermination, where taking action on climate change is someone else’s problem, where the catastrophic effects of climate change are brushed aside ‘now is not the time talk about how climate change is directly accelerating drought and catastrophic fire storms’,2420 where greed is good according to the gospel of prosperity theology and neoliberal ideology. Meanwhile the silent majority (or the ‘quiet Australians’) have begun to despair at the lack of coherent climate change policy, being assailed by deceptive political argument that attempts to misdirect us. ‘We will meet our Paris 2030 emissions target in a canter.’2421 Not true, as we will show elsewhere.2422 Yet our politicians continue to lie to us, using false logic that misrepresents the verifiable facts, arguments that are intended to persuade rather than reveal the truth or urge a call to action. The role of settlement (categorial agency) in Tasmanian genocide In 1788, Britain unilaterally deemed that all Aboriginal land belonged to the Crown. There only remained the business of carving it up for settlement, according to Britain’s evolving system of land and property laws. Within the context of British settlement policy, we will examine: the calibrated phases of British colonization; the role of Secretary of State Bathurst; the summary roles of settlement and pastoralism; the process of land grants up to 1831; the emerging conflict over land; the guides for immigrants seeking landed wealth; and the summary roles of Imperialism and colonization.2423 Hypothesis: Under the UN Convention on genocide, through its settlement policies, Britain is culpable of genocide under the following articles: 2 (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group 1197 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2 (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 2 (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group Procedural phases of the British occupation process The business of turning land into property required tenacity and zeal, where Aboriginal rights were rarely, if ever, considered. It was a feeding frenzy, where Britain collaborated with colonists. The prize was land, far more land than the average Englishman could ever dream of owning in Britain. And Aboriginals were in the way. Where the British saw a benign ‘settlement’ process, the Palawa saw often violent occupation through a pattern of sustained oppression that is difficult to ignore but has rarely been acknowledged, not by the reasonable standards of a contemporaneous professed civil society. The pattern defines the occupation process, which overlaps that of genocide, the common actionable components being mass killing and calibrated societal destruction. 2424 This is a summary model of the invasive British occupation and settlement process that was to repeat across Australia,2425 and we will see the living process played out across the chronological presentation of the British roles and agencies that collectively shaped Tasmania, finishing in a subjugation phase, which we continue to live through right now, where increasing Aboriginal disadvantage across the continent should be a measure of our national dishonour and humiliation: Occupation Protection Consolidation Repression Subjugation Figure 325 Summary phases of the British occupation and settlement process Occupation: First, Aboriginals were removed from prime pastoral lands; beachhead settlements metastasized; squatters assumed de facto sovereignty. In Tasmania, occupation began from 1803 and continued for as long as the Government alienated more land. However, the peak period of alienation was during Arthur’s term, through the 1820s until 1831 inclusive. Protection: If Aboriginals resisted the occupation process, they were killed; military (up to 1838) and police were used to protect occupied land; squatters were encouraged to arm themselves, with few questions asked, if they took the law into their own hands. Aboriginals were driven off their homelands, but they had nowhere to go. For invasive settlerism, land was property, and property had to be protected. In Tasmania, this phase was completed by around 1832, after a four-year period of Martial Law. Consolidation: Laws were introduced to make dispossession legal (land legislation, Aboriginal Acts). 1198 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited In 1826, Arthur introduced Tasmanian regulations to register title deeds. Sale of alienated land commenced from 1832. Repression: When Aboriginals became homeless, they were progressively forced into detention centres and their children taken away; Aboriginal culture was deliberately eroded; eugenics was used in an attempt to erase the Aboriginal traits; then they were forcibly assimilated; wages were ‘managed’ or stolen. In Tasmania, the peak period of ethnic cleansing (but not extermination) took place during Arthur’s ‘friendly mission’ between 1829 and 1834. Extermination began in 1804 and continued through martial law, between 1828 and 1832, after which few Palawa survivors remained, less than around 3% of the originating population before the British invasion. Subjugation: Many Aboriginals, particularly those in remote areas, now live in third world conditions, under the beneficent eye of Government. Preventable disease rages. Suicide is high. Harsh policing is used as a social weapon. Hope is a luxury. When some Aboriginals wanted to return to remote areas they once called home, and because the land had no commercial purpose (for a time), they were allowed to move,2426 with the Commonwealth providing rudimentary services that, even these, the Commonwealth now plans to withhold, once again to force them to move back to cities. But where? And why? And for how long can this cruel, genocidal process continue, where the conditions for Aboriginals to support some less than normal life are further squeezed by Government? In Tasmania, the subjugation phase began from around 1832, when the first detainees were relocated to islands in Bass Strait, and continued to 1847, when the few dispirited survivors were relocated from Flinders Island to a disused penal settlement at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart, where they continued to linger in unhealthy conditions until the last inmate died in the mid-1870s. Tasmanian land grants 1804 - 1823 This is the summary of Tasmanian land grants by year, 1804 to 1823, 2427 for which we provide a more detailed analysis in Part 2. 2428 During Macquarie’s eleven-year term, the total Tasmanian land granted was about 69,228 acres; under Brisbane, between 1821 and 1823, this figure increased to 489,051 acres, about a seven-fold increase on Macquarie. From 1824 to 1836, while Arthur was Governor of Tasmania, the total land grants amounted to 1,403,311.5 acres, an almost three-fold increase on Brisbane and an almost thirty-fold increase over Macquarie. Land grants and genocide Hartwell records that, prior to 1832, grants amounted to 1,974,744 acres. [RM Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850: 58, based upon the official statistics of HM Hull (1866), A Statistical Summary of Tasmania from the Year 1816 to 1865 inclusive: 4]. Therefore, grants from 1824 to 1831 are: (1,974,754 – 571,442.5) = 1,403,311.5 acres. Hartwell records that 1199 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited ‘The amount granted prior to 1832 is difficult to determine, as accurate statistics exist only from 1824. Frankland, the Surveyor-General, mentions in his Report (p. 76) a total alienation by grant and sale up to 31 December 1836 of 2,324,855 acres. If sales up to 1836 (267,825 acres), plus grants between 1832 and 1836 (82,276 acres), are subtracted from Frankland’s total, grants before 1832 can be reckoned at 1,974,754 acres. This total, though large, agrees with Melville (History…, pp. 150 – 1) who gives two million acres as the total alienation by 1835.[In Melville (1965), this page reference is page 129: The number of acres now located is about two million...] That is, from the time of the British invasion until Arthur’s end of term, the total acreage granted was around 1,961,591 acres, a figure that agrees closely with Hartwell and Melville. It was unsustainable, reckless, inhumane, and left no place for Palawa society to exist. Invasion led to dispossession, extermination, ethnic cleansing, genocide and deportation. The winners were British landowners. Year Number of Grants Acreage Granted Cumulative Acreage Granted 1804 4 400 400 1805 13 1,190 1,590 1806 13 863 2,453 1807 0 0 2,453 1808 1 2,000 4,453 1809 14 2,690 7,143 10 1,430 8,573 1811 0 0 8,573 1812 0 0 8,573 1813 356 33,544.5 42,117.5 1814 2 960 43,077.5 1815 2 1,370 44,447.5 1816 9 4,790 49,237.5 1817 111 17,158 66,395.5 1818 29 4,485 70,880.5 1819 6 4,400 75,280.5 1820 63 10,090 85,370.5 116 47,180 132,550.5 1822 0 0 132,550.5 1823 1027 441,871 571,442.52429 1810 1821 NSW Governor Macquarie Brisbane 1200 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 326 Register of Tasmanian Land Grants: 1804 - 18232430 The British Government’s policy and process of implacable Aboriginal land dispossession drove the mechanics of Palawa genocide. At first, settler sovereignty was de facto, or presumed by right of occupation and a legal transactional arrangement through Government grant with a nominal quit rent, a process that often spoke of nepotism and corrupt payments to any officials involved from the Surveyor General’s department. As land became property, it became subject to British laws of property, able to be bought and sold. Slowly, through a juridical process, de facto sovereignty became de jure. The rights of Palawa were simply discounted, or if acknowledged at all, were just ignored. Initially, with so much country available, the system of Government grants was open to corruption. Arthur used land grants as a system of patronage and nepotism, for authoritarian social control. Immigrants with capital were awarded convict labour on assignment. Some grantees sold their land before the grant was confirmed. Land title deeds were meant to be registered, but sometimes the grantee or subsequent buyer did not bother. Some settlers considered that a verbal permission from the Governor to build a house was equivalent to a grant or lease. Through poor regulation, land was often sold twice or sold while under mortgage. Policies for land alienation and immigration We will show throughout this companion book2431 that the alienation of land and the corresponding spread of settlement directly (and intentionally) drove Aboriginal dispossession. That is, British land and immigration policy triggered (engaged) an occupation process that, in the face of Aboriginal resistance, was actioned through genocidal force. Can we therefore quantify the amount of land grants by year and the process involved? Perhaps this will put the cold facts of Britain’s inexorable land heist on the table. For Tasmania, there exist detailed land grants for the period from 1804 until 1823, inclusive. The deeds for grants during Arthur’s term cannot be found, so we will rely on other statistical sources of information. We are particularly interested in land grants during the Governorship of Macquarie, Brisbane, Sorell, and Arthur as these are the periods when Palawa dispossession (and genocide) were to peak. Before 1825, land grants were the primary prerogative of the NSW Governor; in 1825, Tasmania was given its own legislative body allowing Arthur the discretionary responsibility for distributing land, which he used to his advantage. 1201 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited New South Wales Governor Tasmanian Lieutenant-Governor Lachlan Macquarie 1 January 1810 – 30 November 1821 Thomas Brisbane William Sorell 1 December 1821 – 1 December 1825 9 April 1817 – 14 May 18242432 Ralph Darling George Arthur 19 December 1825 – 21 October 1831 14 May 1824 – 29 October 1836 Figure 327 Key Governorships and term of office: 1810 – 1831 How were land grants made? During early settlement, this was an enduring question of interest to would be emigrants. The market responded with a number of guides to acquiring land, among them: Godwin (1823), and Smith Evans (1851). Immigration and genocide See, for example: • • Godwin (1823), Godwin's Emigrant's Guide to Van Diemen's Land, More Properly Called Tasmania; H Smith Evans (1851), A Map and a Guide to all the Emigration Colonies of Great Britain and America. Eligibility for a land grant was generally determined by the amount of capital possessed by a prospective colonist and the strength of their referrals.2433 We are primarily interested in the process of granting land before 1832, after which grants were replaced by sales under the Lord Ripon land reforms. JT Bigge had the same question, when Bathurst appointed him in 1819 to investigate and make recommendations for the better government of New South Wales. Bigge asked Deputy-Surveyor George Evans to explain: Question: " How long have you held the situation of Deputy-Surveyor?" Answer: " About 15 years." Question: "What is the course observed by you when applications are made for grants in the country?" Answer: " A person desirous of obtaining a grant of land here applies to the Governor-in-Chief through the Lieutenant-Governor. A particular time of the year (the month of June, or as nearly as may be to it) is set apart for this purpose by the Commanderin-Chief. On these applications the Governor-in-Chief makes a list of the names of persons to whom he orders that the land should be granted and the quantity they are to have. Which is signed by him and transmitted through his secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor, who either hands over the original or a copy of it, with directions that I should proceed to mark off the quantities of land when at leisure in the situations that the persons may have 1202 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited chosen, provided their choice will not interfere with any government arrangement. When the quantities are measured and marked off, I make out the descriptions and boundaries, which I forward to the Surveyor-General at headquarters. From him they are sent to the Governor, who directs grants to be made out in pursuance of the description." Question: " Are the grants sent down from Sydney to this place, or do they remain until application is made for them and the fees paid? " Answer: " The grants that were sent down in 1817 ·bore date September, 1813. Since. that time about 160 grants of land have remained at Sydney, and are there now." Question: " Are many applications made to you by the persons who have obtained land and have not obtained grants? " Answer: "Almost daily." Question: "I suppose that, when the land is measured and marked off, the people immediately repair to it and cultivate it? " Answer: "They do, and if I have not time always to go, they will begin to cultivate upon my promise to measure it." Question: " Do not instances occur of these lands so occupied being sold or transferred or taken in execution before the grants arrive? “ Answer: " Yes; such instances do occur, but it is at the risk of the party purchasing, for it is a well-known condition in all grants that the land shall not be sold, transferred, or alienated until after the term of five years." Question: " Does that term run, or is it supposed to run, from the period of occupation of the land or from the date of grant?" Answer: " From the date of grant." Question: " Do you think the defect of title, in cases where the grant is delayed, affects the value of lands or increases the difficulty of obtaining security upon them?" Answer: " It does not. In such cases they usually bind themselves in a penalty of double the amount secured to make over the grant when it arrives." Question: " Is the occupation of land permitted by the Lieutenant-Governor before the list containing the names and quantities of land ordered is returned by the Governor-inChief?" Answer: " Yes; to persons of good character, and for whom he is desirous of obtaining land; he does not allow a larger extent of land to be occupied in this way than from 30 to 50 acres." Question: "Now, in case a settler arrives here from England with his family, with an order from the Colonial Office for a considerable quantity of land, is he under the necessity of personally repairing to Sydney to obtain it, and must he remain here unoccupied till the grantor's order for the grant arrives from the Commander-in-Chief?" Answer: "No; on delivering his letter to the Lieutenant-Governor, such a person would be allowed to go into the country to examine the different situations or to come to me to see what were to be disposed of. In case he fixed on any situation, the Lieutenant-Governor would exercise his discretion in allowing the settler to fix himself on such land as he had selected, after conferring with me." Question: "Do you know whether the Lieutenant-Governor institutes any inquiry on the spot as to the pecuniary means of settlers applying for grants of land before they obtain them? " Answer: " In one instance I know he did. I cannot say what he does in others." 2434 1203 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Secretary of State Bathurst Henry Bathurst (1762 – 1834) , the third Earl Bathurst, was secretary of state for the colonies from 1812 to 1827, in Lord Liverpool’s ministry. He had a succession of senior Government appointments. By 1817, he was becoming worried that ‘transportation to New South Wales was becoming neither an object of Apprehension … nor the means of Reformation’, and that the colony was becoming too ‘expensive’. 2435 In part2436 to address a chaotic land regulation environment, in 1820 he decided to appoint JT Bigge as a Commissioner to enquire into ‘the governance, commerce and general practices of the colony, which included looking at the granting of Crown Land and the buying and selling of this land and by whom’.2437 This investigation was unprecedented for the newly minted colony as it presaged a change of administrative direction for the Home Government. New South Wales henceforth had to pay its way and homeland dissidents should be made to fear the cost of crime, in reality the cost of poverty, by making the prospect of transportation a significant and fearful deterrent. Britain wanted to make its impoverished and possibly rebellious underclass afraid of transgression against their privileged masters and the laws of property. Britain wanted to avoid a home-grown revolution of the kind they had just seen in America and France. Bathurst’s instructions to Bigge included a direction to ‘inquire into, and report upon, the actual and probable revenues of the colony; whether they may be looked to hereafter as affording the means of defraying some part of the heavy expenditure annually incurred on account of New South Wales; and whether they are in any, and in what, cases susceptible of increase without prejudice to the prosperity and welfare of the settlements.’ Bathurst was talking about setting an appropriate price for the sale of ‘Crown’ land. Bigge completed his enquiry between 1821 and 1823 and produced three reports for Bathurst.2438 In his third and final report on the state of agriculture and trade in New South Wales,2439 he provided Bathurst with an answer to Britain’s revenue problem, by including a section with recommendations on the sale of ‘Crown’ land. Bigge reported that ‘it was proposed that for persons who brought out real capitals amounting to £500, there should be granted 500 acres; £750, 640; £1,000, 800; £1,500, 1,000; £1,700, 1,280; £2,000, 1,500; £2,500, 1,760; and £3,000, 2,000 acres.’ He then made the recommendation that: ‘The proposal therefore for the sale of land, contiguous to grants made upon real capital, is one which will be very beneficial to settlers and will also be productive of revenue to the crown. In favourable situations, I should recommend that the additional quantity of land should be sold for ten shillings an acre; in those less favorable and more remote, for five shillings. With a view to afford encouragement to the purchasers of contiguous lands, I concur in the suggestion made by Mr. Oxley that a deposit of 10 per cent. should be paid upon the purchase being agreed upon, and that the remainder should be paid by instalments every six months, until the whole was paid. A failure in the payment of one or 1204 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited more instalments should not deprive the purchaser of his right, provided the whole arrears were made good with interest at the period the last payment became due; but a failure in the ultimate payment should subject the purchaser to the loss of antecedent deposits, and of all right to the land’. Bathurst enthusiastically supported the recommendations and asked Macquarie’s successor, Brisbane, to implement the recommendations without delay for the colony of New South Wales, which (until 1825) included Tasmania under the administration of a Lieutenant-Governor who reported to the Governor of New South Wales along with the Colonial Office. In 1827, Arthur attempted to introduce some further efficiency into the registration of land title deeds, so that it was unnecessary to examine the complete chain of prior title deeds from the original grant, which could comprise a search of up to twenty years prior. The 1827 Registration of Deeds Act 2440 also sought to impose a penalty of £100 for every instance when the land was incorrectly registered by neglect or omission. In addition, Arthur made it a felony to destroy, counterfeit or embezzle any registry entry.2441 It was not enough. The system of beneficent and potentially corrupt grants was the root cause of the land allocation and regulation problem. In 1832, after Bigge’s earlier recommendations, the system of land grants was replaced in Tasmania by their sale. Transacting land deals became a major Government business, with the realized revenue contributing to the Treasury’s balance. Settlement and pastoralism The agencies of settlement and pastoralism were closely aligned. With settlement came the need to put land to productive use. The economic activity of pastoralism was the mainstay of the early Tasmanian colony. It drove often violent Palawa dispossession. As the revenue from sheep and cattle farming increased, so did the number of immigrant settlercolonists, which in turn fueled the demand for more ‘Crown’ land to be alienated for sale. It was an exponential ‘feed forward’ process that the Aboriginals could not win. The settler encroachment on Aboriginal land peaked during Arthur’s term, exacerbated by his quite intentional land and immigration policies and his refusal to recognize any legal arrangement of Aboriginal land rights that might offer a treaty or ongoing tenure. Nor did Britain allow the Palawa to own land of any kind by prior right of occupation. The process of land acquisition only began to lose heat and momentum when almost all the available pastoral land had been turned into property of some form. But the compulsion towards attaining landed wealth would continue to define settler society for the next century and beyond. In 1852, the historian John West had little to say on Aboriginal rights, although he did note: The advances towards the final extinction of the natives, have been more rapid than expected; but the certainty of that event was never the subject of doubt. 2442 1205 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited West summarized the prospective settler behavior: The dignity and independence based on landed wealth, is ever the chief allurement of the emigrant. Whatever his rank, he dreams of the day when he shall dwell in a mansion planned by himself; survey a wide and verdant landscape called after his name; and sit beneath the vineyard his own hands planted. 2443 1206 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The process of Tasmanian land grants before and during Arthur’s term Before 1821, land grants were relatively few, compared with what came after. They totalled a mere 633 grants comprising about 132,000 acres, or an average of about 200 acres each. In 1804, the first four grants were 100 acres each, located on a branch of the Derwent River in southern Tasmania.2444 Cumulative land grants in Tasmania (1804 - 1823)2445 Cumulative VDL acreage granted by year, excluding VDL Co. direct grants of 367,000 acres, with exponential trend line overlaid. Figure 328 Cumulative Tasmanian land grants: 1804 - 1823; 1824 – 1831 . Return of muster 1817 - 18192446 Exponential growth in Tasmanian sheep numbers from 1828 to 18472447 Figure 329 Growth in livestock drove the demand for grazing land 1207 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 330 Total Van Diemen’s Population (1824 – 1832) showing almost a tripling over 9 years together with an exponential trend line. From 1821, Britain was encouraging free settlers with capital to apply for land grants, which also allowed them assigned convict labour, a valuable enticement. They arrived in the colony with letters of recommendation and presented themselves to the Governor, when they could expect a grant up to 1,000 or 2,000 acres, depending on their capital. Most grants were much smaller. In Van Diemen’s Land, 433,988 acres were granted in 1823 alone, at an average of 420 acres. By 1824, at the end of Governor Sorell’s term, around 524,000 acres had been granted. Arthur then followed with a further 979,000 acres between 1824 and 1831. By year, these grants were 43,000 acres in 1824, 112,000 acres in 1825, 60,000 acres in 1826, 77,000 acres in 1827, 165,000 acres in 1828, 208,000 acres in 1829,2448 108,000 acres in 1830, and 206,000 acres in 1831. These grants were made in the prime pastoral area through the midlands and along parts of the east coast near Oyster Bay. By the mid-twenties, the properties gradually coalesced to be called the ‘settled districts’. Under tightening British land policy, the ‘settled districts’ became an exclusion zone for the Palawa.2449 These grants did not include those made to private companies such as the Van Diemen’s Land Company, which had the direct backing of the British Government through a Royal Charter. Nor did Britain consider the rights of Aboriginals when making these grants. 1208 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Van Diemen’s Land Company The VDL Company was formed in 1824 to provide wool to Britain. The Company wanted 500,000 acres but was initially only granted half this amount. Sorell suggested an area in the north-west, near Cape Grim. Figure 331. Sketch map showing the Aboriginal population distribution around Tasmania at the time of early British settlement.2450 By 1827, the company’s grant comprised 100,000 acres at Cape Grim, 26,725 acres on nearby islands, 20,000 acres at Circular Head, 150,000 acres at Surrey Hills, 10,000 acres at Hampshire Hills, 10,000 acres at Middlesex Plains and 50,000 acres along Emu Bay Road or nearly 367,000 acres. 2451 Aboriginal trespass was unwelcomed. Emerging conflict over land The immanent problem was that Aboriginals occupied the same land around Tasmania, through the midlands and along the coastline, which was also coveted by pastoralists for their sheep and other livestock. Conflict was inevitable, without some form of conciliatory gesture involving a treaty and reciprocal rights. Britain did not see the need. Genocide was the result. 1209 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Figure 332 Location of land grants to 1823 2452 Britain was not interested in Aboriginal culture. But it was interested in land. Between 1803 and 1823, much of the midlands had already been claimed as property in some form or other, by way of sovereign possession and grants. From 1823, Arthur was to triple this ‘settled’ area by 1831, until all the best pastoral land was taken – whether owned, rented or occupied - excluding Aboriginals from their ancient places or, if they returned, to be treated as trespassers and possibly shot without legal consequence. In the pattern of increasing land allocation by Arthur, we see a small dip in 1830, but it then recovered the following year. The only citizens that Arthur did not allow to own land were the Aboriginals. This would also be the pattern across Australia. It was the primary trigger for genocide. We can go further, that genocide had a political and economic use: to remove the Aboriginal encumbrance on ‘Crown’ land and private property; and to improve the value of property. As Governments became increasingly dependent on revenue from land to grow their economies, Aboriginals were in the way. Between 1824 and 1831, the rate of Tasmanian land alienation directly correlates with the rate of population increase, as we would expect. In this critical period for the future of the Palawa, the cumulative acreage allocated to pastoralists (excluding British grants to private companies) almost tripled from 567,000 to 1.5 million acres. In the same period, the number of free settlers grew from 6,029 to 15,067 people.2453 1210 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited In 1829, Arthur unapologetically wrote that ‘the finest portion of the Island has already been granted away’: The number of persons who have emigrated to the Colony during the Year 1828, was not very considerable compared with former years, and the quantity of land granted was but little more than 200,000 Acres. Of this quantity upwards of 50,000 Acres have been sold at an average of 58d ¾ per acre, and a considerable proportion has been given as Grants, in extension, subject to immediate Quit Rent. The finest portion of the Island has been already granted away, and the lands, remaining at the disposal of the Crown, are of course much less valuable from their remoteness from the Principal Towns.2454 Melville writes about what he describes as the ‘unfair’ process of granting land under Arthur’s administrative incumbency.2455 He neglects to highlight that the people most disadvantaged were the Palawa, who saw the land of their ancestors being given away without compensation or redress. There can be no doubt but that the plan, according to which land has hitherto been located, has been exceedingly unfair and injurious, and under such a system, it cannot be wondered that the most extraordinary instances have occurred of oppression and injustice. When land was first given to the free emigrant, it has already been observed, very considerable stimulus was held out, rations and workmen being allowed the new settler, in proportion to the number of his family, and the quantity of acres given to him. But even in these times, when land was not of much value, the grossest jobbing prevailed – and so it has continued ever since, only varying according to new promulgated regulations. In former times, the free settler, on landing, called upon the Surveyor General, and a map was immediately laid before him – but that was all! – for as to any further information being afforded, that depended upon other circumstances. If the new comer had no friend to show him how to proceed, he would immediately go in search of land in the interior – he would return to the Survey-office, with the knowledge of perhaps a dozen spots suitable to his fancy; the first he would be told had already been taken – the second was a township reserve – the third a private reserve; and so on; in fact, the whole number of selected places, he would find either reserved or located, although no mark whatsoever, to that effect, might appear on the charts. After much waste of time, and very considerable expense and inconvenience, the new settler would by chance fix upon some distant spot, which being so remote, was totally valueless in the estimation of the Surveyor-General, and this land the settler was allowed to possess. If, however, a settler arrived who had a friend to counsel him, the business was soon settled, and a hogshead of wine, a piano-forte, or a harp, or such like present, would point out on the chart in the Survey-Office, the most desirable land in the Colony. 1211 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited In former times, the free emigrants brought with them orders to locate land, but in later years this was not necessary, for a Land Board was appointed to fix the rate of quit-rents, and to examine the amount of capital the fresh settlers might bring with them; and the Local Government had the authority to give away the land in proportion to the capital introduced. Here also fraud was most common; the capitalist entitled to a large grant, would often find an almost beggar that came out with him in the same ship, receive a like quantity adjoining him. It was a common practice for individuals to borrow sums of money, and to shew the bank receipts to the commissioners – and when the location order was issued, they money, of course, was returned to the lender. The favouritism too, practise, will scarcely be believed by any individuals not fully aware of the true circumstances of the Colony – some friends of those in power would have large grants given them, besides suburban, and township allotments in numbers, in every township in the Colony, if they so pleased to have them! Government officers, without bringing with them one farthing of capital, have had the most extensive gifts of land; whilst the industrious capitalist, the real settler, has had his time and money frittered away with the difficulties and negligence he has had to combat with at the Survey-Office. The land patronage, too, has been so disgracefully made use of, that the Government officers and friends of those in authority or favour, have had large additional grants for “improvements made,” when the applicants for such additions have not even seen the land first given to them, nor cultivated an inch thereof, or expended thereon one farthing. Whilst land of the finest description and the most valuable, has been squandered on men holding Government situations, who were necessarily prevented from residing thereon, or improving the same, every obstacle has been thrown in the way of the capitalist, who unfortunately has had no friend at the Colonial Court. Bandied about from one office to another, if a fortunate settler obtained the number of acres his property entitled him to, he would at length proceed in search of land, and after the shuffling of the Survey Department, and much labour and expense, would have the spot marked out on the chart as his own. 2456 Melville’s tirade at the poor treatment of the immigrant ‘capitalists’ who wished to obtain a free grant of land for a quit-rent fee is not supported by the evidence. In fact, emigration from Britain was a booming business, and would continue so until the early 1860s. The rise of settler sovereignty As the amount of land for settlement increased, the Palawa were progressively pushed to the margins of their territorial homelands, while the ‘unlocated’ lands suitable for grazing and agriculture steadily diminished in size. The ‘settled districts’ would not tolerate trespassers Eventually, the Palawa had nowhere to go. Arthur’s final solution was the answer, given an enthusiastic endorsement by the British Foreign Office. Aboriginals became refugees and then 1212 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited detainees, in a process of ethnic cleansing. Their numbers dropped further. Britain’s economic priorities had won, although genocide was the intentional and agreed price. A similar commercial transaction was to be conducted across the Australian continent, the barter now having an acceptable Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss account. Britain found that the human price to Aboriginal society was fair. After all, who could judge them? Where was the penalty? The cause of the Palawa/ British conflict was a ‘tribal’ contest over territory and who should own Tasmania, along with its food resources such as kangaroo. Before 1824 the quality of Government records was ‘uneven’ as Plomley describes it, and it was not until George Arthur’s arrival in 1824 that public records were maintained more efficiently. We note that the cumulative number of clashes grew rapidly between 1826 and 1830 before levelling off. It is a typical sigmoid pattern. By 1831, Plomley shows a total Palawa population of 190, falling from 340 in 1824, down from his estimated pre-contact population of around 5,500.2457 He ascribes Palawa depopulation to: European diseases, ‘affrays’ with settlers, the removal of women from the breeding population for slavery, the disruption of social life, and so on. The key question is: what caused the loss of more than 90% of the Palawa by 1824, at which time the British population numbered about twice the Palawa pre-contact population and recorded racial clashes were yet to spike? In this paper,2458 we will argue the loss of fertile women as the primary cause of the Palawa population collapse before 1824. Mortality from introduced disease and asymmetric violence played their part thereafter. Plomley notes that the rate of increase in the invasive population, ‘driven by transportation and by free migration, was very high after 1817: from 3,114 in 1817 it increased to 4,411 in 1819, 7,400 in 1821, and 10,000 in 1823. Thereafter it went up in leaps and bounds, reaching 26,640 in 1831.’2459 We would demur. The lure of rapid land alienation together with an exponential increase in immigration were the primary co-determinate factors in rapid British population increase. The consequence was a rise in territorial conflict and escalating clashes. The Palawa fought a highly effective guerrilla war against the British but eventually succumbed. Genocide defeated them. 1213 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Year Cumulative recorded clashes 800 Cumulativ e recorded clashes 700 1824 11 600 1825 25 500 1826 54 1827 126 1828 270 1829 418 1830 640 1831 706 400 300 200 100 0 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 Figure 333 Cumulative number of recorded Tasmanian clashes by year: 1824 - 18312460 1214 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Lemkinian Logistics and mechanics Type Process verification We wish to verify that the proposed type occupation process is a mapping of a particular case instance such as an event, say a massacre or a proclamation of Martial Law. Any mapping from one space to another involves some functional relationship between a specific object, for example an event or case, and a target space that we have defined by a reference model, say the type occupation process or the Lemkinian type genocide process. If we can show that some massacre event or case such as Murdering Creek (SE Queensland) or Emu Bay (NW Tasmania) can map to or instantiate the type process, then we have verified that the hypothesized type process is a necessary and sufficient mapping of observed or reported reality, prescribed by some level of fact based analysis. Redux method of process instantiation In terms that are mathematically more rigorous, a function is the relation between two sets. The relationship can be either a mapping or a transformation. The functional relationship is a set of ordered pairs, x and ⨍(x). If we write y = ⨍(x), then y is the value for the argument x, where x = x1, x2, x3,.. xn and di represents some actionable component domain over x. In our Murdering Creek and Emu Bay examples,2461 we can hypothesize the event as a type instance of the occupation process. That is, the relationship between the Murdering Creek event (if verified) and the occupation process is that it is potentially a type instance or mapping of the occupation process. If we can verify the (mythologized) Murdering Creek event and that it can instantiate the occupation process, then we can also assert that there is a direct mapping relationship between the occupation process and almost any Aboriginal homicide at the pastoral frontier, including many purported myths. Therefore, we can no longer treat such massacres in isolation from an overall pattern of belligerent intent, directed by the Government of the time and its functionaries. The homicidal event becomes a contextual referent, where the context is the occupation process and its variant forms. We see the lingering effects of Lemkinian repression in our society today with an oppressive rate of Aboriginal incarceration, poor health and life expectancy, and economic disadvantage. 1215 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The question of culpability and criminogenic intent If the crime of genocide is usually initiated by the state, does it fall within a more general category of state criminality? Was Imperial Britain a criminal association? Kramer and others argue that, until about thirty years ago, the crimes of the rich and powerful tended to be divided into corporate crime and state crime; whereas we now recognize that the two types of crime are functionally interdependent. Kramer and his colleagues called this criminological area ‘state-corporate’ crime, where political governance entities illegally collude with parties involved in economic production and distribution for the purposes of willful malfeasance and determined social injustice. Within this genre of criminality, they identify two sub-types: state-initiated corporate crime, when corporations employed by the government engage in deviance; and state-facilitated corporate crime, where government regulatory instruments fail to restrain deviant conduct.2462 But what of corporate-initiated state crimes,2463 where corporations coerce states into criminal deviancy, for example, the demands of Tasmanian settler society for their Government to declare martial law against the Palawa? And can a state be a criminal association if it colludes with business in state sponsored Aboriginal dispersal operations of the kind conducted by Arthur’s roving and pursuing parties? Today we have the unending examples of white collar corporate crime being forensically exposed by the Royal Commission into the insurance, banking and finance industry,2464 where money laundering was rife, where fees were fraudulently and systematically charged without performing any service, where the regulator (ASIC) was not kept informed of malfeasance under the Corporations Act, or if ASIC was informed, it either failed to take action or resolved to impose a limp administrative undertaking on the perpetrator to do better. An intense judicial light has been shone across the fetid underbelly of business, despite the objections from some Government quarters. Yet there is little comfort for those who have been irretrievably damaged by corporate financial misconduct. It seems the excesses of the past are still with us but are simply wearing different clothes. The rich and powerful continue to manipulate the rules of the civil code, just as for colonial Tasmania, because they are embedded in the machinery of Government through lobby groups and instruments of political influence; the poor are punished for the slightest criminal misdemeanour, among them Aboriginal society. 2465 The question of intent As set out by the Lemkinian Convention, we have briefly shown that Britain clearly intended to destroy the Palawa as a group, in whole or part. It was more than a war of the races; it was a war of racial extermination. The British intent followed from the desire to suppress Aboriginal resistance and clear the occupied land from ‘trespass’. 1216 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Britain has never said: ‘Sorry’. At the time, British Government policy was that subjugated races must be taught Christianity and made useful servants of British civilization. Imperial invasion, mediated by armed force, inevitably led to Indigenous resistance. Over and over. Forming a racist pattern of colonizing oppression around the globe. Putting massacres into perspective It does not really matter how the Palawa were exterminated or the overall numbers killed or the manner of their killing, in the unlikely circumstance that the records are available. This is the false and misdirecting (reframing) argument painted by many denialists, those who decry what they call ‘black armband history’. All that matters is that the Palawa died, and they died as a result of the British invasion and its genocidal policies, for which land expropriation and uncontrolled immigration were the key drivers. Guns and disease were enablers, along with discriminatory legislation and unequal justice. The process was efficient and lethal. The rejection of reflexivity Let us be very clear, in case there is any doubt or circumspection: the British Government was responsible for the destruction of Aboriginal society in Tasmania, their people, their culture. Those historians who argue that Britain tried to protect Aboriginals from the onslaught of ‘convict settlers’ are simply revising history by proponing their own version of historicity, by reflexivity, by subjective posturing, by false logic, by selective quoting of the facts. Let us also be clearer still: the genocide was in Britain’s economic and political interest. Land was at stake and the Palawa were an encumbrance, so they had to be removed. And were. It would be a similar story across the Anglo-world as Britain pushed its colonists into virgin territory with the generic mantra ‘exterminate all the brutes’.2466 But it would never be as bloody or complete as in Australia. British group behaviour embraced Aboriginal dehumanization, dispossession and destruction. It was a small extra step to racial extermination, the logic of ‘us and them’: • • • • • • • • the rules of property; the world of fences; the laws of trespass; the de facto/ de jure concepts of sovereignty; the racial, cultural and ideological divides; the exclusion/ inclusion parsing; the demonization of otherness; the juridical enforcement of ‘ownership’; the patent bias in the rules of evidence; the ascendency of exploitation over sustainability, possession over sharing; the confected winners and losers; the legislated survival of the ‘fit’ over the ‘non-fit’; the worthy and the non-worthy; the ‘lawful’ British settlers and the ‘criminal’ Aboriginal insurgents; 1217 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited • • • • those with rights and those without rights; the triumphant living and the vanquished dead; the predators and their victims; the world of boundaries and power structures; ‘sovereign’ possession and resulting Indigenous dispossession; the clash of ideology and values, of ‘civilization’ over ‘primitive’ society. Violent racial conflict resulted, for which the Palawa were among the first to fall victim to British hubris and racism. Many of our colonial values remain with us still. Our opponent is now the Earth. The role of genocidal agencies In some contested spaces such as Tasmania, Britain’s oppression was - as we will see – genocidal. In Part 2,2467 we will show that the key dispossessory agencies of immigration and land alienation were the major and intentional co-factors in the calibrated genocidal process, where armed force and apprehended legal bias cemented the destruction of Aboriginal society and culture. As for Tasmania, so for Australia. Until well into the 20th century, Australian Governments knew how many sheep there were in the country, but not how many Aboriginals. The same was true for early Tasmania until the extermination of the Palawa was total, until they were extirpated, with only a few mixed blood survivors remaining and from which the present resilient population has grown to several thousand. The policies of racism For Australia, it was the face of rampant genocidal racism, of racial oppression and segregation, of apartheid, of Government colonizing policy where Aboriginals were non-people, feral pests to be removed. In Tasmania, it was far worse: by the end of the 19th century, give or take a few years, the original pure-blood Palawa had ceased to exist. The apocalyptic warning of an ‘indelible stain’ was graffitied on the wall of British justice more than fifty years earlier, but the message was ignored. Genocidal dispossession To paraphrase Tolstoy, ‘every genocide is unique in its own way; but each shows a similarly unhappy pattern.’ The quote derives from Anna Karenina, where, in the opening sentence, Tolstoy writes: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ 1218 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We will later see, from comparative genocide studies, that every genocide, although seemingly having different characteristics from another, shares a Lemkinian pattern to varying degrees of attribute weighting, where the attribute is a Lemkinian clause in Article 2 of the UN Convention. We have shown the unique pattern of Australian genocide as it flamed across the continent before the spreading pastoral frontier. Tasmania helped establish the model, like a metastasizing cancer that shares the same genetic mutation. The myth of settler sovereignty We will examine this apparent contradiction further, in the ‘myth of settler sovereignty’. Some historians, Inga Clendinnen among them, argue that there was only one authentic ‘genocide’: the holocaust. This is oversimplification. We will show that the characteristics of the type genocidal process are determinable within the Lemkin Convention, but that each procedural instantiation of Lemkinian genocide is determinate within a defined behavioural envelope. That is, we can view the type Lemkinian process as a normative behavioural model, where intentionality and categorial agency are embedded in the process at different levels of abstraction from type to event along a decompositional gradient. It allows us to resolve the apparent dilemma that each genocide shares a similar pattern, the Lemkinian type pattern, but each is uniquely different in its instantiation of the type process, becoming a contextual referent or use case. The pattern is defined by categorial agency, by policy driven constraint rules, whose actors are typecast by the administrative machinery of British Government resolve. The Lemkinian genocidal pattern we develop for Tasmania will be scalable and will allow type instantiation for individual and collective genocidal conduct – including massacres - to verify (or disprove) their contextual agency. Are we repeating the past? As for British colonial adventurism, we do something qualitatively similar today. Replace the words ‘colonists’ or ‘colonial Imperialism’ with ‘corporations’ or ‘neoliberal ideology’ or the ‘1%’. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.2468 Some of us argue: But things have changed. Times were different then. It is the reflexive and fallible viewpoint that we cannot judge the past. Why not? If we cannot learn from the past, how can we not repeat it? The ghosts of our history are still with us, the exploitative behaviours still lodged in our bones.2469 1219 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Aboriginal disadvantage continues, subsumed by other myths, the myth of aspirational self-help, the myth of trickle-down economics, perhaps the myth that we really care – about others, about other cultures, about other creatures and ecosystems. History is now against us; and history will be our judge. But with authoritarianism on the march, right wing governments can simply ignore their conflicts of interest, or empirical evidence about climate change, or regulatory constraints; they can plant ‘fake news’ and alternative ‘facts’, impose excessive electronic surveillance, introduce oppressive social controls, enforce harsh measures against refugees, ignore labour racketeering and animal cruelty, limit access to affordable health care, reduce corporate taxes in the unlikely event that large corporations pay more than the minimum, shore up political support through nepotism and cronyism, resume public land for private benefit, withdraw funding for agencies critical of Government policy, abnegate their responsibilities for the welfare of Australia’s First People, cripple regulatory compliance for public interest measures such as appropriate water and land use, tolerate tax minimization schemes such as transfer pricing and the misuse of discretionary trusts, and downplay the negative environmental impacts of corporate activity with remediation often left to the public purse. We have not changed that much. There are rules. And there are rules for bending the rules. Our mantra - we are a rules-based society – is exposed as reflexive. Normative behavioural constraint rules We are left to consider that human behaviour is not unpredictable, but can be the product of constraint rules within some deterministic envelope, often procedural, usually systemic, that are generally shaped by imposed (triggering) ideologies, policies and legislation, encouraged by an all too human urge to exploit vulnerabilities for personal and national advantage, rules such as ‘exterminate the brutes’, or ‘promote immigration with the lure of alienated Aboriginal land for the taking’ or ‘we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’. 2470 That is, State practices, government intentionality, can mould and direct normative group behaviour. Genocide - violent targeted displacement - can be the extreme result, a rapidly learned response, the co-determinate outcome of ‘group’ or coterie self-interest and dysfunctional Government resolve when a certain trigger presents itself that does not involve traditional warfare, like the opportunity to exploit new territory by an invasive culture as happened in Australia or the political extremism that demonizes boat people with the rationale: protect our borders and keep Australia secure. Aboriginal society would render a hollow laugh. Such collective aberrant behaviour can be averted with sufficient will; the corollary: if we engage in genocide or other excessively cruel conduct, it is because we choose to, it suits us, we can be coerced, our behaviours can be subverted. This is the horrifying insight from the 1961 psychological experiment by Stanley Milgram at Yale University, which we will later explore. 1220 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited But even genocide is ultimately self-defeating. It has to be, when short term considerations are factored into long-term sustainability, into evolutionary survivability over the millennia and beyond. Accountability is another matter. Tasmanian genocide recapitulated2471 Researchers en masse have pored over Tasmania’s colonial history. Partly, this is because there is a wealth of primary sources available, official Government despatches, Executive Council minutes, private correspondence, journals, memoirs, and parliamentary papers. But the interest is also due to the bloody nature of Tasmania’s birth in 1803 as a British colony when it was part of New South Wales, and from 1825 when it became an independent colony with a legislative body under Governor Arthur’s firm control. Violent colonization became the pattern for the rest of Australia. Many have written about this, but little is (or was) done. ‘It’s in the past’, they say. Elizabeth Farrelly summarizes: The colonial drive has always been dodgy – both because it generally involves stealing other peoples’ lands and lives, and because it offers the illusion of something for nothing: free resources, costless plunder and, as UTS social scientist Dr Jeremy Walker notes, escape from the moral and environmental responsibilities of home. [...] Neither space nor rapture will save us: not heaven, not Mars, not the Starship Enterprise. The gods, one or many, have no interest in slithering us from our deeds. Earth is our refugium. Fade to black.2472 It is surprising, then, that so many informed people have come to varying conclusions on whether the British occupation process was genocidal. The contrarian view against genocide See, for example: • • • • • • • David Davies (1973), The Last of the Tasmanians, discusses a race war, but excuses British conduct with the familiar argument that if the Home Government offered the well-worn mantra ‘conciliate the affections of the Natives’ often enough, then the violent dispossessory process involved no illwill; Henry Reynolds (1995), The Fate of a Free People does not mention genocide; Henry Reynolds (1989), Dispossession Black Australians and White Invaders does not mention genocide; Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain? The question of genocide in Australia’s history discounts genocide in the context of a proponed humanitarian British Government for which racial violence was an ‘unintended consequence’ of Aboriginal dispossession and their resistance; Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines a history since 1803 does not mention genocide; Henry Reynolds (1996), Frontier Reports from the edge of white settlement does not mention genocide; Henry Reynolds (1998), This Whispering in Our Hearts does not mention genocide; Henry Reynolds (2013), Forgotten War discounts the possibility of genocide because there was no ‘defined and articulated policy of destroying the Aboriginal tribes’ [p. 138] which misstates the legal definition of Lemkinian genocide (the act of legally recognized genocide does not require a formal statement of genocidal policy by the perpetrator); 1221 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited • • • Murray Johnson and Ian McFarlane (2015), Van Diemen’s Land An Aboriginal History limits the possibility of genocide to northwest Tasmania; James Boyce (2008), Van Diemen’s Land in an appendix, talks about ‘towards genocide’; Tom Lawson (2014), The Last Man A British Genocide in Tasmania admits British culpability in genocide; Nicholas Clements (2014), The Black War Fear, Sex, and Resistance in Tasmania: 56 – 58, equates Arthur’s Black War to possible genocide but then equivocates on whether genocide occurred in a Lemkinian sense. Earlier books (before Lemkinian genocide gained currency) discuss extermination, for example: Clive Turnbull (1948, reprinted 1965), Black War the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines. It is less surprising when we consider that different re-interpretations of historicity often depend upon a revised semantic meaning of apprehended genocide, while ignoring or playing down the relevance of the United Nations Lemkinian Convention. Some historians continue to press the contentious argument that colonialism, with professed but non-evident humanitarian motives, had unintended genocidal consequences and therefore could not be genocidal. This is the Henry Reynolds argument [An Indelible Stain? (2001): 49 – 66], indirectly supported by Geoffrey Blainey who downplays the Indigenous numbers killed, variously proposing without verifiable evidence that Aboriginal numbers were never very great and their deaths were mostly due to internecine conflict and introduced disease. We note that Lemkinian genocide as prescribed by the UN Convention (1948 treaty) to which Australia is a signatory is still not domestically legislated as a specific crime in Australia. 2473 With such occluded revisionism, with faulty syllogism, facts can take multiple guises and historical authenticity – historicity - becomes a stranger along with the attributive truths of historically embedded, fact-based events. For the moment, we define revisionism as the self-proclaimed ‘right’ of the victor or apologist in some contested space to rewrite history, ignoring the legitimate voice of the vanquished. Sometimes revisionism can be more subtle, claiming it is defending those who were dispossessed while distorting the verifiable facts of dispossession. Implications for Indigenous society today For today’s Aboriginal society, self-destructive group behaviour is symptomatic of impotence in the face of systemic oppression: anger becomes directed inwards or to the immediate family, sometimes against property, rarely against the machinery of the state – at least, less so recently. Any form of vented resistance often becomes criminalized. In all such cases, judicial punishment is swift and leads to high proportional rates of indigenous imprisonment. Multiculturalism can further obscure Aboriginal rights, except perhaps the ‘right’ by imposed circumstances to live in poverty and the ‘right’ to die an early death compared to the general population. 1222 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Across Australia, the cycle goes on, a cycle of chronic Aboriginal disadvantage and despair. The pre-contact past has been rewritten • • • • • • • through foreign intervention, through its inexorable clamping of new rules onto an alien land, through enforced revolving 99-year pastoral leases, through its Torrens title system of land ownership, its imposing statues of explorers and governors and dignitaries,2474 its ineluctable British placenames, its hagiographic shire histories, its bombastic stories of heroic settler triumphalism, all meant to strengthen the invader’s claim to legitimacy, to a new order, an attempt to define a new reality, a grafted reality that obliterates the old. Notwithstanding the ground-breaking successful claim of Eddie Mabo in 1992 2475 that he did in fact own the land his family had held for generations (and not the Crown through the conferred entitlement of unilaterally declared British sovereignty), these introduced legal and cultural constructs and placename accretions moved Aboriginal land rights further out of reach. Aboriginal history has mostly been erased in overt revisionism by the dominant white culture. There are few commemorative plaques for the innumerable Aboriginal massacre sites across the country. It is another form of genocide, the importunate death of memory in a persecuted Indigenous society. Is it any surprise that Aboriginal leaders rail in frustration against the continuing dispossession, the dispossession of historicity, of historical truth, of memory and landscape? Myths have become the new reality. Along with fakery. And misinformation, with opinion masquerading as fact. If a generation and a race are without hope, where are they to turn? As Australia marches into pluralism, where will that leave Aboriginal rights? Aboriginals as a group will become a decreasing minority, their social inequality addressed through limited forms of targeted, politically motivated, bureaucratic State intervention where most of the benefits devolve to middlemen, the carpet baggers, the ‘for profit’ intermediaries, the ‘outsourcing’ contractors. In such normalized financial arrangements, if social responsibility is held at arm’s length, how can Governments be held to account? That, of course, is the intent, where efficiency becomes the mantra and everyone wins except, perhaps, the people in need. Notwithstanding the advocacy of spokespeople such as Stan Grant and Noel Pearson, among others, for Aboriginals to be absorbed into middle Australia, it does little to secure Aboriginal identity as the First People; it is a continuing form of cultural genocide. Identity and respect should both be achievable; they are not mutually exclusive. Inga Clendinnen reminds us that history cannot be separated from politics: 1223 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The stories made from history always have political implications, but that does not constitute their authority over us. History helps us to know who we humans are, and of what we are capable. It also reminds us that, however complicated the situation, however apparently compelling the circumstances, there is always space for choice: that the individual conscience is our first, last and only refuge. The current politically motivated simplifications can only impede the development of our individual analytic capacities and a reliable sense of social responsibility.2476 But it is politics and ideology that continue to impede Aboriginal reconciliation. And the political journey can only become harder, the more our society marches into the multi-cultural pluralism of factions and special interests, of lobby groups, of short-term expediencies, of contracting election cycles, of economic priorities. In Tasmania, the disruptive pattern of dispossession was swift and ruthless, the primary phase completing in barely more than a single generation. Recurrent genocidal time frame For Britain, the elapsed period for any initial dispossessory cycle to complete was consistently about thirty years from the originating time of each beach-head invasion point around the Australian continent, as the pastoral frontier metastasized in a tsunami-like wave (or perhaps a bush fire across multiple fronts, driven by fierce winds and leaping spot-fires) that rapidly displaced (purged) one society and replaced it with another, one that was more predatory, expansionist, destructive and hegemonic. 2477 The Tasmanian Palawa moved within thirty years from free possessors of the soil to trespassers to enemy insurgents to refugees to prisoners, and, finally, to sad objects of derogation, to genocidal victims, as the last members of the race shuffled off to die in managed detention, derided, dependent on hand-outs, trustful of Government promises that were never kept. A similar process was to play out across Australia where it would take slightly longer, the suffering prolonged into the present for many of our First People. A patterned, reusable template fir Lemkinian dispossession The nature of any pattern is that is reusable. But more importantly, it is repeatable, or reinstantiable. For normative human conduct, it is the still point, the patterned modality, of a type behavioural process such as territorial occupation and, if accompanied by armed force, its often-genocidal instantiation depending on the degree of ethnic targeting. Such patterns defy apologists and those denialists represented by Windschuttle and his cohort who demand rarely available evidence of ad-hoc judicial case histories to be the only measure of State resolve, of calibrated intentionality. As TS Eliot wrote: 1224 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited At the still point of the turning world, Neither flesh nor fleshless There the dance lies 2478 Logical fallacies in arguments against Tasmanian genocide2479 One logical form of the argument by misdirection goes: In the middle of an event induced by [x], now is not the time to talk about [x]. It is an argument that allows indefinite deferral of any critical analysis of the issue, a policy of laissez-faire. For example, in the middle of yet another mass shooting in America, politicians and the gun lobby (National Rifle Association) will generally respond with the formulaic press release, ‘Now is not the time to talk about gun control. Guns don’t kill people, People kill people’. The argument is ill-conceived, as it does not allow timely root-cause analysis of the issue with a rigorous determination of associated prioritized action (agency) and begs the question, ‘If not now, when?’ An important reason for political delay on an issue is that actions usually have financial (fiscal) and social costs, so a delayed action defers the cost. In contemporary Australia, we can substitute for [x]: climate change or some other issue or existential risk. Similarly, for Tasmania between 1803 and 1833, settlers railed against the ‘atrocities’ of the Palawa who were resisting their dispossession and would not consider any form of treaty arrangement during the conflict, nor after, not if it meant giving up control of any land. An evidence-based logical expression of the argument that removes the time-delay between issue and action is: In the middle of an event induced by [x] is exactly the time to talk about [x], particularly when we are facing the ongoing catastrophic effects of [x] and we need to act decisively, if belatedly. It brings forward the costs of action at some political pain but reduces the expected long-term costs that otherwise are transferred to later generations. A frequent variation of this logical misdirection is reframing, that is: it’s not about a, it’s about b. For example, ‘It’s not about climate change, it’s about Greenies obstructing preventative burning’. Or ‘it’s not about taking action now on climate change but taking action later.’ No. a is about a. 1225 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited A large part of our critical thinking dilemma on some profound issues is that cause and effect do not always happen closely together and are statistically related over time, leading us to think – wrongly – that they are not connected. That is, an extended expression of [x] may involve conditional dependency, where: [x]: b  a. For example, climate change (a) increases the risk of affects catastrophic fires and (b) makes them more likely. For stochastic models it is possible to construct the likelihood L (D | p) which is simply the probability that the model with parameters p generates the observed data D. Humans are often poor at evaluating time-delayed causal effects where mathematical modelling is involved. If there is an evidence-based link between, say, climate change and catastrophic fires, or smoking and lung cancer, denialists can always question the link because scientific hypotheses are not based on certainties, only strong probabilities, such as: the sun will probably rise tomorrow, based upon past evidence, but an assertion that we cannot make with absolute certainty. Going further, it is almost impossible to directly link (say) an instance of lung cancer with a lifetime of smoking rather than smog or some other cause; all we can do is show the likelihood of a link, based upon a statistical analysis. In time, our investigative tools may allow an individual’s cellular pathology to be associated with a specific carcinogen, or the circumstances of a firestorm to be deconstructed by complex stochastic causal analysis. But not yet. The required computing power is immense and our algorithms inadequate. The impending danger for humanity is that we may defer action on climate change until it is too late for effective action because the climate has reached an irrecoverable tipping point where our comfortable heuristic rules break down, and from which there’s no going back. Catastrophe (or chaos) theory describes the punctuated evolution of forms in nature, including ‘boom-bust’ cycles, where gradually changing forces produce sudden effects. That is, there are discontinuous transitions between the states of a system. See for example: René Thom (1972) Structural Stability and Morphogenesis. Thom’s mathematical theory is limited to systems with a small (<=5) number of variables. Analytical complexity increases exponentially with the number of variables. Climate scientists predict that the duration and intensity of weather-related events (droughts, fires, floods, cyclones) will tend to increase over time, exacerbated by global warming due to rising greenhouse gas emissions.2480 This human-caused climate change will impact on where we live (rising sea levels), food production, cost of living, loss of life, city viability, species extinction, degraded biodiversity, climate refugees, and territorial conflict. In geological terms, the more damaging ecological effects will play out almost instantaneously, within a 1226 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited century, and continue for millennia until some new form of stability is reached, possibly with fewer humans, where remnant pockets of our species may survive in engineered enclaves, either on Earth or possibly off-world. Humanity has never encountered such a potentially catastrophic climate situation before – apart from the occasional short-term disruption by war, famine, pogroms, genocide, and the like - and is ill equipped for resolute action well beyond the scale of Roosevelt’s New Deal or NASA’s manned space programme to put a person on the moon or the 1948 Marshall Plan to aid European recovery after WWII or America’s Manhattan Project. As a global community, we may have to spend trillions. But the costs of inaction are likely to be considerably more. After the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has passed into a seasonal infection, the existential challenge is that we may no longer have the energy and resolve to take more than token action on climate change. It’s too hard, we may say, or It’s a global problem; Australia can’t act alone, forgetting that our unilateral actions in closing our borders to travelers helped prevent a major disease outbreak. But climate change will not go away, unlike a pandemic. The consequence is that we may triage the world’s biosystems and human populations into those we may potentially save and those that will be allowed to disappear, much like intensive medical support was withheld to the elderly in the SARS panic. Global warming is that serious. Dithering is not an option. Nor is political inertia. Or economic priorities. Like genocide before it, ecocide shares a similar behavioural typology. 2481 Only we can save ourselves. Not God. Not Mammon. Us. 2482 We have seen catastrophe before, with Australian rolling genocide, but we attempt to rewrite or reframe the facts of history. Revisionism paints over our unpreparedness and expunges inconvenient truths. Britain saw colonial genocide as an economic opportunity, not a moral or sociopolitical threat. Genocide became a business, with a frenzy of land acquisition. Government policies legalized the process of dispossession. The settler invasion accelerated with subsidized immigration. It was an ethos of taking. Self-interest was rewarded through a system that was avariciously oiled by unsustainable exploitation. Henry Reynolds discounts genocide in the context of a proponed humanitarian British Government for which racial violence was an ‘unintended consequence’ of Aboriginal dispossession and their resistance. He writes: The question of intent is never far away in discussions of genocide. Was the killing if indigenous people done with the specific intention of destroying particular groups, or did it happen as a consequence of action that had other motives, such as the taking of land, the imposing of a new order, or the pacification of a violent frontier? 2483 There are some who will argue that history, human history, is comprised of almost random events, accidents, poorly planned actions, unforeseeable circumstances, unintended 1227 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited consequences, cognitive bias, the flight of reason. It may lead to the incorrect conclusion that we cannot be responsible for the past, that the principle of mens rea cannot apply to societies, or of it did, that the slate should be wiped clean with each new generation. I disagree. Any type event such as claim possession [of some territory] is embedded in a layered matrix of type instances – for example, develop policies, proclamations, regulations, legislation, programmes and the like - all of which may be connected through originating type triggers. They form what systems theorists call a process at different levels of abstraction, a prescriptive set of steps with an intended type outcome for each layer. The British territorial occupation process of Australia is an example, for which the objective was to achieve settler sovereignty in an unequal war of the races. In logical essence, Reynolds’ argument for ‘unintended consequences’ is: if case [xi] has a number of discrete actionable components [a1, a2, ..ai, aj] that originate through a bounded chain of ordered triggering conditions, then if a j follows on ai, it does not mean that aj depends on ai. Therefore, we cannot be held to account for aj . It follows that [genocide UN] ∌ xi. That is, L. genocide (genocide UN) is ruled out by Reynolds if it is the result of other actions such as violent dispossession of some targeted group from a desired tract of land (case xi). But such violent dispossession – the methods of displacement – cannot be separated from the agency of L. genocide; methods are synonymous with agency within the context of L. genocide. Logic attempts to provide a quality argument as to the reasons for accepting the truth of some claim. Reynolds’ logic proceeds from a false premise of unintended Government actions and (therefore) their unintended consequences (which is an oxymoron; Reynolds seems to be arguing that British expansionism and settlerism was a natural economic force that caused collateral but unintended and unplanned Aboriginal genocide; therefore it could not be genocide), or that Government actions arose from dispossessory motives, policies and triggers (leading to unintended genocidal consequences; therefore it could not be genocide): If British dispossessory actions were unintentional [p], then the consequences of those actions were unintentional [q]. British actions were unintentional. Therefore, the consequences were unintentional. This is summarized as modus ponens: p ⊂ q, p, therefore q. The logic fails if [p] is untrue. That is, if the premise is false, the conclusions are also false. Therefore, Reynolds’ argument is logically false, a non sequitur. Reynolds’ argument for ‘unintended consequences’ assumes ex parte there was a single act of land alienation and dispossession for which the consequences of this single act could not be anticipated; but it was no single act; it was a process that was intentionally carried out over three decades across each point of invasion until Britain’s territorial purpose was achieved, in the case of Tasmania, sovereignty over Palawa land. 1228 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Throughout this violent dispossessory process, Britain was deeply aware of the purposeful destruction of Indigenous people, of the Palawa for example. It chose to do nothing. Or rather, it chose to hold course, without concessions or a treaty. We can reject Reynolds’ exculpation of British conduct. The consequences were intended. They were a result of Britain’s forcible occupation. In winter 2007, Griffith University published a wry reference to these ‘unintended consequences’ of British invasion: Griffith Review, ed. Julianne Schultz, Unintended Consequences. Among the many contributors, Noel Pearson tendentiously argues that ‘white guilt’ encourages Indigenous ‘victim-hood’ and that Black Rights should be black responsibilities in a new form of reconciliation. However, it is not evident that ‘white guilt’ is a commonly shared belief in our increasingly multi-cultural society. Some politicians go further: in rejecting responsibility for the past (‘I don’t kill Aboriginals’) they allow past mistakes to be repeated anew by denying Aboriginal society a supportive voice in the Constitution or denying them dual naming rights to towns and landscapes, the right to reclaim their heritage. Through cultural displacement, it is an extended form of persistent Lemkinian repression. S-curves Grief does not operate in tidy grids. Nor does collapse, either population, or ecological. We may ascribe an S—curve for part of the phenomena. That is, dN/ dt = r N, or the rate of change of some variable N depends on the value of N at time t. If r is negative, we have collapse. But r can be multifactorial, say the effect of resource loss, or sexual predation, or ethnic cleansing, or reducing births, or introduced disease. For the Palawa, they were hounded from their land, subject to the loss of their women, exposed to introduced disease, and preyed upon by armed militia. Where were they to go? The population collapse was sudden, perhaps thirty years. Yet they survive through miscegenation. That is, there was a negative s-curve, followed by one that was modestly positive as it sought an accommodation within its found environment among its persecutors. It is the nature of collapse of any type that it arrives suddenly. For example, the long-term survival of the Great Barrier Reef, in whole or part, may have reached a tipping point. We will know it is serious when our Government does not want to discuss the subject. But the world is watching. We destroyed the Reef beyond the point of recovery within a few decades through ocean acidification, agricultural runoff, warming seas and human induced crown of thorns starfish invasions. Jared Diamond is an expositor of the pattered mechanics of collapse and cites many examples, often resource dependent, that is, through the agency of some external shock. However, Diamond downplays that for those societies which collapse (Mayan, Roman and so on), there remained a residual population that persisted. That is, the societal structure (organization) broke down but the group behavioural dynamics continued in another form. It is rare for a society to completely disappear, and so it was for the Palawa when they were almost destroyed as a cultural and ethnic group, their DNA surviving through miscegenation. Others are more optimistic than Diamond,2484 preferring a death and renewal model over collapse, an endless cycle of regeneration. The regenerative model depends on the concept of reaching a stable new normal, say a new climate equilibrium that is reached with global warming. But if we continue to pump out greenhouse gases, there is no equilibrium, merely more existential carnage until we are no longer able to move the environmental parameters to our economic advantage. Whether such a climate catastrophe might benefit 1229 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited some future lifeform – in the same way that the extinction of the dinosaurs some 66mya gave rise to mammals – is speculative at best. Theoretical ecology models the complex dynamics of ecological systems including human populations to account for observable phenomena, such as the effect of global warming, limits to growth and the interaction of predator/prey populations. However, when a tipping point is reached, the models tend to fail. 2485 For the Palawa, their collapse was both inevitable and final, inexorably pursued to cultural and physical extinction by an invasive power, although their DNA survives in mixed-race offspring. The memetic survival of their culture is another matter. Without the storytellers there is no one to transmit the story. Reading the journals of their nemesis GA Robinson is a poor substitute. Every proposition P, say, the need for genocide or ethnic cleansing to solve some proffered economic-social problem, for example, (P) [‘Aboriginals are an encumbrance on economic development’] and (P) [‘we have to get rid of them’] [because] (cP) [‘they are waging a guerrilla war against their dispossession’] may have its proponent or propagandist who develops a conjecture c around P (cP n or, more inclusively, the set of all cP’s around P for which cP n is an instance) that can be independent of the P value proposition or truth assertion or falsity or hypothesis.2486 In this example, P and cP are reversible. We can equally assert: (P) [‘they are waging a guerrilla war against their dispossession’] therefore (cP)[‘we have to get rid of them’]. It leads to a circular argument. Although cPn is a conjecture c about P, its falsifiability is not determined by P but is merely an association of statements c and P that, taken together, may not be logically consistent and may lead us to invalid conclusions or expectations. That is, c may not follow from P, although we are encouraged to believe so. A proposition may be some proposed social disruptor such as: • • • • • [‘elect me’] with cP [‘we will bring down the price of electricity’]; or [‘we need to reduce company tax’] with cP [‘because it will lead to higher wages’]; or [‘we must have a sugar tax or tobacco tax’] creates a pejorative cP [‘nanny state’]; or [‘to combat climate change we must build more reliable base load power’] because (cP) [‘affordable and reliable power is more important than reducing carbon emissions below some modest target that will have negligible impact on global warming’]; or the compound proposition [‘we must grow the Tasmanian settler economy’] therefore [‘Aboriginal resistance to their dispossession must be destroyed] with the cP [‘because it is costing us money and they are savages’]. 1230 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The cP conjecture can reframe the nature of P or dismiss the relevance of P in terms of arguing its opposite as a form of derogation (˥P is bad), say the propositions: [‘Jews are evil’] therefore [x]; or [‘blacks must be destroyed] [‘for the public good’] . The tools for cP can include prejudicial misinformation or reframing or dogmatic reinforcement of flawed logic or selective data mining or targeted censorship or propaganda. For example: • • • • • • • Tasmanian settler society defended genocide under the racist cP mantra that the Palawa were ‘animals’ and ‘brutes’ and ‘savages’ who committed ‘outrages’ and should therefore be ‘exterminated’ as feral pests; Goebbels defended extermination of the Jews by painting them through a cP as public pariahs who were milking Germans of their money through usury; 2487 the Obama presidential campaign was won through the critical swinging states of Ohio and Florida, where – through data mining – his team identified that the relatively small Jewish vote in a key precinct could be swayed in his favour; 2488 Trump won the 2017 election with the cP ‘make America great again’ through the support and fearfulness of both the left and the right who had been affected by globalisation and the loss of manufacturing jobs; twitter feeds and other social media built support for the ‘me too’ cP movement against sexual oppression by the rich and powerful; the British Government and Lord Goderich removed any evidence of genocidal behaviour (censorship cP) against the Palawa from the Parliamentary Record of 1831; Arthur went back on his word to offer a treaty to the Palawa when he was engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing but pretended for the public record he was always open to the possibility after the Palawa had been destroyed as a race. (misinformation, misdirection cP). We have seen many apologists (or propagandists) for Lieutenant Governor Arthur, that he was an ‘humanitarian’ or he was a ‘devout Christian’,2489 as though the propositions excuse his genocidal behaviour, or deny it in the supposed absence of mens rea or – for that matter - any jurisprudential evidence or case law that show intentionality, but these are examples of cP without logical regard to P. The utilitarian view of Arthur’s morality AGL Shaw writes in the Australian Dictionary of Biography: He believed that the 'heart of every man' was 'desperately wicked'; one 'must preach Christ crucified and faith in Him' as the only means of salvation, have 'always in view the nearness of Eternity' though not dwelling 'too much in Faith, setting at nought good works' for 'the latter are the result of the former'. 2490 1231 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited For a contrarian view against Tasmanian genocide, see Henry Reynolds (2004), Genocide in Tasmania?: 130 [Genocide and Settler Society Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, ed A. Dirk Moses]. Arthur arrived in Tasmania in 1824 predisposed to humanitarian policies towards the Aborigines. He was an evangelical Christian. Reynolds concludes [:147] Whether Governor Arthur strayed over the unmarked border between warfare to genocide cannot be answered with any certainty. As always, it depends on what is meant by genocide. Reynolds’ is a conclusion whose logic we will challenge throughout this companion book. 2491 We will show a pattern of displacive British behaviour that was driven by Government dispossessory policy for which the melancholy outcome was rolling genocide, tribe by tribe, until all resistance was overcome across each contested area. For the Aboriginal survivors, deportation and segregation soon followed, where culture and ethnicity were sacrificed to settler sovereignty. For example, we cannot logically assert the proposition: (P) [‘Arthur was a humanitarian’] therefore (cP) [‘he could not commit genocide’]. for which the British Government’s policy objective (intent) was clear: (P) [‘displace or remove the Palawa from Tasmania’] (cP) [‘for the greater good of Empire and the settlers’]. It may not have begun this way: ‘civilizing’ the Blacks (including the Palawa) was an early British option, partially consistent with a general British Government instruction for its newly appointed colonial Governors to ‘conciliate their affections’. Conciliation involved ‘civilizing’. By ‘civilizing’, Britain meant (at first) attempting to Christianize their new ‘subjects’ before turning them to pliant servitude; but determined Indigenous resistance to disruptive settlerism made genocide more attractive, certainly more expedient. Britain remained ambivalent about whether the members of Aboriginal society were British subjects or enemy combatants, whether they were civilians who were breaking British law or adversaries under the rules of warfare. The dilemma was never satisfactorily resolved; some guerrilla fighters were hanged; others were appeased in the hope they might influence their fellows to accept British rule. But ‘British subject’ suggests ‘British civilian’ or ‘citizen’: Aboriginals were not recognized as citizens until 1967. And when their numbers were catastrophically reduced, more certain. Violent Aboriginal dispossession was never consistent with professed ‘conciliation’ following an armed invasion spearheaded by the military. Britain knew it, but the lure of rapacious hegemony and its economic benefits were too attractive for a narcissistic Empire entranced by its own image of racial superiority. Genocide was Arthur’s legacy in Tasmania and no public posturing or special pleading will change a jot of it, nor will advocacy on his or Britain’s behalf rewrite the intended outcome of what was 1232 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Government policy, the legalized theft of Aboriginal land. Arthur left Tasmania a wealthy man and was further rewarded with a promotion by a grateful British Government. The Palawa endured the ending of their world. But their survivors cling on. Where the gun and State-sponsored genocide forced the races apart, in the end miscegenation drew them together in a tentative alliance. Our discussion began with structural Australian genocide for which Tasmania is case instance and discovered that - embedded in its dysfunctional rule-based fabric - ecocide was woven like warp and weft threads, intertwined, a codeterminate embrace, that genocide and ecocide shared common behavioural comorbidities, the cancer of exploitation that leads to ethnic repression and the ‘tragedy of the commons’ and rots the body politic within its ever pressing constriction. This should not surprise us. What might surprise us is whether we collectively possess a capacity to learn from our mistakes, to overcome our persistent delusional response that shuts out reality with a ‘don’t say, don’t tell’ mantra of self-interest. When we reflect that Aboriginal ‘closing the gap’ is as far out of reach as ever, we may say ‘the targets are the problem, let’s remove the targets’, so Aboriginal disadvantage continues to fester without treatment. Whether our nature is perfectible remains an open question. Climate change is a wicked and hugely difficult issue. For as long as we argue, global warming and species extinction is someone else’s problem, we are doomed like Sisyphus to repeat the mistakes of pursuing jobs and growth over environmental and humanitarian concerns, an unattainable chimera forever out of reach. It is not clear if , as a species, we’ll survive, not this time. We may be unfit. APPENDICES We will summarize: • • • • • • • • • • Palawa prehistory Proper names, quotes, and notation Palawa population distribution (pre-invasion) Tasmanian invasive timeline: 1768 - 1858 Normalization strategy, that is, the methodology for instantiating the Plomley based clash model Normalized Plomley dataset Palawa death toll : 1823 – 1834 Tasmanian land grants: 1803 – 1823, 1825 Tasmanian British population 1804 – 1836, 1824 - 1833 Graphs of land alienation and Aboriginal depopulation 1803 - 1833 1233 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited • • • • • • Modelling Lemkinian genocide in Tasmania The role of pastoralism, economics, and British law in Tasmanian genocide The role of sexual predation, miscegenation, abduction, and cultural destruction in Tasmanian genocide The role of the ‘black war’, martial law, and forced detention in Tasmanian genocide The role of introduced disease in Tasmanian genocide Conversions 1234 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Conversions Imperial to Decimal Length 1 yard 0.9 metres 1 mile 1.6 kilometres (Kms) Area2492 1 acre 4,047 sq. mtrs. (0.4 hectares) Volume 1 pint 0.56 litres 1 gallon 4.5 litres Currency (ca. 2010)2493 1 penny (UK) 0.7 cents (AU) 1 shilling (UK) 8 cents (AU) 1 pound (UKP) 1.6 dollars (AUD) Weight 1 ounce (oz) 28 grams (gms) 1 pound (lb) 0.45 kilograms (Kg) 1235 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Selected Bibliography Abbreviations AJCP Australian Joint Copying Project BT Bonwick Transcripts (Appendices to Bigge Report, 1891 – 1821) CO Colonial Office CSO Colonial Secretary’s Office FWAYAF For We are Young and Free HRA Historical Records of Australia HRNSW Historical Records of New South Wales ML Mitchell Library SL State Library (by state). SA State Archives (by state) V&P Votes and Proceedings (by state) Biographies http://adb.anu.edu.au Primary Sources – Archival Colonial Secretary’s Papers Court of Criminal Judicature Land Titles Office Index and Registers of Assignment 1800 – 1825, ML A3609 – A3620 Unpublished Manuscripts Primary Sources - Published Historical Records of Australia (HRA), Series 1, edited Frederick Watson Historical Records of Australia (HRA), Resumed Series 3, volume 1 – 6. Historical Records of Australia (HRA), Resumed Series 3 (1997 - 2013), volume 7 - 10, edited Peter Chapman. An invaluable reference to the official Government despatches of the time, which had previously only been available, with some effort, through the Colonial Office records. Focus is on Van Diemens Land, with despatches to and from Britain. Historical Records of Australia, Series 1, Volumes 1 – 26, Index compiled by Elizabeth Hook (CD ROM), Gould Genealogy, 2004 Historical Records of Australia, Series 1, Volumes 1 – 26, 1788 - 1848 (CD ROM), Gould Genealogy, 2009 www.archivecdbooks.com.au Originally published by The Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1925. Contains Governor’s despatches to and from England. An invaluable research tool for primary information. Beaglehole, J. C., The Endeavour Journals of Joseph Banks 1768 – 1771, two volumes, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1962 Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes, William Ball, Aldine Chambers, Paternoster Row and Hatchard and Son, Piccadilly, 1837; republished by The Cornell University Library Digital Collections (no ISBN or date) and also available online 1236 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited http://catalog.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=6357526&DB=local from the Cornell University Library, last viewed on 21st April, 2009. The report is quite lengthy, 140 pages, but sobering. It confirms that the British Government was fully aware of the atrocities being committed in its name. To view the entire electronic record, click on the above address for the catalogue record and then click on the electronic link provided in the record. Once you open the book, you may wish to change the viewing from “image” to “text”. If so, from the first page of the manuscript, go to the top left menu, under Format, and change Image to Text. www.library.cornell.edu Digitised transcript from the Harvard College Library is also available at https://ia600406.us.archive.org/34/items/parliamentarypa38unkngoog/parliamentarypa38unk ngoog.pdf Surprisingly, there does not appear to be any Australian online source. The printed version is available from the United States through Cornell University. It is an important document. It is also available electronically from the British House of Commons, through any authorised library. Tasmania: Index to Walch’s Tasmanian almanacs: magistracy and Police Department, 1863 – 1979/ 80/ compiled by Launceston Branch, Tasmanian Family History Society http://srlopac.slq.qld.gov.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=652522 Tasmania: Hobart Town gazette [electronic resource] http://srlopac.slq.qld.gov.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=784524 British House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (BHCPP) Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all Correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the Subject of the Military Operations Carried on against the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land (1831), Vol. 19, No. 259 [available online through an authorised library; also republished by the Tasmanian Historical Research Association (1971), ed. A.G.L. Shaw] Report of Commissioner Bigge on the State of Agriculture and Trade in New South Wales (1823), Vol. 10, No. 36 [available online through an authorised library] Aboriginal Tribes (1834), Vol. 44, No. 617 [available online through an authorised library] Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements) together with the minutes of evidence, appendix and index (5th August 1836), Vol. 7, No. 538 [available online through an authorised library] Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements) with the minutes of evidence, appendix and index (26th June 1837), Vol. 7, No. 425 [available online through an authorised library] In this seminal report, Britain had the chance to withdraw from its genocidal practices. It chose not to. Newspapers Available at http://trove.nla.gov.au Colonial Times (CT) The Hobart Town Courier (HTC) Hobart Town Gazette (HTG) 1237 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Archives The State Archives, Hobart Tasmania Archives Office of Tasmania (AOT) Colonial Secretary’s Office Papers (CSO) The Mitchell Library, Sydney Sir George Arthur Papers 1821 – 1855, volume 4, Correspondence ML CYA 2164 Sir George Arthur Papers 1821 - 1855, volume 28, Aborigines ML CY 1025 Van Diemen’s Land Company Records 1824 – 1954 ML FM 4/1564, 4/1567 The New South Wales State Archives Index to Land Grants, Van Diemen’s Land https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/series/1219 Theses UTAS theses are available at http://eprints.utas.edu.au PJ Boyce (2006), An environmental history of British settlement in Van Diemen’s Land The making of a distinct people 1798 – 1831, University of Tasmania. Graeme Calder (2009), Levée, line and martial law: a history of the dispossession of the Mairremmener people of Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1832, University of Tasmania Nicholas Clements (2013), Frontier Conflict in Van Diemen’s Land, University of Tasmania Bronwyn Desailly (1977), The Mechanics of Genocide Colonial Policies and Attitudes Towards the Tasmanian Aborigines, 1824 – 1836, University of Tasmania Ian McFarlane (2002), Aboriginal Society in North West Tasmania: Dispossession and Genocide, University of Tasmania John McMahon (1995), The British Army and the Counter-Insurgency Campaign with particular reference to the Black Line, Master of Humanities, University of Tasmania http://eprints.utas.edu.au/16331/2/mcMahon-part-thesis.pdf Leonie C. Mickleborough (2002), Colonel William Sorell Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land 1817 – 1824 An examination of his convict system and establishment of free settlement http://eprints.utas.edu.au/11816/1/Sorell_Thesis.pdf PJ Dowling (2011), A Great Deal of Sickness Introduced diseases among the Aboriginal People of colonial Southeast Australia 1788 – 1900, Doctor of Philosophy Thesis, Australian National University https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/.../02Whole_Dowling.pdf Primary Sources James Atkinson (1826), An account of the state of agriculture and grazing in New South Wales John Thomas Bigge (1822 - 1823), Reports of the commissioner of inquiry on the state of the colony of New South Wales James Bischoff (1832), Sketch of the History of Van Diemen’s Land Bischoff’s history is focused on how Tasmania could be exploited, including his role in the Van Diemen’s Land Company. He James Bischoff (1832), Sketch of the History of Van Diemen’s Land Bischoff’s history is focused on how Tasmania could be exploited, including his role in the Van Diemen’s Land Company. He was probably the first outside Government to publish official despatches from 1828 to 1831 on Arthur’s military campaign against the Palawa. James Calder (1875), Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits, &c., of the native tribes of Tasmania (reprinted 1972, facsimile edition) 1238 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Government Statistician (J. E. Calder), Mitchell Library, Q319.6/T Clyde Company Papers Volume IV 1846 – 1850, ed. PL Brown, 1959. William E.L.H. Crowther, The final phase of the extinct Tasmanian race 1847 – 1876: being an epilogue to the 6th Halford Oration, Canberra, A.C.T., 23.11.1933, ed. W.F. Ellis 1974 Edward Curr (1824), An account of the colony of Van Diemen’s Land, principally designed for the use of emigrants. George Frankland (1837), Report of the transactions of the survey department of Van Diemen’s Land, from the foundation of the colony to the end of Colonel Arthur’s administration, addressed to his excellency Sir John Franklin KCH on his assuming the Government. RM Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850. Hartwell’s economic focus perpetuates the myth of an ‘empty island’ which had ‘no native civilization’ and an indigenous culture that was ‘too weak to cause serious conflict’. Hugh Munro Hull (1856), Statistical Account of Van Diemen’s land or Tasmania, from the date of its occupation by the British nation in 1804 to the end of the year 1823 compiled from official records in the office of the Colonial Secretary, published by order of His Excellency Sir H. E. F. Young, Mitchell Library, Sydney DSM Q319.6/T. This compendium also includes statistics for: 1824 – 1839; 1838 – 1841; 1842 – 1844; 1844 – 1846; 1847 – 1849; 1844 – 1853; 1855 – 1858. The unique set of documents is not that easy to locate; hence I have included the catalogue reference. Hugh M. Hull (1856), Statistical account of Van Diemen’s Land, or Tasmania, from the date of its occupation by the British nation in 1804 to the end of the year 1823. Hugh M. Hull (1866), Statistical Summary of Tasmania from the year 1816 to 1865 inclusive, Mitchell Library, Sydney Q319.6/H. This summary does not include land grants, only sales and rental. Nor is the population broken down into categories, for example, free, convicts and so on. For a more detailed statistical treatment, see Hull (1856). Hugh M. Hull (1859), The Experience of Forty Years in Tasmania. Anne McKay (1962), Journals of the land commissioners for Van Diemen’s Land 1826 – 28. Robert Montgomery Martin (1839), Statistics of the Colonies of the British Empire http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006693422 (last accessed March 2015) Henry Melville (1833), Van Diemen’s Land; comprising a variety of statistical and other information, likely to be interesting to the emigrant, as well as the general reader. Henry Melville (1836), The History of Van Diemen’s Land From the Year 1824 to 1835, inclusive During the Administration of Lieutenant Governor George Arthur, (ed. George Mackaness 1965) Melville was a trenchant critic of Arthur’s corruption. Mary Nicholls ed. (1977), The diary of the reverend Robert Knopwood 1803 – 1838 first chaplain of Van Diemen’s Land. Also available as a CD from Tasmanian Historical Research Association. Louisa Anne Meredith (1852), My Home in Tasmania (two volumes) NJB Plomley (1983), The Baudin Expedition and the Tasmanian Aborigines NJB Plomley, Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834 (2008) NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgensen and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land Van Diemen’s Land, Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land (1971), Introduced by A.G.L. 1239 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Shaw. This is also available online through an authorised library from the British House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (1831) Vol. 19, No. 259, Tasmanian Historical Research Association. A compelling account based on official (redacted) despatches of Britain’s final military campaign against the Palawa. Report of the Aborigines Committee (1830), commissioned by Governor Arthur, HRA 3/9: 202 – 236. Provided Britain’s justification for the final Palawa solution. Van Diemen’s Land Record Exiled Three Times Over and Land Musters, Stock Returns and Lists 1803 – 1822. Irene Shaffer. CD available from www.archivebooks.com.au RJ Ryan ed. (1981), Land Grants. Secondary Sources Bain Attwood, The Stolen Generations and genocide: Robert Manne’s In denial: the Stolen Generations and the Right , http://press.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ch1032.pdf Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock, Peter Menzies (editors) (2012), The Oxford Handbook of Causation M. M. Bennett 1930), The Australian Aboriginal as a Human Being Geoffrey Blainey (1980), A Land Half Won. Blainey is a genocide denialist who argues against what he calls ‘a black armband view of history’. In consequence, he can be seen as a revisionist historian with little regard for the verifiable evidence, more concerned with speculation than fact in order to support his particular reflexive bias and populist narrative that most Aboriginal deaths were caused by intertribal warfare and disease, not policy-led Lemkinian destruction. J. Bonwick (1870), The Last of the Tasmanians: or, The Black War of Van Diemen’s Land. Bonwick lived and worked in the Hobart area from 1841 to 1849, where he was influenced by Henry Melville. He developed a thesis that would become familiar in various publications for the next century or more: that the destruction of the Palawa was due to well-intentioned but failed British ‘conciliation’ policy carried out by a succession of ‘humanitarian’ governors on behalf of the British Government, a theme briefly introduced by West around two decades before. Shayne Breen (2001), Contested Places: Tasmania's Northern Districts from Ancient Times to 1900. Also available online from academia.edu. Provides a compelling insight into the destruction of the Pallittorre people near Quamby Bluff, on the Western Marshes south west of Deloraine, a place where I lived as a child, oblivious to its history. James Boyce (2008), Van Diemen’s Land Patrick Brantlinger (1988), Rule of Darkness British literature and Imperialism, 1830 – 1914 Patrick Brantlinger (2003), Dark Vanishings Discourse on the extinction of primitive races, 1800 – 1930 Nick Brodie (2017), The Vandemonian War The secret history of Britain’s Tasmanian invasion. Noel G. Butlin (1993), Economics and the Dreamtime Noel G. Butlin (1998), Our Original Aggression James Calder (1875), Some Accounts of the Wars, Extirpation, Habits, etc. Of the Native Tribes of Tasmania. Graeme Calder (2010), Levée, Line and Martial Law: a history of the dispossession of the Mairremmener people of Van Diemen’s land 1803 - 1832 A.H. Campbell (1987), John Batman and the Aborigines 1240 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Judy Campbell (2002), Invisible Invaders Smallpox and Other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia 1780 – 1880 Manning Clark (1962 – 1967), A History of Australia. Clark begins his six-volume tome with ‘Civilization did not begin in Australia until the last quarter of the eighteenth century’. He barely mentions Aboriginal society and then usually dismissively, setting the investigative approach for other historians, including Geoffrey Blainey. Clark does not mention genocide but rather, his focus is on heroic colonizing achievement, settler supremacy and evolving de jure sovereignty. Nicholas Clements (2014), The Black War John Connor (2005), The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838 David Davies (1973), The Last Of The Tasmanians Edward Duyker ed. (1992), The Discovery of Tasmania Journal extracts of Abel Janszoon Tasman and Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne 1642 and 1772. Josephine Flood (1995), Archaeology of the Dreamtime The story of prehistoric Australia and its people. Bill Gammage (2011), The Biggest Estate on Earth How Aborigines Made Australia. R.W. Giblin (1939), The Early History of Tasmania R. M. Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850 Frank Horner (1987), The French Reconnaissance: Baudin In Australia 1801-1803. Robert Hughes (1987), The Fatal Shore. Tom Lawson (2014), The Last Man A British Genocide in Tasmania (Robert Manne (Ed.), Whitewash On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2003) Mark Levene (2008), Genocide in the Age of the Nation State The Meaning of Genocide Mark Levene (2013), Genocide in the Age of the Nation State The Rise of the West and the Coming of Genocide Mark Levene and Penny Roberts (1999), The Massacre in History Harry Lourandos (1997), Continent of Hunter-Gatherers: New Perspectives on Australian Prehistory Robert Manne ed. (2003), Whitewash On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History Ian McFarlane, Murray Johnson (2015), Van Diemen’s Land An Aboriginal History. Leonie Mickleborough (2004), William Sorell in Van Diemen’s Land, Lieutenant Governor, 1817 – 24, A Golden Age Ian McFarlane (2008), Beyond Awakening: The Aboriginal Tribes of North West Tasmania - a History Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania A. Dirk Moses, Moving the genocide debate beyond the history wars, http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/114.pdf A. Dirk Moses, Genocide, Australian Humanities Review 55 (November 2013) http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-November2013/AHR55_2_Moses.pdf Dirk Moses (ed), (2010) Empire, Colony, Genocide Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History Mudrooroo (1992), Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World NJB Plomley (1983), The Baudin expedition and the Tasmanian Aborigines 1802, Blubber Head Press, Hobart, 1983 1241 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence A history of the Flinder’s Island Aboriginal establishment NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgensen and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: being a reconstruction of his ‘lost’ book on their customs and habits NJB (Brian) Plomley (1993), The Tasmanian Aborigines NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission: the Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829 - 1834 Cassandra Pybus (1992), Community of Thieves Cassandra Pybus (2020), Truganini Journey through the apocalypse Henry Reynolds (1987), The Law of the Land. Henry Reynolds (1989), Dispossession Black Australians and White Invaders. Henry Reynolds (1995), The Fate of a Free People Henry Reynolds (1999), Why Weren’t We Told? Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain H. Ling Roth (1899), The Aborigines of Tasmania CD Rowley (1972), The Destruction of Aboriginal Society Aboriginal Policy and Practice Volume 1. Rowley was one of the first historians and Aboriginal rights activists to focus their gaze on the role of Government policy in the destruction of Aboriginal society, with scattered references to Tasmania. He does not mention genocide although he does use other terms such as ‘obliteration’. Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians (2nd edition) Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: a history since 1803 Lyndall Ryan, List of multiple killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 – 1835, Online Encyclopaedia of Mass Violence www.massviolence.org/List-of-multiple-killings-of-Aboriginesin-Tasmania-1804?cs=print last accessed 29 October 2015 Ernest Scott (1911), Terre Napoleon, A History of French Explorations and Projects in Australia http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00067.html Jacques Semelin (2005), Purify and Destroy The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide Bill Stanner (1936 – 1979, 2011), After the Dreaming and Other Essays (introduction by Robert Manne) Colin Tatz, Confronting Australian Genocide, Aboriginal History 2001 Vol 25, and Genocide in Australia, Research Discussion Paper, AIATSIS, Number 9, 1999. http://www.kooriweb.org/gst/genocide/tatz.html Tindale, Norman B, Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits and Proper Names, with an Appendix on Tasmanian Tribes by Rhys Jones, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1974 Irreplaceable source, never surpassed, long out of print. So much of our valuable history is disappearing from easy access. Libraries have no or limited funds to digitize references for online access. Clive Turnbull (1948, 1965), Black War The extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines John West (1852), The History of Tasmania, ed. A.G.L. Shaw, Melbourne, 1981. Also http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/n00012.html West concludes: ‘the assumption of sovereignty over a savage people is justified by necessity that law, which gives to strength the control of weakness’. Keith Windschuttle (2002), Fabrication of Aboriginal History: volume one, Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1847 1242 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Endnotes 1 See, for example: John Coates (2006), An Atlas of Australian Wars. Stylized. On display at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston. https://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/DOWLING/Default.cfm?IRN=192011&BioArtistIRN=22797&mystartrow=13&realstar trow=13&MnuID=3&GalID=3&ViewID=2 3 https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/P/Palawa%20Voice.htm 4 https://soe.dcceew.gov.au/ 5 See, for example: Ray Gibbons (2020), On Values: the origin of Australia’s rule-based order. 6 Copy of a despatch, Downing Street, 20th February 1829, Van Diemen’s Land, Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land: 8, Great Britain-House of Commons Paper 259 of 1831. Also HRA 3/8: 262. 7 NJB Plomley ed. (2008), Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson: 278. 8 See for example, the extensive works of NJB Plomley. 9 Government Order No. 2, Colonial Secretary’s Office, 25th February 1830, HRA 3/9: 201. The bounty is for any captured Aboriginal, but ‘roving parties’ often killed in order to capture, with no questions asked under Arthur’s martial law proclamation. Also see Peter Chapman’s note, Ibid, pp. 141 – 142. 10 Mudrooroo (2019), Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World. Wooreddy accompanied Robinson on Arthur’s ‘friendly mission’ of ethnic cleansing. NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission https://www.academia.edu/4801570/Friendly_Mission_The_Tasmanian_journals_and_papers_of_George_August us_Robinson_1829_1834_by_N._J._B._Plomley 11 Many writers of history claim Arthur as a humanitarian (ADB, Henry Reynolds, even NJB Plomley) but this document will argue otherwise based upon what he did rather than what he said. 12 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 13 See Part 2: The role of the British Government in Tasmanian genocide. 14 Thomas Kuhn (1962), The Structure of Scientific Revolution; Karl Popper (1980), The Logic of Scientific Discovery. 15 Anthony Giddens (1978), Central Problems in Social Theory Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis: 243 16 Ray Gibbons, Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa, Part 2 (draft). 17 Ray Gibbons (2021), Whitewash the rewriting of Genocidal repression in Tasmania (draft) 18 See, for example: John Berger (1972), Ways of Seeing; Donald Hoffman (2019), The Case Against Reality 19 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/plomley-norman-james-brian-18742 20 If the reader does a google or other search on Plomley aboriginal settler clash 1803 – 1831 you will find a nocharge pdf that can be downloaded from www.qvmqg.tas.gov.au 21 See HRA 3/9, Appendix 13: 1046 – 1052. 22 Plomley’s source for ‘clashes: CSO 1/316 and colonial newspapers which, by themselves, could not be complete. NJB Plomley (1992), The Aboriginal/ Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1831. Plomley ‘clashes’ included robberies and other acts of physical violence. 23 NJB Plomley (1992), The Aboriginal/ Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1831: 3 24 In 2013, Nicholas Clements carefully compiled an extended clash list for both white and black antagonists; he limited clashes to those involving casualties. Nicholas Clements (2013), Frontier Conflict in Van Diemen’s Land: 279 – 331. https://eprints.utas.edu.au/17070/2/Whole-Clements-thesis.pdf Nicholas readily admits that the scale of the violence may be larger than his dataset reveals, but it is currently the best representation he (or we) have. With an incomplete evidentiary record, Gibbons suggests that the pattern of clashes can tell us much about the nature of the conflict, like taking an aerial survey of a forest fire to determine its geospatial scope and intensity. For this purpose, the Plomley dataset is adequate; the Clements extended dataset would merely extend the datapoint density, while limiting any incidents to those involving reported killing. 25 In 2013, Lyndall Ryan obtained a research grant to develop an Australia wide database of conflicts, building on the work of various researchers including herself, and using publicly available resources. 2 1243 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/ This URL can be drilled down into location metrics, metadata, primary sources, and number killed Centre For 21st Century Humanities (newcastle.edu.au) [Newcastle: University of Newcastle, 2017-2020, http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1340762 (accessed 2H20). Funded by ARC: DP 140100399.] In this 4D rendering of massacre data in Tasmania between 1803 and 1833, we are primarily interested in the event descriptor, date, GPS decimal location, and number killed. 26 Jane Morrison began her research in 1971 https://australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/ but datapoints do not show number killed. For example: Australian Frontier Conflicts – Map – Australian Frontier Conflicts → https://australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/maps/conflict-map-of-tasmania/ → shows summary event description, GPS location, and date but not expanded details of numbers killed or primary sources. 27 https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/list-multiple-killingsaborigines-tasmania-1804-1835.html Lyndall Ryan (2008), List of Multiple Killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 – 1835. Lyndall Ryan (2008), Massacre in the Black War in Tasmania: a case study of the Meander River Region, June 1827 https://www.academia.edu/28754959/Massacre_in_the_Black_War_in_Tasmania_1823_34_a_case_study_of_th e_Meander_River_Region_June_1827 Shayne Breen (2011), Extermination, Extinction, Genocide: British colonialism and Tasmanian Aborigines https://www.academia.edu/2474043/Extermination_Extinction_Genocide_British_Colonialism_and_Tasmanian_A borigines Shayne Breen (2012), Contested Places: Tasmanian Northern Districts from ancient times to 1900 https://www.academia.edu/1231178/Contested_Places_Tasmanias_Northern_Districts_from_ancient_times_to_1 900_Part_1 Ann Curthoys (2010), Genocide in Tasmania: the history of an idea: 229 – 252, in Empire, Colony, Genocide, ed. A. Dirk Moses 28 https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide-convention.shtml https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocitycrimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20 Genocide.pdf 29 https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/what-is-genocide 30 In winter 2007, Griffith University published a wry reference to these ‘unintended consequences’ of British invasion: Griffith Review, ed. Julianne Schultz, Unintended Consequences. Among the many contributors, Noel Pearson tendentiously argues that ‘white guilt’ encourages Indigenous ‘victim-hood’ and that Black Rights should be black responsibilities in a new form of reconciliation. However, it is not evident that ‘white guilt’ is a commonly shared belief in our increasingly multi-cultural society. Some politicians go further: in rejecting responsibility for the past (‘I don’t kill Aboriginals’) they allow past mistakes to be repeated anew by denying Aboriginal society a supportive voice in the Constitution or denying them dual naming rights to towns and landscapes, or the right to reclaim their heritage, or refusing to recognize the celebratory appellation Australia Day is a slap in the face for those who were invaded. Such behaviour is an extended form of Lemkinian repression. 31 Ray Gibbons (2015), The Australian Land War and Aboriginal Depopulation. 32 Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain?: 27 33 This is meant ironically, to highlight the inconsistency in Reynold’s logic. 34 Evans estimates that, in Queensland in 1862, the pastoral frontier was advancing at the rate of 200 miles a year (about 320 kms) Evans, Raymond, ACROSS THE QUEENSLAND FRONTIER in Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience, eds Bain Attwood and S.G. Foster (2003): 63 – 75. We note that the distance from Hobart to Launceston, from the south of the island to the north, is 202 kms. 35 Allan Hillier (199x?), If you leave me alone I’ll leave you alone Bibliographical sketches, reports, and incidents from the myall war of the Queensland Native Mounted Police Force, 1860 – 1885. 36 https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/T/Truganini.htm 37 Cassandra Pybus (1992), Community of Thieves: 128 – 129. For Robinson’s originating account, see: NJB Plomley ed (1996), Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834: 805 – 814. 38 Lyndall Ryan (2008), List of Multiple Killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 – 1835; Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: Appendix 1 (no sources provided); Lyndall Ryan (2008), Massacre in the Black War in Tasmania 11823 – 34 a case study of the Meander River Region June 1827 1244 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited https://www.academia.edu/28754959/Massacre_in_the_Black_War_in_Tasmania_1823_34_a_case_study_of_the _Meander_River_Region_June_1827 Shayne Breen (2012), Contested Places: Tasmania’s Northern Districts from Ancient Times to 1900 https://www.academia.edu/1231178/Contested_Places_Tasmanias_Northern_Districts_from_ancient_times_to_1 900_Part_1 Shayne Breen (), Extermination, Extinction, Genocide: British Colonialism and Tasmanian Aborigines https://www.academia.edu/2474043/Extermination_Extinction_Genocide_British_Colonialism_and_Tasmanian_A borigines 39 Op Cit (2008) Lyndall Ryan, list of multiple killings. 40 Robert Hughes (1988), The Fatal Shore: 126-127. 41 HRA 3/9: 574 42 https://australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/about/about-the-author/ https://australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/timelines/some-known-frontier-conflicts-in-tasmania/ 43 Rhys Jones (1969), Fire-stick farming, Australian Natural History 16: 224. 44 G Hardin (1968), The tragedy of the commons https://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243 45 Murray to Arthur, 5 November 1830, HRA 3/9: 573-574 46 Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania creating an antipodean England 47 Henry Melville (1836), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 to 1835, inclusive During the Administration of Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur, ed. George Mackaness (1965): 122 - 123. 48 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/arthur-sir-george-1721 49 Shirley M. Franks (1958), Land Exploration in Tasmania, 1824 – 1842: 9 – 10 https://eprints.utas.edu.au/17322/1/Whole-franks-thesis.pdf.pdf Also see RM Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850: 58 – 61; Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania creating an antipodean England: 25-41. 50 Lyndall Ryan (2008), LIST OF MULTIPLE KILLINGS OF ABORIGINES IN TASMANIA: 1804-1835 https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/list-multiple-killings-aboriginestasmania-1804-1835.html 51 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide (prepublication draft available on request) 52 All the aborigines have been removed to an island in Bass’s Straits, so that Van Diemen’s Land enjoys the great advantage of being free from a native population. Charles Darwin (1845), The Voyage of the ‘Beagle’: 446 - 447 53 The author has developed a similar dynamic map for Queensland between 1820 and 1920, based upon the work of Robert Orsted-Jensen, Raymond Evans, Alan Hillier, Timothy Bottoms, Ray Gibbons, Lyndall Ryan, and that of other researchers without whom we would be much poorer in our understanding of contested spaces. Such 4D maps provide us with insight into our past pathological behavior and point to the looming GIS dynamics of what may happen in the largest contested space of all, the Earth, as we lurch into global warming. 54 For a commentary by Peter Chapman on this significant massacre event, see HRA 3/9: 825 – 829. Also AGL Shaw (ed), Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence: 51-54; Lyndall Ryan (2004), Risdon Cove and the Massacre of 3 May 1804: Their Place in Tasmanian History, Tasmanian Historical Studies, 9: 107 – 123; HRA 3/1: 238, 242, 243, 282. 55 A canonical data model has a single consistent set of attributes for each instance. 56 Lyndall Ryan’s Colonial Frontier Massacres 1788 – 1930 https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/ using Jane Morrison’s massacre data for Tasmania as a type comparative reference https://australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/ www.AustralianFrontierConflicts.com Ryan provides geolocation data (longitude, latitude) but Morrison does not. 57 Also see terminology in the Appendix to this paper. 58 Macquarie International English Dictionary. 59 Ray Gibbons (2020), On Values: the origin of Australia’s rule-based order. 60 Ronald Hyam (1993), Britain’s Imperial Century, 1815 – 1914: A Study of Empire and Expansion: 76. 61 See, for example: https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/data/Our-Future-World 62 Ray gibbons (2020), On Values: the origins of Australia’s social order https://www.academia.edu/42883523/On_Values_the_origins_of_Australias_social_order 63 See, for example: U Sandler, L Tsitolovsky (2017), The S-Lagrangian and a theory of homeostasis in living systems Physica A. Statistical Mechanics and its Application, Vol 471, April 2017: 540 – 553 1245 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437116310287#:~:text=Eqs.,depends%20on%20the%20s ystem's%20history. 64 https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/criminal-law/actusreus/#:~:text=Actus%20reus%20is%20commonly%20defined,qualify%20as%20an%20actus%20reus. 65 Scientific American, November 2020: 8 referring to https://www.c40.org/global-green-new-deal 66 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/08/climate-crisis-experts-2020-joint-hottest-year-everrecorded?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=3f16438691-briefing-dy20210111&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-3f16438691-44944597 67 See James Bellich, Replenishing the Earth The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783 – 1939, 2009; Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly, 1984; Patrick Braitlinger, Rule of Darkness, British Literature and Imperialism, 1988; E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 1966; Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State, 2005; Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, 2008. 68 Compact Oxford English Dictionary 69 At this time, Britain’s population was not particularly high, but an industrializing economy meant fewer opportunities for traditional manual skills. The ‘enclosure of the commons’ by landed gentry had displaced many British farm workers. The Americas had been lost. France was threatening, with its revolution. People were migrating to cities, but the infrastructure was inadequate, and jobs were few. Emigration seemed a solution, along with transportation for troublemakers. And containing the French influence in the South Pacific. 70 Jared Diamond (1999), Guns, Germs, and Steel The Fates of Human Societies: 405 – 425. Also see: David Rindos (1984), The Origins of Agriculture and Settled Life; Carl Sauer (1952), Agricultural Origins and Dispersals; Harry Lourandos (1997), Continent of Hunter Gatherers New Perspectives in Australian Prehistory. 71 http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Carroll-Quigley-TheEvolutionOfCivilizationsAnIntroductionToHistoricalAnalysis-1st&2nd-Editions.pdf 72 http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/the-kardashev-scale-type-i-ii-iii-iv-v-civilization/ 73 John Connor (2005), The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838: 7 - 10 74 James Belich, Replenishing the Earth The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783 – 193: 49 – 78. 75 Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly: 115 – 134. 76 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class: 86 – 103. B.H. Fletcher http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/phillip-arthur-2549 78 John Cobley (1989), The Crimes of the First Fleet Convicts: viii 79 John Cobley (1989), The Crimes of the First Fleet Convicts, pp. vii, viii, 21 77 80 www.australianhistoryresearch.info/the-first-fleet/ Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore The Epic of Australia’s Founding, p. 168. Ibid, (pp. 158 – 203. 83 We can surmise from these figures that the total number of transportees to Australia from 1803 to 1853 was around 167,000. Around 40,000 of these were Irish. Some were political prisoners from the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the 1803 Rising of Robert Emmett and the Young Ireland Skirmishes of 1848. 84 Citing an estimate for Van Diemen’s Land based in information from the Archives Office of Tasmania. 85 Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, The Companion to Tasmanian History http://www.utas.edu.au/tasmaniancompanion/biogs/E000227b.htm http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Convicts.htm citing PR Eldershaw, Guide to Public Records of Tasmania, Section Three, Convict Department Records Group, AOT: 62 86 Citing LL Robson (1965), The Convict Settlers Of Australia. 87 CMH Clark, The Origins of the Convicts Transported to Eastern Australia, 1797 – 1852, Historical Studies, 7, 1956. Manning Clark had the uncharitable view, shared with Robson, that many convicts deserved their sentence because of their felonious character. Neither passes judgment on the often horrific circumstances of penal servitude that bring grave discredit to the British Government. 88 Robert Hughes (1987), The Fatal Shore a history of transportation of convicts to Australia 1787 – 1868: 165. 89 John Cobley (1989), The Crimes of the First Fleet Convicts 81 82 1246 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 90 We discuss Stanley Milgram’s disturbing social experiment in Context, History as a behavioural landscape. For an interesting perspective on the inhumane British convict system, see http://www.ironbarkresources.com/slaves/whiteslaves10.htm 91 http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~fianna/oc/oznz/pasconau.html ‘Between 1791 and 1853 approximately 26,500 Irish people were transported to N.S.W., many for trivial offences’. 92 http://abolition.e2bn.org/people_24.html 93 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Hill_convict_rebellion https://www.independent.ie/regionals/fingalindependent/localnotes/ballyboughal-commemoration-for-fallen-of1798-27785302.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_United_Irishmen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Rebellion_of_1798 94 Ibid. 95 http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/castle-hill-and-vinegar-hill-the-australian-rising-of1804/ https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/castle_hill_convict_rebellion_1804 http://monumentaustralia.org.au/australian_monument/display/22941 96 https://www.britannica.com/event/Chartism-British-history http://www.parliament.uk/about/livingheritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/chartists/overview/chartistmovement/ 97 http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/miller_linus_wilson_10E.html https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277666135_Revisiting_Linus_Miller's_'dark_picture_of_Van_Diemen's _Land' http://www.leatherwoodonline.com/history/2004/patriots/patriots1.htm 98 Linus Miller (1846), Notes of an Exile to Van Diemen’s Land. (380 pages). Miller’s book provides a further insight into the brutish Tasmanian penal system. https://archive.org/details/notesofexiletova00mill Only a third of the book is concerned with Miller’s incarceration in Tasmania. Miller’s book is available online from a Canadian website, but is not available from any Australian site, to the detriment of our history. 99 https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Famine-Irish-history 100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) 101 http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-rising-of-1848/ https://www.ucumberlands.edu/downloads/academics/history/vol15/kmace.html http://www.newhistorian.com/young-irelander-rebellion/4438/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Irelander_Rebellion_of_1848 https://irish-rebellions.wikispaces.com/4++The+Young+Irelanders+Rising+of+1848 102 William Cuffay (1788 – 1870) was the son of a freed slave and a prominent member of the Chartist movement. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/cuffay_william.shtml http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107707.html http://spartacus-educational.com/CHcuffay.htm 103 The Master and Servant Act 1854 made significant and harsh changes to its predecessor, the Servants and Apprentices' Act 1852 (Act no. 16 Vict. No. 23). This legislation included provision for solitary confinement in addition to hard labour as punishment for apprentices or employee's running away or using foul language. https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/tas/biogs/TE01069b.htm 104 William Smith O’Brien (1803 – 1864), Irish nationalist and son of a wealthy aristocrat. In 1847, O’Brien became leader of Young Ireland’s Irish Confederation. http://www.nli.ie/pdfs/mss%20lists/147_WilliamSmithOBrien.pdf In 1848- 1849, a petition is signed by thousands of his supporters, pleading for clemency. https://www.findmypast.com.au/articles/world-records/full-list-of-the-irish-family-history-records/militaryservice-and-conflict/william-smith-obrien-petition-1848 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Smith_O%27Brien 105 http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/13307926?selectedversion=NBD24593423 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/obrien-william-smith-2516 http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-centuryhistory/william-smith-obrien-in-van-diemans-land/ 106 https://books.google.com.au/books?id=4VUBAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y https://pdfyueduqi.ml/ebook/ebookstore-free-download-principles-of-government-v1-or-meditations-in-exile1856-pdf-by-william-smith-obrien.html https://ia601407.us.archive.org/18/items/principlesofgove00obriuoft/principlesofgove00obriuoft.pdf The 472 page pdf is available from an American site, but is not available from an Australian URL, contributing to the inaccessibility and poverty of our history. 107 In this case, the procedure is legislative and jurisprudential, with a political-ideological origin rooted in monarchic Imperialism and market-driven capitalism. 1247 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 108 In Part 3, we will see the extreme mortality figures for Aboriginals who were made captive by the British in Tasmania. 109 Arising from physics, there are two key questions: is Nature deterministic or non-deterministic? Is Nature local or non-local? We will examine these questions in Context. 110 John Connor (2005), The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 - 1838 111 Hyam, Ronald, Britain’s Imperial Century, 1815 – 1914: A Study of Empire and Expansion, Lanham, Barnes and Noble, 1993: 75 – 77. 112 Op. Cit., 75 – 77. We shall refer to this much neglected document in greater detail as we explore the reasons for ethnic cleansing. See Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes, (British Settlements), 1837. 114 Op. Cit. (Hyam):85; Michael Bladstock (2000): The Aborigines Report (1837): A case study in the slow change of colonial relations, The Canadian Journal of Native Studies XX, 1 (2000): 67 – 94, p. 90 113 http://www3.brandonu.ca/library/CJNS/20.1/cjnsv20no1_pg67-94.pdf 115 http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/34.%20Hunting%2C%20Fishing%20and%20Gathering%20Rights%3A%20Legis lation%20or%20Common%20Law%3F/australian-law 116 Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd in 1971. https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/documents/explore/ResearchPublications/BackgroundInformationBriefs/bib2 3rk.pdf 117 Australian Law Journal, 29, 1985, p. 346, cited by Henry Reynolds, The Law of the Land, p. 3 118 Ray Evans, “The Nigger Shall Disappear”, Race Relations in Colonial Queensland, p. 85, quoting S. Swan, Cloncurry, to C. Lilley, Chief Justice, 21st December 1891, Q.S.A., Col/A713, in letter no. 12790 of 1892. 119 For a more comprehensive discussion, see: Ray Gibbons (2020), On Values: the origins of Australia’s rule-based order 120 See Droit des Gens, Vol. 1, p. 18 and Law of Nations, p. 2. Also cited by Stéphane Beaulac, Emer de Vattel and the Externalization of Sovereignty, p. 250. 121 This is loosely based on Paul Keating’s Redfern speech. 122 Sir William Blackstone (1723 – 1780) was an English judge, jurist and professor who produced the influential historical and analytic treatise on the common law entitled Commentaries on the Laws of England, first published in four volumes over 1765 – 1769. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blackstone ] 123 Commentaries on the Laws of England, Bk I, Ch. 4, pp. 106-108. 124 This code, invented by Hollerith, was called Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC); for example, the letter A was coded as ‘C1’ (or ‘1010 0001’ in binary), the number ‘1’ was ‘F1’, special symbols such as ‘+’ or ‘.’ and so on all had their unique machine readable codes which could be read by various machines, allowing the designation, personal details and assignment or disposition of ‘undesirable’ members of the German population to be handled by the millions in a relatively short time, far shorter than an army of clerks might manage and with fewer errors. IBM was aware of German misuse of its 80-column punched card sorting, collating and tabulating machines, but with such a large account, how could they responsibly ignore the commercial opportunity? So they created a German subsidiary to flout the laws of the time, which embargoed certain trade with Germany. In such a way did IBM allow the automation of genocide. And in such a way did the American government turn a blind eye. Also see Edwin Black (2012), IBM and the Holocaust The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation. 125 Rawls, John, Theory of Justice, 1971. 126 Tony Abbott (2009), Battlelines. 127 For example: In 2017, the Turnbull Government spent around $220 million on a postal survey to ask Australians if they approved same sex marriage. The majority were already in favour, but Turnbull did not enact changes to the marriage act because it was opposed by right wing members of his party. Australia said ‘yes’ (around 60% of those who voted or around 48% of the eligible population). In December, same sex marriage became legal and lawful. By comparison, in 2017 Turnbull commissioned a group of eminent Aboriginals to make recommendations on greater Aboriginal inclusion in Government. The ‘Uluru statement’ was rejected in its entirety by Turnbull’s cabinet, with Turnbull stating that the Indigenous voice proposal was ‘not desirable’ and Barnaby Joyce calling it ‘overreach’. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/oct/26/indigenous-voice-proposal-not-desirable-says-turnbull 1248 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/sad-day-turnbull-government-rejects-indigenousreferendum-proposal-20171026-gz8mpj.html http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/federal/2017/05/29/uluru-proposal--overreach---barnaby-joyce.html 128 This wonderfully descriptive term comes from Henry Lawson when he put pen to the events of the 1891 shearers’ strike, which led to the formation of the Australian Labour Party: ‘They needn’t say the fault is ours/ If blood should stain the wattle’. 129 Bruce Elder (Blood on the Wattle, p. 58) attributes this quote to William Cox, landowner, at a Bathurst public meeting in 1824. 130 I asked Bruce about the provenance of this quote, but he could not recall. His book did not carry many footnotes and citations. He said that he had given all his collected source material to a shire library on the south coast for safekeeping. He had thought that his papers might be historically helpful to others in the community, but the library had thrown his work out to make room, for what is unclear, perhaps judging that his careful research was unimportant to preserve, along with all references to his sources. This is how our history is increasingly lost: through desiccation, thoughtlessness, and intellectual disrespect. In 1824, William would have been 60, his son George 29 and George Henry had just been born. 131 Rev. Threlkeld (1788 – 1859) http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/threlkeld-lancelot-edward-2734 Threlkeld was 36 in 1824. 132 Rev. L.E. Threlkeld, Australian Reminiscences and Papers, Missionary to the Aborigines 1824 – 1859, Volume I, edited by Niel Gunson, p. 95 133 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cox-william-1934 Willliam had a son George (1795 - 1868) http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/cox-george-15638 who had another son George Henry (1824 - 1901) http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cox-george-henry-3280 134 Memoirs of William Cox, J.P., Lieutenant, and Paymaster of N.S.W. Corps, or 102nd Regiment, Late of Clarendon, Windsor, William Brooks and Co., Sydney, 1901. 135 Lachlan Macquarie (1762 – 1824) was governor of New South Wales from 1809 to 1817, while Bathurst was Secretary of State. 136 After 1838, Britain continued to appoint colonial Governors and had considerable sway over each colony’s Executive Council, but its direct involvement gradually lessened as colonies became self-governing and up to Federation in 1901. However, Australia still considered itself beholden to the ‘mother country’ at least up to the 1960s. 137 Ray Gibbons (2015), ‘Conciliate the Affections of the Natives’: Governor Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet. 138 HRA 1/3: 366 - 367 139 HRA 1/3: 366 - 367 140 Lyn Stewart (2015), Blood Revenge murder on the Hawkesbury 1799: 19. 141 Hobart to King, 13th June 1802, HRNSW, Volume 4:788; Hobart pardoned the murderers for ‘their general good conduct’ from the time of the murders. British justice would never recover. 142 HRA 1/5: 496 - 504 143 HRA 1/12: 21. Earl Bathurst to Governor Darling, 14th July 1825. Despatch No. 6, per ship Catherine Stewart Forbest; acknowledged by Governor Darling, 5th May, 1826. 144 HRA 1/5: 502 - 504 145 Historical Records of Australia, Series I, Volume 19 ie HRA 1/19, Despatch No. 353, pp. 47 – 50. This is a Despatch from Lord Glenelg to Governor Bourke in 1837: admitting that Aboriginal land had been expropriated; but denying their right to armed resistance, which would acknowledge that they were ‘enemy combatants’; pressing the strategem that they should be treated as subjects of the Crown who, in resisting, could therefore be charged with a civil or criminal offence, according to British law, but without the right to provide evidence in court actions against whites, or in their own defence, or the right to own land, as would apply to a citizen. 146 Quoted in SD Lendrum, The “Coorong Massacre”: Martial Law and the Aborigines at First Settlement, p. 30, citing Emerich de Vattel (1714 – 1767); his Le Droit des Gens, ou Principes de la Loi Naturelle (1758) was by far the most frequently cited work on international law in the nineteenth century, at least before Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, which appeared in four volumes between 1767 and 1769. Smillie was referring to Bk. I, Ch. VII s.81. 1249 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 147 Ford, Lisa, Settler Sovereignty, Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia 1788 – 1836, 2010, pp. 158 – 182. 148 Ford, Lisa, Settler Sovereignty Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia 1788 – 1836, 2010, p. 188, also citing Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 149 For instance, British law in principle conferred the legal right not to be murdered, or segregated, or starved, or incarcerated and so on, irrespective of race, a principle which was comprehensively ignored in the British occupation of Australia. 150 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_referendum,_1967_(Aboriginals) has a valuable exposition on the context and outcome of the 1967 referendum; also John Pilger, A Secret Country, 1990, p. 46.]. 151 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-14/closing-the-gap-report-card-failing/8268450 Also see Peter Sutton (2011), The Politics of Suffering for a raw, impassioned account of continuing Aboriginal mistreatment, where decades of liberal consensus on Aboriginal issues has comprehensively failed to address deeply embedded Aboriginal community suffering and grief, both in policy and practice. 152 John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838, p. 120, citing Glenelg to Stirling, 7 March 1837, located in the 1835 correspondence file, NLA AJCP Reel 300 PRO CO18/15 ff 372-73. 153 HRA 3/ 19, p. 584, Glenelg to Gipps, Despatch No. 211, 15 September 1838. Also cited by John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838, p. 120. 154 This was the principal argument that the British politician Wilberforce (1759 – 1833) encountered when he tried to abolish the hugely profitable practice of slavery. 155 There is a fundamental dilemma between living rationally and leading a fulfilling life that is discussed by Ingmar Persson (2008), The Retreat of Reason A Dilemma in the Philosophy of Life. The pursuit of ‘happiness’ can induce short-term exploitative behaviour that may imperil rational long-term sustainability. The dilemma did not exist for Aboriginal society, where happiness was anchored in the dreamtime and executed in caring for their ‘mother’ the land. Time was measured in millennia, not days and weeks. Collective sharing eschewed private ‘ownership’ and an ethos of sustainability decried any concept of destructive exploitation. 156 See Joseph Stiglitz (2013), The Price of Inequality which is an indictment of neoliberalism and laissez-faire theories of trickle-down economics. Stiglitz (1943 - ) won the Nobel prize for economics in 2001. 157 There are many myths of early civilization, such as those in the book of Genesis ca 8 - 10kya, that have been treated as fables. Take the covenant with Noah and those ancient floods. But there is now evidence that such floods were real across Europe and the Americas, caused by the collapse of vast ice-bound lakes after the last ice age. https://phys.org/news/2017-06-collapse-european-ice-sheet-chaos.html http://cosmographicresearch.org/ice_age_floods.htm http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-biblical-typefloods-real-absolutely-enormous https://www.livescience.com/873-bursting-ice-dam-flooded-ancient-ocean.html 158 Under the Kyoto accord, Australia committed to reducing its GHG emissions by a mere 5% by 2020, compared with 2000 levels. http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/8443e0d0-e823-43dd-8b995e2996dfafb1/files/factsheet-australias-abatement-task.pdf http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/9437fe27-64f4-4d16-b3f1-4e03c2f7b0d7/files/austemissions-projections-2016.pdf http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-28/hamad-meat-the-hidden-culprit-ofclimate-change/5414894 However, we may not even reach that modest target, possibly because of the abolition of the carbon tax in 2014. A 2017 report, which the Government tried to suppress, shows that carbon emissions were increasing from 2014 to 2015, the period of the latest data. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-31/latestcarbon-emissions-data-shows-increases-in/8577374# 159 Methane (CH4) has around 30x the global warming potential of carbon dioxide (CO 2) https://ecometrica.com/assets/GHGs-CO2-CO2e-and-Carbon-What-Do-These-Mean-v2.1.pdf https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327111724.htm 160 http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/9309.0Media%20Release131%20Jan%202015 161 http://www.cartalk.com/content/global-warming-and-your-car-0 162 http://www.cattlecouncil.com.au/assets/Beef%20Fast%20Facts%202013_EMAIL.PDF 163 This figure is constantly being reassessed 164 https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/9437fe27-64f4-4d16-b3f1-4e03c2f7b0d7/files/austemissions-projections-2016.pdf see Figure 4 and Table 2 (page 6) for emission breakdown by sector. Emissions from agriculture are projected to remain steady; there is no abatement policy. 1250 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 165 Nor does Australia’s destructive rate of land clearing, a subject we will shortly address. Even with exclusions, Australia is unlikely to meet its modest 26 – 28% carbon reduction target by 2030. If there were no exclusions, Australia would fall well short of its Kyoto objective. Indeed, we would likely see a significant increase on 2000 carbon levels, although the climate modelling is sparse. Scientists advise us we need a 45% to 65% reduction on 2000 levels by 2030 and more thereafter. It is a discouraging picture. Colour it bleak. It seems the predatory practices that drove the extermination of Aboriginal society continue to shape our destruction of the Earth’s biosphere. We are witnessing destructive exploitation on steroids. 166 https://phys.org/news/2017-11-scientists-countries-negative-global-environmental.html http://scientists.forestry.oregonstate.edu/ 167 Compact Oxford English Dictionary. GE Robinson, AB Barron (2017), Epigenetics and the Evolution of Instincts. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28385970 169 For example, are the children of same sex couples more likely to be homosexual? A 2010 study suggest yes. WR Schummn (2010), Children of homosexuals more apt to be homosexuals? A reply to Morrison and to Cameron based on an examination of multiple sources of data https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20642872 170 For example, see: Shannon Sullivan (2015), The Physiology of Sexist and racist Oppression http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190250607.001.0001/acprof-9780190250607chapter-4 https://theconversation.com/if-were-not-careful-epigenetics-may-bring-back-eugenic-thinking-56169 171 For example, see: Ila Rani Fiete (2003) Learning and coding in biological neural networks, PhD Thesis, Harvard University https://www.physics.harvard.edu/uploads/files/thesesPDF/Fiete.pdf 172 Stanley Milgram (1963) Behavioural Study of Obedience https://www.birdvilleschools.net/cms/lib/TX01000797/Centricity/Domain/1013/AP%20Psychology/milgram.pdf 173 https://www.futurefarmers.com.au/young-carbon-farmers/the-changing-climate/australian-agriculturescontribution 168 174 https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/9437fe27-64f4-4d16-b3f1-4e03c2f7b0d7/files/austemissions-projections-2016.pdf Also see Peter Hannam, Sydney Morning Herald, August 5-6, 2017, p. 10: ‘Disgrace’: Australia’s greenhouse emissions rise accelerates. http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climatechange/australias-carbon-pollution-soars-government-data-shows-20170804-gxpd71.html 175 https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/07/labor-justified-targeting-trusts/ http://www.smh.com.au/national/whatever-you-do-dont-mention-the-trusts-20170406-gvf2pk.html 176 I borrow this term from Barbara Tuchman (1984), The March of Folly: 1. Barbara asks: ’Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?’ Barbara asserts (in equivalent terms) that history often lurches forward through a litany of mistakes and unplanned or poorly planned events. I go further: that critical thinking skills are not always evident in the political process, but it is not necessarily a poorly functioning ‘mental process’ that causes any problematical outcomes (what some historians call ‘unplanned consequences’) so much as a process for which greed and self-interest are too often the behavioural drivers of intentionality. 177 Ray Gibbons (2017), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination if the Palawa. This document includes a projected Aboriginal population, if Britain had not invaded in 1788. This projection is the more realistic estimate of Aboriginal depopulation. 178 For a transcript, see this document. 179 Queensland Aboriginal Act, 1971. ‘The Aboriginal Regulations’ of 1972, regulations 10, 11 and 14 (2). Also see Bill Rosser (1987), Dreamtime Nightmares. 180 Chloe Hooper (2008), The Tall Man Death and Life on Palm Island. 181 FWAYAF Deconstructing the Myth of Murdering Creek (2014) pp. xxix– lxli presents the summary case for Australian genocide, within the terms of the internationally agreed Convention. The full United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide can be found at www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide 182 Journals of G.A. Robinson, May to August 1841 (ed. Presland), Victorian Archaeological Survey, VAS 11, entry for 31 July. [See Ray Gibbons (2017), Recollections of a (homicidal) pastoral frontier 1788 – 1928] Robinson was the appointed Aboriginal Protector for Victoria in the early 1840s, but without any legal power to stop the killing or 1251 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited prosecute the perpetrators, he became an observer (only) to Aboriginal destruction, with La Trobe and his appointed administrators passively looking on. 183 The words have belatedly been changed in early 2021 to we are one and free, scarcely better, and no substitute for Constitutional recognition. 184 The occupation process is further outlined in FWAYAF Deconstructing colonial myths: the massacre at Murdering Creek and detailed in FWAYAF The Political Uses of Australian Genocide, which sets out the overall methodology and semantic typology for investigating the rise of settler sovereignty and the consequent destruction of Aboriginal society. A further source is Deconstructing Tasmanian genocide the extermination of the Palawa (available in draft) 185 One of these remote settlements was Weipa at Cape York, but when bauxite was discovered, Aboriginals were forcibly relocated in 1963 by the Queensland Government’s Aboriginal ‘Protector’ (Pat Killoran, a member of the far right wing repressive Bjelke-Petersen Government; see https://www.qld.gov.au/atsi/cultural-awareness-heritagearts/community-histories-new-mapoon/ ). Another was Maralinga, in the northern desert of South Australia, where Aboriginals were living relatively unmolested (or at least, not displaced) until the British Government demanded its use for nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s, whether or not Aboriginals remained there. Menzies (the Prime Minister) readily agreed. At the time, Aboriginals could not vote and could not protest. Some number perished from radiation poisoning. The land still remains off limits, made desolate. No one bothered to check the Aboriginal dead. Britain has never apologised, or accepted accountability, or offered reasonable compensation. The examples abound. Governments, both State and Federal, allowed Aboriginals to reclaim (but not own) land that appeared worthless, until some worth was discovered. See Ray Gibbons, FWAYAF Recollections from a (Homicidal) Frontier; for Killoran policies, see Kidd, Rosalind, The Way We Civilise, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1997. 186 Aboriginal freehold community occupation is being forced into leasehold tenure by Government policy. 187 Manuel Castells (2001), The Rise of the Network Society 188 Ray Kurzweil (2005), Singularity is Near When humans transcend biology 189 Elon Musk, CEO Tesla http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/04/elon-musk-robots-will-take-your-jobs-governmentwill-have-to-pay-your-wage.html The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) estimates 40% of working Australians will likely lose their jobs in the next 10 to 15 years, the result of autonomous agents like driverless cars, robotic surgery, claims assessment, paralegal automation and so on. After redundancy, what then? http://www.ceda.com.au/research-and-policy/policy-priorities/workforce ; http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-0616/technology-could-make-almost-40pc-of-jobs-redundant-report/6548560 ; http://adminpanel.ceda.com.au/FOLDERS/Service/Files/Documents/26792~Futureworkforce_June2015.pdf 190 The rise and decline of populations, whether they are a company or a society, has been extensively studied through the logistic (or sigmoid) function, which we investigate in relation to Aboriginal depopulation in Ray Gibbons (2017), Deconstructing Tasmanian genocide the extermination of the Palawa. In this companion document, we represent the sigmoid function (also known as the ‘S’ curve) as: ⨍(x) = x (t) = 1 / (1 + (1 / x0 - 1)) e – r t where r can be positive or negative and the initial conditions x 0 = x ( t = 0) ranging from 0.00 to 1.00 in steps of 0.05, as shown in the diagrams. It begins to explain how genocide is more than mass killing and intentional depopulation is more than extermination. 191 The paragraph is an allusion to Paul Keating’s magnificent Redfern speech – the provenance hardly matters - on 10 December 1992. The entire speech is quoted in FWAYAF Recollections of a (Homicidal) Pastoral Frontier. 192 See for example FWAYAF Beyond 1928, and Bringing Them Home, Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, 1997. This was a groundbreaking report, commissioned by the Attorney-General at the time (Michael Lavarch) into the ‘stolen generation’, which chronicled continuing Aboriginal disadvantage and mistreatment. https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/bringing-them-home-stolen-children-report-1997 Indeed, the Productivity Commission’s November 2014 report ‘Closing the Gap’, shows the problems are getting much worse. https://www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/document/publication/ctg-progress-and-priorities-report.pdf 193 Joe Morrison, CEO, Northern Land Council, Press Club Address, February 2015 194 Today, Australia is becoming more unequal, where tax breaks on superannuation, negative gearing and capital gains for the wealthiest 20%, according to Treasury forecasts, will cost $380 billion over four years to 2018/9 [Sydney Morning Herald, January 30 31, 2016, News, 11]. In comparison, Aboriginals who comprise about 3% of the 1252 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited population, are among the most disadvantaged groups in Australia and among first world economies generally. It raises the question: should we continue to celebrate Australia Day? Or should it be a national day of shame, with end stage Lemkinian genocide still in evidence? 195 Yuval Noah Harari (2016), Homo Deus A Brief History of Tomorrow. 196 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/epigenetics-the-controversial-science-behind-racialand-ethnic-health-disparities/430749/ ; http://theconversation.com/if-were-not-careful-epigenetics-may-bringback-eugenic-thinking-56169 ; Bridget Goosby, Chelsea Heidbrink (2014), Transgenerational Consequences of Social Discrimination for African American Health https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4026365/ ; Christopher Kuzawa , Elizabeth Sweet (2008), Epigenetics and the Embodiment of Race: Development Origins of US Racial Disparities in Cardiovascular Health [American Journal of Human Biology] http://groups.anthropology.northwestern.edu/lhbr/kuzawa_web_files/pdfs/Kuzawa%20and%20Sweet%20AJHB% 20early%20view.pdf ; Tabitha Powledge (2011), Behavioral Epigenetics: How Nurture Shapes Nature, BioScience (2011) 61 (8): 588-592. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2011.61.8.4 Published: 01 August 2011 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/doi/10.1525/bio.2011.61.8.4/336969 197 The Gini index is a generalized measure of well-being in some bounded population that is heavily weighted towards economic indicators. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI 198 For genocide historians and scholars, there is a circular debate in the context of the holocaust about functionalism v intentionalism, the polarity between bureaucratic (‘bottom up’) or State-driven (‘top-down’) genocide.198 In fact, they are co-determinate in the same way as functions (more properly events) and processes (with conditional triggers) are mutually dependent within a State driven intentionality envelope at different levels of abstraction. The false schism is exposed by modelling the referents. 199 See for example: Ray Gibbons (2017), Documents that shaped Australian genocide. https://www.academia.edu/33773691/Documents_that_shaped_Australian_genocide_i_DOCUMENTS_THAT_SHA PED_AUSTRALIAN_GENOCIDE 200 Ibid. 201 http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4865159.htm 202 The example is for Tasmania but can be extended to all Aboriginal groups across Australia, of which there were several hundred, each with their culture and history. 203 In this Indigenous societal concept of custodianship, one generation selflessly cared for the land on behalf of all who would follow, a responsibility they gladly embraced. Ownership is the antithesis: it connotes the act, state, or right of possessing something as property. 204 See, for example: Harry Lourandos (1997) Continent of Hunter-Gatherers. 205 Josephine Flood (1995), Archaeology of the Dreamtime The story of prehistoric Australia and its people: 282 206 Britain Inc. at one time had a similar approach to human and drug trafficking, where each transaction brought profit and human misery was off-balance sheet, a zero cost. See, for example: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/opinion/the-opium-war-s-secret-history.html ; Carl Trocki (1999), Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy; Jack Beeching (1975), The Chinese Opium Wars; Trevor Phillips (1999), Britain and the Slave Trade; https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/price-of-britains-slave-trade-revealed 207 This system of grants continued until the early 1830s’ when the Ripon regulations began to take effect for the sale rather than granting of land. 208 If we define the representation of a vector space as some symmetry, then representation theory explores how different symmetries interact. The Aboriginal representation of land use was binary, that of Britain n-ary. It is not possible to map one to the other without making an association of some kind between groups, for which the group membership can be 1,...,n. The mapping (collision) can be through a topological intersection or homomorphism (a mapping between two similar algebraic structures that preserves the relational properties of elements in the two structures). In the language of Australia’s contested spaces, Britain would not contemplate a type of socialism where group (collective) rather than individual (or in some cases corporate) ‘ownership’ was possible except in the case where the ‘owner’ was the Crown. In this sense, the Crown equates to Aboriginal society; but Aboriginal society (a collection of groups, each with their particular identity and culture) did not allow subrogated or transferred subownership, unlike the Crown, which introduced property ownership concepts of leasehold (time limited) and freehold (time unlimited under various kinds of title) ownership, based on a system of rights transfers. So we are left 1253 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited with a collision between a form of socialism (where land was controlled by the community) and capitalism (where land was preferentially held privately for the purposes of profit). The broad dilemma persists today, where there exists a limited rule-based order for conformal mapping between the two social and economic structures (we see the example of China’s melding of controlled capitalism with socialist precepts). Aboriginal society remains in a relatively weak negotiating position to effect such change. 209 Sir John Hindmarsh RN, appointed the first Governor and Commander-in-Chief of South Australia in 1836, had a military background although Gouger and the Land Commissioners did not; their network was political. 210 Queensland: In 1851, a public meeting was held to consider Queensland's separation from New South Wales. Queen Victoria granted approval and signed Letters Patent on 6 June 1859 to establish the new colony of Queensland. On the same day, an Order-in-Council gave Queensland its own constitution. [ https://www.qld.gov.au/about/about-queensland/history/creation-of-state ] Victoria: The Assent original of the British Act of Parliament separating Victoria from New South Wales, and naming and providing a Constitution for the new Colony, it was signed by Queen Victoria on 5 August 1850. The New South Wales Parliament passed the necessary enabling legislation before separation took effect on 1 July 1851. This was formally the founding moment of the Colony of Victoria, its separation from New South Wales established by Section 1 of this Act. [ https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-sdid-17.html ] 211 There were earlier abortive beachheads: 1802 Sullivan Bay, Victoria ; 1826 Westernport Bay, Victoria, when it was mistaken for Port Phillip Bay; http://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/explore-history/colonialmelbourne/convicts/settlement-western-port 1834 the Hentys at Portland in Western Victoria; 1835 Batman’s attempt to negotiate a treaty with the Wurundjeri, which was overturned by Bourke. Finally, in 1836, Bourke intervened to formalize the Victorian ‘settlement’, driven by the demand for wool. https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/Victoriasearlyhistory/europeansettlement The demand for wool, which was the original inspiration to settle the Port Phillip region, was also the driver for the subsequent pastoral expansion into the western and northern parts of the district. This led to the dispersal of population over a wide area resulting in clashes with the local Aborigines as well as unauthorised and unregulated occupation of land. As a way of addressing the problem, in 1836 Governor Bourke introduced a grazing licence fee and established Land Commissioners, a system which was subsequently expanded by Governor Gipps and his successors. 212 The names of states are as they are now known, and not the original names. See time-lapsed evolution of state borders (maps): Figure Error! Main Document Only. Evolution of colonial borders (1788 - present) 213 HRA 3 is concerned with despatches and papers relating to the ‘settlement’ of the states. In particular, Volume 6 examines: Tasmania April to December 1827; West Australia March 1826 to January 1830 (King George’s Sound and Swan River); and Northern Territory August 1824 to December 1829 (Melville Island and Raffles Bay). 214 Invasionary beach heads: 1770 East Coast of New Holland; 1788 New Albion New South Wales (renamed Sydney in 1789); 1803 Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania); 1824 Moreton Bay (Queensland); 1824 Fort Dundas, Melville Island (now part of the Tiwi islands, Northern Territory); 1826 King George III Sound (Western Australia); 1827 Raffles Bay (Fort Wellington on Cobourg Peninsula, Northern Territory); 1826 Western Port Bay (Victoria); 1829 Swan River (Perth); 1836 Adelaide (South Australia); 1836 Port Phillip Region; 1863 Annexation of the Northern Territory to South Australia. 215 Ray Gibbons, Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 216 James Cook (1728 – 1779), explorer, navigator, cartographer, sailor. 1755: joined the Royal Navy; 1776: lieutenant; commissioned to lead first Pacific voyage; 1772: Captain; 1779: Killed in Hawaii while attempting to capture the King. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cook-james-1917 Cook demanded compliance from Indigenous people. Consider his log entry for Botany Bay, 29th April, 1770: ..as we approached the shore they all made off except two men who seemd resolved to oppose our landing. As soon as I saw this I ordered the boats to lay upon their oars in order to speake to them but this was to little purpose for neither us nor Tupia could understand one ord they said. We then threw them some nails beeds &c a shore which they took up and seem’s not ill pleased in so much that I thought that they beckon’d to us to cme a shore; but in this we were mistaken, for as soon as we put the boat in they again came to oppose us upon which I fired a musket between the two which had no effect than to make them retire back where bundles of their darts lay, and one of them took up a stone and threw at us which caused my fireing a second musquet load with small shott, and although some of the shott struck the man yet it had no effect than to make him lay hold of a shield or target to defend himself. Emmidiatly after this we landed which we had no sooner done than they throw’d two darts at us, this obliged me to fire a third shott soon after which thy both made off, but not in such haste but what we might have taken one, but Mr Banks being of opinion that the darts were poisoned 1254 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited made me cautious how I advanced into the woods. [James Cook The Journals, Prepared from the original manuscripts by JC Beaglehole for the Hakluyt Society, 1955 – 1967, selected and edited by Philip Edwards: 123 – 124; Ray Parkin (1997), H. M. Bark Endeavour: 180 – 187]. 217 Cook’s secret instructions, dated June 1768. For a transcript, see Ray Gibbons (2015), Documents that Shaped Australia. 218 http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/nsw1_doc_1768.pdf 219 For a transcript of Cook’s log of Wednesday August 22nd 1770, see Ray Gibbons (2015), Documents that Shaped Australia. This particular partial transcript is from J. C. Beaglehole, The Journals of Captain James Cook On His Voyages of Discovery, edited from the original manuscripts by J. C. Beaglehole (1995), Volume 1, The Voyage of the Endeavour 1768 – 1771, Hakluyt Society, Cambridge University Press, pp. 387 – 388. 220 Thomas Townshend (1733 - 1800), 1st Viscount Sydney, politician. 1782: Secretary at War; 1782: Leader of the House of Commons; 1782: Home Secretary (and Colonial Secretary); 1783: created Baron Sydney; 1783: Home Secretary (and Colonial Secretary); 1783 – 1789: Leader of the House of Lords; 1784- 1790: President of the Board of Control over British East India Company. For some reason, Townshend’s biography does not appear in adb.anu.edu.au See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Townshend,_1st_Viscount_Sydney 221 Arthur Phillip (1738 – 1814) a relative of Lord Pembroke. 1762: RN Lieutenant; 1774 – 1778: Captain in the Portuguese fleet; 1781: post Captain; 1782 took charge of the Europe, taking with him his friend Lieutenant Philip King; 1786 appointed NSW Governor (February 1788 – December 1792); 1799: Rear admiral; 1814 Admiral http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/phillip-arthur-2549 222 To the contrary, when despatches began to reveal increasing Aboriginal mistreatment, the preferred British response was greater Christian education, which had the advantage that the cost was not borne by Government. After the Bigge report in 1823 on the finances of the colony, the British approach to land tenure sharpened. Land grants were replaced by sales. Aboriginals became trespassers on their own land, and then refugees in their own country. When the killing could not be concealed or denied, Britain conducted a Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (British Settlements, 1837). While the report did not occlude the scale of extermination, the recommended solution was further ‘Christian Instruction’ [pp. 59-80]. 223 For a list these private counsellors who provided confidential advice to the Sovereign at any time, see Part 2. For the Privy Counsellors, secret advisors to the Sovereign at this time, see Part 2. 225 http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/nsw2_doc_1787.pdf Also, Ray Gibbons (2015), ‘Conciliate Their Affections’: Governor Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet. 226 Philip Gidley King (1758 – 1808) naval officer, administrator. 1778: RN Lieutenant; 1789: Lieutenant-governor of Norfolk Island; 1791: Commander; 1798: Post-captain; 1802: NSW Governor. Born at Launceston, Cornwall, which may be the origin of the Tasmanian town of that name, in deference to King. Supported by Arthur Phillip and Joseph Banks. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/king-philip-gidley-2309 227 Lieutenant Bowen to Under-Secretary Cooke, 22nd July, 1805, HRNSW 1/5: 675- 677 ’..told me he had long intended to form a settlement on Van Diemen’s Land, to counteract any of the supposed intentions of the French for similar purposes; that he had already communicated his designs to His Majesty’s Minsters at home.’ [:675] 228 John Bowen (1780 – 1827): Naval officer, Commandant http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bowen-john-1811 229 Ibid: 676. King appointed Bowen on 29th March, 1803; his instructions bore the date 10 th June, 1803. I have been unable to find a transcript. ADB: The original settlers at Risdon Cove, which King instructed Bowen to name Hobart (after Lord Hobart, the Secretary of State), were 49 in all, including 21 male and 3 female convicts, members of the New South Wales Corps and free settlers and their families. [ http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bowen-john-1811 ] 230 Ibid: 676. The Commission was dated 13th October, 1803. 231 David Collins (1756 - 1810). Military officer. Second Lieutenant: 1771; First Lieutenant: 1775; Captain-lieutenant: 1779; Captain: 1780; Deputy Judge-Advocate: 1786; Lieutenant-Governor: 1803 – 1810; Colonel: 1808. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/collins-david-1912 232 Robert Hobart (1760 – 1816), soldier and politician. 1784 – 1797: MP in the Irish House of Commons; 1793: appointed to Privy Council; 1801 – 1804: Secretary of State for War and the Colonies; 1804: Fourth Earl of Buckinghamshire. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hobart-robert-2185 233 14th January 1803 https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/tas1i_doc_1803.pdf Also HRA 3/1: 4. At the end of 1802, the British Government decided to agree to King’s proposal to form a ‘settlement’ in Tasmania. 224 1255 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The establishment consisted of: the Lieutenant-governor; a military guard of three officers and forty-seven noncommissioned officers and men of the marines, accompanied by twelve wives and children; a civil staff of twelve with four wives and children; twenty-two settlers with twenty-seven wives and children; a missionary and his wife; three hundred and seven convicts with thirty wives and children; a total of four hundred and sixty-seven persons. Some of the settlers had the option of remaining with Collins or proceeding to Port Jackson. The provisions and stores were estimated to last for two years. [HRA 3/1: xvii]. On the 25th of June, Lieutenant Sladden with the second detachment from Port Phillip arrived in the ship Ocean. There w ere then four hundred and thirty-three persons in the settlement, including a civil staff of eighteen with fourteen wives and children; forty-eight military with twelve wives and children; two hundred and eighty-one convicts with twenty-four wives and children ; and thirteen settlers with twenty-three wives and children. [HRA 3/1: xxvii]. The military invasion of Tasmania had begun. In 1798, Matthew Flinders and Dr. George Bass surveyed the Derwent from the Iron Pot to a point some 5 miles above Bridgewater.15 Bass in particular made observations of the neighbouring country, its soil, vegetation and suitability for agriculture. Much of his journal was published in 1802, by Collins, in the second volume of his Account of the English Colony in New South Wales: ‘The hills to the eastward arise immediately from the banks; but the mountains to the westward have retired to the distance of a few miles from the water, and have left in their front hilly land similar to that on the east side. All the hills are very thinly set with light timber, chiefly short she oaks; but are admirably covered with thick nutritious grass, in general free from brush or patches of shrubs. The soil in which it grows is a black vegetable mould, deep only in the alleys, frequently very shallow, with occasionally a small mixture of sand and small stones. Many large tracts of land appear cultivable both for maize and wheat, but which, as pasture land, would be excellent.’ This ‘excellent..pasture land..of nutritious grass…generally free from brush’ was almost certainly the result of Palawa fire stick farming. [David Collins (1802), An Account of the English Colony of New South Wales, Volume 2: 131 – 132; Wendy Andrew (2008), The People and Places of Early Clarence Plains and Rokeby: 14 https://stors.tas.gov.au/store/exlibris1/storage/STORS/2012/06/14/file_14/au-7-0095-05319_1.pdf ] 234 Earl Bathurst to Governor Darling, Despatch No, 22, 11th March 1826, acknowledged by Darling on 10th October 1826, HRA 1/12: 218 235 General Sir Ralph Darling GCH (1772 – 1858), British Army officer; 1793, commissioned as ensign; 1796, military secretary to Sir Ralph Abercromby (commander-in-chief in West Indies; 1802, lieutenant colonel; 1810, brevet colonel; 1813, major general; 1814, deputy adjutant general; 1824 – 1831, governor of New South Wales. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/darling-sir-ralph-1956 236 Henry Bathurst (1762 - 1834), Third Earl Bathurst; KG PC; politician; 1783 – 1794: member of the House of Commons; 1783 – 1789: lord of the admiralty; 1789 – 1791: lord of the treasury; 1793: sworn to Privy Council;1793 – 1802: commissioner of the board of control; 1807 – 1812: president of the board of trade; 1807: foreign secretary; 1812 – 1827: secretary of state for the colonies (under Lord Liverpool); 1828 – 1830: lord president of the council (under the Duke of Wellington). http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bathurst-henry-1751 237 Sir George Arthur (1784- 1854), 1824, lieutenant governor British Honduras, also colonel; 1823 – 1837, lieutenant governor Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania); 1837, knight commander of the Royal Guelphic Order (KCH), major general, lieutenant governor of Upper Canada; created hereditary baronet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_George_Arthur,_1st_Baronet . 238 HRA 1/12: 838 239 HRA 1/12: 700 240 Ibid: 838 241 HRA 1/12: 701 242 Bartlett, in the WA Year Book of 1979, makes the common mistake that Australia was the same as Terra Australis Incognita. It was not, and the British Admiralty were under no such misapprehension when they despatched Cook to look for it in 1768. Although Bartlett does not give his sources, this is a summary of early exploration from his account (pp. 1 – 17): 1616, Dirk Hartogs entered Shark Bay, calling the area Eendrachtsland (Kimberley and NW); revisited by his countryman, Willem de Vlaming, in 1697; 1618, Lenaert Jacobz touched near North West Cape; 1619, Fredrik de Houtman discovered a reef (Abrolhos) NW of Champion Bay; 1622, Dutch vessel ‘Leeuwin’ rounded the Cape at the SW corner and continued north to what is now called King George III Sound; 1622, a group of British seamen claimed they had been ship-wrecked on what s now called the SW Monte Bello Reef, near present day Barrow Island; 1623, Klaas Hermansz sighted Eendrachtsland; 1627, Francois Thyssen sighted the coast near Cape Leewin and explored the southern coast for 1,000 miles, calling it Nuyts Land (now the Great Australian Bight). 1628, 1256 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Pelsart was wrecked on one of the Abrolhos islands; 1628, Gerrit Fredericsz de Wit ran aground in the Kimberley area; 1635, Pieter Dirkz sighted land near Shark Bay; 1644, Abel Janszoon Tasman examined what was afterwards called Tasman Land from Arnhem Land to Exmouth Gulf; he gave the name New Holland to the western half of the continent, westward of the meridian line, passing through Arnhem Land on the north and near the islands of St Francis and St Peter in the south; all land to the eastward, including the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, still remained as Terra Australis on the Thevenot map of 1663; 1648, Jan Janszoon Zeeuw explored the west coast; 1656, Pieter Albertsz was wrecked on the west coast (lat. 30° 40’) with all its treasure; 1678, Jan Van der Wall coasted the NW; 1688, William Dampier landed on the west coast (Cygnet Bay)1696, William de Vlaming landed at ‘Rottenest Island’ and explored what was probably the area of Cottlesloe Beach; he captured some black swans and gave the river the name Swaenerevier, or Swan River); he continued north to the North West Cape; 1699, William Dampier was sent by William III, under an Admiralty Commission, to solve if the continent was more than a succession of islands; he made unfavourable comments on the barren appearance of the land, discouraging Britain from further interest until Cook was despatched; 1705, Maarten Van Delft and others explored the NW coast and improved Tasman’s charts; 1791, Captain George Vancouver landed at Lyon’s Land, off Chatham Island, close to Point Nuyts, SW from Cape Leeuwin, and named King George the Third Sound, taking formal possession of the country from the land seen north-west of Cape Chatham; he left a record of his visit at Point Possession; 1792, Antoine d’Entrecasteaux appeared on the SW coast looking for traces of Count Jean La Perouse who left Sydney in 1788 and disappeared until 1825, when Peter Dillon discovered their ship wrecks in the New Hebrides; 1801; Matthew Flinders reached Cape Leeuwin and travelled to King George III Sound; Flinders readopted the original name of the continent as Terra Australis, ‘to include New South Wales, New Holland, and the adjacent isles, including that of Van Diemen’; in the British Patent to the first governor of New South Wales a meridian nearly corresponding to the ancient line of separation between New Holland and Terra Australis was made the western limit of that colony, and was fixed at 135°E. longitude, ‘from which the British Territory extends eastwards to the islands of the Pacific or Great Ocean; its northern limit is at Cape Yorke; and the extremity of the southern Van Diemen’s Land is its opposite boundary’. ; 1801 – 3, Baudin anchored off Riviere des Cygnes (Swan) and explored the area, naming some of the locality (Leschenault Estuary, Cape Leschenault, Point Peron, Moreau Inlet, Heirisson Islands), exploring the coast northwards to Shark Bay and Admiralty Gulf; 1818, Louis de Freycinet explored the western and north-western coasts See . http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/free.nsf/0/D269F393BB0AE162CA257B020012F2FC/$File/13005%20WA%20YrBook%201979.pdf (pp. 1 – 16) 243 Ibid: 9 244 Governor Darling to Earl Bathurst, 21st April 1827, HRA 1/13: 264 – 266 It will be seen by the Report [Captain Stirling to Governor Darling, dated 18th April 1827] that Captain Stirling considers that Swan River possesses all the advantages with reference to the Trade with the Eastern Islands, which attach to Melville Island or any part of the North West Coast off this Territory. Among the natural advantages of Swan River, it will be observed that good Water is abundant. The Country is besides favourable for Cultivation, the Soil in general being excellent. (Ibid: 265). In this despatch, it is clear that Darling gave no thought to the fact that the proposed area for the settlement was already occupied by Aboriginal people; he gave them no thought at all in respect of their prior rights to country. [Also see Western Australia 1974 Year Book: Captain Stirling’s ‘Narrative of Operations’, Appendix: 533 – 542 http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/free.nsf/0/23273A80407EB118CA257B020012F336/$File/13005%20WA%20YrBook%201974.pdf ] 245 Sir George Murray (1772 – 1846), soldier and politician. 1794: lieutenant and captain; 1799 lieutenant-colonel; 1809 brevet colonel; 1812 major-general; 1813 KCB; 1814 Governor of Canadian colonies; 1819 – 1824: governor of Royal Military College, Sandhurst; 1823: elected to parliament; 1825: lieutenant-general; 1828 – 1830: secretary of state; 1841 general. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/murray-sir-george-2494 246 https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/wa1_doc_1828.pdf Also Diary and Letters of Admiral Sir C. H. Fremantle, G.C.B., edited by Lord Cottlesloe, C.B., Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1979, p. 15. Sir Charles Howe Fremantle GCB RN (1800 – 1869). Attained the rank of Rear-Admiral. His biography does not appear in http://adb.anu.edu.au He was well connected, being the son of Admiral Thomas Fremantle, an associate of Lord Nelson; his elder brother, Thomas, was 1st Baron Cottlesloe. In 1829, after pressure by Stirling, the Admiralty despatched Fremantle to the Swan River in Western Australia, where he hoisted the British flag and took formal possession in the name of King George IV of ‘all that part of New Holland which is not included within the territory of New South Wales.’ 1257 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fremantle Wiki gives the source of this quote as Western Australian Year Book No. 17 – 1979, p. 11. The Yearbook provides a quote, without giving the source: In 1829, on 2 May, Captain Chas. H. Fremantle, of H.M.S. ‘Challenger’, who, under instructions from the Admiralty, had been despatched from the Cape of Good Hope on 20 March of that year by Commodore Schomberg, of the Indian Squadron, for the purpose, anchored off the mouth of the Swan River and, hoisting the British flag on the south head, took formal possession in the name of His Majesty King George IV of ‘all that part of New Holland which is not included within the territory of New South Wales’. So the origin of this quote is unclear, and is materially different to that in Fremantle’s report to the Admiralty on 2nd May. There is a significant difference between claiming a coastline and a geographic area about one third of Australia. [Western Australian Year Book No. 17, 1979, W.M. Bartlett, Deputy Commonwealth Statistician and Government Statistician, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Western Australian Office. http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/free.nsf/0/D269F393BB0AE162CA257B020012F2FC/$File/13005%20WA%20YrBook%201979.pdf ] The quote does not appear in his reports to the Admiralty, which restricts his claim of possession to the West coast. Fremantle’s diaries do not show him to be particularly literate, suggesting he achieved his rank through connections rather than ability. As to the date when Fremantle claimed possession, Wiki contradicts Cottlesloe’s edited account [Ibid] that states May 2 nd, but Wiki (quoting the Year Book) says it was a ‘week later’: HMS Challenger was despatched by the Admiralty from the Cape of Good Hope on 20 th March 1829, anchored in Cockburn Sound on 2 May and landing on Garden Island. One week later, he hoisted the British flag on the south head of the mouth of the Swan River. 247 Darling was Governor of New South Wales, so extending his role to New Holland may have been an ambit claim on the western side of the continent. 248 Ibid, 1979: 22. 249 Like Cook before him on the East coast, Fremantle only claimed the West coast without specifying a longitude; that would come later. Captain Stirling, who had been appointed ‘Lieutenant Governor of the New Settlement, and other Gentlemen with their families holding situations in the Colony’, arrive on the 2nd June. [Ibid 1979, Part 1 (a) Letters conveying orders (b) letters to the Admiralty: 23 – 24] 250 Ibid, 1979, Part 2, Diary 21st April to 28th August 1829: 29 – 94. Britain did not seek the ‘consent of the Natives’, but simply began the process of land grants, selecting where they chose. The invasion of Western Australia had begun, but no longitude had yet been specified. 251 May 6th: Seals have nearly disappeared, the men having attacked them so violently. Ibid: 43 252 Ibid, 1979: 56 – 57. 253 Ibid, 1979: 68 254 Ibid, 1979, diary September 5th to 11th, 1832: 91 – 92. 255 Sir James Stirling (1791 – 1865), naval officer, governor. 1811: flag lieutenant; 1827: recommended the ‘acquisition’ of Western Australia; 1828: lieutenant governor; 1829 – 1832, 1834 - 1838: superintendant of WA; 1831: governor; 1832: knighted; http://adb.anu.edu.afu/biography/stirling-sir-james-2702 256 https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/wa2_doc_1828.pdf Before 1961, ‘full-blood’ Aboriginals were not included in the WA statistical population returns. The British population would have been considerably outnumbered in the early decades of colonization, an imbalance soon rectified by extermination and accelerated immigration. The WA Yearbook (1979), p. 502 shows population growth from 1829 to 1880 (the period of interest) and beyond. In 1880, the white population was barely 30,000, growing to 731,033 by 1960. http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/free.nsf/0/D269F393BB0AE162CA257B020012F2FC/$File/13005%20WA%20YrBook%201979.pdf Year Males Females Persons Recorded Estimated Natural Net Increase Migration 1829 769 234 1,003 na na 1830 877 295 1,172 na na 1840 1,434 877 2,311 34 123 1850 3,576 2,310 5,886 132 1,109 1860 9,597 5,749 15,346 379 130 1870 15,511 9,624 25,135 475 7 1880 16,985 12,576 29,561 551 129 1258 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 257 In 1831, NSW Governor Darling sent Captain Collett Barker to complete a survey of the area around the mouth of the Murray. In 1834, the South Australian Association together with the support of the Duke of Wellington, persuaded the British Parliament to pas the South Australian Act to set aside 802,511 square kilometres for the new colony, which was to be convict free. The Act specified that the colony would be self-sufficient, with £20,000 surety and £35,000 of land to be sold in advance of colonization. In 1836, Rear-Admiral John Hindmarsh was the first governor; Colonel William Light was the surveyor. The Governor shared power with a civilian land commissioner. The first settlers and nine ships of 636 people set sail from London in 1836. 258 For the list of Privy Counsellors, secret advisors to the Sovereign at this time, see Part 2. Members were drawn from Britain’s upper class. 259 Ibid. 260 An Act to empower His Majesty to erect South Australia into a British Province or Provinces and to provide for the Colonisation and Government thereof. https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/sa1_doc_1834.pdf 261 The South Australian military were less involved in Aboriginal genocide than for other states. Police and pastoralists took over the role. One notable massacre of more than thirty Aboriginals, in August 1841 at Rufus River, was led by the Protector of Aborigines and supported by an overlanding party from New South Wales. The perpetrators were exonerated by Governor Grey.[Graham Jenkin (1985), Conquest of the Ngarrindjeri: 63, citing: Papers Relative to South Australia: 267 – 309 and Protector’s Report, 10 February 1841. As for other states, shooting, poisoning and sexual predation were prevalent. Jenkin notes: ‘On 5 June 1845, the commissioner of police was forced to complain to the governor of the ‘atrocious treatment’ being suffered by Aborigines in the Rivoli Bay district: …damper poisoned with corrosive sublimate was given them. Another method of ill-treatment which can be vouched for is that of driving off the Natives from the only watering places in the neighbourhood. The Native women appear likewise to have been sought after by shepherds, whilst the men were driven from the stations by threats.’ [Ibid: 63, citing: South Australian Archives GRG 24/1 1845: 116] The Government failed to make any prosecutions. It was not until 1847 that the first South Australian European was hanged for murdering an Aboriginal. [Register, 17 March 1847, 31 March 1847] 262 See, for example: Graham Jenkin (1985), Conquest of the Ngarrindjeri The story of the lower Murray Lakes tribes: 11 – 73. 263 See FWAYAF Ray Gibbons (draft), Recollections From a (homicidal) Pastoral Frontier. 264 https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/sa2_doc_1836.pdf 265 Connor writes: The Fort Dundas garrison (on Melville Island, part of Tiwi land) was commanded by Captain Maurice Barlow: it consisted of thirty-four members of the 3rd Regiment augmented by a Royal Marine detachment of twenty-seven commanded by Lieutenant Williams, a surgeon, two commissariat officers and forty convicts. [John Connor (2005), The Australian Frontier War 1788 - 1838: 71, citing Letter – Captain George Burn, 27 December 1824, HRA 3/5: 791]. Fort Wellington was established in 1827 at Raffles Bay on Iwaidja land. Connor: The garrison consisted of soldiers and some soldiers’ wives of the 39th Regiment, fourteen Royal Marines, a surgeon, a commissariat officer, a Malay interpreter and family, and twenty-two convicts. The commandant, Captain Henry Smyth of the 39 th Regiment, was praised by Captain James Stirling, RN (soon to be the founder of Perth. [ibid: 73 – 74]. 266 http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-did-49.html 267 http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-did-49.html http://guides.naa.gov.au/records-about-northernterritory/part1/chapter1/1.3.aspx 268 https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-sdid-57.html 269 Named after Viscount Palmerston (1784 – 1865), politician. Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, KG GCB PC FRS MP. 1809 – 1828 Secretary at War; 1830 – 1834, 1846 – 1851 Foreign Secretary; 1855 – 1858, 1859 – 1865 Prime Minister. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-John-Temple-3rd-Viscount-Palmerston . 270 In Introduction and Context (Rules of Sovereignty) we will examine Britain’s concepts of ‘property’ according to Blackstone’s decisive interpretation. 271 http://archives.govt.nz/provenance-of-power/te-tiriti-o-waitangi/view-te-tiriti-o-waitangi-online 272 As we will establish, each Australian beachhead can be considered an invasion point, given the military nature of all such operations. 273 South Australia was the partial exception. 1259 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 274 For consistency, we will use the Oxford English Dictionary for word meanings. See, for example: Bill Gammage (2011), The Biggest Estate on Earth How Aborigines made Australia. 276 The words are taken directly from official British instructions and comprise a mixture of verbs and nouns. Strictly speaking, a verb-noun phrase describes an actionable component within a repeatable process in the form [do something] where the past tense of the verb phrase [that is, something done] is the outcome, leading to another triggering condition. The process or sub-process mappings are conventionally described by a noun, say invasion or occupation or subjugation conforming to some objective such as: achieve settler sovereignty through various arms of Government, including: military, paramilitary, police, legislative bodies and judiciary. 277 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cook-james-1917 278 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/phillip-arthur-2549 279 For a list of the Privy (or secret) Counsellors to the Sovereign at this time, see Part 2. 280 Ray Gibbons (2015), ‘Conciliate Their Affections’ – Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet; Tim Flannery (2004), Two Classic Tales of Australian Exploration 1788 by Watkin Tench, Life an adventures by John Nicol: 1 – 280.. 281 https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guides-and-indexes/land-grants-guide1788-1856 282 Wikipedia, Colonial forces of Australia: From 1810 until the withdrawal of British forces from Australia, about 20,000 British soldiers, serving in 24 British infantry regiments undertook garrison duties in Australia on a rotational bass, along with elements of the marines, Royal Engineers and Royal Artillery. Some regiments served second tours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_forces_of_Australia citing Peter Stanley (1986), The Remote Garrison: The British Army in Australia: 7 283 https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-did-34.html 284 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_voyage_of_James_Cook 285 http://www.captcook-ne.co.uk/ccne/themes/shipsandcrew.htm 286 Compiled from: Ray Parkin (2003), H.M. Bark Endeavour: 96 - 98 287 Wikipedia, Colonial forces of Australia: From 1810 until the withdrawal of British forces from Australia, about 20,000 British soldiers, serving in 24 British infantry regiments undertook garrison duties in Australia on a rotational bass, along with elements of the marines, Royal Engineers and Royal Artillery. Some regiments served second tours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_forces_of_Australia citing Peter Stanley (1986), The Remote Garrison: The British Army in Australia: 7 288 See Part 2. 289 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Fleet 290 Citing: Mollie Gillen (1989), The Founders of Australia: A biographical dictionary of the First Fleet 291 https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guides-and-indexes/land-grants-guide1788-1856 292 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_forces_of_Australia Citing: M. Austin (1982), The Foundation of Australia’s Army Reserves: 1788 – 1854: 51; Bob Nichols (1988), The Colonial Volunteers: The Defence Forces of the Australian Colonies 1836 – 1901: 25 293 https://teaching.unsw.edu.au/indigenous-terminology 294 Professor David Dixon, UNSW, 7th April 2016, Invasion or Discovery? Political Correctness and Australian History http://www.law.unsw.edu.au/news/2016/04/invasion-or-discovery-political-correctness-and-australian-history Recognition of Aboriginal Customary Laws at Common Law: The Settled Colony Debate https://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/5.%20Recognition%20of%20Aboriginal%20Customary%20Laws%20at%20Co mmon%20Law%3A%20The%20Settled%20Colony%20Debate/se ; Peter Kilroy April 2016, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Discovery, settlement or invasion? The power of language in Australia’s historical narrative https://theconversation.com/discovery-settlement-or-invasion-the-power-of-language-in-australias-historicalnarrative-57097 ; Vanessa Croll, 30th March 2016, Was Australia ‘settled’ or ‘invaded’? https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/was-australia-settled-or-invaded/newsstory/ea18dd60f56fb03e0972d8697e9330d2?nk=27f46f4b9ab4d01f48f8338a229a4a02-1530838270 ; Michael Taylor, 21st January 2013, Was Australia invaded or settled? https://theaimn.com/was-australia-invaded-or-settled/ ; Paul Daley, 30th March 2016, It’s not ‘politically correct’ to say Australia was invaded, it’s history https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2016/mar/30/its-not-politically-correct-to-sayaustralia-was-invaded-its-history Colonisation 1788 - 1890 http://www.workingwithindigenousaustralians.info/content/History_3_Colonisation.html 275 1260 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 295 Professor David Dixon, UNSW, 7th April 2016, Invasion or Discovery? Political Correctness and Australian History http://www.law.unsw.edu.au/news/2016/04/invasion-or-discovery-political-correctness-and-australian-history 296 OED. 297 As we will show in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa, Part2, each sub-process can be decomposed along an abstraction gradient. 298 Geoscience Australia http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/national-locationinformation/landforms/significant-rock-features 299 bya: billion years ago; mya: million years ago; kya: thousand years ago. 300 The name ‘tarkine’ was conferred by the conservation movement in the early 1990’s and was based upon the name of the Palawa tribe, the ‘Tarkiner’, who lived in the area between the Arthur and Pieman Rivers before the British invasion. 301 Huon pine (Lagarostrobos franklini) is a species of conifer – not a pine - that is unique to SW Tasmania. 302 Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas and others, A genomic history of Aboriginal Australia Nature (2016) Published online 21 September 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature18299 (2016) .http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature18299.html 303 However, science depends on data, and new data in the form of ancient bone fragments recently discovered in China and elsewhere may cause us to refine our hypotheses. Growing evidence is now beginning to suggest that there may - after all - have been multiple migrations out of East Africa from as early as 180kya. [Kate Douglas, New Scientist, 7 July 2018, Our Asian Origins: 28 – 31] 304 In Australia, this figure for first human (H. sapiens) settlement has recently been pushed back to 65kya, based upon artefacts found in a rock shelter at Kakadu in Northern Australia by archaeologists from the University of Queensland in 2017. [Chris Clarkson and others, Human occupation of northern Australia by 65,000 years ago http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v547/n7663/full/nature22968.html?foxtrotcallback=true accessed 30th July 2017 [Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature22968] 305 Preliminary zooarchaeological interpretations from Kutikini Cave, south-west Tasmania https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Preliminary+zooarchaeological+interpretations+from+Kutikina+Cave%2 c...-a0152994503 306 http://austhrutime.com/warreen_cave.htm http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/F6FA372655DCC15FCA2 56C3200241893?opendocument Also R Cosgrove, J Allen and B Marshall, Late Pleistocene human occupation in Tasmania: a reply to Thomas Australian Archaeology, Number 38, 1994 307 http://www.smh.com.au/national/highway-threatens-ancient-aboriginal-site-20100310pzaf.html http://www.archaeology.ws/2010-3-16.htm 308 Mudrooroo (2019), Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World. http://www.tasmanianaboriginal.com.au/liapootah/palawa.htm 310 Lyndall Ryan and Neil Smith (1976) http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/trugernanner-truganini-4752 311 The name Lallah-Rookh (with variant spellings, meaning ‘tulip cheeked’) was originally conferred by George Robinson (a friend of Bischoff’s) as a term of endearment, after the heroine of a popular 1817 Persian romance by Thomas Moore. In 1832, Bischoff (1776 – 1845) wrote a Sketch of the History of Van Diemen’s Land that included an account of the Van Diemen’s Land Company, which played a particularly violent part in Palawa dispossession across the Tasmanian northwest. 312 We shall meet our cast of characters in due course and the role they played in a drama that was written by Imperial dispossessory resolve that made genocide almost inevitable from the outset, when Tasmania was first invaded by Britain in 1803. 313 The surviving Palawa people are trying to disinter and reclaim some of their language from the writings of people such as George Augustus Robinson, among the few whites who had any such ethnographic interest, certainly not the British Government for whom Aboriginal cultural destruction was of little consequence. http://tacinc.com.au/tasmanian-aboriginal-place-names/ 314 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Dowling_-_Tasmanian_Aborigines,_1856.jpg This is a stylized painting from 1856. Robert Dowling, National Gallery of Victoria, cited by Nicholas Clements (2014), Tasmania’s Black War: a tragic case of lest we remember? https://theconversation.com/tasmanias-black-war-a-tragic-case-oflest-we-remember-25663 Note the possum skin clothing, the use of ochre and the camp fire. The rocks are possibly 309 1261 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Jurassic dolerite, reflecting southern Tasmania’s volcanic past with its magmatic extrusions. The mountain in the background seems to be Mount Wellington. 315 The tribal nomenclature and designations were conferred by Britain, who otherwise had little understanding of Palawa culture and identity. The term ‘nation’ is the Palawa preferred term for ‘tribe’. 316 The area around Oyster Bay and up to the Devonian granitic Hazzards is incredibly beautiful, one of my favourite places on Earth. It was also treasured by the Palawa until they were removed. 317 Rhys Jones (1974), Tasmanian Tribes: 319 - 354 in Norman B. Tindale (1974), Aboriginal tribes of Australia: their terrain, environmental controls, distribution, limits, and proper names and Tribal Boundaries map supplement Tindale and Jones’ work on the Aboriginal tribes of Tasmania largely derives from Robinson: see NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission: 1003 – 1013; Lyndall Ryan (1982), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 15,16; James Backhouse Walker (1902), Early Tasmania: 131 – 161 http://Gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1300961h.htm#ch-36 . The ethnographic concepts of ‘bands’ and ‘tribes’ are an imposed anthropological construction. The languages and customs are now mostly lost as a genocidal consequence of the British invasion. 318 Lyndall Ryan (1982), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 15; Norman B. Tindale (1974), Aboriginal tribes of Australia: their terrain, environmental controls, distribution, limits, and proper names, Tribal Boundaries map . The numbers refer to ‘tribe’ names and their geographic distribution. 319 Op. Cit., Friendly Mission: 14 - 20; also this document, pp. xiii – xiv. We must note that the ethnographical nomenclature is an imposed construction, based upon fragmentary post factum data. ‘Band’ is a non-Aboriginal term for a small, related group within a tribe. For today’s Palawa descendants, ‘Nation’ is the preferred concept for a group of ‘tribes’. The spatial map derives from the wonderful work by the University of Tasmania http://utas-spatial.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapTour/index.html?appid=5cc2337c499047f9a8210089958937e9 320 Geoffrey Blainey, A Land Half Won: 88 – 89 Quoted by Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People: 185. Reynolds offers the hearsay evidence from Bonwick who says he was told by Robert Clark, the Wybalenna catechist that ’their numbers were very much thinned by a sudden attack of disease which was general among the entire population previous to the arrival of the English’, citing James Bonwick (1869), The Last of the Tasmanians: 85. Reynolds’ citation is incorrect; the correct reference is James Bonwick (1870), Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians: 85. If there was an outbreak of disease causing mortality sometime prior to 1803, the questions are: (a) what could the disease have been; what is the evidence? (b) exactly when did it happen, which decade? (c) how widespread was it; did it affect all tribal areas? (d) how many died, numerically and as a proportion of a given population? (e) what was the estimated Tasmanian population in 1803? We will address these questions in this paper and Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. 322 Geoffrey Blainey, A Land Half Won: 88 – 89. Blainey’s ‘grand total of 20,000’ seems to be underestimated by a factor of 10 or more [see Ray Gibbons (2015), The Australian Land War and Aboriginal Depopulation]. Blainey provides no evidence for his speculation that internecine conflict caused a substantial number of Aboriginal deaths, possibly leading to a long-term trend of a decreasing total population. If we look to other Indigenous societies, for example that of Papua New Guinea, we know there was sometimes tribal conflict, often stylized, but the overall population is increasing and in 2017 is now around 7.9 million. 323 Abel Janszoon Tasman's Journal,(1644), ed. JE Heeres http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600571h.html 324 Edward Duyker (ed., 1992), The Discovery of Tasmania: Journal Extracts from the Expeditions of Abel Janszoon Tasman and Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, 1642 and 1772; Woide’s translation of Abel Jansen Tasman’s journal of a voyage from Batavia, in the East Indies, for the discovery of the unknown South land, 1776 http://www.empire.amdigital.co.uk.ezproxy.sl.nsw.gov.au/Documents/Details/Woides%20Translation%20of%20A bel%20Jansen%20Tasmans%20journal%2016421643_ 325 Ibid, Duyker (1992) 326 Captain Furneaux's Narrative, with some Account of Van Diemen's Land [excerpt]. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1306441h.html 327 https://archive.org/details/threevoyagesofca05cook/page/180/mode/2up?q=adventure+bay https://www.gutenberg.org/files/62095/62095-h/62095-h.htm#b1c6 328 Lord, Clive Errol, 1922, 'Notes on Captain Bligh's visits to Tasmania in 1788 and 1792', Papers & Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania: 1-22. https://eprints.utas.edu.au/15672/1/lord-bligh-visits-tasmania-1922.pdf 321 1262 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 329 Lord, Clive Errol, 1922, 'Notes on Captain Bligh's visits to Tasmania in 1788 and 1792' , Papers & Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania: 1-22. https://eprints.utas.edu.au/15672/1/lord-bligh-visits-tasmania-1922.pdf 330 Lord, Clive, 1919, The Early History of Maria Island, East Coast, Tasmania https://eprints.utas.edu.au/15857/1/lord-history-maria-island-1919.pdf 331 NJB Plomley (1977), The Baudin Expedition and the Tasmanian Aborigines, 1802 (ML Q306.0899915/2) Péron, Voyage de décourvertes aux Terres Australis. Frank Horner (1987), The French Reconnaissance Baudin in Australia 1801 – 1803: 188 - 210 332 Lord, Clive, 1919, The Early History of Maria Island, East Coast, Tasmania: 46 https://eprints.utas.edu.au/15857/1/lord-history-maria-island-1919.pdf 333 NJB Plomley (1977), The Baudin Expedition and the Tasmanian Aborigines, 1802: 160; John West (1852), ed. AGL Shaw (1971), The History of Tasmania: 258 - 262 334 http://archival-classic.sl.nsw.gov.au/album/albumView.aspx?itemID=890196&acmsid=0 335 Ibid, James Bonwick (1869), The Last of the Tasmanians: 2 - 3. 336 Ibid: 4. 337 Ibid: 4 – 5. 338 https://www.ourtasmania.com.au/visitorsguide/exploration-bligh.html 339 D’Entrecasteaux Channel is to the left of Bruny Island. Recherche Bay is 80kms to the south of Southport. For more on Recherche Bay, see http://www.tasmania.australiaforeveryone.com.au/recherche-bay.htm By Kompakt Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20316311 340 Jacque Labillardière (1755 – 1834) http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/la-billardiere-jacques-julien-houtou-de2316 341 A simple back count suggests 27 children in this one group. 342 M Labillardière, Voyage in Search of La Perouse, Performed by Order of the Constituent Assembly, During Years 1791, 1792, 1793, and 1794, Volume 2: 37 from www.forgottenbooks.com The fate of La Perouse was discovered by an Irishman, Peter Dillon, in 1826, who found remains of their ships near Vanikoro in the Santa Cruz Islands, part of the Solomon Islands. 343 Jacques Labillardière (1800), Volume II, Voyage in Search of La Perouse: 19 – 20 http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1204001h.html 344 Ibid: 26 345 Ibid: 27 - 28 346 NJB Plomley (1983), The Baudin Expedition and the Tasmanian Aboriginals 1802: 21. The purpose of the Baudin expedition (1800 – 1803) was to map the coast of New Holland and to conduct ‘observation and research relating to Geography and Natural History’, as set out by Frank Horner (1987), The French Reconnaissance in Australia 1801 – 1803: 36 – 56. Francois Péron (1775 – 1810) was a natural historian and zoologist. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/peron-francois-2545 347 HRA 3/9: 205, 825 – 829. 348 The Derwent Star, 29 January 1801. Trove has not yet caught up with digitizing the early 19th century record of the Derwent Star and Van Diemen’s Land Intelligence or The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser. This transcript derives from John West (1852), The History of Tasmania (ed. AGL Shaw, 1971): 264 349 NJB Plomley (ed) (2008), Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834.(Mitchell Library, papers of George Augustus Robinson, A7022 – A7092). It is a formidable task to decipher Robinson’s handwriting and I can only admire Plomley’s patience. 350 Judy Campbell (2002), Invisible Invaders Smallpox and Other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia 1780 - 1880 351 And if not STDs, then the genocidal agency of a catastrophic reduction in birth rate caused by the kidnapping of Palawa women and a persecuted lifestyle. It became increasingly difficult to raise a family when there were armed British pursuing parties constantly engaged in ‘search and destroy’ missions on Palawa groups, looking out for their campfires at night, surrounding and shooting them without fear of prosecution. We will examine this vectorial agency in a later section. 352 This includes the initial process of occupation. This document later sets out a classification schema for the occupation process (see Part 1), for which a number of categorial agencies intersect, including those that are involved in genocide. 353 See Ray Gibbons (2015), Documents that Shaped Australian Genocide: 4 – 6; 354 Gibbons, Ibid: 7 - 11; HRNSW, Volume 1, Part 1: 57, 169 - 170 1263 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 355 Gibbons, Ibid: 15 – 19; HRNSW, Volume 1, Part 2: 1 - 6 Ibid:20; HRA 1/1: 13 – 14 357 Lyn Stewart (2015), Blood Revenge murder on the Hawkesbury 1799: 19. 358 Hobart to King, 13th June 1802, HRNSW, Volume 4: 788; Hobart pardoned the murderers for ‘their general good conduct’ from the time of the murders. British justice would never recover. 359 Nicolas Baudin in response to a letter from Governor King, 1802: Ernest Scott, Terre Napoleon, A History of French Explorations and Projects in Australia http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00067.html For some reason, the authoritative Historical Records of New South Wales, Volume 4, Hunter and King 1800 – 1802, edited by F.M. Bladen, 1896, does not include this important letter. Also see Epilogue (in this document) for a transcript. HRA 1/5: 829. 360 At the end of 1802, the British Government decided to agree to King’s proposal to form a settlement in Tasmania. The establishment' consisted of the lieutenant-governor; a military guard of three officers and forty-seven noncommissioned officers and men of the marines, accompanied by twelve wives and children; a civil staff of twelve with four wives and children; twenty-two settlers with twenty-seven wives and children; a missionary and his wife ; three hundred and seven convicts with thirty wives and children; a total of four hundred and sixty-seven persons. Some of the settlers had the option of remaining with Collins or proceeding to Port Jackson. The provisions and stores were estimated to last for two years. HRA 3/1: xvii. On the 25th of June, lieutenant Sladden with the second detachment from Port Phillip arrived in the ship Ocean. There were then four hundred and thirty-three persons in the settlement, including a civil staff of eighteen with fourteen wives and children; forty-eight military with twelve wives and children; two hundred and eighty-one convicts with twenty-four wives and children; and thirteen settlers with twenty-three wives and children. HRA 3/1: xxvii. The invasion of Tasmania had begun. 361 This includes the expansionary reach of Imperialism 362 14th January 1803 https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/tas1i_doc_1803.pdf Also HRA 3/1: 4. 363 For a commentary by Peter Chapman on this significant massacre event, see HRA 3/9: 825 – 829. Also AGL Shaw (ed), Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence: 51-54; Lyndall Ryan (2004), Risdon Cove and the Massacre of 3 May 1804: Their Place in Tasmanian History, Tasmanian Historical Studies, 9: 107 – 123; HRA 3/1: 238, 242, 243, 282. In 1865, Hull briefly and inaccurately refers to this massacre of a peaceful Aboriginal party who were hunting kangaroo (Statistical Account of Van Diemen’s Land, 1804 to 1823) where he records: 1805: Provisions became very scarce, so much so that rations were issued to settlers, troops and convicts. The Aboriginals became very troublesome, and attacked the camp near the present Hospital, and also at Risdon Cove when 40 or 50 were killed. 364 Judge-Advocate Atkins’ Opinion on the Treatment of Natives, 20 July 1805, HRA 1/5, 1804 – 1806: 502 – 504. 365 Nicholas Clements (2015), The Black War: 36; Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 55 – 56; M. Fels, Culture contact in the country of Buckinghampshire, Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1811, Tasmanian Historical Research Association (THRA) Papers & Proceedings, vol. 29, no. 2, 1982: 47 – 69. 366 This includes the processes of occupation, protection and consolidation. From 1803 to 1831, free grants of land were made, subject to a quit-rent. 367 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 58 – 63. Many Norfolk Islanders were granted land at York Plains near Longford, others at New Norfolk near Hobart. In the 1820s, English immigrant numbers were swelled with Scottish settlers to take up Government land grants along the rivers of the lightly wooded plains of the midlands between Launceston and Hobart. ‘Easily adapted for pastureland and farming, this region known as the Midlands – is a landscape now understood as former hunting grounds cultivated by the island’s Aboriginal peoples. The land was alienated and the indigenous inhabitants dispossessed largely via a system of land grants, operating from 1803 to 1831. This process occurred most rapidly (and, at times, violently) between 1824 and 1831, as free colonisation gained pace. The colonial government awarded land to grantees – both free settlers and emancipated convicts – on the basis of their capital and capacity to “improve” the land.’ Stuart King (2019), Scottish Networks and their Buildings in Van Diemen’s Land and Tasmania: 3. https://journals.openedition.org/abe/5887 368 Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: 5 – 41; Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigine: 74 – 83; Lyndall Ryan (2008), List of multiple killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 – 1835 http://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/list-multiple-killings-aboriginestasmania-1804-1835 356 1264 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 369 Includes extermination, extirpation, ethnic cleansing, genocide and the other variant agencies. In Tasmania, the phases of repression and subjugation happened so quickly that they effectively became coterminous. 370 Gibbons, Op. Cit., : 64 – 75; HRA 1/9: 139; www.lib.mq.edu.au/digital/lema/1816/proclamation20July1816.html 371 Lyndall Ryan (2008), List of multiple killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 – 1835 http://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/list-multiple-killings-aboriginestasmania-1804-1835 citing Hobart Town Gazette, 1816; 31st August 1817; 29th March 1818; 25th October 1818; 13th December 1818; 14th November 1818 (I have been unable to check these references because they are unavailable among the Trove digitised newspapers in trove.nla.gov.au ); Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigine: 74 – 83. 372 Ibid, Ryan (2008) 373 John Thomas Bigge (1822 - 1823), Reports of the commissioner of inquiry on the state of the colony of New South Wales, Report of the Commissioner of Enquiry on the State of Agriculture http://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/discover_collections/history_nation/macquarie/greenway/bigge.html http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1300181h.html 374 Clive Turnbull (1965), Black War: 65 – 66; For a transcript of this proclamation, see Henry Melville (1835), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 – 1835: 31 – 32. 375 Gibbons, Op. Cit.: 76 – 79; http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2183147 376 Gibbons, Op. Cit.,: 80 – 88; http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/nsw6_doc_1825.pdf 377 HRA 1/12: 21. Earl Bathurst to Governor Darling, 14th July 1825. Despatch No. 6, per ship Catherine Stewart Forbest ; acknowledged by Governor Darling, 5th May, 1826. 378 www.vdlfarms.com.au www.woolnorthtours.com.au NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission: 4th August 1830, 225 – 226, notes at 266 – 267. 379 In fact, all Aboriginal killings were extrajudicial (apart from those four he hanged as an example), for Arthur charged no one, not a single colonist. He did not want the public, excluding Aboriginals, to become antagonistic to his authority. In some instances, Arthur went further by legalizing the genocide through edicts condoning the violence by settlers and his proclamations of martial law. 380 Arthur hanged Musquito and Black Jack on 25 February 1825. Also see Henry Melville, The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 – 1835: 55 - 59. 381 AGL Shaw ed. (1971), Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land: 20 – 21. Arthur’s response was probably triggered by an hysterical newspaper article on 18th November 1826 that reported ‘a new series of murders, committed by this savage and vindictive race’ and demanded their entire relocation to King Island [Hobart Town Courier: 2]. A month later, the Colonial Times picked up the deportation argument: Until the Aborigines are sent out of the Island, there will be continual slaughter on both sides, which no human hand can possibly prevent [Colonial Times 29th December 1826: 3]. 382 British land and immigration policy, colonial policy, was the primary cause of the race war, a fact acknowledged by one newspaper on the 18th November 1826: ..if any aggression was put upon the rights of these original natives, it was done at first in planting the British Standard, and in entering the first plough in the soil. [Hobart Town Gazette: 2] Aboriginal dispossession was the necessary corollary to land settlement. Britain was determined to continue the process, knowing the racial consequence. Force would be used, as required, to establish supremacy. Land would not be returned to the Palawa. 383 Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People: 97 – 98, Government Notice edict from the Colonial Secretary’s Office, authorized by Arthur, 29 November 1826, Op. Cit., Shaw (1971): 21. ‘when a felony [by Aborigines] has been committed..the persons pursuing may use such force as is necessary’. Also Shaw, op, cit., 29 November 1827: 21 ..the black Natives may be driven from the settled districts, which has now become a measure of indispensable necessity, as they cannot by conciliating means be induced to retire from them. Sufficient troops to give confidence to the inhabitants will be at the disposal of the civil power in every district, and the number will be augmented as circumstances require. 384 John Connor (2005), The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838: 84 – 101 (Van Diemen’s Land 1826 – 1831); Nicholas Clements (2015), The Black War: 68 – 93; Clive Turnbull (1965), Black War the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines: 64 – 123; Arthur’s use of hangings was not restricted to Aboriginals. During his term, public 1265 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited execution reached unprecedented levels. Arthur left the bodies to rot as an example. [James Boyce 2008), Van Diemen’s Land: 169]; Van Diemen’s Land (ed. AGL Shaw) (1971), Copies of all correspondence between LieutenantGovernor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land; J.C. Gill (1968), Notes on the “Black War” 1827 to 1830 https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:213049/s00855804_1967_1968_8_3_495.pdf 385 Op. Cit., Shaw (1971): 23. This officious proclamation by Arthur was meant more for settler consumption than the Palawa, who would have been unaware of this new segregation policy except by seeing a ring of military outposts. When Aboriginals ignored his ‘proclamation’, Arthur declared martial law. 386 Huskisson to Arthur, 6th May 1828, HRA 3/7: 311 – 312. 387 Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land, ed. AGL Shaw (1971): 22 – 24. Note the one-sided British use of military force: when Aboriginals resisted the process of occupation, Arthur declared martial law; when colonists killed Aboriginals, Britain ignored the normative culpable homicide as ‘justified’ in ‘defence of property’. 388 Lyndall Ryan http://www.massviolence.org/Article?id_article=106 389 http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Cape%20Grim%20Massacre.htm http://press.anu.edu.au/apps/bookworm/view/Edward+M.+Curr+and+the+Tide+of+History/10411/ch01.html Ian McFarlane (2003), Cape Grim, in Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Robert Manne (Ed.): 277–298. 390 For a transcript of Arthur’s proclamation, see Melville, Op. Cit.: 72 – 74. Arthur’s plan failed spectacularly. Wandering Palawa had no knowledge of it or the need for a ‘passport’. 391 Melville writes: At the time it was promulgated it was almost certain death to any native who would shew himself to a European, and it was also death to any European that might fall within the reach of the spear or waddy of the Aborigines. [Ibid, p. 75] 392 Gibbons, this document ‘The role of Martial Law in Tasmanian Genocide’; Excerpt from Arthur’s martial law proclamation, 1st November 1828. http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/4219798 Martial law is sustained from November 1828 to January 1832 393 Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834, Ed. NJB Plomley (2008): 225, 637. 394 The details of the Emu Bay massacre are set out earlier in this document, under the chapter: The role of Martial Law in genocide. It becomes a contextual referent or case instance in the genocidal process for Tasmania. 395 Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834 (ed. NJB Plomley), p. 637; Plomley cites the source as : CSO 1/326/7578. The Tasmanian colonial administration under the British Foreign Office never prosecuted acts of violence against Aboriginals. In consequence, there is an absence of case law. Also Ian McFarlane (2002), Aboriginal Society in North West Tasmania: Dispossession and Genocide: 120 – 144 http://eprints.utas.edu.au/220/ 396 Includes ethnic cleansing and the use of juridical processes to facilitate Aboriginal dispossession and settler sovereignty. 397 George Augustus Robinson 1791 – 1866) emigrated to Tasmania in 1824 and found employment as a builder at a time when there was open hostility with Aboriginals caused by the kidnapping of native children and women, and indiscriminate killing by settlers. Arthur was increasing his punitive measures, which caused the conflict to escalate. Colonists wanted all Aboriginals to be removed, to give them clear possession of the country. In 1828, the Government advertised for a conciliator to establish relations with the Aboriginals at Bruny Island. Robinson successfully applied. He hoped to ‘civilize’ them by teaching them English, Christianity and more settled ways. He realized that he must first understand their customs and language. His efforts brought disease and death, but he then proposed to Arthur that he should travel around the island, accompanied by around a dozen friendly Palawa, and encourage them to surrender to his care. It was a programme of capture, of ethnic cleansing, which continued until October 1833, with captives being rounded up and transported to imprisonment. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/robinson-george-augustus-2596 398 NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson: 117. Also: Arthur to Twiss, 9 March 1830 Informing that a committee has been appointed to gather information on the 1266 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Tasmanian Aboriginals and prepare a report. The full report is at Report of the Aborigines’ Committee, 19th March 1830, Despatches, Arthur to Murray, HRA 3/9 (ed. Peter Chapman), pp. 202 – 236. 399 NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 96 – 99. 400 Government Order No. 2, Colonial Secretary’s Office, 25th February 1830, HRA 3/9: 201. The bounty is for any captured Aboriginal, but ‘roving parties’ often killed in order to capture, with no questions asked under Arthur’s martial law proclamation. Also see Peter Chapman’s note, pp. 141 – 142. HRA 3/9: 201, Colonial Secretary’s Office, February 25th, 1830. Letter plus enclosures from George Arthur to Sir George Murray. Ed. Peter Chapman. 401 HRA 3/9, Arthur to Sir George Murray, Despatch 19, 15 th April 1830: 164 – 236, especially paragraph 10 (pp. 167 – 168) ‘The Military strength under my command is, I submit, inadequate to the protection of the Colony [...] at once two thousand convicts might be assigned away’ [...] Also see Peter Chapman’s note [ibid, note 183, pp. 788 – 789) about the profound human consequences of Arthur’s proposal to use convicts as a paramilitary force. Arthur proposes to arm 2,000 convicts against the Aboriginals. Murray agrees (p. 574). See HRA 3/9: 572 – 576, ‘You have proposed, as a means of mitigating the evil complained of, that an increased number of Convicts should be sent out to Van Diemen’s Land [...] your wishes will, if possible, be complied with’. 402 Report of the Aborigines’ Committee, 19th March 1830, Despatches, Arthur to Murray, HRA 3/9 (ed. Peter Chapman), pp. 202 – 236. 403 Clive Turnbull (1965), Black War the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines: 99- 123; David Davies (1973), The Last of the Tasmanians: 71 – 101; Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People: 87 – 119; Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 101 – 113; Nicholas Clements (2015), The Black War: 125 – 157. 404 Gibbons, Documents that shaped Australian Genocide, Op. Cit.: 92 – 98; http://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1832/r_v_boatman_or_jackass_a nd_bulleye/ 405 Op. Cit., Gibbons, Documents that shaped Australian Genocide: 111 – 117; This is a transcript from the original two-page document held by the UK National Archives. See http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item.asp?dID=42 406 For an eloquent and populist overview of how Britain interpreted the conceptual equivalent of ‘terra nullius’ (or ‘res nullius’) in Australia, see Sven Lindqvist (2012), Terra Nullius A journey through no one’s land.] 407 N.J.B. Plomley, Weep in Silence a history of the Flinder’s Island Aboriginal settlement; Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 219 - 251 408 Op. Cit., Gibbons: 118 – 151; Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes, William Ball, Aldine Chambers, Paternoster Row and Hatchard and Son, Piccadilly, 1837; republished by The Cornell University Library Digital Collections (no ISBN or date) and also available online http://catalog.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=6357526&DB=local from the Cornell University Library, last viewed on 21st April, 2009. The report is quite lengthy, 140 pages, but sobering. To view the electronic record, click on the above address for the catalogue record and then click on the electronic link provided in the record. Once you open the book, you may wish to change the viewing from “image” to “text”. If so, from the first page of the manuscript, go to the top left menu, under Format, and change Image to Text. 409 Roger Milliss (1992), Waterloo Creek The Australia Day massacre of 1838, George Gipps and the British conquest of New South Wales 410 Op. Cit., Gibbons, Documents that shaped Australian Genocide: 158 – 164; This Act has been transcribed from: //ozcase.library.qut.edu.au/qhlc/documents/AustralianColonialWasteland1842.pdf 411 After the forty seven Palawa survivors from Wybalenna were hurriedly relocated in 1847 to a disused and run down penal settlement at Oyster Cove thirty five kms south of Hobart, they were largely neglected and continued to suffer a terrible mortality from the unhealthy conditions where their upkeep was begrudged by the Government. For the rest of Australia, land laws continued to be introduced to assert white sovereignty over what was once Aboriginal land. 412 Ibid: 165 – 170; www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item.asp?dID=76 ,Australian Constitutions Act.mht. The full text is transcribed in www.founding.docs.gov.au/respurces/transcripts/vic3_doc_1851.pdf 413 http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/download.cgi/cgibin/download.cgi/download/au/legis/qld/consol_act/awla1855235.txt 414 Ibid: 178 – 221; http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/sa8_doc_1858.pdf 415 DJ Mulvaney (1989), Encounters in Place Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians 1606 – 1985 416 Ibid 20. 417 Ibid: 95. 1267 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 418 Ibid: 20. Between the 1820s and 1832, around 600 to 900 Palawa were killed, perhaps fifteen to twenty percent of the pre-contact population. See, for example: Nicholas Clements (2014), The Black War: 2. 420 Lyndall Ryan (2008), List of Multiple Killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 – 1835 https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/list-multiple-killings-aboriginestasmania-1804-1835.html 421 Nicholas Clements (2013), Frontier Conflict in Van Diemen’s Land (PhD thesis) https://eprints.utas.edu.au/17070/2/Whole-Clements-thesis.pdf 422 Because the number of Aboriginal deaths in Van Diemen’s Land is directly related to the size of the original population, this question has been central to the history wars. 423 L. Ryan, ‘Estimating the Pre-1803 Aboriginal Population of Van Diemen’s Land’, paper presented to University of Tasmania, Riawunna seminar series, Sandy Bay, Tasmania, 2009. Ryan surveyed all known estimates from the time, and most of the significant estimates that had been advanced since. 424 Taylor, ‘A Study of the Palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal) Place Names’, MA thesis, University of Tasmania, Riawunna, 2006: 54. 425 Cited in Mulvaney & Kamminga, Prehistory of Australia: 339. 426 Jones, ‘Tasmanian Tribes’: 325. 427 Plomley, Tasmanian Tribes and Cicatrices: 12. 428 The one notable detractor has been Keith Windschuttle, who claimed the original population was ‘less than 2,000’ (Fabrication, p. 371). His discussion of the limitations of Jones and Plomley’s methodology (pp. 36472) was reasonable, except in two respects. In particular, his point about the fluidity of bands is weak, and in noting the fact that some of the bands mentioned by Robinson had ceased to exist by the 1830s he seems oblivious to the fact that this only strengthens Jones’ case for assuming there were more bands than just recorded by Robinson (pp. 369-70). It would be strange indeed if Robinson had known about and recorded all the bands, given that most were decimated or destroyed by the time he was writing. Jones and Plomley were working with tenuous evidence, and there is certainly room to question their methodologies, but I feel from my own knowledge of the sources that the population was within their combined estimate range. 419 429 See Chapters 3 and 4. 430 Plomley (‘Disease Among the Tasmanian Aborigines’, p. 667) found evidence of several possible cases of syphilis, but believed it was rare. However, Plomley was unacquainted with John Barnes’ paper ‘A Few Remarks on the Natives of Van Diemen’s Land’ delivered to the Royal College of Physicians in 1829. Barnes (cited in ‘A Young Englishman’s Observations’, p. 21) observed that ‘Gonorrhea has been introduced among them and in many places it commits terrible ravages in the parts affected.’ Examining this extremely rich source, Ian Gregg (‘A Young Englishman’s Observations’, p. 24) found Barnes’ description also strongly suggests syphilis (not known to be distinct from gonorrhea until 1837). Barnes noted that calomel (a mercury compound then the only known treatment for syphilis) ‘gave limited relief’ to colonists who had contracted the infection from Aborigines. Syphilis causes a host of horrible symptoms, among them severe birth defects, but rarely infertility. 431 If left untreated, gonorrhoea can cause epididymitis in men, and pelvic inflammatory disease in women, both of which can cause infertility. 432 This claim (accepted by most historians) is evidenced mainly by the small number of children accompanying some bands at the end of the War, by the remarks of several contemporaries, and by the numbers of childless women among the sealers (see Chapter 6). There was also considerable sexual interaction in the interior. So, whilst none of this is conclusiv e, it provides good circumstantial reasons to assume that, to some extent, infertility impeded the maintenance of the Aboriginal population. 433 This contention has been gleaned largely from Robinson’s remarks throughout his journals, and the fact that he never mentioned such a shortage. See also Weep in Silence, Appendix 1. The child thefts that appear to have been common in the early years of settlement, predominantly impacted bands in the immediate vicinity of Hobart – bands that had practically disappeared by the 1820s. 434 Plomley, The Tasmanian Aborigines, pp. 56-58. 435 Yaws is an infectious condition, caused by the spiral bacterium Treponema pertenue, and is accompanied by red skin eruptions and joint pain. This matches the descriptions given by explorers. Later colonial reports of skin infection appear to refer to canine scabies, a more serious condition resulting from their close contact with dogs. See, for instance, Gregg, 1268 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited ‘A Young Englishman’s Observations’, p. 22 & Hobler, The Diaries of Pioneer George Hobler, p. 77, entry by Frank Hobler, 26 April 1829. In order to distinguish skin and venereal infections from more deadly epidemic diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza, I have employed the term ‘sickness’ to refer exclusively to the latter. 436 Colonial Times, 16 June 1826, p. 3 & J. Barnes, ‘A Few Remarks on the Natives of Van Diemen’s Land’, cited in Boyce, Van Diemen’s Land, p. 65. 437 Fisk’s Mill, in Hobart, was briefly utilised by Colonial Surgeon, Edward Luttrell, to treat a small group of Aborigines for ‘the Cutaneous disorder to which they are more or less liable’ (Sorell to Luttrell, 7 December 1819, in Historical Records of Australia, ser. 3, vol. 2, p. 750). 438 See Buxton to family, 14 September 1821, NLA, MS902, p. 3; Colonial Times, 16 June 1826, p. 3 & Leake to Pike, 19 August 1824, in Hudspeth, ‘Experiences of a Settler in the Early Days of Van Diemen’s Land’, Royal Society of Tasmania Papers and Proceedings, 1935, p. 150. 439 Parramore to family, 5 October 1824, Parramore, Parramore Letters, p. 54. 440 Boyce, Van Diemen’s Land, p. 64. 441 There was one Aborigine who died of a respiratory disease in a Hobart hospital in 1819 (Hobart Town Gazette, 3 July 1819, p. 1). This was ‘Black Mary’, the one time partner of the bushranger Michael Howe. This case has not been included because Mary was detribalised and had been living among the whites for some time. 442 Colonial Times, 27 July 1827, p. 3. The paper claimed that, on 12 July, ‘Black Kit’ died of ‘Catarrh’, and ‘her Companion is labouring under the same distemper’. Bonwick (The Daily Life and Origins, pp. 87-88), however, recorded that ‘Black Kit, Queen of Black Tom’s band, has died of the leprosy.’ 443 Friendly Mission, pp. 55-108, journals April-December 1829. This band appears to have consisted of up to forty individuals when Robinson arrived in March 1829. 444 Weep in Silence, Appendix 1; N. J. B. Plomley, ‘Disease Among the Tasmanian Aborigines’, Medical Journal of Australia, vol. 151, 1989, pp. 666-67. We know these were the diseases responsible based on the symptoms described, and the numerous postmortems carried out on Flinders Island. 445 Robinson to Colonial Secretary, 23 September 1829, in Plomley, Friendly Mission, 1 edn., Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Hobart, 1966, pp. 76-77). 446 Friendly Mission, p. 143, journal 2 February 1830. 447 Robinson to Colonial Secretary, February 1831, Friendly Mission, p. 260. 448 Backhouse, A Narrative, p. 103. Luckerrermicticwocken’s people were from west of the Huon River. 449 Bonwick, Daily Life and Origins, p. 85. Clark was appointed catechist on Flinders Island in 1834, and then assistant superintendent at the Aboriginal settlement at Oyster Cove until his death in 1850. 450 Bonwick, The Daily Life and Origins, p. 87. This last quotation was Bonwick paraphrasing Clark. 451 Calder, Levée, Line and Martial Law, p. 112. There seems to have been fairly distinct socio-linguistic differences between the bands divided by the Derwent River. 452 Making the two-and-a-half-mile voyage to Maria Island on bark rafts was dangerous enough, but it would also have left them more vulnerable to armed men in boats. 453 See J. Campbell, Invisible Invaders: Smallpox and Other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia 1780-1880, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria, 2002. 454 Friendly Mission, p. 1006. 455 Jones, ‘Tasmanian Tribes’, p. 325. Jones estimated that bands ranged in size from forty to fifty individuals. This range is perhaps too narrow given the vast differences in the carrying capacities of east and west Van Diemen’s Land (the former being much richer in resources), but the figure of fifty, for eastern bands, is accepted here in the interest of conservatism. 456 Reynolds, An Indelible Stain?, p. 71. Reynolds is one of the few historians who made a definitive estimate of the pre-War population. The southern and western bands were fewer and smaller than the eastern ones, so his estimate of 1,500 is actually quite close to the one advanced in this thesis. 457 These include many (probably exaggerated) reports of hundreds of Aborigines together at the same time, as well as countless references to Aboriginal burning. 458 One possibility, suggested by Plomley (Weep in Silence, p. 53) was that the ‘eastern peoples, who had greater contact with Europeans, had acquired a greater immunity than the western people.’ Plomley (Disease Among the Tasmanian Aborigines’, p. 666) also noted, however (and his training was in anatomy), that with respiratory diseases 1269 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited in question ‘immunity was not gained from the first infection, but others would follow the first, each causing systematic damage until a terminal infection occurred.’. 459 Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1949), Ethics 460 The total number removed by 1836 was 200, of which 73 had already perished (Robinson to Colonial Secretary, 4 July 1836, SLNSW, ML, A1771, p. 183). Judging from the number of women with the sealers (Plomley & Henley, Sealers of Bass Strait, pp. 71-88), the censuses taken in exile (Weep in Silence, Appendix 1), and from reports of the numbers captured by Robinson and others, it appears that about half this number (just less than 100) were survivors of the War in the east. 461 Furthermore, if large numbers of Aborigines were seriously ill during the War, the constancy and rapidity of their movements is difficult to account for. 462 Gilbert Robertson’s journal, 25 February 1829, TAHO, CSO1/331, p. 142. 54. This includes those killed outright and those who died from wounds in the hours and days after an ambush. Incidentally, this is close to the 500 casualties estimated in 1875 by the conservative historian, James Calder (Some Accounts, p. 25). 463 This includes those killed outright and those who died from wounds in the hours and days after an ambush. Incidentally, this is close to the 500 casualties estimated in 1875 by the conservative historian, James Calder (Some Accounts, p. 25). 464 Windschuttle, ‘Whitewash confirms the Fabrication of Aboriginal History’, pp. 11-13. 465 Nicholas Clements (2013), Frontier Conflict in Van Diemen’s Land: 330 – 331.https://eprints.utas.edu.au/17070/2/Whole-Clements-thesis.pdf 466 In 2020, the Australian crude death rate from all causes was about 6.9 per thousand or 0.69%. https://www.indexmundi.com/australia/death_rate.html 467 Clements’ full dataset shows primary sources and the estimated number of Aboriginals who were wounded or captured. See Nicholas Clements (2013), Frontier Conflict in Van Diemen’s Land: 332 – 338 https://eprints.utas.edu.au/17070/2/Whole-Clements-thesis.pdf 468 https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/introduction.php 469 Ibid. 470 Peter Chapman, HRA 3/9: App 13. Also see Nick Brodie (2017), The Vandemonian War The secret history of Britain’s Tasmanian invasion: 4, 245 – 261 regarding a previously unknown file (CSO1/1/320 (7578)) for Government directed operations against the Palawa, making Arthur’s involvement and intentionality absolutely clear. 471 Lyndall Ryan (2008), List of Multiple Killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 – 1835 https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/list-multiple-killings-aboriginestasmania-1804-1835.html 472 John Connor (2005), The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838: 85, citing Marie Fels, ‘Culture Contact’; Maria Moneypenny, ‘Going out and Coming in’: Cooperation and Collaboration between Aborigines and Europeans in Early Tasmania, Tasmanian Historical Studies, 5 (1), 1995-96, pp 64-75., 473 Lyndall Ryan (2008), List of Multiple Killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 – 1835 https://ogma.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:4578 474 Clements dataset, Op. Cit.: 323 – 347. 475 Ibid: 85, citing Jorgenson, Jorgen Jorgenson: 113; Dumont d’Urville, Two Voyages, I: 192. 476 Ibid: 85 – 87. 477 Lyndall Ryan (2008), List of Multiple Killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 - 1835 478 Lyndall Ryan (2008), List of Multiple Killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 - 1835 479 Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 313. 480 Nicholas Clements (2013), Frontier Conflict in Van Diemen’s Land: 345. 481 Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People; 75 – 76. 482 Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 313 - 314 483 John Connor (2005), The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838: 87 484 Ryan provides no sources for these statistics. Op. Cit.: 313. 485 Ryan provides no sources for these statistics. Op. Cit.: 314. 486 Ibid: 91 – 92, citing Governor’s Proclamation, 1 November 1828, BPP Australia, 4: 184; letter – Thomas Anstey, Police Magistrate Oatlands, to Burnett, 8 December 1828, AOT CSO1 320/7578/5. 487 Ibid: 91-92, citing Melville, History of Van Diemen’s Land: 79. 1270 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 488 Raymond Evans, Robert Ørsted–Jensen, 'I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed': Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier, The Australian Historical Association, ‘Conflict in history’, July 2014 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2467836 Also see John Harris, Hiding the bodies: the myth of the humane colonisation of Aboriginal Australia, 2001 http://press.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ch0550.pdf Ray Gibbons (2015), The Partial Case for Queensland Genocide https://www.academia.edu/12016000/The_partial_case_for_Queensland_genocide 489 Op. Cit., Clements (2013): 255-256. Clements offers no citable evidence for this assertion. We have no way of knowing what the Palawa thought, apart from what some British were told, people such as Robinson. 490 http://www.centre-robert-schuman.org/userfiles/files/REPERES%20%E2%80%93%20module%201-1-1%20%20explanatory%20notes%20%E2%80%93%20World%20War%20I%20casualties%20%E2%80%93%20EN.pdf 491 HRA 3/9, Appendix 13. 492 Op. Cit., Clements (2013) 493 Derived from Clements (2013), Appendix 3: 323 – 338.: 494 Killed 82 132 refers to the ‘no date’ casualties (82), including cumulative ‘unclear date’ (50), making 132; wounded 17 22 refers to ‘no date’ wounded (17), then includes cumulative ‘unclear date’ wounded (5), making 22. 495 Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania Creating an Antipodean England: 13 based upon the register of Van Diemen’s Land land grants held by the Archives Office of Tasmania (LSD 354) 496 Hartwell records that, prior to 1832, grants amounted to 1,974,744 acres. [RM Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850: 58, based upon the official statistics of HM Hull (1866), A Statistical Summary of Tasmania from the Year 1816 to 1865 inclusive: 4]. Therefore, grants from 1824 to 1831 are: (1,974,754 – 571,442.5) = 1,403,311.5 acres. Hartwell records that ‘The amount granted prior to 1832 is difficult to determine, as accurate statistics exist only from 1824. Frankland, the Surveyor-General, mentions in his Report (p. 76) a total alienation by grant and sale up to 31 December 1836 of 2,324,855 acres. If sales up to 1836 (267,825 acres), plus grants between 1832 and 1836 (82,276 acres), are subtracted from Frankland’s total, grants before 1832 can be reckoned at 1,974,754 acres. This total, though large, agrees with Melville (History…, pp. 150 – 1) who gives two million acres as the total alienation by 1835. [In Melville (1965), this page reference is page 129: The number of acres now located is about two million...] 497 In 1823, Sorell was the Tasmanian Governor, under Brisbane. 498 https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guides-and-indexes/land-grants-guide1788-1856 Also Tasmanian Archive Office, LSD 354 499 https://blackwarvandiemensland.wordpress.com/land-grants-1825-roll-call-of-the-displacers/ The document provides a detailed list of the names of those who received grants of land in the Government Notice of November 1825. 500 Robert Montgomery Martin (1839), Statistics of the Colonies of the British Empire: 434. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006693422 (last accessed March 2015) 501 NJB Plomley (1992), Tasmanian Tribes and Cicatrices as Tribal Indicators among Tasmanian Aborigines 502 Rhys Jones (1974), Tasmanian Tribes in NB Tindale (ed) Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits and Proper Names: 319 – 354. 503 https://www2.palomar.edu/users/warmstrong/lmexer9.htm#popgrowth With an 1803 Palawa population upper bound of 5,000, the decline is about 10% pa. to 1833. 504 Plomley, Op. Cit.: 53 – 98. 505 See M. Finnane, ‘Just like a ‘nun’s picnic’? Violence and Colonisation in Australia’, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, vol. 14, no. 3, 2003, pp. 299-306. See also Steven Pinker’s exceptional book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined (Viking, New York, 2011), which presents proportional death rates for numerous conflicts throughout history. 506 Nicholas Clements (2013), Frontier Conflict in Van Diemen’s Land: xvi https://eprints.utas.edu.au/17070/2/Whole-Clements-thesis.pdf 507 Ibid: 343, 345 508 Words that are grouped together by meaning around some subject area (say genocide) form a semantic field or semantic domain (hyponymy). The lexical properties of the subject area (object) comprise attributes and their 1271 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited relationships and classification (typology). These lexical objects map to type concepts and events, such as genocide or a genocidal instance. We will introduce a Lemkinian genocide typology later in this document. 509 Sometimes the mapping can be legally contentious. Nulyarimma v. Thompson (1999) failed because, even if intent could be proven, genocide was not a crime in Australian law. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ILB/1999/81.html 510 HRA 1/12: 21. Earl Bathurst to Governor Darling, 14th July 1825. Despatch No. 6, per ship Catherine Stewart Forbest; acknowledged by Governor Darling, 5th May 1826. 511 Government Order No. 2, Colonial Secretary’s Office, 25th February 1830, HRA 3/9: 201. The bounty is for any captured Aboriginal, but ‘roving parties’ often killed in order to capture, with no questions asked under Arthur’s martial law proclamation. Also see Peter Chapman’s note, pp. 141 – 142. 512 Robert Hughes (1987), The Fatal Shore: 120. 513 Tom Lawson (2014), The Last Man: 14 514 Along with Tom Lawson, other researchers have also drawn attention to the apparent whitewashing of genocide from Australian history by certain eminent historians, including Henry Reynolds and Lyndall Ryan. See Ann Curthoys, Genocide in Tasmania The History of an Idea: 229 – 252 in Empire, Colony, Genocide Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History (ed. A. Dirk Moses, 2008); Shane Breen in. Forgotten Genocides Oblivion, Denial, and Memory (2011), edited by René Lemarchand; Shane Breen, Extermination, Extinction, Genocide: British Colonialism and Tasmanian Aborigines. 515 Steven Pinker (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature: 324. 516 Nikita Khrushchev (1894 – 1971) was Premier of the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964, when he oversaw the deStalinisation of his country, unwinding some of the worst excesses of that era, and paving the way for Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika. 517 Robert Menzies (1894 – 1978), KT, AK, CH, FAA, FRS, QC was Prime minister from 1939 to 1941, then 1949 to 1966. During his long second term, he denied citizenship to Aboriginal Australians, denied them the vote and the right to own land, excluded them from the Census (but included them in the livestock count), and encouraged a system of apartheid where Aboriginals were forced to live separately from whites, often subsisting in makeshift tin shanties on the outskirts of country towns in a late-stage Lemkinian process of racially targeted subjugation and repression. 518 See, for example: Indigenous Rights and History , Vol 1 (1), Monash Indigenous Centre and Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Colin Tatz, Genocide in Australia: By Accident or Design? https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/141554/tatz-essay.pdf Anna Haebich(2008), Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950-1970 Kim Beazley (1964), Dispossession and disease – or Dignity? https://webfiles.acu.edu/departments/Library/HR/restmov_nov11/www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/pp/PP115.HT M 519 //treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf last accessed 29 March 2015. 520 Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain: 13 – 33, 49-85;Henry Reynolds (2013), Forgotten War, 137-151; Henry Reynolds (2004), Genocide in Tasmania?: 127-147 (Genocide and Settler Society (2004), ed. A. Dirk Moses) 521 Nicholas Clements (2015), The Black War: 56-58. 522 James Boyce (2008), Van Diemen’s Land: 261 – 317. Although Boyce is aware of the connection between Aboriginal wellbeing, land alienation and violent conflict, he ignores or downplays the subject of genocide. 523 Inga Clendinnen (2006), The History Question: Who Owns the Past?, Quarterly Essay 23, https://www.quarterlyessay.com/essay/2006/09/the-history-question 524 Keith Windschuttle (2002), The Fabrication of Aboriginal History Volume One: Van Diemen’s Land 1803 - 1847: 18, 96-99, 198 525 Inga Clendinnen (May 2001), First Contact, The Australian Review of Books: 6 – 7, 26. 526 Henry Reynolds (2013), Forgotten War: 148-157 527 Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 255; Lyndall Ryan ( 2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 341-344. 528 John Connor (2005), The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838: 84 – 101. 529 Henry Reynolds (2004), Genocide in Tasmania?: 146-147 (Genocide and Settler Society (2004), ed. A. Dirk Moses) 530 Ibid, p. 27 531 Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain (2001): 52 – 57. 1272 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 532 Ibid: 59, quoting Murray to Arthur, George Murray, Secretary of State Despatch, 5th November, 1830. papers on Van Diemen’s land, 1831, No. 259, p. 56; HRA 3/9: 572 – 576, Despatch No. 43, Murray to Arthur. 533 Government Order No. 2, Colonial Secretary’s Office, 25th February 1830, HRA 3/9: 201. The bounty is for any captured Aboriginal, but ‘roving parties’ often killed in order to capture, with no questions asked under Arthur’s martial law proclamation. Also see Peter Chapman’s note, pp. 141 – 142. 534 George Murray, Secretary of State Despatch, 5th November, 1830. papers on Van Diemen’s land, 1831, No. 259, p. 56; HRA 3/9: 574 – 576, Despatch No. 43, Murray to Arthur. 535 Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain (2001): 66; citing Arthur’s proclamation, dated 1 November 1828, Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence, ed. A.G.L. Shaw (1971): 11 – 14. 536 Nick Brodie (2017), The Vandemonian War The secret history of Britain’s Tasmanian invasion: 245 – 261, regarding file CSO1/1/320 (7578) 537 Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain (2001): 27, 49-86; Forgotten War (2013): 138-141, 148-157.. 538 Arthur to Huskisson, 5 July 1828, ... There is nothing, I would repeat, to be apprehended from the Natives to excite your alarm, or to check emigration.. [Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State (1971) ed. A.G.L. Shaw, p. 8] Arthur to Murray, 4 November 1828 ...I have felt myself called upon to issue a Proclamation of Martial Law against them... but there is no decided combined movement among the Native tribes, nor, although cunning and artful in the extreme, any such systematic warfare exhibited by any of them as need excite the least apprehension in the Government... [Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State (1971) ed. A.G.L. Shaw, p. 9] Arthur to Twiss, 28 May 1830, HRA 3/9: 343 – 344 ...We are bound to protect the Settlers from such acts of continued barbarity as they have been exposed to from these Blacks...although the free Settlers are, in a great degree, an unoffending party, there can be no doubt that the runaway convicts were the first aggressors.. but I am most exceedingly desirous of doing what is right, and leaving no stain upon my Administration.. 539 Murray to Arthur 20 February 1829 ,...As it appears that you have not had recourse to the present alternative of confining the haunts of the Natives to particular limits until you had tried every other possible means of removing the existing evils, His Majesty has commanded me to signify to you his approval of the Proclamation which you have issued for that purpose, and of the instructions which you have given to the civil and military authorities for carrying its provisions into effect...; [Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State (1971) ed. A.G.L. Shaw, p. 8] Murray to Arthur, 9 May 1831 HRA 3/9: 572 – 574 ... and the adoption of any line of conduct having for its avowed or for its secret object, the extinction of the Native race, could not fail to leave an indelible stain upon the Character of the British Government...I approve of your increasing to a reasonable extent, the field police, & the awarding of a moderate bounty to the Military... 540 Nicholas Clements, Black War (2015): 56-58 541 Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain (2001): 27 542 Ann Curthoys, Genocide in Tasmania The History of an Idea: 231, in Empire, Colony, Genocide Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History (2008), ed. A. Dirk Moses. 543 See Gibbons, Semantic Typology of Genocide. Under the UN Convention, Lemkinian genocide connotes more than mass killing, which is why it is procedurally inclusive of, but not limited to, extermination. That is: genocide is the attempt by one group to destroy, in whole or part, another group, where targeted destruction can have many methods, including murder. We see from the conceptual model that Curthoys’ terminological representation leads to inconsistency: extinction, as an outcome, is not necessarily mandated by extermination or genocide. The story becomes more complex, as we will see in Part 2. The nested decomposition conforms to a mapping space where there are multiple levels of intentionality along an abstraction gradient. 544 Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain (2001): 27 545 In a causal universe like ours, events are ordered in time. If I throw a rock into a pool, the splash will come after I throw the rock, not before. Special Relativity precludes faster than light travel. Irrespective of the relative motion of the observer, if event A causes event B, no observer will see B first. 546 This process is delineated in FWAYAF The political uses of Australian genocide, which includes a semantic typology for mass killing and its variant terms. 547 A. Dirk Moses, Moving the genocide debate beyond the history wars, 1273 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/114.pdf Bain Attwood, The Stolen Generations and genocide: Robert Manne’s In denial: the Stolen Generations and the Right , http://press.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ch1032.pdf 548 A. Dirk Moses, Genocide, Australian Humanities Review 55 (November 2013):19, 31 http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-November-2013/AHR55_2_Moses.pdf Bain Attwood, The Stolen Generations and genocide: Robert Manne’s In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right: 169 http://press.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ch1032.pdf Colin Tatz, Confronting Australian Genocide http://press.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ch0251.pdf Inga Clendinnen (May 2001), First Contact, The Australian Review of Books: 6 – 7, 26. 549 Keith Windschuttle, Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Chapter 10. Also see Whitewash On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History (Ed. Robert Manne) for a compelling and comprehensive counter argument to Windschuttle’s flawed thesis. It seems that Windschuttle’s book is well-named: it fabricates history. 550 http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/197.pdf 551 The expression means: there was no genocide in Tasmania, but there was introduced disease and a self-caused failure to procreate, neither of which could be blamed on the occupation process. The contention has no evidentiary basis. 552 Nicholas Clements (2015), Black War: 56-58. 553 Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain (2001): 27; In his latest work, Reynolds presses his argument that genocide did not happen in Australia. What did happen, he maintains, was an extended war at the pastoral frontier, as Aboriginals fought against their dispossession. But this argument equates genocide with a holocaust type event, where Aboriginals across Australia would have to be rounded up, interned, and killed. It ignores the actual meaning of Lemkinian genocide, as set out in Article 2. See Henry Reynolds (2013), Forgotten War: 121 – 157 554 Ibid, p. 209 555 The argument equates to: Clements assumes the UN Convention on genocide is equivalent to his own and Reynolds’ definition, which excludes the case of Tasmanian genocide as he defines it. The argument fails to recognize that the Lemkinian genocide convention includes, but is not limited to, the holocaust. Furthermore, Article 2 of the Convention is not restricted to killing a targeted ‘group’ in whole or part, but also specifies other equally potent forms of destruction, such as removing children, causing mental harm and destroying cultures a group at a time as the pastoral frontier continued its bloody advance, until no Aboriginal group in Australia was left untouched. Many groups still suffer the end-stage Lemkinian effects of marginalisation, systemic ill health, excessive rates of incarceration and chronic disadvantage. 556 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 215 - 216. 557 Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians. The argument equates to: Ryan assumes the UN Convention on genocide is equivalent to her own definition, which excludes the case of Tasmanian genocide. 558 Sir George Arthur (1784 – 1854), colonial administrator. He was Lieutenant Governor of Tasmania from 1824 to 1836. In 1838, a grateful Britain rewarded him with a baronetcy for his services in Tasmania and promoted him to Major General. 559 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/arthur-sir-george-1721 560 In 2012, these are the damning statistics: Aboriginals are 2.5% of the total Australian population but comprise 26% of the gaol population, almost doubling in 20 years. An Aboriginal is much more likely to be incarcerated than have a university education. Aboriginals are sent to gaol for such trivial misdemeanors as an unpaid traffic fine. The rate of incarceration is increasing. https://www.lawcouncil.asn.au/lawcouncil/images/LCA-PDF/Indigenous_Imprisonment_Fact_Sheet.pdf 561 http://www.smh.com.au/national/tony-abbotts-lifestyle-choice-remark-leaves-everyone-hurting-inside-inremote-indigenous-communities-20150313-143lh7.html 562 For a discussion on the myth of rising GDP as a measure of relative prosperity, see Angus Deaton (2013), The Great Escape health, wealth, and the origins of inequality. Deaton received the Nobel prize for economics in 2015. 563 https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide-convention.shtml 564 Joan Frigolé (2005), The State and Exterminating Violence In Search of a Formulation of the Elemental Structure of Genocide. 565 Jacques Semelin (2005), Purify and Destroy The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide 566 John Connor (2010), The frontier that never was: 10 - 28, Craig Stockings (ed), Zombie myths of Australian military history 1274 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 567 NJB Plomley (1992), The Aboriginal/ Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1831: 29 NJB Plomley (1992), The Aboriginal/ Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1831:29 569 Ibid: 185, and quoting James Bonwick (1870), The Last of the Tasmanians: 85 (the citation is for the incorrect book; it should be Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians). 570 Ibid: 84 - 85 571 We will use https://miniwebtool.com/exponential-growth-calculator/?n1=4000&n2=&n3=30&n4=200 572 https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/death-rate-crude-per-1-000-people-wbdata.html#:~:text=Death%20rate%2C%20crude%20(per%201%2C000,compiled%20from%20officially%20recognize d%20sources. 573 See for example: Ray Gibbons (2016), The Great Australian Land War and Aboriginal Depopulation. 574 See Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide, op. cit.. 575 Model (b). 576 Deconstructing Tasmanian genocide the extermination of the Palawa will examine Lemkinian agency in Palawa depopulation using primary sources as an evidentiary dataset. 577 See Part 2, Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. 578 See, for example: Cassandra Pybus (2020), Truganini Journey through the apocalypse: 181 – 206. 579 Detailed integration calculation: dP/ dt = rP or (1/ P) (dP) = r dt P(t) (1/P) dP = 0∫t r dt = r 0∫t dt P0∫ ln │P│ P0P(t) = r t │0t ln │P(t)│ - ln │P(0) │ = r (t – 0) ln │ (P(t) / P(0) │ = r t P(t) / P(0) = e r t P(t) = P(0) e r t 580 https://miniwebtool.com/exponential-growth-calculator/?n1=4000&n2=&n3=30&n4=200 581 For a deconstructive analysis, see Part 1 of this document. There is an overlap between social and jurisprudential schema. 582 See, for example: https://www.hcourt.gov.au/assets/publications/speeches/formerjustices/gleesoncj/cj_ruleoflaw.htm 583 Nicholas Clements (2014), The Black War: 324-325. 584 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines A history since 1803. These phases are defined by part headings. 585 Ibid: chapter headings 586 Ibid: 241 587 Cassandra Pybus (2020), Truganini Journey through the apocalypse 588 NJB Plomley (1992), The Aboriginal/ Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803 - 1831 589 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 143; Clements: 10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War 590 See, for example: Clive Turnbull (1948), Black War the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines; Nicholas Clements (2015), The Black War fear, sex and resistance in Tasmania 591 NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 1834 592 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence A History of the Flinders Island Aboriginal Settlement. 593 Ibid. 594 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 142 595 Ibid: 143 596 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 143 597 Ibid: 143, This period falls within Arthur’s term as Lieutenant-Governor. 568 598 https://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/tas/cases/case_index/1830/notices_concerning_aborigi nes/notice_7_1830/ 599 https://www.omnicalculator.com/math/exponential-growth using the algorithm P(t)= P0(1+r)t 600 See Ray Gibbons (2021), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide: the extermination of the Palawa. 601 https://www.omnicalculator.com/math/exponential-growth 602 Using the annualised algorithm P(t)=P 0(1+r)t 1275 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 603 Ibid: 10, citing Graeme Calder (2010), Levée, Line and Martial Law: 224. https://www.utas.edu.au/telling-places-in-country/historical-context/historical-biographies/mannalargenna 605 NJB Plomley, Rhys Jones. 606 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War p.2 Nicholas Clements. 607 Ibid: 3 608 Ibid: 3 609 Ibid: 10, 610 Ibid: 3 611 Ibid: 3, citing Ryan (2012): 58, 62, 66, 74-75. 612 Ibid: 10 613 Ibid: 3 614 Ibid: 3 615 Ibid: 6 616 Ibid: 8 617 Ibid: 2 618 Ibid: 3 619 Ibid: 3, citing Clements, 2014: 20, 49. 620 Ibid: 2, citing Nicholas Clements (2014), The Black War: 58 - 67. Clements equivocates when he refers to ‘European atrocities’; they were British atrocities carried out with the support and sometimes active involvement of the British Government. 621 Ibid: 8 622 Ibid: 8, citing Clements (2014): 180 - 189 623 Ibid: 3 624 Ibid: 4. 625 Ibid: 4, citing Lyndall Ryan (2014), Tasmanian Aborigines: 87-91, 123-124. 626 Ibid: 4 627 Ibid: 4 628 Ibid: 4 629 Ibid: 6 630 Ibid: 6 631 Ibid: 2. This is far from the truth. The “friendly mission” was an ethnic cleansing programme; Robinson was far from a humanitarian – Arthur paid him for each captured Aboriginal, many of whom died while Robinson held them captive in lethal conditions; Wybalenna was not an ‘island sanctuary’ but an open prison where the captives ‘pined and died’. Robinson detained Aboriginal captives on the West coast, with a mortality rate of around 75%, but he refused to release them for, to do so, he would lose his bounty from Arthur. 632 Ibid: 2 633 Ibid: 11, citing Clements (2013): 324 – 325. 634 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 142 citing Colonial Times, 11 February 1826 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/8791458?searchTerm=11%20february%201826 635 Plomley (1992): 29 636 Nicholas Clements (2013), Frontier Conflict in Van Diemen’s Land: 329 – 331 https://eprints.utas.edu.au/17070/2/Whole-Clements-thesis.pdf 637 For convenience, we will use an online exponential growth calculator , alone and despondent, at Oyster Cove, importuning her friends to protect her body from https://miniwebtool.com/exponential-growthcalculator/?n1=4000&n2=0.015&n3=220&n4= 638 Also see, for example, Banathy (1997), http://www.newciv.org/ISSS_Primer/assem04bb.html 639 https://arxiv.org/ftp/quant-ph/papers/0402/0402001.pdf https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/nuclear-engineering/2251-quantum-theory-of-radiation-interactions-fall-2012/lecture-notes/MIT22_51F12_epr_bell.pdf http://qudev.phys.ethz.ch/content/courses/QSIT10/presentations/QSIT-BellsInequality.pdf 604 640 For an overview, also see https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/200642/how-to-understand-localityand-non-locality-in-quantum-mechanics 641 Sometimes referred to as Hamiltonian mechanics. 1276 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 642 For Newtonian mechanics, the measurement problem is insignificant. Mark Levene (2008), The Meaning of Genocide: 92 - 98 644 For an overview of the debate, see Mimi-Cecilia Pascoe, Intentionalism and Functionalism: Explaining the Holocaust http://eview.anu.edu.au/burgmann/issue2/pdf/ch06.pdf (ibid) 645 See Parts 1 and 2 in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide for a graphical description of the relevant processes that intersect L. genocide through shared categorial agencies. 646 Stanley Milgram (1963), Behavioural Study of Obedience https://www.birdvilleschools.net/cms/lib/TX01000797/Centricity/Domain/1013/AP%20Psychology/milgram.pdf 647 Nestar Russel (2014), Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority “Relationship” Condition: Some Methodological and Theoretical Implications Soc. Sci. 2014, 3, 194–214; doi:10.3390/socsci3020194 www.mdpi.com/20760760/3/2/194/pdf 648 Nestar Russell (2009), Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Experiments: Towards an Understanding of their Relevance in Explaining Aspects of the Nazi Holocaust PhD Thesis http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10063/1091/thesis.pdf 649 OED. 650 www.cs.iusb.edu/~danav/teach/c463/3_agents.html 651 Also see, for example: Muaz A Niazi (2017), Towards A Novel Unified Framework for Developing Formal, Network and Validated Agent-Based Simulation Models of Complex Adaptive Systems https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.02357 652 As we will show, the type triggers exist in a hierarchy along an abstraction gradient. 653 In a similar way, quantum field theory lends itself to stochastic partial differential equations at the detailed level of quanta, but can be aggregated across an expanded domain of interest to a deterministic solution. For an interesting article on this subject, see Stochastic PDE, Reflection Positivity, and Quantum Fields, Arthur Jaffe, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA February 3, 2015 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1411.2964.pdf 654 By example in this document, a simple set of constraint rules that define a genetic algorithm can and will result in genocidal consequences when played out over a defined population. Also see the Milgram experiment in this chapter. 655 The’ myth’ of Murdering Creek is delineated in Part 1 of Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide as an extended trope for the analytical models used to investigate the categorial agencies for Tasmanian genocide. The complete discussion is in Ray Gibbons (2015), Deconstructing Colonial Myths: the massacre at Murdering Creek. 656 These processes are analysed in FWAYAF The Political Uses of Australian Genocide. 657 See FWAYAF The Political Uses of Australian Genocide. There are many investigative efforts into the typology of genocide, among them: VN Dadrian, A Typology of Genocide, International Review of Modern Sociology, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Autumn, 1975): 201 – 212. Dadrian focuses on a linear classification or sub-typing of a particular definition of genocide that bypasses the UN legal definition. Dadrian proposes such sub-types as cultural, latent, retributive and so on. The typology developed by Gibbons uses Lemkinian genocide as a framework for a faceted classification schema. 658 For a more general discussion, see G Ivancevic, DJ Reid (2015), Complexity and Control: Towards a Rigorous Behavioral Theory of Complex Dynamical Systems. 643 659 MIKHEIL KAPANADZE and GIA SIRBILADZE, Genetic Algorithm Approach for the Identification Problem of the Discrete Possibilistic Dynamic System; Ben Goertzel, From Complexity to Creativity Computational Models of Evolutionary, Autopoietic and Cognitive Dynamics, 1997; Kirsty Kitto, Modelling and Generating Complex Emergent Behaviour, PhD Thesis, QUT, 2006; Bernard Chazelle The Convergence of Bird Flocking, 2009 www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/pubs/flocking.pdf ; Felipe Cucker and Steve Smale Emergent Behavior in Flocks, 2007 https://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~mehlhorn/SeminarEvolvability/CuckerSmale.pdf 660 Steven H. Strogatz, Exploring Complex Networks, Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and Center for Applied Mathematics, Cornell University, Nature, Vol 410, 8 March 2001 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6825/pdf/410268a0.pdf 661 We will set out an algorithm and behavioural constraint rules for this complex dynamic system process later in this chapter. 662 JD Murray (2002), Mathematical Biology I: An Introduction 663 Ibid: 395 - 397 664 Ibid: 397 1277 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 665 Ibid: 398 We have used this equation in this paper to carry out a bivariate regression analysis between immigration and land alienation in Tasmanian Genocide. 667 Ibid: 398 - 401 668 We will examine this equation later for propagating wave solutions. 669 Ibid: 400 670 Ibid: 437 – 439; JD Murray (2013), Mathematical Biology II: Spatial Models and Biomedical Applications 671 Evans, Raymond, ACROSS THE QUEENSLAND FRONTIER in Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience, eds Bain Attwood and S.G. Foster (2003): 63 – 75. 672 See Murray, Ibid: 479 673 http://www.canetoadsinoz.com/invasion.html http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=6602 674 J Lubina, S Levin (1988), The spread of a reinvading species: range expansion in the California sea otter, American Naturalist, 131, http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/284804 : 526 – 543. Also JD Murray (2001), Mathematical Biology: 439, 479. 675 The basic theory on the diffusive aspects of wave behaviour is now extensive. For example, see: D Tilman, P Kareiva (ed,) (1998), Spacial Ecology: The Role of Space in Population Dynamics and Interspecific Interactions; PM Kareiva (1983), Local movement in herbivorous insects: applying a passive diffusion model to mark-recapture field experiment.s 676 Refer to equation (4) 677 Also called the Fisher-Kolmogoroff equation. See equation (6). 678 For a discussion of the Tasmanian economic cycles between 1820 and 1850, see: RM Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850, in particular: The trade cycle in Van Diemen’s Land: 193 – 236. Between 1850 and 1930, these ‘boom and bust’ cycles defined the economy. http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/B/Boom%20and%20Bust.htm 679 Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania Creating an Antipodean England: 5 - 23 680 See Introduction, The Shape of Australian History: 92 – 95. 681 Ibid: 402 – 405, 478 – 482. 682 See Part 2. 683 See Part 2. 684 See MG Neubert, M Kot, MA Lewis (1995), Dispersal and pattern formation in a discrete time predator prey model, Theor. Popul. Biol., 48: 7 – 43. 685 JD Murray (1989), Mathematical Biology: 71 686 Ibid: 2. We will model the Palawa population in Part 2. 687 See this paper. 688 We will analyse and assess the relevant categorial agencies in this paper. 689 There is an accepted measure of wealth inequality in any given society. It is the Gini coefficient, developed by the Italian statistician and sociologist, Corrado Gini, in a 1912 paper ‘Variability and Mutability’. The coefficient can have a value between 1 (maximum inequality) and zero (where everyone receives the same income). For Australia, the Treasury office reports that the Gini coefficient has been steadily rising over the last thirty years: from 0.28 (1982) to 0.32 (2011-12). In comparison, Sweden is about 0.23 and the United States about 0.45. http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2013/Economic-Roundup-Issue-2/EconomicRoundup/Income-inequality-in-Australia 690 In our example, counter-cyclic political values correspond with political driven negative feedback constraints on the occupation process, such as limiting the spread of the pastoral frontier until the rights of Aboriginals were properly protected, and enforcing the law for all people, not just the whites. Instead, most collective colonial behaviour was subject to positive feedback, where dysfunctional behaviour was amplified and normalised through Government policies exercised over a considerable period of more than a century. 691 Professor Tony Broe AM is a specialist in geriatric health, dementia and brain ageing. He is the Program Head of the Koori Growing Old Well Study in the Aboriginal Health & Ageing Research Program at NeuRA, Neuroscience Research Australia, an independent not for profit research institute based in Sydney. The majority of Broe's work now is on Aboriginal health and ageing. He was interviewed by Margaret Throsby on this subject on ABCFM Wednesday 11 March 2015. 666 1278 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 692 Vladimir Ivancevic, G Reid, J Darryn (2015), Complexity and Control – Towards a Rigorous Bahavioural Theory of Complex Dynamical Systems. 693 A Hamiltonian H is the total energy of a system, where ∂u/∂t = -H (t, xi,…xn, pi,…pn), and the variables are all functions of the parameter t. As used here, it is the study of the rate of change of the conditions of moving particles at different scales, including the level of macroscopic interpersonal human crowds. 694 The simulation model is represented in the functional language Haskell using the Arrows package. https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.10.0.0/docs/Control-Arrow.html 695 Liouville’s theorem: In complex analysis, the result that a bounded entire function is constant. 696 Op. Cit., Reid et al (2015): 256 697 Op. Cit., Reid et al (2015): 256 698 Ibid, Reid et al (2015): 257 699 Ibid, Reid et al (2015): 258 - 259 700 Ibid, Reid et al (2015): 259 701 Ibid, Reid et al (2015): 261 702 The term ‘government’ is used in the general sense, beginning with successive British Governments from 1788 until the various Australian colonies were granted self-government, and then State Governments until Federation in 1901, and finally including the Commonwealth Government from 1901. 703 The role of collective constraints on innate individual behaviours within some system is consistent with the principles of strong emergent system properties. The stability of the system suggests a set of constraints of some kind on the collective properties of the system, which the parts must obey if they are perturbed from their original states. [Yaneer Bar-Yam, A mathematical theory of strong emergence using multi-scale variety, 2004] http://www.necsi.edu/research/multiscale/MultiscaleEmergence.pdf 704 http://www.math.uah.edu/stat/sample/CLT.html . 705 A more comprehensive Lemkinian typology for Australia is set out in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide, Context, The Semantics of Genocide and Semantic Typology of Genocide (in preparation). 706 HRA 1/5, 1804 – 1806: 502 – 504. 707 Among many others, John Harris reminds us: ‘The awful but surely undeniable fact of Aboriginal history, the one fact that transcends all other facts and all other estimates, reconstructions, analyses, guesses, misrepresentations, truths, half-truths and lies, is the fact of the immense and appalling reduction in the Aboriginal population during the first 150 years of European settlement. This must be the starting point of any morally responsible discussion of the past treatment of Aboriginal people and therefore must precede any discussion of death by violence.’ [Hiding the Bodies: the myth of the humane colonisation of Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal History, 2003, Vol. 27, p. 81]. I agree, but would note that the word ‘European’ should be replaced by ‘British’. To state otherwise is to diminish the direct responsibility of Imperial Britain in the intentional and calibrated process of Aboriginal genocide and cataclysmic depopulation. 708 For one of many excellent introductions to this subject, the interested reader is referred to Philipp Koehn (1994), Combining Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks The Encoding Problem, MSc Thesis, University of Tennessee. http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/pkoehn/publications/gann94.pdf 709 See, for example: Introduction, Documents that Shaped Our History; Appendix, Towards a Transformational Myth. 710 Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 – 2009) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Claude-Levi-Strauss 711 See, for example, Yang Kuang (1993), Delay Differential Equations with Application in Population Dynamics https://www.researchgate.net/publication/243764052_Delay_Differential_Equation_with_Application_in_Populat ion_Dynamics DN Alstad, University of Minnesota, Density Independent Population Growth https://cbs.umn.edu/sites/cbs.umn.edu/files/public/downloads/PopulusHelp_e.pdf 712 In our system of laws, we can be found guilty of certain crimes if there is evidence we carried out or intended to carry out the crime. Intent can be a criminal offence and is equivalent to mens rea (guilty mind). 713 S Gao, J Wu (2013), Bifurcation Theory of Functional Differential Equations https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d02e/6aeccec169dd687c0d10171d4ae7a05a9917.pdf 714 Ibid: 41 - 60 715 A Lipschitz continuity is a strong form of continuity for functions that prescribe a limit in how fast the function can change. That is: there exists a real number such that, for every pair of points on the graph of a function, the absolute value of the slope of the line connecting them is not greater than this real number. For example, every 1279 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited function that has bounded first derivatives is Lipschitz. https://users.wpi.edu/~walker/MA500/HANDOUTS/LipschitzContinuity.pdf 716 Weekend Australian, August 27 – 28, 2016, Inquirer: 21 717 Ray Gibbons, Aboriginal Depopulation and the Great Australian Land War (2015). 718 It is hard to escape the distinct possibility that some diseases were deliberately introduced: see Ray Gibbons, FWAYAF Political Uses of Australian Genocide. 719 See FWAYAF Recollections of a (Homicidal) Pastoral Frontier. 720 For a more comprehensive discussion, see for example: Ray Gibbons (2020), On Values the origins of Australia’s rule-based order. 721 Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116 https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1116&context=orpc 722 Schwartz’ ten ‘values’ are: achievement, benevolence, conformity, hedonism, power, security, self-direction, stimulation, tradition, universalism. 723 Gibbons: Schwartz mapping: Hold: Conservation; Adapt: Openness to change; Grow: Self-enhancement; Transcend: Self-transcendence 724 See Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian genocide: the extermination of the Palawa (in draft). 725 These definitional expansions are what Schwartz terms ‘defining goals’. 726 Quoting Maslow 1965 among others. However, Maslow’s non-empirical needs-based hierarchy can be challenged using structural examples from different types of social organization. 727 https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/kent-state-shooting http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Kent_State_Shootings 728 Stanley Milgram (1963), Behavioural Study of Obedience; also Saul McLeod (2017), The Milgram Shock Experiment https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html 729 Albert Bandura (1999), Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities, Personality and Social Psychology Review 3 (1999): 193 – 209 730 Stanley Milgram (1963), Behavioural Study of Obedience https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1964-03472-001 731 On the Australian frontier, the need for security was high; it was a borrowed landscape that had to be defended. The security measures required paramilitary force and defensive architecture for homesteads, with augered embrasures. 732 By Source (WL: NHCC#4, Fair Use, https://en.wk 733 Adapted from: Schwartz, S. H. (2006). Les valeurs de base de la personne: Théorie, mesures et applications [Basic human values: Theory, measurement, and applications]. Revue française de sociologie, 42, 249 – 288. 734 https://neurosciencenews.com/reward-system-moral-reasoning-7344/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/risk/#Eth Z Fang and others (2017), Post-conventional moral reasoning is associated with increased ventral striatal activity at rest and during task https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541100/ 735 The dashed line indicates little or no codification of the named layer, say ‘rights’. Legend: Mapping (Gibbons: Schwartz) Hold: Conservation; Adapt: Openness to change; Grow: Self-enhancement; Transcend: Self-transcendence. For modelling with partial differential equations, see, for example: Stanley Farlow (2006), An Introduction to Differential Equations and their Applications; also J. Banasiak https://www.up.a.za/m259/Docus/Teaching%20material/ln1.zp158058.pdf and https://cage.ugent.be/~ms/tea/PDEs/eerste_hoofdstuk.pdf and Heinrich Guggenheimer (1977), Differential Geometry 736 www.TherapistAid.com Some of these ‘emotions’ have a physiological basis (facial expression), most are feelings based (sense, affect), some are persistent (behavioural trait), some are descriptive (adjectival), some are affective (verb). Plutchik’s wheel is more rigorous, as it allows sub-typing; but it does not link emotions to behaviour. 737 https://mrafisher.weebly.com/uploads/1/5/7/7/15778366/describe_words-_behavior__personality.pdf We immediately note that, if we profile normative Lemkinian behaviour for settler society, key behavioural attributes are missing, attributes such as acquisitive, exploitative, violent, destructive, murderous, insensitive, racially intolerant (racist), greedy, self-interested, venal, power seeking, invasive. Therefore, the matrix is incomplete. 1280 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 738 Ibid. Ibid. 740 S. H. Schwartz (2012), Theory of Basic Values https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1116&context=orpc The highlighted values are those which tend to be the subject of legislative constraint rules. 741 We normally think of ‘rights’ as those guaranteed by a formal ‘bill’ that may be an amendment to a country’s Constitution. Australia has no such ‘rights’ and those we think we may have are embedded in often ambiguous or contradictory legislation. For example, security legislation may override whistleblower protection. See ‘Towards a Bill of Rights’ in the 2020 paper: On Values the origin of Australia’s rule-based order for a proposed list. 742 A more robust classification schema would classify emotions, behaviours, values, rights, and rules through a set of related typologies that look to physio-neuroendocrinology for empirical guidance. It is a subject we address in: On Values (academia.edu). 743 https://www.9news.com.au/national/jobseeker-payment-increased-after-coronavirus-supplement-endschanges-explained/8eab7829-8592-4601-90f0-245176384e29 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-0223/jobseeker-recipients-in-line-for-extra-$25-a-week/13182498 744 https://data.oecd.org/benwage/benefits-in-unemployment-share-of-previous-income.htm 745 Caring for Older Australians (2011) https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/aged-care/report Aged Care Quality and Safety—Royal Commission—Final report: Care, dignity and respect (2021) https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;adv=yes;orderBy=dateeFirst;query=Dataset%3Atabledpapers;rec=13;resCount=Default 746 https://www.afr.com/property/residential/sydney-melbourne-property-among-world-s-most-expensive20200122-p53tm6 https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/pubs/briefingbook 45p/housingaffordability https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2014/jun/12/why-australia-thirdmost-expensive-houses 739 747 https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1920/ BaseSalary2019#:~:text=The%20PBR%20Act%20and%20the,Act%201990%20and%20related%20legislation.&text= Remuneration%20Tribunal%20Determination%202017%2F12,annum%20from%201%20July%202017. 748 See, for example: Marie-Christine Fourny (2013), The border as a liminal space A proposal for analyzing the emergence of a concept of the mobile border in the context of the Alps. 749 James Sully (1887), Illusions: a psychological study https://www.gutenberg.org/files/17815/17815-h/17815h.htm regarding the Heidenhain liminal perceptual hypothesis. 750 Arnold van Gennep (1909), Rites of Passage. 751 Bjorn Thomassen (2009), The Uses and Meanings of Liminality: 51. 752 P Cameron (2008), Grease and Ochre: The Blending of Two Cultures at the Tasmanian Colonial Sea Frontier: 113116 UTAS MA Thesis https://eprints.utas.edu.au/15763/2/1Cameron_whole_thesis.pdf 753 Ibid: 154. 754 Marie-Christine Fourney (2013), The border as a liminal space A proposal for analyzing the emergence of a concept of the mobile border in the context of the Alps. https://journals.openedition.org/rga/2120 755 Op. Cit. Cameron (2008): 1, ‘The central orthodoxy is found in the diaries of George Augustus Robinson and colonial newspaper reports that firstly portray the sealers as brutal and abusive hardened men who came to the colonial shores raping and killing, and secondly that they were responsible for the demise of many Aboriginal nations.’ Cameron does not cite any specific primary evidentiary sources for this generalised conjectural assertion. Ibid: 121 ‘It seems that Robinson was very selective with what he reported regarding the treatment of clanswomen by the Straitsmen, thus his version was blurred by a biased view.’ 756 P Cameron (2008), Grease and Ochre: The Blending of Two Cultures at the Tasmanian Colonial Sea Frontier: 119 – 121 UTAS https://eprints.utas.edu.au/15763/1/1Cameron-front-matter.pdf 757 See, for example Ronald Suny, Armenian Genocide https://www.britannica.com/event/Armenian-Genocide 758 https://www.quantamagazine.org/protons-antimatter-revealed-by-decades-old-experiment20210224/?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=cc85d44e54-briefing-dy20210225&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-cc85d44e54-44944597 1281 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 759 For a more detailed analysis of the central mapping problem, see Ray Gibbons (2020), On Values the origins of Australia’s rule-based order available on www.academia.edu . 760 The term ‘analytic’ is sometimes used for holomorphic functions because they can be represented by a convergent Taylor series, which can be used to calculate the value of an entire function at every point, if the value of the function, and of all of its derivatives, are known at a single point. 761 For a summary, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_function_theory 762 Ferris Jabr (2021), The Social Network Conflict, negotiation, reciprocity, perhaps even selflessness: an emerging understanding of forests suggests there’s more going on within them than you might think. 763 See, for example: S Roccas, L Sagiv (2017), Values and Behaviour. Taking a Cross-Cultural Perspective; S Schwartz (2017), The Refined Theory of Basic Values in Values and Behaviour. Taking a Cross-Cultural Perspective, eds. S Roccas, L Sagiv; V Ponizovsky, L Grigoryan, U Kuhnen, K Boehnke (2019), Social Construction of the Value-Behaviour Relation Frontiers in Psychology; 2019; 10: 934 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00934/full 764 Primary definitions are taken from the Macquarie International English Dictionary, unless otherwise stated. 765 It is possible to place ‘values’ into a classification schema, and this is addressed in a companion work: On Values (academia.edu) 766 See, for example, Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain?: 27 The question of intent is never far away in discussions of genocide. Was the killing of indigenous people done with the specific intention of destroying particular groups, or did it happen as a consequence of action that had other motives, such as the taking of land, the imposing of a new order or the pacification of a violent frontier? 767 See, for example: Ray Gibbons (2017), Deconstructing Australian Genocide how Britain shaped the destruction of Aboriginal society 768 See Ray Gibbons (2015), Documents that Shaped Australian Genocide 769 Rafael Lemkin (1944), Axis Rule in Occupied Europe 770 Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. The full transcript can be found at http://www.oas.org/dil/1948_Convention_on_the_Prevention_and_Punishment_of_the_Crime_of_Genocide.pdf 771 Rafael Lemkin (1900 – 1949), a Polish Jew and lawyer, first raised the concept of genocide in his influential 1944 book: Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation – Analysis of Government – Proposals for Redress. At the time of his death, Lemkin was writing a further comprehensive book that included a section on Tasmanian Genocide. The book was never finished. Only seven people attended his funeral in New York. 772 Ibid, Chapter IX, GENOCIDE - A NEW TERM AND NEW CONCEPTION FOR DESTRUCTION OF NATIONS 773 In the case of Australia, we think of the destruction of Aboriginal society by Britain. 774 Shirley Scott, Why wasn’t genocide a crime in Australia? Accounting for the half century delay in Australia implementing the Genocide Convention http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AJHR/2004/22.html ICTJ Legal Analysis on Applicability of UN Convention on Genocides prior to January 12, 1951 http://groong.usc.edu/ICTJanalysis.html 775 See Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa 776 For an Australian context, see Colin Tatz, Confronting Australian Genocide, Aboriginal History 2001 Vol 25, and Genocide in Australia, Research Discussion Paper, AIATSIS, Number 9, 1999. http://www.kooriweb.org/gst/genocide/tatz.html also Benjamin Madley, Patterns of frontier genocide 1803 – 1910: the Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia, Journal of Genocide Research (2004), 6 (2): 168 - 192 http://gsp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/patterns_of_frontier_genocide.pdf 777 http://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocitycrimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20 Genocide.pdf 778 See for example Geoffrey Robertson (2015), An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians? See more at: http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/geoffrey-robertson/an-inconvenient-genocide-who-nowremembers-the-armenians-9780857986337.aspx#sthash.s9vQZB4E.dpuf Turkey disputes the Armenian genocide, arguing that over a million deaths occurred ‘accidentally’ as a result of mass ethnic relocation in the course of a war. 779 Macquarie International English Dictionary 780 https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/pages/whatarehumanrights.aspx 781 I borrow this term from Ron Suskind (2006), The One Percent Doctrine. 1282 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 782 https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/climate-change-protest-will-lead-to-dole-queue-minister-tellsstudents-20181130-p50jbt.html 783 https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/video/1448934979637/Scott-Morrison-No-one-is-above-the-law-in-this-cou 784 Morgan Begg, Kristen Pereira, Institute of Public Affairs (2019), Legal Rights Audit 2019 https://ipa.org.au/wpcontent/uploads/2019/12/IPA-Report-Legal-rights-audit-2019.pdf 785 Ibid: 14 786 Stanley Milgram (1963), Behavioural Study of Obedience https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1964-03472-001 Stanley Milgram (1974), Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View 787 I am not the first to make the link between genocide and ecocide or, more specifically, between climate change and genocide. See, for example: Jürgen Zimmerer (2014), Climate change, environmental violence and genocide The International Journal of Human Rights, 18 (3) June 2014 DOI: 10.1080/13642987.2014.914701 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263429304_Climate_change_environmental_violence_and_genocide David Wallace-Wells (2018), UN Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It’s Actually Worse Than That. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genocide-coming-but-its-worse-than-that.html 788 See Ray Gibbons (2015), Modelling Lemkinian Genocide. https://www.academia.edu/13775268/Modelling_Lemkinian_Genocide We will argue that the predatory and displacive Occupation process (a repeatable set of actionable steps bound together by proclamations, policies and legislation) drove Australian genocide and ecocide. Also see Ray Gibbons (2017), Documents that Shaped Australian Genocide. https://www.academia.edu/33771694/DOCUMENTS_THAT_SHAPED_AUSTRALIAN_GENOCIDE 789 See, for example: Mason, Timothy "Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy about the Interpretation of National Socialism" pages 3–20 from The Nazi Holocaust Part 3, The "Final Solution": The Implementation of Mass Murder Volume 1 edited by Michael Marrus, Mecler: Westpoint, CT; Timothy Mason (1995), Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class: 212 – 230. 790 CMH Clark (1979), A History of Australia, volume I: 1 791 Macquarie International English Dictionary. 792 Ibid. 793 See, for example: Peter Dowling (1997), PhD Thesis, "A Great Deal of Sickness" Introduced diseases among the Aboriginal People of colonial Southeast Australia 1788-1900 https://openresearchrepository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/7529/1/02Whole_Dowling.pdf 794 Ray Gibbons (2014), For We Are Young and Free, Political Uses of Australian Genocide 795 OED. 796 Although the occupation process described here is set out in an Australian socio-political context, it equally applies (as a template or meta-pattern) to other forms of invasive occupation, including certain disease trajectories and the generalised vectorial morphology of environmental destruction. 797 The Australian, World 13, September 13-14, 2014 798 See, for example: M Barr, C Wells (2012), Category Theory for Computing Science http://www.tac.mta.ca/tac/reprints/articles/22/tr22abs.html 799 See, for example: Ray Gibbons (2015), The Great Australian Land War and Aboriginal Depopulation. 800 G Brennan in Mabo v Queensland (No. 2) 1992 §82: 40 http://www.7genfund.org/sites/default/files/helpfulresources/Mabo%20v%20Queensland%20%28No%202%29%20%28%2522Mabo%20case%2522%29%20%5B1992 %5D%20HCA%2023.pdf http://www.hcourt.gov.au/justices/former-justices/former-chief-justices/sir-francisgerard-brennan-ac-kbe-qc 801 CR Darwin (1871), The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex: 34 [London: John Murray. Volume 1. 1st edition]. 802 CR Darwin (1845), The Voyage of the Beagle: 446 – 447. [Heron Books, London, 1968] 803 Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain? The question of genocide in Australia’s history: 27 804 https://soe.environment.gov.au/theme/climate/topic/emissions-trends https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/13/australias-carbon-emissions-highest-on-record-datashows 805 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/08/explore-atlas-great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching-mapclimate-change/ https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/great-barrier-reef-tourism-die/index.html 1283 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 806 See, for example: https://www.australianmining.com.au/features/what-should-we-do-with-australias-50000abandoned-mines/ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-15/australia-institute-report-raises-concerns-on-minerehab/8270558 https://theconversation.com/what-should-we-do-with-australias-50-000-abandoned-mines-18197 807 https://www.gabpg.org.au/great-artesian-basin/ 808 See, for example: S Lélé 1991), Sustainable Development: A Critical Review, World Development, Vol. 19, No. 6: 607 621. https://www.atree.org/sites/default/files/pubs/slele/journalpublications/Lele_SusDev_review_WDev.pdf 809 MM Vopson (2014), Fundamentals of Multiferroic Materials and Their Possible Applications: 24 – 25 https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/52402966.pdf 810 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191014111716.htm 811 https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/articles/52/ 812 Rick Mills (2020), EV Predictions Show Strained Metal Supply https://www.sharecafe.com.au/2020/02/07/evpredictions-show-strained-metal-supply/ 813 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm) https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/milestones/humanenvironment; 1992 Earth Summit, UN Conference on Environment and Development (Brazil) https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/milestones/unced. R Goodland, H Daly, S El Serafy (1991), Environmentally Sustainable Economic Development: building on Brandtland, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/332821467989482335/pdf/multi-page.pdf 814 Dennis Meadows, Donella Meadows, Jørgen Randers, William W. Behrens III (1972), Limits to Growth: 23 815 Paul Ekins (1992), ‘Limits to Growth’ and sustainable development: grappling with ecological realities: 270. 816 Ibid: 270; H Cole et al (1973), Thinking about the Future: a Critique of the Limits to Growth. 817 Ibid, Ekins: 273, citing E Mishan (1977), The Economic Growth Debate: an Assessment: 10. 818 Ibid, Ekins: 274-275, citing H Daly (1977), Steady-State Economics: 17, 170, 176. 819 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG 820 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG W Lutz, K Samir (2010), Dimensions of global population projections: what do we know about future population trends and structures? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935115/ 821 Ibid. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG 822 See, for example: Paul Kelly, The Politics of Economic Change in Australia in the 19080s and 1990s https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/confs/2000/pdf/kelly-address.pdf, 823 In Wuhan, the epicentre of the epidemic, the central meat market legally sells dogs, cats, bats, wolf cubs and other animals for human consumption, including critically endangered and illegally trafficked pangolins – a longsnouted scaly anteater from East Africa and India. Based on genetic sequencing data, pangolins are the likely intermediary of the viral Chinese epidemic, for which the originating infection may have derived from bats. Should the wildlife meat trade be shut down? Logic suggests it is a public health risk, if not cruel and immoral. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00364-2 https://www.worldanimalprotection.org.au/news/pangolin-poaching-brutal-reality?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI55ySI3D5wIVlo2PCh1gBAukEAAYBCAAEgJ7efD_BwE https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/science/pangolin-coronavirus.html 824 See, for example: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/confs/2000/pdf/kelly-address.pdf https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/australian-government-to-spend-millions-attracting-chinese-tourists20190306-p5120g.html 825 See, for example: https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2019/11/14/is-australia-too-dumb-and-too-china-dependent/ https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/figures-show-how-much-australias-economyrelies-on-china/news-story/7c7028cbcc999ffb279bdd0b49f04341s 826 https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/figures-show-how-much-australiaseconomy-relies-on-china/news-story/7c7028cbcc999ffb279bdd0b49f04341 827 See, for example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/06/26/the-origin-of-the-worlds-dumbestidea-milton-friedman/#7ed5bc0c870e https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160726/OPINION/160729868/economists-give-up-on-miltonfriedman-s-biggest-idea https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-12/bradley-why-are-we-being-sold-the-trickledown-economics-con/7406844 1284 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 828 Dennis Meadows, Donella Meadows, Jørgen Randers, William W. Behrens III (1972), Limits to Growth; (1992), Beyond the Limits to Growth. http://donellameadows.org/archives/beyond-the-limits-to-growth/ 829 See, for example: H Cole, C Freeman, M Jahoda, K Pavitt (1973), Thinking about the Future: a Critique of the Limits to Growth, Sussex University Science Policy Research Unit. 830 Fr Sean McDonagh (2011), Sustainable Development and The Limits to Growth. https://earthcaremission.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/sustainable-development-and-the-limits-to-growth-debatefr-sean-mcdonagh-2/ 831 World Development Report 1992 (World Bank, 1992) https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/5975?locale-attribute=es 832 Ibid. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/5975/9780195208764_overview.pdf?sequence= 12&isAllowed=y 833 Paul Ekins (1992), ‘Limits to growth’ and ‘sustainable development’: grappling with ecological realities: Ecological Economics, 8 (1993): 269 – 288 http://cemusstudent.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Limits-to-Growth-andSustainable-Development-Grappling-with-ecological-realities2.pdf 834 Ibid, citing A Lélé (1991), Sustainable development: a critical review. World Development https://www.atree.org/sites/default/files/pubs/slele/journal-publications/Lele_SusDev_review_WDev.pdf, 19 (6): 609 – 610; J Pezzey (1992), Sustainability: an interdisciplinary guide. Environ. Values, 1 (4). 835 R Norgaard (1992), Co-evolution of economy, society and environment. In: P Ekins and M Max-Neef (editors), RealLife Economics. Routledge, London: 76 – 86. 836 Paul Ekins (1992), ‘Limits to growth’ and ‘sustainable development’: grappling with ecological realities: Ecological Economics, 8 (1993): 269 – 288 http://cemusstudent.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Limits-to-Growth-andSustainable-Development-Grappling-with-ecological-realities2.pdf 837 Citing P Ekins (1989), Beyond growth: the real priorities of sustainable development. Environmental Conservation, 16 (1): 5 – 6, 12. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/environmental-conservation/article/beyond-growth-the-real-prioritiesof-sustainable-development/0D9BA785AD0AED0C24B33EC86812871D 838 Citing Paul and Ann Ehrlich (1989), The Population Explosions: 58 839 Citing J Houghton, G Jenkins, J Ephraums (editors, 1990), Climate Change: the IPCC Scientific Assessment: xviii. 840 Citing Ministry of Housing, Physical Panning and Environment (MOHPPE, 1988), To Choose or to Lose: National Environmental Policy Plan. MOHPPE, The Hague. 841 Citing N Sadik (1991), The State of the World Population 1991: 31. UN Fund for Population Activities. 842 Citing J Tinbergen, R Hueting (1991), GNP and market prices: wrong signals for sustainable economic success that mask environmental destruction in R Goodland, H Daly, S El Serafy (eds), Environmentally Sustainable Economic Development: Building on Brundtland. Environment Working Paper Np. 46, World Bank: 36 – 42. http://www.snihueting.info/EN/Publications/1991-Tinbergen-Hueting-GNP-and-market-prices.pdf http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/332821467989482335/pdf/multi-page.pdf 843 M Schoen (1992), Macroeconomic effects of measures to affect global warming. Fraunhofer Institut, Karlsruhe, paper presented at 2nd meeting of International Society for Ecological Economics, Stockholm, Sweden. 844 Ibid: 7. 845 P Ekins (1991), The sustainable consumer society: a contradiction in terms? International Environmental Affairs, 3 (4): 243 – 258. 846 World Bank (1990), World Development Report 1990.Table, pp. 178 – 179. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/5973 847 UNDP, 1991. UN Human Development Report 1991: 30-31 http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/220/hdr_1991_en_complete_nostats.pdf 848 R Goodland, F Daly (1992), Ten reasons why Northern income growth is not the solution to Southern poverty. Environment Department, World Bank 849 P Ekins (1991), A strategy for global environmental development. Development, 1991 (2): 64 – 73. 850 World Bank, 1992, World Development Report 1992: Development and the Environment: 9 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/995041468323374213/World-development-report-1992development-and-the-environment 851 F Hirsch (1976), Social Limits to Growth. E Mishan (1977), The Economic Growth Debate: An Assessment. 1285 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 852 Paul Ekins (1992), ‘Limits to growth’ and ‘sustainable development’: grappling with ecological realities: Ecological Economics, 8 (1993): 269 – 288 http://cemusstudent.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Limits-to-Growth-andSustainable-Development-Grappling-with-ecological-realities2.pdf 853 The future is now: science for achieving sustainable development, Global sustainable development report 2019: xx https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/24797GSDR_report_2019.pdf 854 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/memberstates/australia 855 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-17/gas-exports-blamed-for-electricity-price-rises-job-losses/11121120 856 https://www.lowyinstitute.org/issues/australian-foreign-aid 857 John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, p. 98; quote is taken from FRUS 1948 Vol. 1. p.524. 858 Joseph Stiglitz (2006), Making Globalization Work the next steps to global justice 859 Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality; Thomas Picketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. 860 Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1948 http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.FRUS1948v05p1 861 https://www.acoss.org.au/inequality-in-australia-html-version/ https://www.pc.gov.au/research/supporting/income-distribution-trends/income-distribution-trends.pdf https://www.oxfam.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/An-economy-for-99-percent.pdf 862 https://www.australia21.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Final-InequalityinAustraliaRepor-2.pdf 863 https://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/budget-2013/2013-05-16/abbott-vows-to-keep-tax-cuts/469486 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-13/budget-winners-and-losers/5433178 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-13/budget-2014-joe-hockey-slashes-spending-in-budget-repairjob/5446700 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/may/08/how-joe-hockeys-disastrous-firstbudget-fell-apart-brick-by-brick 864 W Lutz, K Samir (2010), Dimensions of global population projections: what do we know about future population trends and structures? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935115/ 865 Ibid: 12 866 See, for example: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/developing-world-west-living-standardssustainable-products-luxury-africa-asia-us-south-america-a8195416.html https://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-theory/08/standard-of-living-quality-of-life.asp https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712 https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty 867 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/oct/31/six-natural-resources-population 868 https://www.statista.com/statistics/925805/helium-reserves-worldwide-by-country/ 869 https://www.army.mil/article/45029/the_army_response_to_hurricane_katrina https://www.academia.edu/1505911/The_USACE_and_PostKatrina_New_Orleans_Demolitions_and_Disaster_Clean-Up 870 See, for example: Ray Gibbons (2015), The Political Uses of Australian Genocide for which there are supplementary companion works: terminology; methodology; and rule-based behaviour 871 It is hard to escape the distinct possibility that some diseases were deliberately introduced: see FWAYAF Political Uses of Australian Genocide. 872 This was the influential and ill-conceived Daisy Bates philosophy, to ‘smooth a pillow for a dying race’. 873 See Appendix, The shaping of history through redaction in Landscape as History the origin of Australia’s rule-based order. 874 See FWAYAF Recollections of a (Homicidal) Pastoral Frontier. 875 See, for example: David Crewes (2008), Epigenetics and its implications for behavioural neuroendocrinology Neoroendocrinol. 2008 Jun: 29 (3): 344 – 357 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2394853/ 876 This is sometimes termed pseudospeciation. 877 See Ray Gibbons (2015), Deconstructing Colonial Myths the massacre at Murdering Creek. 878 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing Them Home https://www.humanrights.gov.au/ourwork/bringing-them-home-report-1997 879 Peter Sutton (2011), The Politics of Suffering: 209 – 210. 880 Johanna Vollhardt (20t8), The Psychology of Genocide: Beware of the Beginnings, The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/sound-science-sound-policy/201803/thepsychology-genocide-beware-the-beginnings Also see, for example: E Staub (2011), Overcoming evil: Genocide, 1286 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited violent conflict and terrorism; B Harff (2003), No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955, The American Political Science Review, vol 97, No 1 (Feb., 2003): 57 – 73; B Harff, T Gurr (1988), Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases Since 1945, International Studies Quarterly, Vol 32, No 3 (Sep., 1988): 359 – 371. 881 Ray Gibbons (2019), Deconstructing Queensland Genocide (in draft). 882 Ray Gibbons (2019), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa (in draft). 883 This article was contributed by Scott Bennett of the Information and Research Services section of the Parliamentary Library, Canberra. From 1965 to 1998 Mr Bennett lectured in Political Science at the University of NSW, the Royal Military College and the Australian National University. He has published extensively in the area of Australian politics and political history. http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article12004 884 Senator Matheson, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates (S), 1902, p. 11467; Mr O'Malley, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates (HR), 1902, p. 11930. 885 See FWAYAF The Political Uses of Australian genocide. 886 See Ray Gibbons (2015), academia.edu, Deconstructing Colonial Myths: the Massacre at Murdering Creek. In this case, Murdering Creek becomes an instance of the independent variable. 887 We will argue that all points of Australian territorial invasion followed a similar dispossessory pattern. 888 Ray Gibbons (2020 planned publishment), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 889 For the analysis, see Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Queensland Genocide under the section: The growth in Queensland’s economy: 1860 - 1900 890 See, for example: Noel Loos (1982), Invasion and Resistance Aboriginal –European Relations on the North Queensland Frontier 1861 – 1897; Libby Connors (2015), Warrior a legendary leader’s dramatic life and violent death on the colonial frontier. 891 Raymond Evans, Robert Ørsted–Jensen (2014), “I cannot say the numbers that were killed”: Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier. https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:353456 892 This type process was replicated for all beachhead invasion points around the country, including Queensland, showing a self-similar pattern. 893 https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/qld5_doc_1897.pdf 894 Strictly speaking, the pattern of Australian massacres was not fractal, as we explain in the Appendix. 895 See for example: Alex Alvarez (2017), Unstable Ground: 115 – 138, ‘forced displacement and borders in a warming world’; https://www.huffpost.com/entry/our-survival-depends-upon_b_584820 https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/a0e142fe1fc7738bca2570ec0 019e8fb!OpenDocument https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/oct/31/six-natural-resourcespopulation 896 Simon Winchester (2021), Land: How Hunger for Ownership Shaped the World. 897 Naomi Klein (2019), On Fire; for the 8th October 1769 Gisborne massacre see https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49958027 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/02/britainexpresses-regret-over-maori-killings-after-captain-cooks-arrival-in-new-zealand 898 https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/nsw1_doc_1768.pdf 899 See for example: Ray Gibbons (2017), Documents that Shaped Australian Genocide: 8 – 10 900 http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0501141h.html 901 https://maas.museum/observations/2011/10/20/when-did-captain-cook-land-in-australia-and-did-anychanges-in-the-international-date-line-lead-to-a-change-in-dates-in-australia/ http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/cook/17700429.html 902 http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0501141h.html 903 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa; also Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Queensland Genocide the massacre at Murdering Creek as a contextual referent. 904 For example see: A Sampson (2015), An Introduction to Behavioural Economics https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/introduction-behavioral-economics/ 905 For a summary, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics 1287 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 906 The system model for the type Occupation process shows the procedural interaction between the key categorial agencies as they cooperate to achieve the desired outcome of establishing settler sovereignty (white supremacy) over some contested space. 907 See this document: Modelling settler behaviour as a dynamic, complex, bounded system. Also see: Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. 908 See, for example: JD Murray (2001), Mathematical Biology, I : 402 – 403. 909 Evans estimates that, in Queensland in 1862, the pastoral frontier was advancing at the rate of 200 miles a year (about 320 kms). Evans, Raymond, ACROSS THE QUEENSLAND FRONTIER in Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience, eds Bain Attwood and S.G. Foster (2003): 63 – 75. 910 For a model of the Occupation Process in Australia, see Appendix in this document. 911 See Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Queensland Genocide the massacre at Murdering Creek as a contextual referent; Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa 912 Leo Tolstoy (1873), Anna Karenina: 1 All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. All genocides share the same Lemkinian type characteristics that are variously weighted according to categorial agencies within a specific instance. 913 Notation: I = [0,1]: the unit interval; ∏: the identity function from a set to itself; 914 See Ray Gibbons (2109), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide (in draft) 915 For further reading, see Allen Hatcher (2001), Algebraic Topology 916 Herbert Spencer (1851), Social Statics or The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified and the First of Them Developed Part IV, Chapter XXX, 4 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/spencer-social-statics-1851 917 See Sven Lindqvist (1996), Exterminate all the Brutes. 918 Stephen Katz (1994), The Holocaust in Historical Context. Volume 1: The Holocaust and Mass Death before the Modern Age 919 Hannah Arendt (1951, 1962), The Origins of Totalitarianism: 221 See https://www.azioniparallele.it/images/materiali/Totalitarianism.pdf In particular see Chapter 7, Race and Bureaucracy. In the early 20th century, imperialism had been replaced by totalitarianism in supremacist racist thinking. 920 Ray Gibbons (2109), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide (in draft). Also the Appendix in this document 921 Eric Wolf (1997), Europe and the People Without History: 120 922 Ibid: 121 923 Lisa Ford (2010), Settler Sovereignty Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia 1788 – 1836: 166 924 Ibid: 166 – 167, quoting R. v. Steele, October 28 or 30, 1834, Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788 – 1899. 925 See, for example Peter Overlack, Queensland’s Annexation of Papua: a background to Anglo-German friction http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:205103/s00855804_1978_79_10_4_123.pdf 926 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa; Ray Gibbins (2020), Deconstructing Queensland Genocide the massacre at Murdering Creek as a contextual referent. 927 See, for example: Ray Gibbons (2015), The Australian Land War and Aboriginal Depopulation https://www.academia.edu/11857662/The_Australian_land_war_and_Aboriginal_depopulation Year Book Australia, No. 23, 1930: 670 – 672 http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/allprimarymainfeatures/62DEB194C61FE66BCA2573AE00046021?op endocument http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/free.nsf/0/C2EC7E6AF990B8A2CA257AF000152167/$File/13010_1930_ bk23.pdf 928 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Statistics on the Indigenous Peoples of Australia, Year Book Australia 1994, Ian Castles: 421 – 427 http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/free.nsf/0/348415DE508128F3CA257AFA0011875D/$File/13010_1994_ bk76.pdf Source: The Aboriginal Population of Australia', L, R. Smith, Australian National University Press, Canberra 929 There is a racist connotation in this census enumeration. After all, a census would not variously count the British invaders as Cockney or half-blood Celt or some other classification that derogates genetic heritage. However, the results do reveal the enormous Aboriginal depopulation since 1788, and the effect of sexual predation and miscegenation. 1288 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/free.nsf/0/F8A631CD75497EA6CA25783900132215/$File/1911%20Cens us%20-%20Volume%20II%20-%20Part%20VIII%20Non-European%20Races.pdf 930 1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 1930: 687 – 696 http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/free.nsf/0/EFE13D17AAA8FF7BCA257AF00015216E/$File/13010_1930% 20section%2024.pdf 931 L.R. Smith, The Aboriginal Population of Australia, 1980 932 Aboriginal population statistics, Commonwealth of Australia, Director of National Parks, 2007 http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/tourism/uluru/downloads/Aboriginal%20population%20statistics.pdf 933 The 1911 Commonwealth census shows a figure of 52,343 full-blood and half-caste combined. 934 The report estimate quotes the data source as: Noel Butlin, Our Original Aggression, 1983; Aboriginal population statistics, Commonwealth of Australia, Director of National Parks, 2007 http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/tourism/uluru/downloads/Aboriginal%20population%20statistics.pdf In fact, the correct source is Noel Butlin, Economics and the Dreamtime A hypothetical history, 1994. Butlin assessed that ‘Australian precontact Aboriginal populations might need to be thought of as in the order of five times the Radcliffe-Brown estimates, with population bands of 1 – 1 500 000 persons in 1788’ with ‘a population for New South Wales and Victoria alone at about the same level that Radcliffe-Brown had proposed for Australia as a whole.’ [Butlin; 1994: p. 99] 935 Malcolm Prentis, A Study in Black and White The Aborigines in Australian History: 40, 41. The table and notes are those of Prentis. The pre-contact figures have been revised upwards again by recent scholars. 936 These censuses record the population count of those people who claim an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage, in whole or part. 937 A.R. Radcliff-Brown’s estimate in the Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, XXIII, 1930, pp. 672, 687-696, updated for Tasmania. The total is a minimum figure. 938 These figures are based on the estimates of N.G. Butlin, Our Original Aggression, and those of other recent scholars and represent the most radical revision possible at this stage. 939 Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, XVII, 1924, pp. 951-961. 940 1966 Census: Statement on the Aboriginal Population. 941 The Australian aboriginals, Australian Information Service Publication, 1974, p. 3. 942 1986 Census. The figure combines Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders; there were 21,541 of the latter. 943 Ray Gibbons (2015), The Australian Land War and Aboriginal Depopulation 944 http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3126.0. Includes Jervis Bay Territory. Source: ABS: Experimental Estimates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Population, 1986-1991 and 1991-1996 (ABS, 1994 and ABS, 1998a). 945 http://stat.abs.gov.au/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ABORIGINAL_POP_PROJ# 946 Ibid, Evans, Ørsted–Jensen, I cannot say the numbers that were killed. Orsted-Jensen further cites the 1930 Radcliffe Brown figure (revised by Smith in 1980) of a Queensland pre-contact proportion between 34.2% and 38.2% [Frontier History Revisited, pp. 10, 11]. 947 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Population, 1301.0 – Year Book Australia, 2008 http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/8D6ED0E197FE38A6CA2573E7000EC2AD/$File/13010_ 2008.pdf 948 The Australian Bureau of Statistics provides valuable demographic data on a regular basis. You will find them by doing a search on ‘Year Book Australia No.‘ 949 Nikita Khrushchev (1894 – 1971) was Premier of the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964, when he oversaw the deStalinisation of his country, unwinding some of the worst excesses of that era, and paving the way for Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika. 950 L.R. Smith, The Aboriginal Population of Australia: 238 951 Boyd Hunter, Aborigines and the Economic History of Australia in the Early Colonial Period, Australian National University, presented to CAEPR Seminar Series, 27 March 2013 http://caepr.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/Seminars/presentations/Hunter%20Economic%20History%20March%2 02013.pdf 952 Raymond Evans, A History of Queensland: 10,11. 1289 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 953 Smith,1980, revising Radcliffe Brown estimates, 1930; also cited by Robert Orsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited – Colonial Queensland and the ‘History War’, p. 10. These proportions – not those of the 1911 census - are used to generate pre-contact numbers. The 1911 census shows the disproportionate drop in Aboriginal numbers by state. 954 Williams AN. 2013 A new population curve for prehistoric Australia. Proc R Soc B 280: 20130486 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.0486 From 12 ka, the population curve shows a steady increase in the Terminal Pleistocene,’ primarily driven from south-eastern Australia, and demonstrates increasing spatial use of the landscape and diversification of economic activities, with greater divergence from rock shelters to a range of other sites types. By the Early Holocene, there is evidence for increasing population – with activation of new sites; dense occupation deposits and rock engravings; appearance of complex technology (e.g. fish traps) and food processing techniques.’ [...] ‘It appears that climate instability may have had a significant influence over population change, with notable declines at LGM (approx. 18 ka), Antarctic Climate Reversal (approx. 14 ka), Mid-Holocene Climatic Optimum (approx. 8 – 5 ka) and the onset of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (approx. 4 – 2 ka). The greatest impact to populations appears to have been the LGM, where declines of up to 61 per cent are observed between 21 a nd 18 ka.’ 955 Williams, ibid., p. 3. 956 Williams, ibid., p.6. 957 Williams, ibid., p. 4. 958 Ros Kidd, The Way We Civilize (1997): 201 – 227. For example, when bauxite was discovered on the Weipa/ Mapoon Aboriginal Reserve in 1902, it was only a matter of time before extractive mining began. In 1963, Patrick Killoran, the Queensland Director of Native Affairs, deployed heavily armed police to burn the settlement and forcibly move the inhabitants to another location, allowing Comalco to begin operations unimpeded. 959 A more detailed analysis of the quantitative causes of Aboriginal depopulation, including mass killing, smallpox and sexually transmitted diseases, is set out in FWAYAF The Political Uses of Australian Genocide. 960 Population statistics are analysed in more detail in FWAYAF The Political Uses of Australian Genocide. 961 This and other Aboriginal population discussions and statistics are taken from the relevant ABS year book reports at various times, and are quoted in full. 962 Source: ABS, 2014 Australian Bureau of Statistics (2014) Estimates and projections, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 2001 to 2026. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. 963 Australian Bureau of Statistics (2012) Census of population and housing - counts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 2011. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. 964 Biddle N (2012) CAEPR Indigenous population project 2011 census papers: population and age structure. Canberra: Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. Biddle N (2013) CAEPR Indigenous population project 2011 census papers: population projections. Canberra: Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. 965 Australian Bureau of Statistics (2012) Census of population and housing - counts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 2011. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. 966 Australian Bureau of Statistics (2010) Population characteristics, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 2006 (reissue). Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2009) Experimental estimates and projections, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians 1991 to 2021. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistic. 967 Source: ABS, 2012 968 Australian Bureau of Statistics (2012) Australian demographic statistics, March quarter 2012. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics 969 See Context in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide (draft). 970 Gibbons (2015), Typology of Australian Genocide (unpublished) 971 For example, see Case Instance: Arthur’s declaration of martial law 1828 - 1830: the massacre at Emu Bay 1829 later in his document. 972 Ray Gibbons (2016), The Semantic Typology of Australian Genocide. 973 The generalised association type between all vectorial agency triggers is uses (or is used by), depending on the direction of the association. The network of type triggers overlays the Occupation/ Genocide type process. 974 See Context, in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. 975 Repeatability means that each instantiation becomes a contextual referent. 976 AGL Shaw https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/arthur-sir-george-1721 1290 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 977 Ironically, many mixed blood descendants of the original Palawa are now attempting to relearn some of their language and traditions from the writings of George Robinson, who was one of the few to attempt some partial ethnographic understanding of their culture. Arthur certainly saw no need, although he was careful to engage his superiors in his supposed attempts at ‘conciliation’. 978 Chief Justice Pedder, Van Diemen’s Land, Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried out against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land, ed. A.G.L. Shaw, Tasmanian Historical Research Association (1971): Extract of the minutes of the Executive Council, 23rd February 1831, Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence: 82. 979 Arthur to Hay, 24 September 1832, PRO CO 280/35, quoted in Lyndall Ryan (1982), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 174 980 Quoted in Henry Reynolds (1987), The Law of the Land: 96, citing British Parliamentary Papers (BPP), 1837: 121. I have been unable to verify this source. The BPP (1837) digitized transcript from the Harvard College Library is available at https://ia600406.us.archive.org/34/items/parliamentarypa38unkngoog/parliamentarypa38unkngoog.pdf 981 See ‘FWAYAF Recollections From a (Homicidal) Pastoral Frontier. George Murray, Secretary of State Despatch, 5th November, 1830. papers on Van Diemen’s land, 1831, No. 259, p. 56. 982 Murray to Arthur, ibid. We will use the name Tasmania when we refer to Van Diemen’s Land. 983 See www.adb.anu.edu.au for Arthur’s biographical details. The relative value of £50,000 in 1836 is tens of millions today. Using an average earnings comparison, it is equivalent to £36.5 million, but considerably more if the share of GDP is used - about £139 million. www.measuringworth.com 984 https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/qld5_doc_1897.pdf 985 Brisbane Times, 17 July 2014; http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/australian-war-memorial-shouldrecognise-revised-aboriginal-death-toll-researcher-20140716-ztqr6.html 986 Raymond Evans, Robert Ørsted–Jensen, 'I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed': Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier, The Australian Historical Association, ‘Conflict in history’, July 2014 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2467836 Also see John Harris, Hiding the bodies: the myth of the humane colonisation of Aboriginal Australia, 2001 http://press.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ch0550.pdf 987 Source: Ørsted-Jensen dataset (Excel) unpublished. 988 Queensland Past and Present: 100 years of statistics, 1896 – 1996, Chapter 3 Demography Section 1: 63 – 68 http://www.qgso.qld.gov.au/products/reports/qld-past-present/qld-past-present-1896-1996-ch03-sec-01.pdf 989 Source: ABS, Year Book, Australia, various years; ABS, Australian Demographic Trends, 1986, Cat. no. 3102.0; ABS, Australian Demographic Statistics, March Quarter 1997, Cat. no. 3101.0; ABS, unpublished data. 990 Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited, Colonial Queensland history and the ‘history war’ (2011): 10, 11. 991 This was the popular ‘dying race’ theory that absolved settler society from intentional crimes against humanity. 992 (2,069,421 – 155,825) = 1.91 million; (4,210,000 – 155,825) = 4.06 million. 993 http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/2075.0main+features32011 The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander count included all those individuals who claimed an indigenous heritage in whole or part. 994 Statistical register for 1861, Registrar-General’s Office, Brisbane, 14th July 1862, addressed to Robert Herbert, Colonial Secretary and premier http://www.qgso.qld.gov.au/products/reports/stats-register-qld/stats-register-qld1861-sec-02.pdf 995 Land sales up to 1863 amounted to 213,123 acres, a small part of what was occupied. There are 640 acres in a square mile, so 194,000 square miles is 124.2 million acres. Therefore only 17% of the land was accounted for through alienation in fee. 996 http://www.qgso.qld.gov.au/products/reports/qld-past-present/qld-past-present-1896-1996-ch03-sec-01.pdf 997 Ibid, statistical register: 2 998 Registrar-General’s Statistical Register 1863 for Herbert (colonial secretary and premier), p. 13. The detailed report is notable for the absence of any reference to Aboriginals, except as an expenditure cost for the native police, which is set out on pp. 33, 34. https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:306783/HA3007_Q4_S73_1863.pdf 999 Ibid, p. 13. These statistics do not always reconcile with each other. For example, see the summary statistics, p. 15. He writes that in 1862 the amount realised from land sales was £106,619, increasing to £108,828 in 1863. 1291 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1000 Ibid: 9, 15 Ibid, statistical register: 4 1002 Ibid, statistical register: 5 1003 25th Victoria, No. 3: to raise through loans an amount of £123,800 for immigration and £33,478 in 1862 for all police (including the native police). 1004 Ibid, p. 2. For 1862, the Registrar-General calculated that immigration accounted for 11,727 people. For the total population, the breakdown is : males 27,186, females 17,891. The proportion was about 1.5 : 1, creating a shortage of women. 1005 Ibid, p. 2. For 1863, the population gender breakdown is: males 37,579, females 24,061. The relative proportion has increased to about 1.6 : 1. 1006 Ibid, p. 2. For 1864, the gender breakdown is: males 37,579, females 24,061. The relative proportion remains at about 1.6 : 1. 1007 Queensland statistical register 1863, Registrar-General, p. 2 https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:306783/HA3007_Q4_S73_1863.pdf 1008 Ibid, p. 15. 1009 Ibid, p. 15 1010 Ibid, p. 15 1011 Peter Overlack, Queensland’s Annexation of Papua: a background to Anglo-German friction http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:205103/s00855804_1978_79_10_4_123.pdf 1012 British High Commissioner Arthur Hamilton Gordon to Prime Minister Gladstone, private letter, April 1883, quoted in P. Kaplund, Sir Arthur Gordon on the New Guinea Question 1883, Historical Studies, Volume VII, 1955-7: 330-1. I am indebted to Ray Evans for this quote from: Evans, Saunders, Cronin, Race Relations in Colonial Queensland A history of exclusion, exploitation and extermination, p. 78. At the time, Queensland was pressing the British Government to allow the annexation of Papua New Guinea as a Queensland territory. To their credit, Britain refused the request, although it had done almost nothing about the carnage in Queensland and the other states for the previous 100 years. Britain’s decision may have prevented considerable further slaughter, if Australia’s unique brand of ‘civilising the blacks’ had been allowed to spread north. 1013 Ray Gibbons (2015), Deconstructing Colonial Myths the massacre at Murdering Creek. 1014 See, for example: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/18/forced-to-build-their-own-pyresdozens-more-aboriginal-massacres-revealed-in-killing-times-research 1015 In the context of Queensland Government policy (1860 – 1865). For a more complete list of the racist Queensland legislation for the early 1860s, see Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Queensland Genocide, The Political Uses of ‘Dispersal’ in Early Queensland (Post Separation). 1016 The full extent of the ‘dispersal’ process is revealed in FWAYAF Recollections From a (Homicidal) Pastoral Frontier 1788 – 1928. 1017 See Chloe Hooper, The Tall Man (2008), and Gibbons, FWAYAF Recollections of a (Homicidal) Pastoral Frontier 1018 See Rosalind Kidd (2005), The Way We Civilise 1019 There was a further purge of police operational records in the early 20th century. See, for example: Jonathon Richards, The Secret War A true history of Queensland’s Native Police (2008); Robert Orsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited Colonial Queensland and the ‘history war’ (2011): 100-1. 1020 See, for example: Ray Gibbons (2015), Deconstructing Colonial Genocide the massacre at Murdering Creek. 1021 Baldry et al: 102 https://law.uq.edu.au/files/1263/Queenslands-Frontier-Killing-Times-Facing-up-to-GenocideBaldry-McKeon-McDougall-2015.pdf 1022 Timothy Bottoms (2013), Conspiracy of Silence Queensland’s frontier killing times: xii – xvi 1023 Op. Cit., 2014 1024 See later in this chapter. 1025 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/15/why-the-number-of-indigenous-deaths-in-thefrontier-wars-matters http://www.maristfamily.com.au/resourcedownloads/why_indigenous_deaths_matters.pdf A transcript of their original paper to AHA in 2014 is available through: Raymond Evans, Robert Ørsted–Jensen (2014), “I cannot say the numbers that were killed”: Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier. https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:353456 1026 See, for example: Bruce Breslin (1992), Exterminate with Pride Aboriginal-European relations in the TownsvilleBowen region to 1869: 52 – 68 Wretched caricatures of the human race as they have made themselves, and faithless 1001 1292 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited stewards of the fine property upon which they horde, the right – the duty of civilisation to occupy and “subdue” the soil which they disregard and disgrace is not an open question, in view of either reason or revelation…[Ibid: 53, citing Wide Bay and Burnett Times, 6 March 1860], a view supported by the historian Geoffrey Blainey: To me, the fact is unmistakable that by modern standards the Aboriginals couldn’t make full use of the lands – and it’s in the interests of the world that someone else got them [Ibid: 53 – 54, citing Courier Mail 2 May 1984] ‘Taking’ involved genocide. 1027 Op. Cit., Bottoms et al. 1028 See, for example: Anna Haebich (2004), “Clearing the Wheat Belt” Erasing the Indigenous Presence in Southwest of Western Australia: 269 Biological: depopulation is promoted through measures to decrease the birth rate, for example, controls over marriage, separation of males and females through deportation and gross undernourishment of parents. Measures such as subsidies and tax concessions for large families are introduced to encourage increase in the invading population. Procreation with local populations is encouraged and special care is available for offspring. [Ibid: 269, in A Dirk Moses (2004), Genocide and Settler Society Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History]. 1029 See, for example: Peta Stephenson (2003), BEYOND BLACK AND WHITE: ABORIGINES, ASIAN-AUSTRALIANS AND THE NATIONAL IMAGINARY PhD Thesis https://minervaaccess.unimelb.edu.au/bitstream/handle/11343/39203/67156_00002981_03_finalstephenson.pdf?sequence=1 1030 Ray Evans, Kay Saunders, Kathryn Cronin (1975), Race Relations in Colonial Queensland a history of exclusion, exploitation and extermination: 103, citing A Meston, First Report on Western Aborigines, 16 June 1897, QSA Col/143. 1031 Ibid: 103, citing Constable residing, Boulia to Inspector Branelly, Longreach, 10 December 1898, QSA Col/140. 1032 Ibid: 103, citing Queensland Figaro, 17 March 1883: 176. 1033 Ibid: 99, citing F Urquhart, Cloncurry, to Sub-Inspector Carr, Corella, 5 May 1887, QSA Pol/J19, Batch No. 410M; Sub Inspector Dillon, Winton, to Commissioner of Police, 2 May and 4 June 1892, QSA Pol/J19, Batch No. 410M. 1034 Ibid: 99, citing E Quest, Kyanuna, to Colonial Treasurer, 13 March 1891; also G Sandbrock, Bowen, to Colonial Secretary, 3 April 1889, QSA Pol/J19, Batch No. 410M. 1035 See, for example: Katherine Ellinghaus (2003), Absorbing the ‘Aboriginal problem’: controlling interracial marriage in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries Aboriginal History 2003 Vol 27 http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p73641/pdf/ch1128.pdf White Australians relied on interracial sexual relationships to bring about assimilation through a generation-bygeneration loss of physical identity [Ibid: 202} 1036 Under Aubrey Neville’s eugenics policy, Aboriginal absorption or ‘breeding out the colour’ was promoted as a way of saving the race, which was expected to die out. Neville was Western Australia’s Chief Aboriginal Protector (1915 – 1936) and Commissioner of Native Affairs (1936 – 1940), when he oversaw a child removal programme. Also see Robin Holland (2003), THE IMPACT OF ‘DOOMED RACE’ ASSUMPTIONS IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF QUEENSLAND’S INDIGENOUS POPULATION BY THE CHIEF PROTECTORS OF ABORIGINALS FROM 1897 TO 1942, MA Thesis https://eprints.qut.edu.au/61774/2/Robin_Holland_Thesis.pdf 1037 See, for example: Colin Tatz (1999), Genocide in Australia https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/products/discussion_paper/tatzc-dp08-genocide-in-australia.pdf We know something about Article II (a), "killing members of the group", because they, the Aborigines, were members of a definable group. We know something about the physical killings, particularly in the latter half of the last and the early part of this century. The first white settlers came to Tasmania in 1803, and by 1806 the serious killing began [See Lyndall Ryan (1981), The Aboriginal Tasmanians ]. In retaliation for the spearing of livestock, Aboriginal children were abducted for use in forced labour, women were raped and tortured and given poisoned flour, and the men were shot. They were systematically disposed of in ones, twos and threes, or in dozens, rather than in one systematic massacre. [Ibid: 14] 1038 After 1939, the cumulative deaths in custody levelled off, returning us to an S-curve. In 1968, Aboriginal inmates began to gain more freedom; in 1988, it became a Deed of Grant Trust Community. http://rationshed.com.au/about-cherbourg/ 1039 Data derives from Thom Blake (1992), A dumping ground: Barambah Aboriginal settlement 1900 – 40. PhD Thesis https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:185624 . 1293 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1040 http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookup/3303.0Media%20Release62017 https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/indigenous/Health-Performance-Framework2014/tier-1-health-status-and-outcomes/122-all-causes-age-standardised-death-rate.html . 1042 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa (in draft) 1043 Government Order No. 2, Colonial Secretary’s Office, 25th February 1830, HRA 3/9: 201. The bounty is for any captured Aboriginal, but ‘roving parties’ often killed in order to capture, with no questions asked under Arthur’s martial law proclamation. Also see Peter Chapman’s note, Ibid, pp. 141 – 142. 1044 Mudrooroo (2019), Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World. Wooreddy accompanied Robinson on Arthur’s ‘friendly mission’ of ethnic cleansing. NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission https://www.academia.edu/4801570/Friendly_Mission_The_Tasmanian_journals_and_papers_of_George_August us_Robinson_1829_1834_by_N._J._B._Plomley 1045 Many writers of history claim Arthur as a humanitarian (ADB, Henry Reynolds, even NJB Plomley) but this document will argue otherwise based upon what he did rather than what he said. 1046 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 1047 See Part 2: The role of the British Government in Tasmanian genocide. 1048 Karl Popper (1980), The Logic of Scientific Discovery; (1996), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1049 Anthony Giddens (1978), Central Problems in Social Theory Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis: 243 1050 See Part 2. 1051 See, for example: John Berger (1972), Ways of Seeing; Donald Hoffman (2019), The Case Against Reality 1052 The Committee consisted of: The Venerable Archdeacon Broughton. The Revd. W. Bedford, The Revd. J. Norman, P. A. Mulgrave Esq., Jocelyn Thomas Esq., James Scott Esq. Col. Surgeon, Samuel Hill Esq.., Charles Arthur Esq. 1053 Report of the Aborigines’ Committee, 19th March 1830, Despatches, Arthur to Murray, HRA 3/9 (ed. Peter Chapman): 202 – 236. The Sir George Arthur papers regarding Aborigines, 1825-1837, are held by the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, A 2188 http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2014/D06294/a1771.html The transcript only became generally available in the late 20th century, previously being buried in microfiche records for the British House of Commons papers and other relatively inaccessible places. 1054 Sir George Murray to Lieutenant Governor Arthur, Despatch No. 43, 5th November 1830, HRA 3/9: 574 1055 Op. Cit., HRA 3/9: 202 - 236. 1056 HRA 3/9: 207. 1057 29th November 1826, Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land:21 1058 Ibid: 62 1059 HRA 3/9, note 228: 825 – 829 1060 Arthur to Murray, Proclamation, 15th April 1830, HRA 3/9: 186 – 188, setting out Arthur’s reasons for enforcing marital law, establishing an Aboriginal Committee, and requesting additional convicts to protect settlers in remote areas. 1061 HRA 1/ 12: 21 1062 As we examine in Part 2 and the Appendix, the British Government later saw this direction as self-incriminating and removed it from the House of Commons publication in September 1831. Also see Peter Chapman’s commentary, note 207, HRA 3/9: 808 – 812 and note 173, ibid: 781 – 782. 1063 1861 Select Committee of Enquiry into the Native police Force. Archive.aiatsis.gov.au/removeprotect/92123.pdf last accessed 21 August 2013 (167 pages) 1064 Sir Robert Ramsay Mackenzie, 10th Baronet (21 July 1811 - 19 September 1873) was premier of Queensland from 1867 to November 1868. Mackenzie entered politics in 1859 and became colonial treasurer on 18 December 1859 in the ministry of Robert Herbert. Mackenzie represented Burnett in the Legislative Assembly of Queensland from 1860 to 1869. Mackenzie formed a government in 1867 on the resignation of Arthur Macalister, taking on the roles of premier and colonial treasurer. He resigned on 25 November 1868. 1065 Op. Cit. 1861 Select Committee of Enquiry into the Native police Force. Archive.aiatsis.gov.au/removeprotect/92123.pdf last accessed 21 August 2013 (167 pages). For a full discussion, see Ray Gibbons (2015), Deconstructing Colonial Myths the massacre at Murdering Creek. 1041 1294 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1066 Ibid, Evidence of Challinor: 166 – 167. Challinor’s intended irony was lost on Mackenzie, who proceeded with the purchase of more lethal weaponry and an expanded mounted Native Police force. See RJ Gibbons (2015), Deconstructing Colonial Myths: the massacre at Murdering Creek. 1067 HRA 3/9: 221 – 222. 1068 Ibid: 574. Murray to Arthur, 5th November 1830. 1069 Ibid: 574 1070 Ibid: 574. 1071 James Bischoff (1776 – 1845) had a keen interest in the development of the wool trade in early Tasmania. Part of his book was devoted to the formation of the Van Diemen’s Land Company in NW Tasmania, which had a brutal history in Palawa extermination, a fact he does not mention. For biographical details see Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_18851900/Vol_5_Bicheno_-_Bottisham and https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bischoff,_James_(DNB00) 1072 Lachlan Macquarie was NSW Governor from 1810 to 1821. At the time, Tasmania was part of NSW. If Macquarie’s land grants were ‘indiscriminate’, they were far exceeded by Arthur. 1073 Bischoff, Op. Cit: 33 1074 Ibid: 36. As we now know, Arthur did not give his Palawa prisoners sole use of Flinders Island. They were kept in managed detention, under poor conditions; they began dying out, away from any public gaze. 1075 Bischoff introduces the Appendix with the words: The documents printed in the Appendix shew the cruel and inhuman manner in which these poor savages have been since treated, and the measures which it is now deemed necessary to adopt, in order to put a stop to their ravages, and to protect the persons and properties of settlers. [Ibid: 42] 1076 These despatches have now become more generally available. For example: HRA Series 3. 1077 Sir George Murray to Lieutenant-Governor Arthur, 5th November 1830, James Bischoff (1832), Sketch of the History of Van Diemen’s Land: 231 – 232 1078 Ibid: 233 - 234 1079 HRA 3/9: 262, Secretary Sir George Murray to Lieutenant-Governor Arthur, 20th February 1829. 1080 HRA 3/9: 573, , Secretary Sir George Murray to Lieutenant-Governor Arthur, 5th November 1830. We analyse such evidentiary material for British genocidal culpability in Part 2. 1081 HRA 3/9: 574 1082 Henry Melville (1799 – 1873) Journalist, newspaper publisher and political commentator http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/melville-henry-2445 1083 Henry Melville (1836), ed. George Mackaness (1965), The History of Van Diemen’s Land From the Year 1824 to 1835, inclusive During the Administration of Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur. 1084 Melville was campaigning for the recall of Arthur and for the reintroduction of land grants. Hence the tone of his declamation. 1085 Ibid, Melville: 116 - 118 1086 Henry Melville (1836), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 to 1835, inclusive During the Administration of Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur, ed. George Mackaness (1965): 122 - 123. 1087 Ibid: 122 - 123 1088 Ibid: 184. 1089 Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes, (British Settlements). Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes. 1837. [The Cornell University Library Digital Collections]. We will examine this important document in Part 2 of Deconstructing Tasmania Genocide. 1090 Ibid: vii 1091 https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/final-report 1092 http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/closing-the-gap/key-facts/what-is-the-history-of-closing-the-gap 1093 https://closingthegap.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/ctg-report-2017.pdf 1094 John West (1852, 1971 ed. AGL Shaw), The History of Tasmania: 258 – 334 West was a respected Congregational minister and author (1809 – 1873) http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/west-john-2784 We will examine Labillardière’s journal in Part 2. 1095 West’s (and Labillardière’s) arithmetic is incorrect: in a party of 42, 64% were children; in a party of 48, 50% were children. 1295 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1096 Ibid: 260 Ibid: Section 3, 267-277. 1098 Ibid: 272- 273 1099 See Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide, Part 2. 1100 Op. Cit., West: 263 1101 Ibid. 1102 Ibid: 330-331 1103 See Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide, Part 2, In draft. 1104 James Bonwick (1817 – 1906) http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bonwick-james-3022 1105 James Bonwick (1869), The last of the Tasmanians; or, The black war of Van Diemen’s Land: 85. 1106 Ibid: 30 – 31. Also see: Ray Gibbons (2015), ‘Conciliate the Affections of the Natives’: Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet. 1107 Hobart to King, 13th June 1802, HRNSW, Volume 4: 788; Hobart pardoned the murderers for ‘their general good conduct’ from the time of the murders. British justice would never recover. For a compelling account, see Lyn Stewart (2015), Blood Revenge Murder on the Hawkesbury 1799 1108 Bonwick, Op. Cit.: 31 1109 Ibid: 370 1110 James Bonwick (1870) Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians: 85. 1111 See Appendix The Shaping of History Through Redaction. 1112 RM Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850 1113 Ibid: vii 1114 Ibid: 5. 1115 Ibid: 63 1116 Ibid: 5. 1117 John Thomas Bigge (1822 - 1823), Reports of the commissioner of inquiry on the state of the colony of New South Wales, Report of the Commissioner of Enquiry on the State of Agriculture http://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/discover_collections/history_nation/macquarie/greenway/bigge.html http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1300181h.html 1118 The Oxford Companion to Australian History, ed. G. Davidson, J. Hirst, S. Macintyre (1999): 558 http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100422269 1119 Op. Cit., Hartwell: 5 – 6. 1120 Ibid: 19 1121 Joseph Stiglitz (2013), The Price of Inequality. http://www.anglicare.asn.au/publications/aspectnewsletter/aspect-march-2018 In 2018 Anglicare commissioned a report into ‘The Cost of Privilege’, which showed that, for tax concessions, a total of $68.55 billion is received by those with the top 20% of incomes, compared with $66.85 billion by the other 80%. Not surprisingly those Australians with the lowest 20% of income gained only $6.14 billion from these concessions. The flow to the top 20% is over six times the amount spent on Newstart in the same period. Even the aged pension, the single biggest item in the federal budget is only two thirds of this amount at $44 billion every year. http://www.anglicare.asn.au/docs/default-source/default-document-library/cost-of-privilegereport.pdf 1122 http://www.anglicare.asn.au/docs/default-source/default-document-library/cost-of-privilege-report.pdf 1123 CMH (Manning) Clark (1915 – 1991) Historian. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/clark-charles-manning-225 1124 Ibid: 5 1125 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa, Part 2. 1126 CD Rowley (1970), The Destruction of Aboriginal Society Aboriginal Policy and Practice Volume 1 1127 Ibid: 145. 1128 Ibid: 145 – 146. 1129 See ABC Radio National article, May 2008, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/hindsight/last-refuge-remembering-coranderrkaboriginal/3261602 1130 Carl Feilberg (1880), The Way We Civilize; Black and White; The Native Police: A series of articles and letters reprinted from the “Queenslander’ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Way_We_Civilise 1097 1296 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1131 In Tasmania, pursuing and roving parties were generally on foot because of the heavily forested and rugged terrain in the areas where Aboriginals sought protection from being attacked. 1132 Ibid: 148 – 149. 1133 Ibid: 43 – 44. 1134 Op. Cit.: 43 – 53. 1135 Ibid: 44. 1136 Ibid: 44. Arthur made no effort to protect the Palawa from being shot on sight or prosecute those responsible and, in some circumstances, encouraged the practice. 1137 Ibid: 53. 1138 Ibid: 52. 1139 Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land (1971, with an historical introduction by AGL Shaw). THRA made the compilation from Great Britain – House of Commons Paper 259 of 1831. It includes a map, dated 23rd September 1831, of the field plan for movements of the military in Arthur’s race war. Previously, this correspondence was not easily available. 1140 See Part 2. 1141 Geoffrey Blainey (1930 - ), historian, Australian economic and social history 1142 We will expand on the myth of ‘black armband’ history in Introduction, later in this book. See Geoffrey Blainey (1993), Drawing up a balance sheet of our history. Quadrant, 37, 7 – 8: 10 – 15. 1143 Geoffrey Blainey (1980, (1982)), A Land Half Won: 74-75. 1144 THRA facsimile, 1971, based on the House of Commons paper, September 1831. THRA (1971), Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence… 1145 Op. Cit., Blainey (1980): 74 1146 Also see Graeme Calder (2010), Levee, Line and Martial Law A History of the Dispossession of the Mairremmener People of Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1832; Lyndall Ryan (2013), The Black Line in Van Diemen’s Land: success or failure? Journal of Australian Studies, Volume 37, 2013, Issue 1 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14443058.2012.755744 . 1147 Ibid: 74- 75. 1148 AGL Shaw, Arthur, Sir George (1784–1854) http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/arthur-sir-george-1721 1149 Op. Cit., Blainey (1980): 75. 1150 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa, in draft 1151 Ibid. 1152 We examine our shared colonial history from different observational perspectives in Introduction, The ‘myth’ of settler sovereignty in this document. 1153 Ibid, Blainey, A Land Half Won: 88 – 89. 1154 NJB (Brian) Plomley (1912 – 1994) made an unsurpassed contribution to our understanding of early Tasmanian history, using primary sources he discovered in the Mitchell Library. 1155 Thomas Henry Braim (1814 – 1891) was an Archdeacon and teacher who was in Tasmania between 1835 and 1841. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/braim-thomas-henry-3043 1156 A Narrative of the Habits, Manners, and Customs of the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land (1837), unpublished. 1157 Other works held by the Mitchell are: Jorgenson’s journal of discoveries in V.D. Land and the death of Mr. Lorimer. From Circular Head to the Pieman’s River, West Coast, which was probably used in his anonymous History of the origin, rise, and progress, of the Van Diemen’s Land Company (1829), unpublished. 1158 Jorgen Jorgenson (1837), A Narrative of the Habits, Manners, and Customs of the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land, with the measures adopted by the Local Government for restraining their depredations, and subsequently to bring about conciliation, final capture, and removal (unpublished, donated to Braim). 1159 NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 47- 48. 1160 For Arthur, history wasn’t so much about what was – what actually happened – but what it could be made to look like through careful editing and reconstruction of the historical record. He presented himself as an humanitarian but was an authoritarian monster, the lieutenant governor and military commander in chief, the architect of Palawan genocide. This is why we must go back to the bare events, what Arthur did, rather than the narrative perception or interpretation of those events. 1297 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1161 Robert Hughes (1987), The Fatal Sore. Luke Slattery, writing in The Australian (15th April 2017) criticized Hughes for depicting Australia too much like a Gulag https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/hughess-fatal-shore-unfairly-shows-early-australia-as-agulag/news-story/d2155d038a468e0e259e3b1b51c0d7ff 1163 http://www.clivejames.com/pieces/snakecharmers/hughes 1164 Hughes, ibid: 368 – 324. 1165 Ibid: 399. 1166 Ibid: 414 – 424. 1167 James Carrott: Report of Committee for Aboriginal Affairs, Corr. Military Operations 1832: 36 1168 Corr. Military Operations 1831, Minutes of Evidence, testimony of James Hobbes: 49 – 50. A full account of British settlers’ and sealers’ aggression against the Tasmanian Aborigines is given in Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Chapters 3 – 7. 1169 Hughes, Ibid: 414 – 415. 1170 Op. Cit., Corr. Military Operations: 48. For Arthur’s views on the treatment of Aborigines by free settlers, see Ibid: 16. 1171 Lyndall Ryan (1981, 1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 215 1172 James Boyce (2008), Van Diemen’s Land: 295 – 296. 1173 Ibid: 235. 1174 Ibid: 300 1175 Ibid: 341, quoting TPP, Hansard, House of Assembly, 13 August, 1997: 18 1176 Ibid: 345, quoting Mercury, 1st March 1999, Bacon, press release, 28th February 1999. 1177 Lyndall Ryan (1982), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 261 1178 Ibid: 261 1179 Ibid: 313. Ryan calculates the number of Aboriginals shot between 1800 and 1835 as 362. 1180 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines A history since 1803 1181 Ibid: 143. 1182 Ibid: 143, This period falls within Arthur’s term as Lieutenant-Governor. 1183 Keith Windschuttle (2002), Fabrication of Aboriginal History: volume one, Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1847 1184 Robert Manne (2003), Whitewash 1185 Ibid. 1186 Robert Manne, ed. (2003), Whitewash On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History: 109 - 110 1187 H. Ling Roth (1899), The Aborigines of Tasmania 1188 NJB Plomley (1976), A Word List of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Languages; Henry Reynolds (2003), Terra Nullius Reborn: 114 – 115, in Manne, Ibid. 1189 Plomley’s word sources included Jorgen Jorgensen and George Augustus Robinson. 1190 NJB Plomley (1966, reprinted 2008), Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834: 100 – 101. 1191 Ibid: 101. 1192 Marilyn Lake (2002), History and the Nation: 164, in Whitewash, Ibid. 1193 Ibid: 172 1194 Op. Cit., Manne (2003): 11 - 12 1195 John Connor (2005), The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838. 1196 The most comprehensive account of this predatory military operation is: Roger Millis (1994), Waterloo Creek The Australia Day massacre of 1838, George Gipps and the British conquest of New South Wales. Also John Harris, Hiding the bodies: the myth of the humane colonisation of Aboriginal Australia http://pressfiles.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p73641/pdf/ch0550.pdf https://www.jenwilletts.com/searchaction.php?page=1&surname=nunn&firstname=major 1197 Millis, Ibid: 3 citing Nunn, deposition at Merton 4.4, 1839, HRA 1/20: 25 1198 Here, in reference to the ‘British’ using horses, Connor is confusing the roles of the British army and British civilians. After 1838, police and settlers found that horse-mounted paramilitary commando tactics were effective in chasing down Aboriginal resistors. 1199 Ibid: 85. 1200 Ibid, Van Diemen’s Land, 1826 – 1831: 84 – 101. 1162 1298 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1201 HRA 3/9: 825 – 829 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines A history since 1803: 55 – 56 1203 See Part 2. 1204 Although Connor acknowledges that the British Government was engaged in a land war against the Aboriginals, it is a war that the Australian War Memorial steadfastly refuses to recognize. 1205 Ibid: 85. 1206 Ibid: x citing Alison Palmer (2000), Colonial Genocide: 19. We analyse Palmer’s genocide thesis in Part 1 and find substantial flaws in her arguments that led to inconsistencies noted by Connor and Reynolds. Without the flaws of logic, her genocide argument was sustainable. 1207 Ibid: 93. 1208 Ibid: 101 1209 According to the Van Diemen’s Land financial statement for 1830, the cost of the Arthur’s Black Line operation was around £30,000, compared with the total revenue for that year about £65,000. 1210 Ibid: 87. Ryan estimates that a total of 700 Aboriginals were killed between 1804 and 1831; Reynolds estimates between 250 and 400. We will develop a mortality, morbidity, sexual predation, and kidnapping spreadsheet in the Appendix to Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide: the extermination of the Palawa. Genocide is more than homicide. 1211 James Boyce (2008), Van Diemen’s Land 1212 Ibid: 259 - 313 1213 W.E.H. Stanner, The Boyer Lectures 1968, After the Dreaming: 11 1214 W. E. H. (Bill) Stanner (1905 – 1981) http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stanner-william-edward-bill-15541 1215 As we show in this book, evidenced by various studies such as the ‘Closing the Gap Report’, little has changed today. 1216 Robert Manne (1947 - ) Emeritus Professor of politics and Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Manne edited the 2003 anthology, Whitewash. On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal history, which refuted Windschuttle’s claim there was no British genocide against Aboriginal Australians and that Aboriginal society did not conduct a guerrilla war against British settlement; instead, they were criminals who were breaking British law. 1217 W,E.H. Stanner (2011), The Dreaming & Other Essays, with an introduction by Robert Manne. 1218 See, for example, the latest ‘Closing the Gap Report’ dated 2017. https://closingthegap.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/ctg-report-2017.pdf 1219 R Bonduriansky, T Day (2018), A New Understanding of Inheritance and Evolution: 91 - 92. See also J Sapp ((1987), Beyond the Gene: Cytoplasmic Inheritance and the Struggle for Authority in Genetics; (2003), Genesis: the Evolution of Biology; J Bohacek, M Mansuy (2015), Molecular Insights into Transgenerational Non-genetic Inheritance of Acquired Behaviours, Nature Reviews, Genetics, Volume 16, November 2015: 641 – 652 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282344416_Molecular_insights_into_transgenerational_nongenetic_inheritance_of_acquired_behaviours 1220 WEH Stanner (1968), After the Dreaming: 10. Also Ray Gibbons (2015), ‘Conciliate Their Affection’ – Governor Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet 1221 Op. Cit., Stanner (1968): 26 1222 This quote probably originates with J.A. La Nauze (1959) in Different Perspectives on Black Armband History, Mark McKenna, Research Paper 5, 1997 – 1998, http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/RP9798/ 98RP05 1223 Op, Cit., Stanner (1968): 25 1224 Ibid: 25 1225 In 2018 the Aboriginal film producer Warwick Thornton released an extraordinary film called Sweet Country, billed as an Aboriginal western set in the Northern Territory in the 1920s, where ‘justice itself is put on trial’. This was at the time of the 1928 Coniston massacre, when no one was prosecuted. The major theatre chains declined to show Thornton’s film, claiming a lack of public interest. Nor did another 2009 film he directed called Samson and Delilah receive popular release, being relegated to art theatres. It received many international awards but negligible revenue from its screening. It seems the Australian public has little enthusiasm to be confronted with its history. 1226 Tom Lawson (2014), The Last Man A British Genocide in Tasmania. 1227 Ibid: xviii 1202 1299 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1228 https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/49794/title/The-Evolutionary-Roots-of-Instinct/ Murray Johnson, Ian McFarlane (2015), Van Diemen’s Land An Aboriginal History 1230 Nick Brodie (2017), The Vandemonian Wars The secret history of Britain’s Tasmanian invasion. 1231 Ibid: 1 1232 Ibid 1233 Ibid 1234 Op. Cit., Brodie: 197 1235 Op. Cit., Brodie: 382 1236 Brodie: 229, 16th September 1830, citing Colonial Secretary’s Office, CSO 41/1/1: 451 – 452 1237 See, for example: Mary Ann Jebb (2002), Blood, Sweat and Welfare; Peter Sutton (2011); The Politics of Suffering, Tadhgh Purtill (2017), The Dystopia in the Desert. The silent culture of Australia’s remotest Aboriginal communities; Chris Healy (2008), Forgetting Aborigines 1238 cf. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/corporate-governance.html 1239 https://theconversation.com/why-the-government-was-wrong-to-reject-an-indigenous-voice-to-parliament86408 1240 The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) continues to argue that today’s Britain is not to blame for the wrongs of its colonial forebears and that too much time has elapsed for a fair trial. 1241 SH Roberts ( 1968), The History of Australian Land Settlement (1788 – 1920: 43 - 48; Ronald Hyam (1993), Britain’s Imperial Century, 1815 – 1914: A Study of Empire and Expansion: 75 – 77; Niall Ferguson (2003), Empire: How Britain made the modern world: 102 - 110; James Belich (2011), Replenishing the Earth The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1788 – 1939: 261 – 278. 1242 See, for example: Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination if the Palawa 1243 RC Kramer, RJ Michalowski, D Kauzlarich (2002), The Origins and Development of the Concept and Theory of State-Corporate Crime, Crime & Delinquency. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.515.7792&rep=rep1&type=pdf 1244 Kristian Lasslett, A Critical Introduction to State-Corporate Crime http://statecrime.org/state-crimeresearch/state-corporate-crime-crit-intro/ Queen Mary University of London 1245 The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, established in December 2017 https://financialservices.royalcommission.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx 1246 An epigram by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in the January 1849 issue of his journal Les Guêpes (“The Wasps”). Literally “The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.” 1247 This is an ironic play on: The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. [Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2, oration by Antony]. 1248 https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/2001-john-howard 1249 The Buddhist Vipassana meditation technique is a way of seeing ‘things’ as they really are, that is: paring the cP layers back to P. We can also use logical analysis, as here. 1250 Hitler established the Reich ministry of public enlightenment: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005202 https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007677 1251 In 2008, Barack Obama won 78 percent of the Jewish vote. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-andpolitics/97638/the-most-jewish-election 1252 https://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/28/1077677004840.html 1253 Elizabeth Farrelly, A backup plan to bring on our demise, The Sydney Morning Herald, News Review, 28, February 4-5, 2017 1254 https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf 1255 See this document: Myths and Reality 1256 http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA/1992/23.htm 1257 Inga Clendinnen (2007), Agamemnon’s Kiss: Selected Essays: 156. Also quoted by Peter Sutton (2009): 211 1258 Ray Gibbons (2017), Recollections of a (homicidal) pastoral frontier (in draft). 1259 See Introduction, the myth of settler sovereignty. 1260 On 3 April 1816 Sorell was appointed to replace Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Davey as lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen's Land …..He sailed in the transport Sir William Bensley and reached Sydney on 10 March 1817. During a brief 1229 1300 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited stay there Sorell impressed Governor Lachlan Macquarie before going on to Hobart Town. On 9 April he assumed office http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sorell-william-2680 1261 https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guides-and-indexes/land-grants-guide1788-1856 1262 WN Hurst (1938), A Short History of Land Settlement in Tasmania: 12 – 14 https://eprints.utas.edu.au/22625/1/Hurst-history-tasmania.pdf 1263 Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania Creating an Antipodean England: 13 based upon the register of Van Diemen’s Land land grants held by the Archives Office of Tasmania (LSD 354) 1264 In 1823, Sorell was the Tasmanian Governor, under Brisbane. 1265 https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guides-and-indexes/land-grants-guide1788-1856 Also Tasmanian Archive Office, LSD 354 1266 S Eliot, Burnt Norton 1267 Zachary Blount, American Scientist, May June 2017, Volume 105, Replaying Evolution: 156 – 165. 1268 Jacques Monod (1970), Chance and Necessity: Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology argued for chance, rather than convergence 1269 http://www.fpnotebook.com/Psych/Behavior/ClstrBPrsnltyDsrdr.htm 1270 See Ray Gibbons (2015), Introduction, Myths and Reality 1271 Tom Lawson (2014), The Last Man: 202. For an overview of British supremacist thinking, see Sven Lindqvist (1992), ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’. Also, Patrick Brantlinger (1988), Rule of Darkness British Literature and Imperialism 1830 - 1914 1272 Ibid, 173, 178 1273 Ibid, 203. 1274 With Philip’s New South Wales settlement in 1788 at Sydney Harbour in 1788, Farm Cove became the hope for sustaining the colony. The agricultural experiment almost failed. 1275 Bowen to King, 20th March 1803, HRNSW, volume 5: 223 – 227. Also described by John Hudspeth ‘the beautiful and rich valley of Jericho… more like a gentleman’s park in England, laid out with taste, than land in its natural state’, cited by Bill Gammage (2011), The Biggest Estate on Earth How Aborigines Made Australia: 16, citing RW Giblin (1928), The Early History of Tasmania, vol 2: 306. 1276 SH Roberts (1969), History of Australian Land Settlement 1788 – 1920: 47 – 48; RM Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850: 31 - 62 1277 Roberts, Ibid. 1278 John F. McMahon (1995), THE BRITISH ARMY AND THE COUNTER-INSURGENCY CAMPAIGN IN VAN DIEMEN’S LAND WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE BLACK LINE: ii https://eprints.utas.edu.au/16331/2/mcMahon-partthesis.pdf 1279 Ibid: 1 1280 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 1281 ‘Intent’ is conceptually embedded in the formal UN definition of Lemkinian genocide, so ‘intentional genocide’ is stylistic reinforcement. 1282 I use the term criminal in the behavioural sense of an individual or group being archetypically aware of right and wrong, not the legal meaning which, for Britain, did not recognize or punish assaults and wrongdoing against Aboriginals. Britain was the law and could make the law according to its economic and political interests. 1283 http://closingthegap.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/ctg-report-2017.pdf 1284 The process dynamics for the over-arching occupation process are set out in Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa, Part 1. The categorial agencies for Tasmanian genocide are examined in this paper, where we will also develop an absolute measure of Lemkinian genocide in an area, denoted by Lc. We will investigate the hypothesis that Lc is a function of co-determinate land and immigration policies. These policies, among others, become normative behavioural constraints on the shape of settler society, which we examine and model in Introduction. 1285 William Huskisson (1770 - 1830), Secretary of State: 3rd September 1827 to 30th May 1828. 1286 Arthur to Huskisson, 5th July 1828, Saw (197), Van Diemen’s Land Military Operations: 8. 1287 George Murray (1772 – 1846), Secretary of State: 30th May 1828 to 22nd November 1830. 1288 Murray to Arthur, 20th February 1829, Van Diemen’s Land, Copies of all correspondence (ed AGL Shaw): 8 1301 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1289 HRA 3/8, Arthur to Murray, 3 April 1829, Despatch No. 21: 304, and notes 235, 255, 317. The ‘land question’ is also exposed by Henry Melville, The History of Van Diemen’s Land From the Year 1824 to 1835; 116 – 137. 1290 Minutes of the Executive Council, 27th August 1830, HRA 3/9: 616 1291 Great Britain – House of Commons Paper 259 of 1831, Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land. Also see the Appendix, where this formal redaction is set out in full. 1292 The more complete analysis of Australian genocide is in: Ray Gibbons (2016), For We Are Young and Free: recollections of a (homicidal) pastoral frontier 1788 – 1928 (in preparation) 1293 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-30/battle-of-beersheba-indigenous-soldiers-remembered/9098636 http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-last-huzzah-for-the-walers-of-the-light-horse-brigade-20171019gz42p0.html 1294 By 1847, only a small handful of Palawa remained. These people were relocated from Wybalenna on Flinder’s Island to Oyster Cove, south of Hobart. Arguably the last full blood Tasmanian Aboriginal, Fanny Cochrane Smith, died in 1905. 1295 The reference to ‘political use’ alludes to Jacques Semelin’s seminal work: Purify and Destroy The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide (2007). 1296 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. (in draft) 1297 Ibid. 1298 Bill Stanner (1969), After the Dreaming The Boyer Lectures 1968: 18 - 28 1299 Some nations are seeing melting ice caps in the polar regions as an opportunity for oil and mineral exploitation. 1300 Bill Gammage (2011), The Biggest Estate on Earth How Aborigines Made Australia 1301 Mudrooroo (1983), Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World 1302 https://books.google.com.au/books?id=cFxjAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA254&lpg=PA254&dq=hannah+more+%27all+propert y+is+sacred%27&source=bl&ots=80HKZAr6hE&sig=LF95I15wmYFO_JbmHVvMIer7c2c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKE wjRvraV7bnUAhXDTrwKHTEVDhcQ6AEIKzAB#v=onepage&q=hannah%20more%20'all%20property%20is%20sacred '&f=false 1303 Thomas Piketty (2013), Capital in the Twenty-First Century; Angus Deaton (2013), The Great Escape health, wealth, and the origins of inequality 1304 Jared Diamond (1997), Guns, Germs, and Steel The Fates of Human Societies 1305 For a transcript, see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-26/constitutional-recognition-rejected-byindigenous-leaders-uluru/8563928 1306 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/aug/04/clearing-of-native-vegetation-in-nsw-jumps-800in-three-years https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/queensland-accounts-for-up-to-65-percent-of-tree-clearing-report-20180423-p4zb5q.html 1307 The paradox can be understood in these terms: to reduce agricultural CO2E emissions by x% would generally require a reduction in livestock levels by the same percentage, creating a dilemma for achieving any meaningful carbon footprint that involves livestock. 1308 See, for example: Ryan Doody (2013), The Sunk Cost ‘Fallacy’ is Not a Fallacy http://www.mit.edu/~rdoody/TheSunkCostFallacy.pdf The fallacy was first described by economic prospect theory [D Kahneman, A Tversky (1979), Econometrica 47, 263 – 291] See also: HR Arkes, C Blumer (1985), The Psychology of Sunk Cost, Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes 25, 124 – 140 (1985) http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.452.2318&rep=rep1&type=pdf 1309 See Context in this document. 1310 Gibbons (2015), Typology of Australian Genocide (unpublished) 1311 For a detailed analysis, see Ray Gibbons (2019), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. 1312 For example, see Case Instance: Arthur’s declaration of martial law 1828 - 1830: the massacre at Emu Bay 1829 later in his document. 1313 Ray Gibbons (2016), The Semantic Typology of Australian Genocide. 1314 The generalised association type between all vectorial agency triggers is uses (or is used by), depending on the direction of the association. The network of type triggers overlays the Occupation/ Genocide type process. 1315 See Context, in Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 1302 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1316 Repeatability means that each instantiation becomes a contextual referent. For detailed analyses, see Ray Gibbons (2019), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide; Ray Gibbons (2019), Deconstructing Queensland genocide 1318 We set out a more rigorous analysis of this hypothesis in Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 1319 Oxford English Reference Dictionary. 1320 James Bonwick (1884), The Lost Tasmanian Race: 40 1321 HRA 3/5: 70 1322 For a transcript, see Henry Melville (1835), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 – 1835: 31 – 32. 1323 Henry Melville (1835), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 – 1835: 30 – 32. Although Arthur was acutely aware of violence towards Aboriginals, he charged no one during his term of office. Shortly after Arthur became Governor, he was causing the violence through his policies and proclamations. 1324 See for example Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: 109 – 125 under the subject ‘If it moves, shoot it...’ the impact of European settlement on the environment. 1317 1325 Despatches, Arthur to Murray, 15th April 1830, HRA 3/9 (ed. Peter Chapman): 202 - 236, Aborigines’ Committee Report, finding number 22. 1326 Arthur to Murray, 15th April 1830, HRA 3/9: 164 – 236. This despatch included the Aborigines’ Committee Report. 1327 Murray to Arthur, 5th November 1830 (read in the Executive Council by Montagu on 1 st June 1831), HRA 3/9: 575 1328 In a scathing investigation of corporate and government corruption in the downfall of Gunn’s Limited, a Tasmanian forestry company, Beresford writes: ‘government policy in Tasmania was built around a culture of antienvironmentalism and destruction of the natural environment. [...] anti-environmentalism has been a defining theme of government policy since early colonial times’. [Quentin Beresford (2015), The Rise and Fall of Gunns Ltd: 385]. 1329 Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians (1996): 77. 1330 NG Butlin (1993), Economics and the Dreamtime: 129 1331 Louisa Anne Meredith (1852): My Home in Tasmania During a Residence of Nine Years (Volume 1): 244 1332 John Oxley (1784 – 1828) was an explorer and New South Wales surveyor general from 1812 to 1828. He visited Tasmania in 1809. 1333 HRA 3/1: 575-6. 1334 The Parliamentary Report on Fisheries of Tasmania, Report of the Royal Commission (Fisheries of Tasmania 1882); Shellfish Reefs at Risk, p. 16 https://www.conservationgateway.org/ConservationPractices/Marine/Documents/Shellfish%20Reefs%20at%20Ris k-06.18.09-Pages.pdf 1335 Louisa Meredith, My Home in Tasmania, p. 245 (no volume number is cited), quoted by James Boyce, Fantasy Island, in Whitewash On Keith Windscuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, edited by Robert Manne (2003): 50. Louisa Anne Meredith (1812 – 1895). Louisa migrated with her family to Tasmania in 1821, but Arthur denied them a land grant. They moved to Oyster Bay in 1840, where they bought the estate next to her father-in-law. There are two different versions of this book. One version is in two volumes. The citation for Boyce’s quote is incorrect. Also see Louisa Anne Meredith (1852), My Home in Tasmania: During a Residence of Nine Years, vol. 1: 98 – 99 , where Meredith is regretting the vanished black swan, not out of any ecological reason, but because there are none left for her and others to shoot or otherwise capture during the moulting season. She goes on to write what they are like to eat. ‘..dressed goose-fashion, they are thought to taste like that bird, but I consider them superior, being less coarsely fat, and of a more game-like flavour, especially if served without customary strong “illustrations” of sage and onion bestowed upon the goose.’ 1336 Louisa Anne Meredith (1852), My Home in Tasmania during a residence of nine years, Volume 1: 98. Britain’s invasive and exploitative culture extended to the Palawa, whom it displaced and destroyed almost as quickly as the Black Swans. 1337 Lieut-Governor Collins to Under-Secretary Sullivan, 4th August 1804, HRA 3/1: 276 - 277 1338 Louisa’s father in law, George Meredith, was among those involved in shore-based whaling. 1339 Some Palawa descendants try to reclaim their history by asserting that their women were deliberately offered to sealers in trade, to preserve the blood line, because they saw no future for themselves as a race, being shot at by 1303 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited graziers if they used their own hunting grounds. However, most of the evidence supports sexual predation by whites as the major reason for mixed progeny. 1340 HRA 3/9, Arthur to Sir George Murray, Despatch 19, 15th April 1830: 164 – 236, especially paragraph 10 (pp. 167 – 168). Also see Peter Chapman’s note [ibid, note 183, pp. 788 – 789) about the profound human consequences of Arthur’s proposal to use convicts as a paramilitary force. Arthur proposes to arm 2,000 convicts against the Aboriginals. Murray agrees (p. 574). 1341 This deception became a favourite means of plausible deniability in killing from a distance. It was cloaked as an act of kindness. The ‘generosity’ was soon extended to other Australian colonies. No one was prosecuted. 1342 The Hobart Town Courier, Saturday 11 December 1830, p. 2 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article-article4205955 1343 NJB Plomley (1966), Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian journals and papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829– 1834, uploaded to academia by Gregory Lehman https://www.academia.edu/4801570/Friendly_Mission_The_Tasmanian_journals_and_papers_of_George_August us_Robinson_1829_1834_by_N._J._B._Plomley 1344 Friendly Mission, The Tasmanian Journal and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, ed. NJB Plomley (2008), 23 rd November 1829, Bruny Island: 100-101. 1345 This is the specious argument by misdirection and reframing we hear often from special interest groups and populist identity politicians who are wedded to non-evidence-based ideology and a conservative constituency, where inconvenient facts are brushed aside (displaced) to be replaced by mere opinion. 1346 https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/australia-not-on-track-to-meet-climate-targets/ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-01/is-australia-on-track-to-meet-its-paris-emissions-targets/10920500 1347 See, for example: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter12_FINAL.pdf 1348 See, for example: Ugo Bardi (2020), Before the Collapse: A Guide to the Other Side of Growth 1349 See, for example: José Fontanari (2018), The Collapse of Ecosystem Engineer Populations https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/6/1/9 1350 See Introduction, The Shape of Australian History: 92 – 95. 1351 See Figure 101, 102. 1352 See Figure 110, 111. 1353 The functional construction lends itself to an evidence-based set of equations, using conformal mapping, where the exact values of the coefficients are contextually dependent. We have summarised these equations here, but have not shown the calculation of the coefficients, which are outside the scope of this book. (Also see Hull statistics: appended table to this chapter) 1354 In our case, this deterministic envelope is broadly defined by the supply and demand of immigrants and land. Both I and G are subject to Government policy constraints. We examine the effect of type Government constraints on normative behavioural dysfunction (and their instantiation) in Introduction, where we see the effect of such constraints on the genocidal process. This Lemkinian schema overlays the Occupation process as a facet. 1355 The results of this mapping are set out in the appended dispossessory table. 1356 This linear relationship for each of I and G over time is confirmed by the bivariate regression models. See the appended table for the evidentiary data set. 1357 Another term for this relationship is ‘strongly coupled’, to avoid the connotations of quantum field theory. 1358 For interested readers, calculating the exact correlation coefficient between two variables has a more precise algorithm, for which there are various automation tools available, one of which we use here. See figures 120 to 139. 1359 See Part 1. 1360 A set is a collection of objects. In our case, a set is the collection of objects corresponding to the process parts for some particular process. The set objects include sub-processes, activity strings, activities and associated triggering conditions that are related in some directed graph structure that is mathematically equivalent to a Petri Net, which we partially examine elsewhere in this document. The set can exist at multiple levels of abstraction, conforming to a typology. 1361 More precisely, the system objects defined by the system model are finite state machines that execute some deterministic algorithm to achieve a prescribed behavioural state, say: enumerate the acreage granted to eligible individuals in year x , whereas the equivalent process objects for the process model are of the form: on [trigger[ do this, then this [in order to achieve some outcome], for example, survey land in an area and make it available - through alienation - to the grants process, involving: application receipt; checking of capital; and allocation to grantee, subject to a contractual arrangement. 1304 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1362 From a data modelling perspective, the event layer (with attributes: who, what, when, where, how and perhaps why) can also exist in multiple decompositional mapping layers (optionally comprising supertype and type) with a meta-tag definitional layer - the meta-characteristics of the event (or data about data) - existing in an orthogonal space. Conceptual supertypes are used to minimise mapping complexity. If there is a multiplicity of entity relationships, a supertype reduces the spaghetti effect at the logical level. The type model is a canonical logical model to provide physical independence from different mapping interpretation. The physical event layer is instantiated with details of a specific event. The data model maps to the process model at different levels of detail. 1363 We have shown that I and G are co-determinate, involving a politically and economically based positive feedback process that takes almost no account of Indigenous humanitarian concerns. 1364 This m-dimensional manifold comprises: process objects and their collection of parts and parts within parts; faceted classification schema at multiple levels; object typologies; systems models; process mappings; system and process states; Government policies, edicts and proclamations; meta data; and so on. There exists a discrete mapping (or chart) between the different dimensions that is outside the scope of this book, although we have shown some examples where it is relevant to the text. 1365 The model for L applies to Tasmania and other parts of Australia, as the British colonizing process transformed Indigenous land into private property, displacing Aboriginals as it swept across the continent. That is, L was primarily a function of immigration and land alienation. In other spheres of genocide, L may have a different model, or one with different weightings to Australia. For example, ideology may sometimes be the primary factor, or cultural divisions, resulting in a purge. The genocidal motives and means for L may vary, but the outcome is similar. 1366 For a discussion of these normative behavioural constraint rules, including modelling, see Introduction in Deconstructing Tasmania Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 1367 We hypothesize that this value of L c will be consistent across all designated areas in Australia. It is a falsifiable hypothesis. 1368 Evans, Raymond, ACROSS THE QUEENSLAND FRONTIER in Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience, eds Bain Attwood and S.G. Foster (2003): 63 – 75. 1369 Such a methodology is similar to that used by climate scientists when they model the effect of climate change across the Earth by dividing the atmosphere into cells or data points. 1370 See the discussion on constraint analysis, modelling Lemkinian genocide, in Context, Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. 1371 See figures 111 to 139. 1372 George Arthur (1833), Observations Upon Secondary Punishment: 40 (Mitchell Library, Sydney DSM/ 343.2/ 3A1) 1373 Sir John Franklin (1786 – 1847) http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/franklin-sir-john-2066 (Kathleen Fitzpatrick) 1374 Lemkinian Articles 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) and 2 (e) are satisfied 1375 See Figure 89. 1376 http://closingthegap.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/ctg-report-2017.pdf 1377 Hugh M. Hull (1865), Statistical Account of Van Diemen’s Land 1804 to 1823, showing number of arrivals by year. It is unclear if these are nett figures. 1378 Excludes Military personnel, servants, convicts in service 1379 Statistical Account of Van Diemen’s Land: 1824 to 1833, compiled from official records in the office of the Colonial Secretary by Hugh M. Hull, 1856 (held by Mitchell Library, Sydney, DSM Q319.6/T). Nett Population at end of any year = (Existing population at beginning of year + arrivals + births – deaths – departures) 1380 Hugh M. Hull (1865), Statistical Account of Van Diemen’s Land 1804 to 1823. Rounded to nearest acre 1381 Hugh M. Hull (1865), Statistical Summary 1816 to 1865, Mitchell Library, Sydney DSM Q319.6/H 1382 A return of the number of grants of land and the number of acres granted in Van Diemen’s land, from 1824 – 1835 (No. 8), Statistical Account of Van Diemen’s Land, 1816 to 1835 (compiled by Hugh Hull, 1856). Held by Mitchell Library, Sydney DSM Q 319.6/H 1383 Ibid, Hull. See preceding table of derived statistics (Figure 89). 1384 Excludes grants to large companies such as the Van Diemen’s Land Company 1385 Excludes grants to large companies such as the Van Diemen’s Land Company 1386 Ibid, Hull. See preceding table of derived statistics, Figure 89. 1387 Ibid, Hull 1388 Wessa P., (2015), Pearson Correlation (v1.0.10) in Free Statistics Software (v1.1.23-r7), Office for Research Development and Education, URL http://www.wessa.net/rwasp_correlation.wasp/ 1305 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1389 All bivariate correlation regression analyses in this document use Wessa, P. (2016), Free Statistics Software, Office for Research Development and Education, version 1.1.23-r7, URL http://www.wessa.net/ 1390 Cumulative acreage granted by year derives from Hull, Figure 96. In fact, the cumulative acreage granted from 1803 to 1823 was about one million acres. See Hartwell. 1391 See figures 92, 95. [Ibid: Hull (1865)] 1392 See figures 94, 119. 1393 Ibid, Hull. See Figure 94. 1394 These processes are deconstructed in Context and Introduction. Ray Gibbons, Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide: the extermination of the Palawa 1395 The occupation process is further outlined in Gibbons (2015), FWAYAF Deconstructing Colonial Myths: the massacre at Murdering Creek and detailed in FWAYAF The Political Uses of Australian Genocide, which sets out the overall methodology and semantic typology for investigating the rise of settler sovereignty and the consequent destruction of Aboriginal society. 1396 One of these remote settlements was Weipa, but when bauxite was discovered, Aboriginals were relocated by the Queensland Government’s Aboriginal ‘Protector’ (Pat Killoran, a member of the far right wing Bjelke-Petersen Government). Another was Maralinga, in the northern desert of South Australia, where Aboriginals were living unmolested until the British Government demanded its use for nuclear weapons testing, whether or not Aboriginals remained there. Some number perished from radiation poisoning. The examples abound. Aboriginals were allowed to reclaim (but not own) land that appeared worthless, until some worth was discovered. See Gibbons (2016), Recollections from a (Homicidal) Frontier; for Killoran policies, see Kidd, Rosalind, The Way We Civilise, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1997. 1397 Adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010065b.htm last accessed 25th September 2013. 1398 Bathurst also asked Bigge to enquire into the system of transportation as an effective deterrent against crime. Bigge’s terms of reference are set out in Bathurst to Macquarie, 30th January 1819. HRA 1/10, pp. 22 – 31. 1399 Ibid, Maurice Cornish (2000), EARLY LAND DEALINGS IN TASMANIA FROM SETTLEMENT TO 1827: 2 1400 John Thomas Bigge (1822 - 1823), Reports of the commissioner of inquiry on the state of the colony of New South Wales. 1401 See Regulations respecting Grants of Land and Allotments in the Towns J.T. Bigge, Report of the commission of inquiry on the state of agriculture and trade in the colony of New South Wales, 13 March 1823, pp. 33 – 51; HRA 1/10, pp. 330 – 334; also see Gibbons (2016), Recollections of a (homicidal) pastoral frontier 1788 - 1928 1402 http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/tas/num_act/aatpftrodwjacerp8gin51017/ On 4th July 1829, Arthur wrote to Murray about his new land regulations to operate as ‘a wholesome check upon the existing mania for acquiring land’. [HRA 3/8: 436] 1403 Op. Cit., Cornish (2000): 4 1404 John West (1852), The History of Tasmania (republished, with editing by A.G.L. Shaw, in 1971): 314 1405 R. M. Hartwell (1954), The economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850: 29, citing John West (1852), The History of Tasmania: 134 (republished, with editing by A.G.L. Shaw, in 1971) 1406 Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: 10 1407 Cumulative data derives from Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: 13 (citing Register of Van Diemen’s land grants, L.S.D. 354, Archives Office of Tasmania). Note the extraordinarily steep increase in 1823, in the most part driven by the huge rise in the number of grantees, as the number of settlers surged on the back of conducive British immigration policies. In 1823, the average Tasmanian grant was about 430 acres. 1408 Arthur to Murray, 17th August 1830, ‘During the Year 240,655 Acres were granted; of this quantity 19,215 Acres were sold at an average of 5s/10/½ per Acre. 216,880 acres were granted at a Quit Rent of 5 per Cent, and 4,560 Acres were granted to Naval and Military Officers free of Quit rent under the regulations in their favour’.[HRA 3/9: 442] 1409 These figures differ slightly from Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania Creating an Antipodean England: 13. Her figures derive from the Register of Van Diemen’s land grants, L.S.D. 354, Archives Office of Tasmania. For example, she quotes acreage granted in 1823 as 441,871 acres, with a cumulative grant between 1804 and 1823 of 574, 421.5 across a total of 1776 grants. Also see CJ King (1957), An outline of Closer Settlement Part I The sequence of the land laws 1788 – 1956; 1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 1911 Land Tenure and Settlement 1306 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/featurearticlesbytitle/88FD067140FC3F4DCA2569E300102388?OpenD ocument ; Maurice Cornish (ca. 2000) PROJECT OFFICER Office of the Recorder of Titles, EARLY LAND DEALINGS IN TASMANIA FROM SETTLEMENT TO 1827 (based upon the research of John Marrison) http://dpipwe.tas.gov.au/Documents/Early-land-dealings-in-Tasmania-from-settlement-to-1827.pdf 1410 Source: NJB Plomley, Friendly Mission (2008): 45 1411 www.utas.edu,au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/V/VDL%20Co.htm 1412 Source: Sharon Morgan, Land Settlement in Early Tasmania (1992): 21 1413 Rebecca Kippen (2014), The Population History of Tasmania to Federation, Melbourne University, https://www.apa.org.au/sites/default/files/atoms/files/Wed%20Plen%201100%20Kippen.pdf 1414 HRA 3/8, Arthur to Murray, 3 April 1829, Despatch No. 21: 304, and notes 235, 255, 317. The ‘land question’ is also exposed by Henry Melville, The History of Van Diemen’s Land From the Year 1824 to 1835; 116 – 137. 1415 Melville was campaigning for the recall of Arthur and for the reintroduction of land grants. Hence the tone of his declamation. 1416 Ibid, Melville: 116 - 118 1417 James Ross (1786 – 1838) arrived at Hobart in 1822 and was granted 1000 acres on the Shannon River. In 1825, he tutored Arthur’s children, when he also edited the Hobart Town Gazette. He remained associated with various newspapers until 1834 and his editorials were consistently pro-government. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ross-james-2607 1418 James Ross (1836), The Settler in Van Diemen’s Land: 110 1419 David Burn (1799 – 1875) was a settler and author who arrived at Hobart in 1826 but failed to qualify for a land grant. In 1830, he purchased 500 acres near New Norfolk. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/burn-david-1854 1420 David Burn (1840 – 1841), A Picture of Van Diemen’s Land: 110 – 115, based on an original account in the Colonial Magazine, republished in 1973. 1421 Louisa Anne Meredith (1852), My Home in Tasmania During a Residence of Nine Years: 190 – 191.Louisa’s fatherin-law, George, was an early 1821 settler in the Freycinet Peninsula area at Oyster Bay. George had been attacked by Aboriginals many times and participated in an unsuccessful 1831 human line across the isthmus, in an attempt to clear the Mairremmener people from the area. [James Calder (2010), Levée, Line and Martial Law: a history of the dispossession of the Mairremmener people of Van Diemen’s land 1803 – 1832] He was frequently in conflict with Arthur, because of the Governor’s imposed restrictions on press freedom. The British Foreign Office supported Arthur. The Merediths were never charged for their depredations against the Aboriginals. One of George Meredith’s sons, also called George, was a sealer, who was accused of capturing Aboriginal women from mainland Australia and selling them to sealers in the Strait. He was speared to death. [NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 385, 405,654, 671] 1422 Graeme Calder (2010), Levée, Line and Martial Law A History of the Dispossession of the Mairremmener People of Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1832: 192 – 193. 1423 http://www.gravesoftas.com.au/incomplete%20municipalities/Glamorgan/Swansea%20All%20Saints%20Anglican/ Meredith%20George.jpg [courtesy S. Castley] 1424 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence A history of the Flinders Island Aboriginal settlement with the Flinders Island journal of George Augustus Robinson 1835 - 1839; 353 Ibid: 639, Mary Ann Proctor, wife of William Proctor, sealer, petitioned for a grant of land on the main. Her request was referred to GAR, who informed the Colonial Secretary on 17 May that Mary Ann Proctor was a half-caste, and therefore had no claim on the Government. (CSO 1/861/18213) 1425 Article 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) 1426 Article 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) 1427 This is also Tom Lawson’s argument. Tom is a genocide scholar who is one of the few to recognise how murderous normative British antecedent behaviour has forced a deep-rooted cultural intrusion into the present. He argues that, for Britain to come to terms with the past, it must first properly understand its history. He identifies the ambiguity in British culture, where destruction of others is accepted in the cause of British superiority. (It may also be a partial explanation for Britain’s resolute vote to exit from the European Union, a sense of superiority and xenophobia). Tom Lawson (2014), The Last Man A British Genocide in Tasmania. 1428 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 858, Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 270 – 271. 1307 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1429 Leigh Rayment’s Privy Council Page http://leighrayment.com#Privy%20Councils: This list also sets out the senior members of the Privy Council in length of service. 1430 KG: Knight of the Garter 1431 Gibbons, FWAYAF Documents that Shaped Australia. 1432 Sir Evan Nepean (1752- 1822), politician, colonial administrator, naval officer. The Right Honourable Sir Evan Nepean Bt PC FRS. 1783 - 1791, Permanent Under Secretary of State for the Home Department; 1794, UnderSecretary of State for War; 1795 – 1804., Secretary to the Board of Admiralty; 1804 – 1805, Chief Secretary for Ireland; 1812 – 1819, Commissioner of the Admiralty. Created Baronet of Bothenhampton, 1802 – 1822. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/nepean-evan-2504 1433 Order for Transportation, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 1, Part 2, Phillip, 1783 – 1792, ed. Alexr. Britton (1892): 30- 31. Britton notes: New South Wales was first named as a place of transportation at the Council held at the Court of St. James, 6th of December, 1786. […] and in every case it shall and may be lawful for His Majesty, by and with the advice of the Privy Council, to declare and appoint to what place or places, part or parts, beyond the seas, either within His Majesty’s dominons or elsewhere out of Hs Majesty’s dominions, such felons or other offenders shall be conveyed or transported, and such court as aforesaid is thereby authorized and empowered to order such offenders to be transported to the use of any person or persons and his or their assigns, who shall contract for the due performance of such transportation […] And whereas it hath been represented to His Majesty that the several offenders whose names are contained in the list hereunto annexed have been transported or ordered to be transported to parts beyond the seas, his Majesty doth hereby judge fit, by and with te advice of his Privy Council, to declare and appoint the place to which the several offenders shall be transported for the term or terms in their several sentences mentioned to be the eastern coast of New South Wales, or some one or other of the islands adjacent […] 1434 Patrick Brantlinger (1988), Rule of Darkness British Literature and Imperialism 1830 – 1914. 1435 See Part 3: The role of forced detention in Tasmanian genocide: Wybalenna 1436 As a Lieutenant-Governor, Arthur also took his instructions from the New South Wales Governor. 1437 Reynolds does not mention Hay’s administrative role at all in the targeted destruction of the Palawa. Yet Hay held office almost contemporaneously with Arthur’s full term. This is a curious omission. [Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain?] The bulk of Hay’s voluminous correspondence with Arthur involved land grants and colonial finances (revenue and expenditure). There is no evidence that Hay gave any humanitarian consideration whatsoever to displaced Aboriginals, whom he regarded as an obstruction to be resolved through military means. Hay also ratified the VDL Company arrangement in northwest Tasmania. [Hay Arthur, 1828 – 1830, HRA 3/9] 1438 HRA 1/20-25 for the period between 1838 and 1844. Reading these first hand Government letters is to understand the bloody unfolding process as the pastoral frontier expanded unchecked, with new ‘collision’ battlegrounds being opened up along the Wellington Valley, and around Port Phillip, and at Moreton Bay and down the River Murray. Britain took no action to stop the process. Indeed, it was abetted in the interest of economic development. 1439 Patrick Brantingler (2003), Dark Vanishings Discourse on the extinction of primitive races, 1800 – 1930. 1440 Russell to Gipps, 7th April 1841, enclosure from Captain Grey to Lord Russell, Report upon the best means of promoting the civilization of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Australia, HRA 1/21: 33-40 1441 Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain?: 88 - 90 1442 See Gipps Russell Stanley Glenelg letters, 1838 – 1844, HRA 1/20-25. For example, Gipps to Russell, 11th August 1841, HRA 1/23, the Major Lettsom (80th Regiment) massacre; collisions around Port Phillip (pp. 208-211); Gipps to Glenelg, 22nd July 1839, the Major Nunn military campaign, HRA 1/20: 243-259 1443 Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain?: 88 – 90; Gibbons, FWAYAF Recollections from a (Homicidal) Pastoral Frontier 1788 - 1928]. 1444 A fractal pattern (or in our case, a fractal-like pattern) is one that is self-similar or repeating at all scales. In this sense, the genocidal behavioural pattern of the State tends to recur through the group and the individual, as we saw in Tasmania: there was a similar pattern of Aboriginal oppression at all societal scales, which collectively operated through shared constraint rules of normative dysfunction. The Palawa were targeted by stockkeepers, sealers, roving paramilitary groups, the military and field police, with Government policies set in place to reinforce the collective genocidal agency. 1445 See also: Ray Gibbons (2017), Recollections of a (Homicidal) Pastoral Frontier: 1788 – 1928 (in draft). 1446 Charles Darwin (1879, 2nd ed), The Descent of Man: 22 (Penguin Classics, 2004): 22 1447 Ibid, quoting Bonwick: 388, 390. 1308 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1448 Ibid: 214. M.M. Bennett (1930), The Australian Aboriginal as a Human Being: 38-39, quoted by Ann Curthoys (2010), Genocide in Tasmania the history of an idea: 237, in Empire, Colony, Genocide (2010), ed. A. Dirk Moses. Mary Bennett worked most of her life for Aboriginal rights at a time when they had almost none. 1450 For most of the 19th century, Britain was at war with various of its European neighbours, as alliances changed and geopolitical boundaries were being redrawn across the globe, subordinating indigenous races by force, if necessary. In Australia, the force became genocidal within the Lemkinian meaning. 1451 Twiss, Hay despatches, 1828 - 1830: HRA 3/8, Precis of Despatches and Letters: li - cviii; HRA 3/9, Precis of Despatches and Letters: lxix – cxxix. 1452 Sir George Murray (1772 – 1846) was secretary of state for the colonies from 30 May 1828 to 22 November 1830. 1453 Viscount Goderich (1782 – 1859) held a succession of cabinet posts from 1809 to 1833. In 1831 he introduced the ‘Ripon regulations’ which replaced land grants with auction sales at a minimum of 5s. an acre, a change made possible by the ten preceding years of intensive surveys and valuations ordered by Tory governments. [ http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goderich-first-viscount-2103 ] Britain did not consider Indigenous land rights. 1454 Baron Glenelg (1778 – 1866): Charles grant was secretary of state for war and the colonies under Melbourne from 1835 to 1839. 1455 HRA 1/12: 21. Earl Bathurst to Governor Darling, 14th July 1825. Despatch No. 6, per ship Catherine Stewart Forbest; acknowledged by Governor Darling, 5th May, 1826. 1456 Collins died in office and was not immediately replaced. 1457 Sir Henry Young was Tasmania’s first Governor, after it became self-governing in 1856. 1458 In 1850, the United Kingdom passed the Australian Constitutions Act, granting the right of legislative power to each of the six Australian colonies. In 1854, the Legislative Council of Van Diemen’s Land drafted a new constitution, which they passed in that same year and was given Royal assent by Queen Victoria in 1855. Later in 1855, the Privy Council approved the colony changing its name to Tasmania. In 1856, Tasmania became a self-governing colony of the British Empire. In January 1855, the first Governor of Tasmania, Sir Henry Young, was appointed. On 1 November 1856, Young proclaimed William Champ, a former British army officer, as the first Premier of Tasmania.[http://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/php/ColSecretaryPremier.html; WA Townsley (1956), The Struggle for self-government in Tasmania, 1842 – 1856]. 1459 http://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/php/ExC1825.htm 1460 http://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/History/tasparl/mlcs1825to1855.htm 1461 Sir John Pedder (1793 – 1859): First Chief Justice of Tasmania, 1824-1854, when he suffered a stroke. During this time, he was a sometimes reluctant participant in the process of Tasmanian genocide. He presided over an enormous number of hangings instituted by Arthur’s authoritarian regime, including the capital punishment of four Aboriginal leaders. As a member of the Executive Council, he spoke against Aboriginal imprisonment on Flinder’s Island, but was overruled by Arthur. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography-pedder-sir-john-lewes-2542 1462 William Hamilton (1790 – 1870) He applied to the secretary of state for a grant of VDL land, arriving with £12,000 in capital. He was granted 2,000 acres near present day Hamilton. He managed Arthur’s official correspondence for 8 months, which provided a rich research resource. He was an MLC from 1825 to 1830. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hamilton-william-henry-2150 1463 Adolarius Humphrey (1782 – 1829) arrived in Tasmania with Collins in 1804. He was appointed as a magistrate in 1814 and in 1817, coroner, superintendent of police and chief magistrate of Hobart, the most powerful man in the colony next to the Governor, Sorell. From 1825 to 1828, he was a member of the Executive and the Legislative Councils, when he retired. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/humphrey-adolarius-william-henry-2212 1464 Edward Curr (1798 – 1850) was appointed as the Van Diemen’s Land Company manager in 1825, with the support of Earl Bathurst. The VDLC base was at Circular Head in the northwest. He held the powerful VDLC position until 1841, during which period he was also the local magistrate. Curr was ruthless towards the local Palawa and saw no wrong in their ‘extermination’. He was frequently at odds with Arthur, because of his constant demands for more pastoral land. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/edward-curr-1944 1465 Edward Abbott (1766 – 1832) was a soldier, magistrate and MLC from 1825 to 1826. In 1825, the colonial office granted him 3,210 acres at Port Dalrymple In 1826, Bathurst ordered that he be appointed commissioner of the Court of Requests, which he held until his death in 1832, having been forced by Arthur to give up his MLC role. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/abbott-edward-3 1449 1309 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1466 John Burnett (1781 – 1860) Held the office of colonial secretary for over nine years, but his talents were mediocre.. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/burnett-john-1855 1467 Thomas Anstey (1777 – 1851), wealthy pastoralist and police magistrate from 1827 until 1833. In 1829, he coordinated the civilian ‘pursuit parties’ under Arthur to ethnically cleanse Aboriginals from the ‘settled districts’, mainly in the Oatlands area of the midlands, where he owned more than 20,000 acres. Jorgen Jorgensen was his constable and clerk. He was appointed to the Legislative Council from 1827 to 1844. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/anstey-thomas-1709 1468 Thomas Archer (1790 - 1850) MLC from 1826 to 1845. Appointed Cornwall magistrate in 1814 and coroner in 1816. At the time, Cornwall comprised nearly half the ‘settled districts’. In 1817, he was appointed commissary of Hobart. By 1825, he owned 6,000 acres by grant, and other land by purchase, all in northern Tasmania. Much of this property remains in the hands of his descendants. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/archer-thomas-1475 1469 Council as constituted by the Huskisson Act of 1828. 1470 Algernon Montagu (1802 – 1880) Appointed to Supreme Court in 1833 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/montagu-algernon-sidney-2470 1471 Jocelyn Thomas (1780 – 1862) Soldier, public servant. Took up 500 acres at Evandale. Also had a home near Hobart. In 1825, Arthur appointed him Acting Colonial Treasurer. Became one of the five members of the Executive Council. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/thomas-jocelyn-henry-connor-2726 1472 William Bedford (1781 – 1852) Anglican minister. He replaced Rev. Knopwood at St, David’s Church. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bedford-william-1760 1473 Edward Abbott (1766 – 1832) In 1825, the Colonial Office promised him an appointment as commandant at Port Dalrymple and a further grant of 3,210 acres to supplement an earlier grant of 2,000 acres near Hobart. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/abbott-edward-3 1474 Edward Macdowell (1798 - 1860) He and his brother, the newspaper editor Thomas, were part of the ‘Arthur faction’ of nepotism and cronyism. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/macdowell-edward-2397 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/macdowell-thomas-2838 1475 John Montagu (1797 – 1853) Soldier, public servant, banker, landowner. Married Arthur’s niece. In 1824, he sailed to Hobart with Arthur. On arrival he was appointed secretary to the lieutenant-governor, and soon took over the books and papers at the colonial secretary's office. In 1828, he was provisionally granted 2,560 acres. Handled his own and Arthur’s property speculations. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/montagu-john-2471 1476 Alfred Stephen (1802 – 1894) http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stephen-sir-alfred-1291 1477 John Gregory (1795 – 1853) Closely associated with the family of Arthur’s sister and with John Montagu. Member of the Executive and Legislative Councils. He was part of the ‘Arthur faction’, along with John Montagu , Matthew Forster (chief police magistrate who also married into Arthur’s family), John Pedder (chief justice), Thomas and Edward Macdowell and others. Most had received free land grants from Arthur. The ‘faction’ arose from the dual purpose of Tasmania as both a free colony and a gaol. Arthur’s focus was on Tasmania as a penal establishment. Colonists resented the nepotism around Arthur and his cronyism form of Government.. They also wanted to use convicts as cheap labour system rather than have them deployed on public works. It was a similar tension to that which Macquarie faced with the ‘emancipists’. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gregory-john-2123 1478 http://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/tpl/datasheets/Premiers_Table.htm 1479 British House of Commons, Report of the Commissioner of Enquiry, on the State of Agriculture and Trade in the Colony of New South Wales, 13th March 1823, Parliamentary Papers, Vol. 10, No. 36: Regulations respecting grants of land and allotments in the towns: 33 – 50. Also http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1300241h.html which includes Bigge’s instructions from Bathurst, and HRA 1/10: 2 – 11 for despatches regarding same. 1480 Adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010065b.htm last accessed 25th September 2013. 1481 This is probably a reference to the 3rd May 1804 massacre of some number of peaceful Aboriginals who were hunting kangaroo at Risdon, on the Derwent River. The massacre was ordered by Lieutenant Moore (in charge of two military detachments) and the surgeon Mountgarret (who was in charge of a four-pounder cannon). LieutenantGovernor Collins did not bother to count the number of dead but wrote to Governor King on 15th May that only three had been killed. 1482 Op. Cit., Bigge Report No. 3: 83 1483 http://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/discover_collections/history_nation/macquarie/greenway/bigge.html 1484 Sir Thomas Brisbane (1773 – 1860) was NSW Governor from 1821 to 1825. His jurisdiction included Tasmania. 1310 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1485 J. D. Heydon, 'Brisbane, Sir Thomas Makdougall (1773–1860)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/brisbane-sir-thomasmakdougall-1827/text2097, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 7 February 2016. 1486 Henry Bathurst (1762 - 1834) was a member of the House of Commons from 1783 to 1794 when he succeeded to the earldom. He was lord of the admiralty 1783-89, lord of the treasury 1789-91, commissioner of the board of control 1793-1802, and was a member of the cabinet as president of the board of trade 1807-12, and briefly foreign secretary in 1807. In Lord Liverpool's ministry he was secretary of state for the colonies from 1812 to 1827, the significant period when Tasmanian colonisation was belligerently displacing the Palawa at an exponential rate (although the militarised racial violence would shortly peak under Arthur, from 1828 to 1832). In 1828-30 he was lord president of the council in Wellington's ministry. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bathurst-henry-1751 1487 General Sir Ralph Darling, GCH (1772 - 1858) was Governor of New South Wales from 1825 to 1831. The Tasmania Governor reported to NSW until 1825. 1488 HRA 1/12: 21. Earl Bathurst to Governor Darling, 14th July 1825. Despatch No. 6, per ship Catherine Stewart Forbest; acknowledged by Governor Darling, 5th May, 1826. 1489 Colonial Times, 1st December 1826, p. 2. http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/imageservice/nla.news-page679192/print 1490 Friendly Mission, The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834, ed. NJB Plomley, 12th December 1831, Big River Tribe: 582. 1491 Giles argued that he had to protect the occupational health and safety of his prison staff, but he had a blind spot when it came to the rights of Aboriginal children who were being brutally treated: some were kept in stifling hot solitary confinement for 23.5 hours a day; some were being restrained in an Abu Ghraib type punishment chair; some being sprayed with tear gas; some being stripped naked for ‘their safety’ when they became overly depressed. In a similar way, Arthur was primarily focused on protecting the sovereignty of the colonists; the rights of Aboriginal were secondary. http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2016/s4507967.htm 1492 In many Australian states and territories, targeted policing of Aboriginals results in the issuance of fines which, if not paid, results in imprisonment. The overall rate of incarceration is much greater for Aboriginals, as we have noted elsewhere. Many Aboriginal children are held in remand before being charged. Meanwhile, the root causes are not addressed. The general solution to a rampant punitive policy is to build more prisons or stack detainees higher in existing prisons, where overcrowding becomes chronic. 1493 Malcolm Turnbull initially appointed Brian Martin to head the enquiry, but he did not consult with Aboriginal groups who had no time for Martin because he was still on the NT payroll, although Turnbull did unconscionably involve Giles in formulating the terms of reference when the evidence suggests that Giles should be subpoenaed if not prosecuted. Martin was at one time Chief Justice of the NT’s justice system, where he oversaw the entire sentencing programme for juvenile offenders, many of whom were Aboriginal. Giles, as Chief Minister, was part of the systemic Government culture of Aboriginal abuse. If past enquiries are an indication, for example the 1987 enquiry into Aboriginal deaths in custody, we should expect that the pattern of Aboriginal marginalisation and mistreatment will not change, particularly when Turnbull refused to broaden the enquiry across all states and territories. [ http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs112.aspx ] 1494 Peter Chapman (ed.), Historical Records of Australia, Resumed Series 3, Volume 9, Tasmania, January to December 1830, published by Melbourne University Press 2006. 1495 The British Government published the document as Great Britain – House of Commons Paper 259 and is available online through authorized libraries. 1496 For example, in the colonial history of Queensland the operational files of David Seymour, the long-serving Police Commissioner for the brutal Aboriginal ‘dispersal’ regime from 1864 to 1895, have gone ‘missing’. 1497 HRA 3/9: 164, 167 - 168 1498 Samples A1 and A2 have been collapsed together as Sample A. Similarly, for Samples B1 and B2, which become Sample B. 1499 The two sets of documents are transcribed in the Appendix to this paper. 1500 Peter Chapman (ed.), Historical Records of Australia (2006), Resumed Series III, Despatches and papers relating to the history of Tasmania, Volume IX, Tasmania, January – December 1830, Appendix 13, Editors and Aborigines, pp. 1046 to 1052, Melbourne University Press. 1311 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1501 Ibid, HRA 3/9: 1049. Many of the Council’s emendations are legal in nature, suggesting the strong influence of Pedder in some matters. 1502 Huskisson to Arthur, 6th May 1828, HRA 3/7: 311 – 312. 1503 Ibid: 1052 1504 This was a Proclamation, issued by Arthur on 15th April 1828, to prevent Aboriginals by military force from remaining in the ‘settled districts’. 1505 Arthur to Huskisson, 5th July 1828, Shaw (1971): 8. Also HRA 3/7: 410 – 411. As noted by Peter Chapman, these passages (in red bold) were marked for exclusion in the House of Commons report but were published in the record of Van Diemen’s Land Military Operations. 1506 Arthur to Murray, 15th April 1830, HRA 3/9: 167 1507 As noted by Peter Chapman, this passage was marked for exclusion in the House of Commons report but was published in the record of Van Diemen’s Land Military Operations. See Shaw (1971): 63. 1508 As noted by Peter Chapman, these passages were marked for exclusion from the extract, and were not published in Van Diemen’s Land Military Operations for the House of Commons record. Extract from the Minutes of the Executive Council, 27th August 1830, Enclosure No. 3, Arthur to Murray, 20th November 1830, HRA 3/9: 613. The minutes were originally misdated as September 1830. 1509 As noted by Peter Chapman, this passage was marked for exclusion from the extract, and was not published in Van Diemen’s Land Military Operations for the House of Commons record. Ibid, HRA 3/9: 614. 1510 As noted by Peter Chapman, this passage was marked for exclusion from the extract, and was not published in Van Diemen’s Land Military Operations for the House of Commons record. Ibid, HRA 3/9: 614. 1511 As noted by Peter Chapman, this passage was marked for exclusion from the extract, and was not published in Van Diemen’s Land Military Operations for the House of Commons record. Ibid, HRA 3/9: 615. 1512 As noted by Peter Chapman, this passage was marked for exclusion from the extract, and was not published in Van Diemen’s Land Military Operations for the House of Commons record. Ibid, HRA 3/9: 615. 1513 Arthur to Murray, 20th November 1830, HRA 3/9: 588. 1514 Arthur to Murray, 20th November 1830, HRA 3/9: 589 - 590. 1515 Minutes of Executive Council, 27th August 1830, HRA 3/9: 616. These minutes show a date of September 1830, but Peter Chapman has confirmed a date of 27th August, citing EC4, 1, AOT: 560, 566. The correct date is showing in Shaw (1971), Van Diemen’s Land Military Operations: 62. What Arthur had in mind by an operation on a ‘more extended scale’ was soon revealed by his ‘call to arms’ on 22 nd September 1830 with his detailed militarised campaign, as commander in chief, for ‘expelling these miserable people’ from the ‘settled districts’. 1516 Geoffrey Blainey (2001), The Tyranny of Distance. The quote appears in a review by Gideon Haigh (July 2016), but does not appear in the book. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/the-tyranny-of-distance-geoffreyblaineys-classic-turns-50-/news-story/30477685f87b58523e883f556b40e059 1517 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/geoffrey-blainey-i-can-see-parts-of-our-historywith-fresh-eyes/news-story/dfbd5d36d5faf1000ec337cc0b87d9bb in an interview promoting his book: The Story of Australia’s People, Volume 1 (2015). 1518 Article 2 (a) 1519 Article 2 (d) 1520 Article 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) 1521 Article 2 (e) 1522 Article 2 (e) 1523 For a good general introduction to Palawa culture and traditions, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_Tasmanians 1524 Lyndall Ryan (1982), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 15,16. Ryan bases her groupings and distribution on the ethnographic work of Rhys Jones (1974), Tasmanian Tribes: 319 - 354 in Norman B. Tindale (1974), Aboriginal tribes of Australia: their terrain, environmental controls, distribution, limits, and proper names and Tribal Boundaries map supplement Tindale and Jones’ work on the Aboriginal tribes of Tasmania largely derives from Robinson: see NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission: 1003 – 1013. 1525 Lyndall Ryan (1982), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 15; Norman B. Tindale (1974), Aboriginal tribes of Australia: their terrain, environmental controls, distribution, limits, and proper names, Tribal Boundaries map. The numbers refer to ‘tribe’ names, as shown in the earlier prefatory table, pages xiii, xiv. 1312 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1526 An edition of these Robinson papers is held by the Mitchell Library, Sydney. A complete bibliographical list of the Mitchell and Dixson Robinson collection is found in NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson: 1099 – 1101. 1527 Ethnographic sources other than Robinson include: J. Milligan ((1859), On the dialects and language of the Aboriginal tribes of Tasmania, and on their manners and customs; J. Milligan (1890), Vocabulary of the Dialects of some of the Aboriginal tribes of Tasmania; W. Schmidt (1952), Die Tasmanischen Sprachen; H. Ling Roth (1899), The Aborigines of Tasmania; Harry Lourandos (1997), Continent of Hunter-Gatherers New Perspectives in Australian Prehistory. 1528 Rhys Jones (1974), Tasmanian Tribes: 320 - 321 in Norman B. Tindale (1974), Aboriginal tribes of Australia: their terrain, environmental controls, distribution, limits, and proper names and Tribal Boundaries map supplement 1529 Op. Cit., Friendly Mission: 14 - 20; also, this document, pp. xiii – xiv. We must note that the ethnographical nomenclature is an imposed construction, based upon fragmentary post factum data. ‘Band’ is a non-Aboriginal term for a small, related group within a tribe. For today’s Palawa descendants, ‘Nation’ is the preferred concept for a group of ‘tribes’. The spatial map derives from the wonderful work by the University of Tasmania http://utas-spatial.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapTour/index.html?appid=5cc2337c499047f9a8210089958937e9 1530 NJB Plomley ed. (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 43 Ibid: 10 1532 Article 2 (a) 1533 Article 2 (e) 1534 Article 2 (d) 1535 Article 2 (b) 1536 Articles 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) 1537 Articles 2 (c), 2 (d) 1538 Article 2 (c) 1539 HRA 3/3: 585-586. Cited by James Boyce, Fantasy Island, p. 54 (Robert Manne (Ed.), Whitewash On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History). Also Land Musters, stock returns and lists: Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1822 (edited by Irene Schaffer) available as a CDROM from www.gould.com.au 1540 RM Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850: 110 1541 Ibid, RM Hartwell (1954): 118 1542 Ibid: 118. There is no data for 1834. 1543 HRA 3/8: note 866 1544 [No heading]. (1828, March 22). The Hobart Town Courier (Tas. : 1827 - 1839), p. 4. Retrieved December 28, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page641580 The Clyde River valley is in central Tasmania, an hour’s drive from Hobart. 1545 THE HOBART-TOWN COURIER. (1828, March 22). The Hobart Town Courier (Tas.: 1827 - 1839), p. 3. Retrieved December 28, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4223545 1546 [No heading]. (1828, April 19). The Hobart Town Courier (Tas.: 1827 - 1839), p. 1. Retrieved December 29, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page641600 1547 Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834, ed. NJB Plomley, note 277: 505 – 508. Also John Batman to Robinson, Pipers River, 17 September 1831: I have to inform you that I received a letter from the Chairman of the Aboriginal Committee (Jocelyn Thomas Esqre) by the command of His Excellency, dated the 7th inst., respecting the employment of the Sydney Blacks, so as not to clash or interfere with your operations. At the same time I was requested to proceed to this place to confer with you as to the best mode of employing them. [...] [Ibid] 1548 Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians; also Lyndall Ryan (2013), Tasmanian Aborigines. 1549 Lyndall Ryan, List of multiple killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 – 1835 http://www.massviolence.org/Article?id_article=106 In this genocidal conflict, many massacres went unreported, and those who died from other causes such as introduced disease were ignored or uncounted. 1550 Hugh Munro Hull (1818 – 1882) was police magistrate for the Bothwell, Hamilton and later Green Ponds districts. During this time, he was also chairman of Quarter Sessions, commissioner of the Court of requests and returning officer for the Cumberland electorate. He produced statistical summaries and Hints to Emigrants, which the 1531 1313 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited government bought and distributed in the thousands. [ HM Hull (1871), Practical Hints to Emigrants Interested to Proceed to Tasmania http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hull-hugh-munto-3814 ] 1551 Hugh Hull (1859), The Experience of Forty Years in Tasmania: 24 - 25 1552 Article 2(a). 1553 Article 2(a). 1554 Article 2 (b). 1555 Article 2 (c). 1556 Article 2 (c), 2 (d), 2 (e). 1557 Article 2 (d). 1558 Article 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d). 1559 Arthur to Goderich, 1st December 1827, HRA 3/6: 366. 1560 Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence (ed. AGL Shaw), Arthur to Huskisson, 5th July 1828: 8 1561 Robert Montgomery Martin (1839), Statistics of the Colonies of the British Empire: 443. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006693422 (last accessed March 2015) 1562 Robert Martin (1839), ibid, p. 434 1563 The cumulative figures are calculated from Noel Butlin (1994), Forming a Colonial Economy: Australia 1810 – 1850: 21. His figures derive from the Tasmanian Archives resources (no reference is cited) 1564 Bathurst to Darling, Despatch No. 74, 1 October 1826, acknowledged by Darling to under-secretary Hay, 14th February 1827, HRA 1/12: 593 – 595. 1565 The cumulative figures are calculated from Noel Butlin (1994), Forming a Colonial Economy: Australia 1810 – 1850: 20, 21. For the period 1821 – 1828, Butlin estimates the net annual figures as a residual of Madgwick’s departures for NSW and VDL and the Census estimates for NSW. For the period 1829 – 1850, Butlin calculates his annual figures from the shipping arrivals at Hobart (using the Tasmanian Archive microfilm resources). Also see R. B. Madgwick, Immigration into Eastern Australia 1788-1851 (London, 1937, Sydney, 1969) 1566 Articles 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) 1567 Article 2 (c) 1568 Article 2 (c) 1569 Article 2 (c) 1570 Article 2 (d) 1571 Article 2 (b) 1572 In 1987, because of the large number of Aboriginal deaths in custody, the Hawke Government held a Royal Commission to make recommendations on reducing the death rate. The key finding of the Royal Commission was that ‘the deaths were due to the combination of police and prisons failing their duty of care, and the high numbers of Indigenous people being arrested and incarcerated. Twenty nine years later, the problem of Aboriginal social disadvantage and imprisonment has become far worse. The rate of Aboriginal incarceration has ‘doubled as a proportion of the prison population from 14% to become 28%, while making up only 2% of the general population...[..] .In June 2015, Indigenous people were 15.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Indigenous people. A startling 54% of juvenile detainees are Indigenous, making Indigenous youths 26 times more likely to be in detention.’ http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2016/Ap ril/RCADIC-25 1573 See this document: The Semantics of Genocide in Context. 1574 John West (1852), The History of Tasmania: 105 (1971 edition) 1575 See the Milgram behavioural study in Context. 1576 R.M. Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850. In particular, see The Distribution of Land: 31 – 62. 1577 Ibid, Hartwell: 33. 1578 Ibid, Hartwell: 31 1579 In the evolution of capitalism since the 19 th century, little has changed today. For example, without legal constraints, an exploitative society will always try to minimize its cost for conducting business. There is no Australian legal requirement to provide for long-term environmental obligations through an initial allocation to capital expenditure. Indemnification or remediation for an event (what accountants call a ‘contingent liability – unquantifiable’) is an ex post facto charge to income under the Accounting Standards Codification, which becomes a zero charge if the company has folded or walked away, leaving the damage rectification as a public cost. Directors 1314 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited are also usually indemnified for claims arising out of environmental damage. See for example: Ernst & Young, Financial Reporting Developments, Environmental Obligations (2010), http://www.ey.com/publication/vwluassets/financialreportingdevelopments_bb0638_environmentalobligations_a pril2010/$file/financialreportingdevelopments_bb0638_environmentalobligations_april2010.pdf 1580 Ibid, Hartwell: 31, citing I. Bowman (1931), The Pioneer Fringe: 5. 1581 Hartwell (Op. Cit.: 5 – 6) cites S. H. Frankel (1949), The Concept of Colonization for a discussion of the various theories of colonization. 1582 See ‘The myth of terra nullius’ discussion in this document. 1583 Op. Cit., Hartwell: 63, citing I. Isaac (1947), Economics of Migration: 32. 1584 Op. Cit., Hartwell: 63. (Capitalists, Convicts and Workers). 1585 See Part 2, Retroactive culpability, Did Britain know its policies were genocidal, Depopulation statistics. 1586 Hugh M. Hull (1856), Statistical Account of Van Diemen’s Land, 1804 to 1823 1587 See Figure 84. 1588 Op. Cit., Hartwell: 31 – 32. 1589 Op. Cit., Hartwell: 32. See figure 84 1590 Hartwell cites Henry Melville, Op. Cit.: 152. Also J. Backhouse (1843), A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies, mentions the estate of T. Anstey being 20,000 acres; other ‘land barons’ were Orr, Lord, Archer and the Hentys. 1591 Ibid, Hull: 5. 1592 Hull’s comments are handwritten on the original document. Hull adds the annotation: ‘(some of which are supposed to have been unfavourable to certain grants of theirs)’ as the reason for the document destruction. Lieutenant Edward Lord served under Collins for six years. 1593 Hartwell cites Sir J. Franklin (1845), Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Van Diemen’s Land: 8. 1594 Op. Cit., Hartwell: 32 – 33. 1595 Thomas Piketty (2013), Capital in the Twenty-First Century: 39. In November 2016, the Australian Productivity Commission published a report into Increasing Australia’s future prosperity. The Commission defines productivity – the measure of an economy’s ability to convert inputs of resources into outputs of goods and services – as the output per unit of both labour and capital. Since 2004, productivity has stalled or is falling world-wide, which may be no bad thing if we are to have a sustainable future. Falling productivity is partly an artefact of what we call a resource. Resources, as economists define them, are generally non-renewable. In an information based economy, information should also be treated as a resource. It isn’t, not in the usual definition of productivity. If information was included as a resource, the calculated productivity would fall further. What is more alarming: according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, between 1975 and 2016 company profits have been rising, but the wages share of GDP has fallen from 58% to 49% due to the flat-lining of wage growth, the casualization of labour, and its off-shoring or outsourcing to labour hire firms. People are working longer for less, whether they are ordinary Australians or migrants on 457 work visas. It is a pattern of exploitation that was also in evidence with the British colonization of Tasmania. The pattern seems to be a necessary concomitant of a capitalist economy, as Piketty identifies. http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/current/productivity-review/discussion/productivity-review-discussion.pdf 1596 Hartwell cites Denison to Grey, 11 January 1850, British Parliamentary Papers (H. C.), session 1850, vol. XXXVII, paper no. 1289 II: 168. 1597 Op. Cit., Hartwell: 58 1598 Op. Cit.: Hartwell: 58, citing figures from Hull. Allison (Op. Cit.: 8) gives total sales to 1847 as 637,768 acres, a figure agreeing with Hull. 1599 Op. Cit., Hartwell: 58 clarifies that formal leasing probably remained around 200,000 acres between 1828 and 1843, but it was not until 1843 that leasing figures indicate the actual occupation of waste land. In 1850 ‘upwards of one-and-a-half-million of acres’ were leased, according to Denison [Denison to Grey, 11 January 1850, Parliamentary Papers, 1850, XXXVII, 1289 II]. 1600 Op. Cit., Hartwell: 58, citing H. M. Hull (1866), A Statistical Summary of Tasmania from the Year 1816 to 1865 Inclusive. For the period from 1824 to 1838, Hull (1856) records the grant breakdown as: Total number of acres granted 1,053,350; Total number of acres granted to discharged soldiers 9930; Number of acres granted to Van Diemen’s land company 350,000; Total number of acres granted 1,413,280. These figures are slightly different from Frankland. 1315 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1601 Op. Cit., Hartwell: 58, citing George Frankland (1837), Report on the Transactions of the Survey Department of Van Diemen’s Land, from the Foundations of the Colony to the End of Colonel Arthur’s Administration: 76. 1602 Op. Cit., Melville: 150 – 151. 1603 Denison to Grey, 3 October 1847, Parliamentary Papers, 1850, XXXVII, 1289 II 1604 A. Prinsep (1833), The Journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Van Diemen’s Land: 109 1605 W. R. Allison (1847), Remarks on the Transportation Question: 8 1606 S. H. Roberts (1924), History of Australian Land Settlement (1788 – 1920): 45 1607 Ibid: 75. 1608 Ibid: 99. 1609 Op. Cit., Frankland (1837): 72, 73, 76 1610 Op. Cit., Frankland: 50 1611 Op. Cit., Frankland: 76 1612 Op. Cit., Frankland: 72 1613 Op. Cit., Frankland: 73 1614 HRA 3/10: xiii 1615 HRA 3/10: xxxiii 1616 HRA 3/9: 28 1617 HRA 3/9: 28 1618 HRA 3/1: ix, xxix. In comparison, from 1788 ‘the settlement at Port Jackson had commenced with a population of 1,024 and in seven years had increased to 3,388, exclusive of over 900 persons at Norfolk Island ..’ 1619 After his arrival at Risdon Cove, Bowen submitted returns, dated 27 th September 1803. ‘The total was then fortynine instead of forty-seven, and there were three female convicts instead of ten. The forty-nine persons were lieutenant Bowen, J. Mountgarrett, Thomas Wilson, one lance-sergeant, and seven privates, William (called Aaron by Collins; Birt, and his wife; William Clark (called Richard Clarke by Collins); - Smith (an overseer on Grose farm at Sydney); twenty-one male convicts and three female convicts; three women and one child accompanied the NSW corps; and one woman and two children, exclusive of Mrs. Birt, accompanied the three settlers. In addition, there were one man and two women, whose names are not ascertained, and who were nor victualled from the public stores.’ [HRA 3/1: note 99, page 196, 199: 804]. 1620 HRA 3/1: xxiii, 194, King instructed Bowen that settlers were to ‘have town lots of 5 acres each on a lease of 14 years and when circumstances allow to have a grant of 100 acres each, subject to the usual quit rents.’ Bowen includes a map of the settlement, including the first land grants. (HRA 3/1/ 199]. 1621 HRA 3/1: xvii 1622 HRA 3/1: xxi. 1623 ‘The establishment consisted of the lieutenant-governor; a military guard of three officers and forty-seven non commissioned officers and men of the marines, accompanied by twelve wives and children; a civil staff of twelve with four wives and children; a missionary and his wife; three hundred and seven convicts with thirty wqives and children; a total of four hundred and sixty-seven persons. Some of the settlers had the option of remaining with Collins or proceeding to Port Jackson.’ [HRA3/1, Fredk. Watson: xvii, xxvi] 1624 HRA 3/1: xxvii, 1 - 14. Receiving Commissions were: Rev. Robert Knopwood, deputy judge-advocate Barbauld, assistant surgeon I’Anson, mineralogist AWH Humphrey. ‘There were then four hundred and thirty-three persons in the settlement, including a civil staff of eighteen with fourteen wives and children; forty-eight military with twelve wives and children; two hundred and eighty-one convicts with twenty-four wives and children; and thirteen settlers with twenty-three wives and children.’ 1625 nd 2 April to 14th June, 1982. 1626 HRA 3/1: xxxii 1627 HRA 3/1: xxix, Fredk. Watson (ed.). 1628 See Figure 114. 1629 http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/you-need-how-much-to-be-uber-rich-our-top-earners-aretaking-home-more-20150511-ggyzom.html 1630 http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/top-earners-own-45-per-cent-of-australian-wealth-oecdinequality-report/news-story/97d6017d5fadf8d9b0feb33f9c645601 1631 George Frankland (1837), Report on the transactions of the Survey Department of Van Diemen’s Land, from the foundation of the colony to the end of Colonel Arthur’s administration, addressed to Hs Excellency Sir John Franklin, 1316 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited K.C.H., on his assuming the government, Mitchell Library, DSM/042/P469: 11. Frankland (1797 – 1838) was SurveyorGeneral in the Department of Lands and Surveys from 1827 to 1838, a period which covered most of Arthur’s term as Lieutenant-Governor. 1632 Ibid: 11. 1633 Nett Immigration = (arrivals – departures – deaths) as compiled by the statistician (Hull). 1634 Correlation is the statistically measured association or correspondence between the ordering of two ‘random’ variables. The correlation coefficient can range between -1 and +1. There is a positive correlation (0 to 1) when each variable tends to increase or decrease as the other does. A strong correlation is 0.5 to 1.0. 1635 Figures 101, 102. 1636 Figures 95 - 99. 1637 Figure 119. 1638 Figure 99. 1639 Figure 114. 1640 Figure 96. 1641 Figures 103, 104. 1642 For simplification, we will assume that the total cumulative free male immigrant population by year is equivalent to the potential grantee pool by year, up to 1831 inclusive. 1643 Figures 105, 106, 107. 1644 Figures 108, 109. 1645 Following the Earl of Ripon (Lord Goderich) land regulations in 1831, the granting of land by Government was phased out, to be replaced by sales and leases. Arthur’s authority as a ‘social architect’ reduced with his diminishing ability to offer favours to his cronies by way of grants or convict assignments. 1646 Figures 108, 109. 1647 Figures 113, 114. 1648 Figures 115, 116. 1649 For simplicity, we assume that all emigrants up to 1831 had some amount of capital that made them eligible for a land grant. 1650 We quantitatively assess the demographic and social impact of Palawa depopulation in Epilogue. Also see: Ray Gibbons (2015), The Great Australian Land War and Aboriginal Depopulation. 1651 We highlight in blue the more pivotal edicts that, if they had been rescinded or modified in favour of Aboriginal land rights, may have changed the course of British colonizing history in Australia. 1652 Judge-Advocate Atkins’ Opinion on the Treatment of Natives, 20 July 1805, HRA 1/5, 1804 – 1806: 502 – 504. 1653 Gibbons, Op. Cit., : 64 – 75; HRA 1/9: 139; www.lib.mq.edu.au/digital/lema/1816/proclamation20July1816.html 1654 John Thomas Bigge (1822 - 1823), Reports of the commissioner of inquiry on the state of the colony of New South Wales, Report of the Commissioner of Enquiry on the State of Agriculture http://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/discover_collections/history_nation/macquarie/greenway/bigge.html http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1300181h.html 1655 Clive Turnbull (1965), Black War: 65 – 66; For a transcript of this proclamation, see Henry Melville (1835), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 – 1835: 31 – 32. 1656 Gibbons, Op. Cit.: 76 – 79; http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2183147 1657 Gibbons, ibid: 80 – 88; http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/nsw6_doc_1825.pdf 1658 HRA 1/12: 21. Earl Bathurst to Governor Darling, 14th July 1825. Despatch No. 6, per ship Catherine Stewart Forbest ; acknowledged by Governor Darling, 5th May, 1826. 1659 www.vdlfarms.com.au www.woolnorthtours.com.au NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission: 4th August 1830, 225 – 226, notes at 266 – 267. 1660 In fact, all Aboriginal killings were extrajudicial (apart from those four he hanged as an example), for Arthur charged no one, not a single colonist. He did not want the public, excluding Aboriginals, to become antagonistic to his authority. In some instances, Arthur went further by legalising the genocide through edicts condoning the violence by settlers and his proclamations of martial law. 1661 Huskisson to Arthur, 6th May 1828, HRA 3/7: 311 – 312. 1317 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1662 Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land, ed. AGL Shaw (1971): 22 – 24. Note the one-sided British use of military force: when Aboriginals resisted the process of occupation, Arthur declared martial law; when colonists killed Aboriginals, Britain ignored the normative culpable homicide as ‘justified’ in ‘defence of property’. 1663 Lyndall Ryan http://www.massviolence.org/Article?id_article=106 1664 http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Cape%20Grim%20Massacre.htm ; http://press.anu.edu.au/apps/bookworm/view/Edward+M.+Curr+and+the+Tide+of+History/10411/ch01.html; Ian McFarlane (2003), Cape Grim, in Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Robert Manne (Ed.): 277–298. 1665 For a transcript of Arthur’s proclamation, see Melville, Op. Cit. : 72 – 74. Arthur’s plan failed spectacularly. Wandering Palawa had no knowledge of it or the need for a ‘passport’. 1666 Melville writes: At the time it was promulgated it was almost certain death to any native who would shew himself to a European, and it was also death to any European that might fall within the reach of the spear or waddy of the Aborigines. [Ibid, p. 75] 1667 Gibbons, this document ‘The role of Martial Law in Tasmanian Genocide’; Excerpt from Arthur’s martial law proclamation, 1st November 1828. http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/4219798 1668 Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834, Ed. NJB Plomley (2008): 225, 637. 1669 The details of the Emu Bay massacre are set out earlier in this document, under the chapter: The role of Martial Law in genocide. It becomes a contextual referent or case instance in the genocidal process for Tasmania. 1670 Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834 (ed. NJB Plomley), p. 637; Plomley cites the source as : CSO 1/326/7578. The Tasmanian colonial administration under the British Foreign Office never prosecuted acts of violence against Aboriginals. In consequence, there is an absence of case law. Also Ian McFarlane (2002), Aboriginal Society in North West Tasmania: Dispossession and Genocide: 120 – 144 http://eprints.utas.edu.au/220/ 1671 George Augustus Robinson 1791 – 1866) emigrated to Tasmania in 1824 and found employment as a builder at a time when there was open hostility with Aboriginals caused by the kidnapping of native children and women, and indiscriminate killing by settlers. Arthur was increasing his punitive measures, which caused the conflict to escalate. Colonists wanted all Aboriginals to be removed, to give them clear possession of the country. In 1828, the Government advertised for a conciliator to establish relations with the Aboriginals at Bruny Island. Robinson successfully applied. He hoped to ‘civilize’ them by teaching them English, Christianity and more settled ways. He realized that he must first understand their customs and language. His efforts brought disease and death, but he then proposed to Arthur that he should travel around the island, accompanied by around a dozen friendly Palawa, and encourage them to surrender to his care. It was a programme of capture, of ethnic cleansing, which continued until October 1833, with captives being rounded up and transported to imprisonment. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/robinson-george-augustus-2596 1672 NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1673 NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 96 – 99. 1674 Government Order No. 2, Colonial Secretary’s Office, 25th February 1830, HRA 3/9: 201. The bounty is for any captured Aboriginal, but ‘roving parties’ often killed in order to capture, with no questions asked under Arthur’s martial law proclamation. Also see Peter Chapman’s note, pp. 141 – 142. HRA 3/9: 201, Colonial Secretary’s Office, February 25th, 1830. Letter plus enclosures from George Arthur to Sir George Murray. Ed. Peter Chapman 1675 HRA 3/9, Arthur to Sir George Murray, Despatch 19, 15th April 1830: 164 – 236, especially paragraph 10 (pp. 167 – 168) ‘The Military strength under my command is, I submit, inadequate to the protection of the Colony [...] at once two thousand convicts might be assigned away’ [...] Also see Peter Chapman’s note [ibid, note 183, pp. 788 – 789) about the profound human consequences of Arthur’s proposal to use convicts as a paramilitary force. Arthur proposes to arm 2,000 convicts against the Aboriginals. Murray agrees (p. 574). See HRA 3/9: 572 – 576, ‘You have proposed, as a means of mitigating the evil complained of, that an increased number of Convicts should be sent out to Van Diemen’s Land [...] your wishes will, if possible, be complied with’. 1676 Report of the Aborigines’ Committee, 19th March 1830, Despatches, Arthur to Murray, HRA 3/9 (ed. Peter Chapman), pp. 202 – 236. 1318 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1677 Clive Turnbull (1965), Black War the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines: 99- 123; David Davies (1973), The Last of the Tasmanians: 71 – 101; Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People: 87 – 119; Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 101 – 113; Nicholas Clements (2015), The Black War: 125 – 157. 1678 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goderich-first-viscount-2103 1679 HRA 3/9, Arthur to Sir George Murray, Despatch 19, 15th April 1830: 164 – 236, especially paragraph 10 (pp. 167 – 168). Also see Peter Chapman’s note [ibid, note 183, pp. 788 – 789) about the profound human consequences of Arthur’s proposal to use convicts as a paramilitary force. Arthur proposes to arm 2,000 convicts against the Aboriginals. Murray agrees (p. 574). Whether the plan was carried out is the subject of another story, with twists and plots that we will address elsewhere in this document. 1680 James Calder (1875), Some Account of the Wars, Extirpation, Habits, &c., of the Native Tribes of Tasmania: 50 – 51. At this time, Arthur hanged twenty-eight men on four successive days. 1681 For details, see Henry Melville (1835), Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 – 1835: 55 – 58; Hobart Town Gazette, 6 August 1824 [1] ; http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/page/123401 ; R. v. Musquito and Black Jack [1824] http://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/tas/cases/case_index/1824/r_v_musquito_and_black_jac k/ ; Naomi Parry, ‘Hanging no good for blackfellow’: looking into the life of Musquito’ http://press.anu.edu.au//aborig_history/transgressions/mobile_devices/ch07.html David Lowe, Forgotten Rebels Black Australians Who Fought Back: 10 – 14 http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/127.pdf 1682 There is evidence that ‘Musquito’ and ‘Black Jack’ may have been innocent of the crimes attributed to them. The jury was comprised of military officers. Some of the evidence was circumstantial or guilt by association. Arthur would not be dissuaded from his course of exemplary punishment. In the end, he simply antagonised Aboriginals further, through his use of the judiciary in pursuing one-sided justice. 1683 For a transcript, see Henry Melville (1835), Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 -1835: 58 1684 Arthur to Murray, 14th April 1830, Enclosure No. 1, Schedule of Government and Garrison Orders, Notices, Proclamations and Letters Relative to the Natives, numbers 3, 4, HRA 3/9: 169. [Government Notice, 13th September 1826: 9 – 11; Government Notice 29th November 1826: 13 – 18] 1685 Ibid, pp. 58, 59. 1686 J.E. Calder (1875), Some Account of the Wars, Extirpation, Habits, &c., of the Native Tribes of Tasmania: 14. 1687 For example, Henry Reynolds propones that Arthur was a humanitarian. In his widely quoted contrarian book, Reynolds presents then dismisses any evidence that Arthur did not act with the best of motives. Reynolds goes further, and questions if Tasmanian genocide ever happened, by selectively quoting the primary sources. [Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain?: 60, 49 – 66, 67 - 85]. 1688 For a more comprehensive discussion of the entire legislative process, see Ray Gibbons (2015), Documents That Shaped Our Nation (academia.edu). Also see http://www.dpac.tas.gov.au/divisions/opc/publications.html?sq_content_src=%2BdXJsPWh0dHAlM0ElMkYlMkZhc HBsaWNhdGlvbnMuZHBhYy50YXMuZ292LmF1JTJGb3BjJTJGSGlzdG9yaWNhbE5vdGVzLmh0bWwmYWxsPTE%3D 1689 http://ozcase.library.qut.edu.au/qhlc/documents/CrownLandsAlienationAct1868_31_Vic_c_46 is a pdf that does not properly copy across to a Word document, but is of particular interest to the history of Aboriginal land dispossession in relation to ethnic cleansing. It will be no surprise that the legislation was enacted in Queensland a few years after its separation from New South Wales. Most other states followed a similar process of legislative enactment, with New South Wales often taking the lead until Federation in 1901. 1690 1845 – The Act 5th and 6th Victoria, chap. 36, repealed, as to Van Diemen’s Land only, which returned to the status of 1787. 1691 John West (1852, facsimile 1971), The History of Tasmania (ed. AGL Shaw): 122 - 123 1692 Article 2(a) 1693 Article 2(b), 2 (c) 1694 Article 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) 1695 Article 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) 1696 Article 2 (e) 1697 Article 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d). 1698 This followed the precedents set by Macquarie in 1816 and Brisbane in 1824. 1699 R.M. Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850: 58 1319 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1700 The estimate by Hartwell prior to 1832 is based on Frankland’s report. Based on H.M. Hull (1866), A Statistical Summary of Tasmania from the Year 1816 to 1865 Inclusive: 4 1702 Op. Cit., Hartwell (1954): 237 1703 Henry Melville (1836), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 – 1835: 89. Based upon Hartwell’s figures, the balance of payments in 1830 may not have been as healthy as Melville clearly believed, but the trajectory was certainly upwards. It would not become consistently positive until 1836, the year when Arthur left the colony for another posting, although terms of trade suffered a setback from 1840 until 1844. Also see RM Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850: 212. 1704 Ibid, Hartwell (1954): 163 1705 Op. Cit., Hartwell (1954): 102 1706 Article 2 (a). 1707 Articles 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d). 1708 Article 2 (e). 1709 https://bassstraitto1850.wordpress.com/biographies-of-people-living-in-or-visiting-bass-strait-to-1850/ 1710 Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 71. 1711 citing NJB Tindale, Results of the Harvard-Adelaide Universities Anthropological Expedition, RQVM, n.s. 2 (19530: 4. 1712 See, for example: Patricia Cameron (2008), Grease and Ochre: The Blending of Two Cultures at the Tasmanian Sea Frontier (Ma Thesis), where she was mentored by Henry Reynolds. 1713 Aborigines’ Committee Report, 1830, HRA 3/9: 202 – 230. Also see Shayne Breen, Re-inventing Social Evolution, in Whitewash On Keith Windschuttle’s fabrication of Aboriginal history (Ed. Robert Manne) (2003): 148 – 150. 1714 Leonard Charles (1927 An Account of the Whaling and Sealing Industries in Van Diemen’s Land to 1850 https://eprints.utas.edu.au/20991/1/whole_MurrayLeonardCharles1927_thesis.pdf Sue Kee (1987), North east Tasmanian archaeological survey: a regional study: a report to the Department of Lands, Parks and Wildlife and the Australian Heritage Commission http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2618477659 https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj2618477659/view JS Cumpston (1973), First Visitors to Bass Strait Brian Plomley and Kristen Anne Henley (1990), The Sealers of Bass Strait and the Cape Barren Island Community 1715 Hobart Town Gazette, Saturday 11 November 1826, p. 2 http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/8791038 1716 James Hobbs (1792 – 1880). In 1824, he received a grant of 110 acres in Sussex Parish, then in 1825 a further 700 acre, with another 1000 acres in 1834. 1717 HRA 3/9: 227 1718 This is a reference to an 1804 massacre soon after the British arrived in Hobart, intending to establish a settlement. ‘The first act of decided hostility was committed at Risdon on the eastern shore of the Derwent, at which the Settlement was under the command of Lieutenant Moore of the 102 nd Regiment – This occurrence took place the 3rd May 1804, and the Committee have some difficulty in deciding whether it is to be considered as originating in an aggression by the Natives, calling forth measures of self defence, or in an attack upon them commenced by the Settlers and Military, under an impression that an attempt was about to be made upon the position by the unusually augmented number of the Natives who had made their appearance in the neighbourhood.’ [Arthur to Murray, Report of the Aborigines Committee, 19th March 1830, HRA 3/9: 205]. In fact, the Aboriginals were engaged in a kangaroo hunt. Eyewitness accounts suggest up to 50 may have been killed, including women and children, but the British military did not count the bodies. The Aboriginals never forgot or forgave the massacre. The perpetrators were never brought to account. 1719 23rd November 1829, Bruny Island, Friendly Mission, The Tasmanian Journals of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834, ed. NJB Plomley (2008): 100 – 101. Arthur ignored the killing of Aboriginals, as did his superiors. 1720 Ibid, p. 104, Bruny Island. Arthur chose to ignore the rampant problem, allowing it to grow worse. HRA 3/9: 321, 574, 588. 1721 Ibid, p. 377 1722 NJB Plomley (1966), Friendly Mission: 447 - 448 1723 Ibid, p. 278 1724 Ibid: 300 1725 Cited by Plomley at CSO 1/357/7578: 231 – 232 1726 Ibid: 471 1701 1320 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1727 Ibid, 25th October 1830: 291 Ibid, 9th November 1830: 303 1729 th 7 August 1832, Launceston Examiner, cited by NJB Plomley, ibid: 479 1730 Article 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) 1731 Article 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) 1732 Article 2 (e) 1733 Article 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) 1734 Article 2 (d) 1735 Article 2 (b) 1736 https://www.omnicalculator.com/math/exponential-growth using the algorithm P(t)= P0(1+r)t 1737 Aboriginal society across Australia all shared a deep connection with their land. As pastoralists took over, Aboriginals were reluctant to leave their ‘mother’, later preferring to work for no money and poor food if they could cling to their heritage and birthplace. If minimal wages were paid, it usually went into the pockets of middlemen and Government consolidated revenue, so-called ‘stolen wages’. Aboriginals became slaves to their colonial ‘masters’ if it allowed them to remain near their spiritual home, their totems, their ancestors. The Wave Hill walk off by Gurindji Aboriginals in 1966 on the vast cattle property owned by the British company Vesteys in the Northern Territory changed everything. Vesteys refused to pay them a wage and with the support of Government evicted them from their homeland. It rapidly became a pattern across Australia. Many Aboriginals were forced to leave the country they cherished. It was a dispossession twice over. Aboriginal society never fully recovered. After 1966, the land rights movement is still in process with mixed success. In 2017, the Australian Government is now reducing services to remote communities as it tries to force Aboriginals to relocate to cities where they can be better managed under repressive work for the dole schemes. http://indigenousrights.net.au/land_rights/wave_hill_walk_off,_1966-75 http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs224.aspx 1738 There is no better example of this concept than Mudrooroo’s (1992) Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World. 1739 Minutes of the Executive Council, 27th August 1830, HRA 3/9: 616 1740 HRA 3/7: 235, 238-240; Arthur to Hay, 24th November 1829, HRA 3/8: 724-727. 1741 We will investigate Palawa depopulation statistics from various sources in a later section. 1742 Also see Lyndall Ryan (2008), List of multiple killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 – 1835 http://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/list-multiple-killings-aboriginestasmania-1804-1835 1743 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines A history since 1803: 143 1744 The semantic typology of genocide is addressed in a separate volume (yet to be published). There are two aspects to any representational schema: the content and the format (ontological representation of a named thing). For example, there is a widely accepted naming convention developed as part of a Unified Modelling Language (UML) and adopted by the Object Management Group (OMG) that provides standardised object meta-tags including identifier/ description, attributes, associations. In a faceted classification, these meta-tags can be used to represent the properties and characteristics (facets) of a specific class or subject, for example, time or place. In particular, L. genocide Article 2 makes certain categorial assertions, including: Killing members of the group: causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, and so on. The general form is [do something] to [someone]. So we are talking about a process which can form a nested decomposition along an abstraction gradient within a layered intentionality envelope. An instance of the [process] becomes a case instance or use case or contextual referent or an event (actionable component constrained by who, when, where). The representation of the process models and their different levels of abstraction conforms to the well understood logic of directed graph theory (Petri net). The process flow clearly has actors and agencies. It also has (or should have) a controlled vocabulary which can form the basis of a semantic typology. A faceted classification schema allows distinct (mutually exclusive) consistent (clearly defined) categories (facets) to be combined in the representation (ontology) of a concept. A faceted modelling approach works best when there are different ways to associate named elements through some search, as in a Petri net. For example: missile: air/surface; missile: surface/air are quite different things. In our case, we want to derive genocidal ethnic cleansing through two conceptually overlapping taxonomies, either genocide or ethnic cleansing. 1728 1321 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited We have elsewhere developed a rigorous and precise representational format for objects of different types, for example, noun, verb, verb/noun, noun/verb or adjectival variations that form the basis for a semantic typology of genocide and its various overlapping concepts. 1745 A. G. L. Shaw, 'Arthur, Sir George (1784–1854)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/arthur-sir-george-1721/text1883 , published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 24 June 2016. 1746 Ibid. 1747 Ibid: 'The aboriginal natives of this colony are and ever have been a most treacherous race', he wrote on 15 April 1830, though he still welcomed attempts at friendly parley; but, though he forbade the capture of 'inoffensive' natives, a notice of 27 August 1830 reiterated his determination not to 'relax in the most strenuous exertions' to drive all others from the settled country. [Government Notice No. 166, 27th August 1830, Shaw (1971): 62]. 1748 Ibid. 1749 Ibid. 1750 Henry Melville (1836), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the year 1824 – 1835 During the Administration of Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur: 28 1751 Arthur to Bathurst, 2 March 1827, HRA 3/5: 698 1752 HRA 1/15: 274 - 275 1753 HRA 3/5: 698 1754 Huskisson to Arthur, 6 May 1828, Despatch No. 30, HRA 3/7: 311 – 312. Read in the Executive Council 30 October 1828. 1755 HRA 1/15: 275 - 276 1756 Field Marshal Fitzroy Somerset, 1st Baton Raglan (1788 – 1855). Following Wellington's appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in January 1827 Somerset became Military Secretary in August 1827. He was promoted to major-general in 1825. Darling would have written to Somerset in his capacity as military secretary, where he had a key role in troop deployment. 1757 HRA 1/15: 274 - 275 1758 John McMahon (1995), The British Army and the Counter-Insurgency Campaign with particular reference to the Black Line: 3 http://eprints.utas.edu.au/16331/2/mcMahon-part-thesis.pdf The 40th and 63rd regiments had their headquarters in the Tasmanian colony. 1759 AGL Shaw (ed), Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the Subject of the Military Operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land, House of Commons, 23 September 1831: 19 1760 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Notice, 13th September 1826: 19 - 20. 1761 HRA 1/12: 21. Earl Bathurst to Governor Darling, 14th July 1825. Despatch No. 6, per ship Catherine Stewart Forbest ; acknowledged by Governor Darling, 5th May, 1826; Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Notice, 29th November 1826: 20 – 21. 1762 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Notice, 29th November 1827: 21. 1763 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Garrison Orders, Brigade Major’s Office, 29th November 1827: 21 - 22. 1764 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Arthur to Goderich, 10th January 1828: 3 – 4. Also HRA 3/7: 26 – 29. 1765 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Proclamation, Arthur, 15th April 1828: 5 – 7. 1766 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Arthur to Huskisson, 17th April 1828: 4 - 5. Also HRA 3/7: 178 – 184. 1767 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Brigade-Major to Officers on Detachments, 21st April 1828: 24. 1768 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Arthur to Huskisson, 5th July 1828: 8. Also HRA 3/7: 410 – 411. 1769 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Brigade-Major’s Office, 24th October 1828: 26. 1770 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Brigade-Major to Captain Walpole, 30th September 1828: 25. 1771 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Executive Council Minutes, 30th October 1828: 9 – 10. Present: Arthur, Pedder, Jocelyn Thomas. 1772 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Executive Council Minutes, 31st October 1828: 10 - 11. Present: Arthur, Montague, others? 1773 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Proclamation, Arthur, 1st November 1828: 11 – 12. 1774 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Arthur, Circular to Magistrates, 1st November 1828: 28. 1775 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Brigade-Major to Lieutenant Oliver, Brigade-Major’s Office, 1st November 1828: 28 – 29. 1776 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Garrison Order No. 2, Brigade Major’s Office, 3rd November 1828: 13 – 14, issued by Montague. 1777 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Arthur to Murray, 4th November 1828: 9. Also HRA 3/7: 625. 1778 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Notice, Colonial Secretary’s Office, 11th December 1828: 30. 1322 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1779 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Garrison Order No. 4, 17, Brigade Office, 12th December 1828: 26, 31. The order was first issued as No. 4, then reissued as No. 17, to clarify the ration of spirits to the military. 1780 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Circular to the magistrates from J. Burnett, Colonial Secretary’s Office, 2nd January 1829: 31. 1781 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Murray to Arthur, 20th February 1829, Received 28th July 1829: 8 . Also HRA 3/8: 261 – 262 received 28th July 1829. 1782 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Notice, J. Burnett, 4th March 1829: 31 – 32. Robinson was the successful applicant. The Executive Council was to determine that the Bruny Island experiment could be replicated to the rest of Tasmania in a ‘friendly mission’. In humanitarian terms, Bruny Island was a failure. The Aboriginal morbidity was frightening, as we will later see. The Executive Council was not deterred by the death rate but buoyed by the success in coercing Aboriginals into ‘protective custody’. 1783 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Murray to Arthur, 25th August 1829: 14. Murray had picked up on Arthur’s earlier evocative phrase, which encouraged the Colonial Office to consider Aboriginal resistance with some detachment, as though it was an academic exercise without any human consequences. Also HRA 3/8: 587 – 588, received 12th January 1830. 1784 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Garrison Order No. 20, F. Aubin, Acting Town Adjutant, on behalf of Arthur, 4th September 1829: 32. Arthur proclaimed martial law in 1828 to provide military and paramilitary protection to the colonists, not Aboriginals. 1785 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Arthur, Circular to magistrates, from J. Burnett (Colonial Secretary), 11 th September 1829: 32. At this time, the Palawa were beginning to fight an increasingly desperate guerrilla war, with Arthur’s campaign against them becoming more rancorous and determined. Arthur continued to instruct the judiciary and military to show ‘forbearance’ and that ‘any Natives who may surrender or be captured be treated with humanity and tenderness, and that defenceless women and children be invariably spared’. But he knew that this was most unlikely in a conflict, where guns were conciliating. However, he attached his ‘conciliatory’ orders to his despatches. The Colonial Office approved his ‘conciliatory’ words, but they also approved of his genocidal actions. Arthur never issued an instruction that an Aboriginal body count be kept. He did offer a small inducement to the military for every captured Aboriginal. 1786 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Garrison Order, Town Adjutant, issued by Arthur, 15th September 1829: 32 – 33. 1787 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Town Adjutant (for Arthur) to Captain Vicary, 63rd Regiment, 5th February 1830: 34. Also HRA 3/9: 199. 1788 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Order No. 1, Colonial Secretary’s Office (J. Burnett), 19th February 1830: 34. Also HRA 3/9: 199 – 200. 1789 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Order No. 2, Colonial Secretary’s Office (J. Burnett), 25th February 1830: 34. Also HRA 3/9: 200 – 201. 1790 Arthur to Murray, Despatch No. 19, 15th April 1830, Report of the Aborigines’ Committee, HRA 3/9: 202 – 236; Ibid, Shaw (1971), Report of the Aborigines Committee, 19th March 1830: 35 – 55. 1791 Arthur to Murray, 15th April 1830, HRA 3/9: 164 – 168; Ibid, Shaw (1971), Arthur to Murray, 15th April 1830: 15 18. 1792 Arthur to Murray, Schedules, Proclamations, Orders, Committee reports, HRA 3/9: 169 - 308 1793 Arthur to Murray, 15th April 1830, HRA 3/9: 164 - 168 1794 Murray to Arthur, 23rd April 1830, HRA 3/9: 311 – 312. 1795 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Notice No. 160, Colonial Secretary’s Office (J. Burnett), 19th August 1830: 61. Also HRA 3/9: 599. 1796 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Notice No. 161, Colonial Secretary’s Office (J. Burnett), 20 th August 1830: 61 62. For an analysis, see later in this chapter. Also HRA 3/9: 601. 1797 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Notice No. 166, Colonial Secretary’s Office (J. Burnett), 19th August 1830: 61. Also HRA 3/9: 603 – 604.Contrary to his injunction that ‘wanton attacks’ against ‘inoffensive tribes’ would be ‘vigorously prosecuted’, Arthur allowed the genocidal carnage to continue without restraint. 1798 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Extract from the Minutes of the Executive Council, 27th August 1830: 62 – 64. Present: Arthur; Pedder; Colonial Secretary; Jocelyn Thomas. Also HRA 3/9: 612 – 616. 1799 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Order No. 9, Colonial Secretary’s Office (J. Burnett), 9th September 1830: 64 – 66. Also HRA 3/9: 616 – 620. 1800 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Order No. 11, Colonial Secretary’s Office (J. Burnett), 22 nd September 1830: 66 – 70. Also HRA 3/9: 627 – 636. 1801 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Martial Law Proclamation, 1st October 1830: 71. Also HRA 3/9: 644 – 645. 1323 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1802 Murray to Arthur, 9th May 1831, HRA 3/9: 572 – 576, received 1st June 1831; Ibid, Shaw (1971), Murray to Arthur, Extract, 5th November 1830: 55 – 57. 1803 Arthur to Murray, 20th November 1830: HRA 3/9: 587 – 659, received 15th May 1831; Ibid, Shaw (1971), Arthur to Murray, Memorandum, 20th November 72 – 74. 1804 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Arthur, Memorandum, 20th November 72 – 74. 1805 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Arthur to Murray, 1st January 1831: 74 – 75. 1806 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Report of the Aborigines Committee, 4th February 1831: 76 – 78. 1807 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Arthur to Murray, 12th February 1831: 75. 1808 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Government Notice, Colonial Secretary’s Office (J. Burnett), 19th February 1831: 85 – 86. These ‘kind and pacific intentions’ were occluded by the reality of their harsh treatment after capture, where there was a fearful Palawa mortality. 1809 Present: Arthur; Pedder; Montagu, Colonial Secretary; Lieutenant-Colonel Logan 1810 The Palawa were not told that ‘government protection’ meant they were destined for island imprisonment. 1811 The main fear of the Palawa, apart from the depredations of the sealers in some coastal areas, was the threat of the military and armed roving parties, with a secondary threat from armed colonists and their servants. 1812 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Extract of Minutes of Executive Council, 23rd February 1831: 80 – 83. Present: Arthur; Pedder; Colonial Secretary; Lieutenant-Colonel Logan. Pedder demurred from Robinson’s opinion that expatriation and imprisonment would not cause them a sense of hopelessness, and instead suggested a treaty, allowing them to remain in Tasmania, but was overruled by Arthur. 1813 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Colonial Secretary’s Office (J. Burnett), 3rd March 1831: 84 – 85. 1814 Present: Arthur; Pedder; Montagu; Lieutenant-Colonel Logan. 1815 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Extract of Minutes of Executive Council, 14th March 1831: 83 – 84. 1816 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Arthur to Murray, 4th April 1831: 78 – 79. 1817 Ibid, Shaw (1971), Goderich to Arthur, 17th June 1831: 75. 1818 The hypothesized genocidal agency of martial law (including the Aborigines’ Committee) is dealt with separately in this paper. 1819 This was the populist term, used by Jorgenson and others, for ‘levée en masse’ or mass uprising, where Arthur was enjoining all able bodied colonists to participate in his ‘black line’. 1820 HRA 3/7:26 – 28; Ibid, Shaw (1971) Arthur to Goderich: 3 – 4. 1821 HRA 3/7: 129 1822 Arthur’s two proclamations of martial law and the further genocidal consequences will be dealt with under the ‘agency’ of martial law. The different agencies are co-determinate in their effect but are analysed separately to distinguish their unique aspects. 1823 James Boyce (2008), Van Diemen’s Land: 261 – 294. 1824 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/burnett-john-1855 Burnett suffered ill-health for most of his term of office. Arthur often nominated his nephew, John Montagu, Captain of the 40 th Regiment, to stand in for Burnett. Montagu was one of Arthur’s inner circle, which led Melville and others to accuse Arthur of nepotism. 1825 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/pedder-sir-john-lewes-2542 1826 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/thomas-jocelyn-henry-connor-2726 Thomas borrowed heavily to buy land. In 1832, Treasury funds showed a shortfall of £10,627. He was dismissed from office in 1834. 1827 Shaw (1971); Copies of all correspondence: 3 – 4. 1828 Geoff Lennox, The Van Diemen’s Land Company and the Tasmanian Aborigines: A Reappraisal, Tasmanian Historical Research Association (THRA) Papers and Proceedings, 1990, Vol. 37: 20. Paper is available for a small fee from http://search.informit.com.au/browsePublication;py=1990;vol=37;res=IELAPA;issn=0039-9809;iss=4 1829 HRA 3/7: 625 – 635. 1830 Arthur to Murray, 20th November 1830, HRA 3/9: 588 1831 This murder was the 1828 Emu Bay massacre, and we make it the subject of a case study later in this document. 1832 HRA 3/9: 311 – 312. 1833 Government Notice No. 160, 19th August 1830, HRA 3/9: 599; Shaw (1971): 61. 1834 Government Order No. 2, 25th February 1830, Shaw (1971): 35. 1835 Government Notice No. 161, issued by the Colonial Secretary’s Office, 20th August 1830, HRA 3/9: 601. 1836 Government Notice No. 166, Colonial Secretary’s Office, 27th August 1830, HRA 3/9: 603 – 604; Shaw (1971), Copies of all correspondence: 62 1324 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1837 For an insight into Arthur’s insubordination, see Peter Chapman’s excellent commentary on the episode. HRA 3/9: notes 553 to 583 pages 919 – 931. Arthur referred to Murray’s instruction as ‘inopportune’. The fact that Arthur’s response was edited out suggests that the British Government might have agreed with him. See HRA 3/9, note 173 (pp. 781 – 782) for details of ‘judicious editing out of potentially embarrassing material on the Aboriginal problem’, especially HRA 3/7: 625, 627 – 628. Also note 174 (HRA 3/9: 782): Arthur’s despatch of 4th November 1828 was not responded to until 25th August 1829 (a period of nearly ten months) but this response was not received by Arthur until 12th January 1830, making a total elapse of fourteen months between Arthur’s initial reporting of the martial law emergency and his receipt of advice on the measures he was adopting in a rapidly developing situation. 1838 Notices 160, 161. 1839 Notice 166. 1840 Arthur to Murray, 20th November 1830, HRA 3/9: 589 1841 Murray to Arthur, 23rd April 1830, HRA 3/9: 311- 312. Read in the Executive Council on 27th August 1830. 1842 Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the subject of the military operations carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land, ed. AGL Shaw (1971), 27th August 1830: 63. 1843 Ibid, Van Diemen’s Land Correspondence: 63. 1844 See the Emu Bay case study later in this document. 1845 HRA 3/9: 613. 1846 HRA 3/9: 614 1847 Op. Cit., Van Diemen’s Land (1971), 9th September 1830: 64 – 65. 1848 Executive Council, extract of minutes, 27th August 1830, HRA 3/9: 612 – 616. Present were: George Arthur; John Pedder, the Chief Justice; the Colonial Secretary, John Burnett; Jocelyn Thomas, the Colonial Treasurer. 1849 This reference is probably meant as G.A. Robinson 1850 These were mere words by Arthur. No white was ever punished, either under his administration, or any other in the colony’s history prior to 1833, for any crime against an Aboriginal. 1851 This ‘perilous’ condition resulted from their often violent occupation of prime Aboriginal territory, territory the British were not prepared to give up or negotiate, territory for which they demanded Government armed protection. 1852 By ‘irreclaimable’, Anstey - the Police Magistrate and major landowner in the Oatlands District of the fertile midlands - meant that the Palawa were fighting a desperate war against their dispossession and refused to accept white sovereignty over their country. 1853 Arthur had every reason to be anxious. The ‘settlers’ wanted extreme punitive measures taken against the Palawa. Murray advised caution and reminded Arthur that under the rule of British Law, crimes against Aboriginals should also be punished. Arthur knew that if he prosecuted white ‘settlers’, it was he who would be punished. So in late 1829, he sought to further outsource the problem to a hastily formed Aborigines Committee, who could build the case for one-sided punitive action or other measures that might mitigate the ‘Aboriginal problem’, a problem largely of Arthur’s making. With an ‘independent’ body supporting Arthur’s draconian ethnic cleansing measures, the Colonial Office might buckle. And so they did. Murray approved the use of paramilitary convicts. Fortunately for Arthur, Murray’s successor (Goderich) had little interest in bringing to justice any white perpetrators of crimes against Aboriginals. Nor did any other British Government functionary, with the sole exception of Gipps, as the genocidal conflict flamed across the rest of the continent. 1854 Here, the Council is word smithing, to make a case. Conciliation at the end of a gun was never going to work. Robinson showed that a ‘friendly overture’ would work, although it must be said that this was at a time when the Palawa were becoming increasingly desperate, when all they saw were armed ‘roving parties’ who shot on sight or attempted armed capture. Before Robinson, Arthur’s sole negotiating tactic was that the Palawa must recognize that their country had been taken from them, and they must accept their position as being absorbed into a superior culture as servants and labourers, subordinate to British civilization. Arthur had long foregone the thought he briefly considered, of partitioning, even the possibility of a treaty. The colonists would have none of it. However, he led the Palawa to believe that either might be possible if they surrendered to his authority, if not his goodwill. 1855 With the Council’s endorsement of much harsher policies towards the Aboriginals, Arthur had made them complicit in the consequences. Now, all he had to do was engage the full support of his superiors in a genocidal campaign. He did this by despatching an exceptionally long set of communications, including the Report of the Aborigines’ Committee, Executive Council minutes, Government Notices, Orders, Field Plan of Military Movements, 1325 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited and a Proclamation all of which were intended to justify his excessively harsh militarization of the race war and his refusal to punish white colonists. Arthur to Murray, 20th November 1830, HRA 3/9: 587 – 659. 1856 In developing this argument, the Council is showing apprehended bias. They are not condemning the many atrocities of the white ‘settlers’. The result of this prejudicial logic was a one-sided military and paramilitary operation against the Palawa. 1857 In this argument for more violent action by the Government, the Council admits that the whites are at war with the Palawa; but they do not mention that many more Palawa were killed than whites, a ratio of at least 4:1, according to Lyndall Ryan’s detailed research, although we may never know the actual body count from Arthur’s punitive campaign against them. What we do know is that, at the end of martial law, few Palawa remained, a little over two hundred. 1858 To this point, few whites had any interest in learning the languages and customs of the Palawa, although the Palawa were expected to learn some amount of English. The Council also talks about protecting the ‘settled districts’ as though they were of a fixed size and border; but the Palawa knew, as did Arthur and the Council, that the process of land alienation and occupation would continue, pushing the Aboriginals further and further to the margins of the island, and Britain had no intention of stopping the process. Therefore, the Council’s self-righteous argument is disingenuous at best, and deceptive otherwise. 1859 In making this assertion, whether true or not, the Executive Council is able to claim that they have no other choice than draconian action, like the case of going to war with Iraq because there was wrongly stated to exist a stockpile of ‘weapons of mass destruction’. 1860 The Palawa well knew the obligation of a promise, but Arthur and Robinson often used a verbal ‘promise’ as a ruse to obtain some concession. If Arthur’s word could not be trusted, there was little hope of ‘conciliation’ in whatever imagined form it might take in Britain’s thinking. Britain repeatedly spoke of ‘conciliation’ but in practice it meant that Aboriginals must give up their land and their rights without protest; and if they protested, British Law was used against them to secure their compliance. 1861 The Council’s argument for a quick assault on the Palawa using overwhelming force was a popular sentiment during the period of rapid colonial expansionism in Australia during the 19th century. See, for example, Trollope: Their doom is to be exterminated; and the sooner their doom to be accomplished – so that there be no cruelty – the better will it be for civilization. [Anthony Trollope (1875), Trollope’s Australia, edited by Hume Dow, Thomas Nelson (Australia), Sydney, 1966, p. 141. 1862 Van Diemen’s Land Correspondence, ed. AGL Shaw (1971): 63 – 64. 1863 The ‘levy en masse’, NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 99 - 109. This curious British corruption of French should of course be levée en masse 1864 Op. Cit., Van Diemen’s Land (1971), 22nd September 1830: 66; The ‘levy en masse’, NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 99 - 109. 1865 Op. Cit., Van Diemen’s Land (1971), 1st October 1830: 71 1866 NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 99 1867 NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 100 1868 NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 99 1869 Arthur sought, and obtained, Murray’s approval to use convicts as an armed paramilitary force against the Palawa. Murray to Arthur, 9 May 1831 HRA 3/9: 572 – 574, 787, 790, 791. Arthur’s request was received by Murray on 29 September 1830. On 16 November 1830, Murray instructed Darling, the New South Wales Governor, to provide Arthur with military assistance, a copy of which was forwarded to Arthur on 17 November, but not received until 9 May 1831. By this time, Arthur had already executed other emergency procedures. This does not downplay Murray’s extraordinary acquiescence to a ‘final’ solution using armed convicts. 1870 Plomley notes that the order also appeared in the Hobart Town Courier of 25th September and the Launceston Examiner of 4th October. The operations of the Line are in the AOT, for the CSO series, particularly CSO 1/324/7578 and in newspaper reports for October and November 1830. 1871 ‘Levy en masse’, NJB Plomley, ed., (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 99. 1872 AGL Shaw (ed.), Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence (1971): 66 - 70 1873 The Black Line, 1830 – 1831, Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines A history since 1803: 131 – 140. 1874 A mere handful of Aboriginals were captured, the others easily evading entrapment. Arthur also forgot that an army marches on its feet and with its stomach. Rations were slow to arrive and shoe leather quickly deteriorated. Ultimately the failure of his operation did not matter, although Arthur did not know it at the time. He was extremely 1326 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited relieved, along with his Aborigines Committee, when remnant Aboriginal groups showed themselves amenable to a ‘friendly’ overture from Robinson, where he promised protection, but gave captivity. 1875 ‘Levy en masse’, NJB Plomley, ed., (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 108; John McMahon (1995), The British Army and the Counter-Insurgency Campaign with particular reference to the Black Line, Master of Humanities, University of Tasmania http://eprints.utas.edu.au/16331/2/mcMahon-part-thesis.pdf 1876 Government Order No. 11, dated 22nd September 1830, published in the Hobart Town Gazette on the 25 th, Arthur to Murray (enclosure 5): HRA 3/9: 628 – 636. There exists a map of Arthur’s military operation, drawn by Thomas Scott, published in 1830 by James Ross, which also shows the Tasman Peninsula as ‘Establishment for the Aborigines’. HRA 3/9: 932 1877 Ibid, para 28. 1878 AGL Shaw (ed), Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence (1871): map enclosure (THRA facsimile). Plomley also includes the map as an enclosure in NJB Plomley(1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land. You will note that the ‘black line’ comprised multiple lines. 1879 £35,000 represents between £6.3 million and £19.6 million in today’s currency. https://www.measuringworth.com/australiacompare/result.php?year_source=1830&amount=35&year_result=20 16 1880 In fact, there were multiple overlapping lines that became conjoined as they closed onto the southeast peninsula. See Figure 83: Arthur's 'Black Line' ethnic cleansing operation October/ November 1830. 1881 Plomley notes that ‘the story of Savage appears as Government Notice no. 203 of 18th October 1830 in the Hobart Town Gazette of 23rd October 1830’. It is also transcribed in NJB Plomley (1971), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 134 - 136. 1882 These were probably what the British called the ‘Oyster Bay’ and the ‘Big River’ tribes, using primitive and poorly conceived British anthropological constructs. 1883 It was not true, of course, but it succeeded in convincing these Aboriginals of the Government’s good intentions. With nothing in writing, with no white advocate willing to document any agreement and the terms of surrender, then after their capture no concessions were necessary by Arthur. As the ‘friendly mission’ progressed around the Island, so did the ruses vary to obtain their surrender, as we will see. 1884 NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 81 1885 Thomas Anstey (1777- 1851) http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/anstey-thomas-1709 1886 This became the strategy of the roving/ pursuing parties. It was armed ambush. Many Aboriginals were killed in this way. 1887 Samuel Calvert (1828 – 1913); Samuel Thomas Gill (1818 – 1880) These retrospective depictions were created long after the Tasmanian war for land was over. Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War 1888 Anstey to Arthur, 14th November 1828, NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 81 – 82. 1889 NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 82. 1890 NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 84. 1891 J. Burnett, Colonial Secretary, to Thomas Anstey, 2 nd April 1830, NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 85. 1892 Despatch No. 13, Arthur to Murray, 4 th April 1831, NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 84. 1893 Ibid: 21, citing AOT CSO 1/320/7578, p. 275 1894 Ibid: 22. 1895 Ibid: 97 – 98. 1896 Murray to Arthur, Despatch No. 43, 5th November 1830, HRA 3/9: 572 – 576. Received 9th May 1831. 1897 Arthur to Murray, Despatch No. 42, 20th November 1830, HRA 3/9: 587 – 596. Received 15th May 1831. 1898 AGL Shaw (ed.), Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence (1971): 80 – 83. Present: Arthur; Pedder; Colonial Secretary: Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Logan (Commanding Officer of the 63rd Regiment. 1899 NJB Plomley (ed.), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land: 97 1900 ‘Unlocated’ was a British term for land that had not yet been surveyed for white occupation. 1901 AGL Shaw (ed.), Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence (1971): 83 – 84. Present: Arthur, Pedder, Colonial Secretary, Lieutenant-Colonel Logan. 1327 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1902 For Arthur, ‘consent’ meant: if the Palawa accepted a few gifts and vague promises of Government ‘protection’, then they also accepted imprisonment’. If Arthur had been honest in disclosing the real terms of ‘surrender’, it is doubtful the Palawa would have accepted Arthur’s ‘kindness’. Arthur, in a later instruction to Robinson (3rd March 1831) wrote that if Aboriginals were detained by sealers (and others) against their will, warrants must be issued for their release. Arthur did not see his own hypocrisywhen he held Aboriginals against their will. 1903 Ibid: 83 - 84 1904 AGL Shaw (ed.), Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence (1971): 78 - 79 1905 Pedder’s model was soon to be trialled in Victoria and other Australian colonies, where unarmed Aboriginal Protectors travelled with Aboriginal groups or looked over their welfare, but without any prosecutorial responsibility. Yet the ethnic extermination continued well into the 20th century. Governments simply were not interested in charging any white offender. So they didn’t. And soon enough, when most of the land was in the hands of pastoralists, the Aboriginals became unwanted trespassers. Not allowed to own any land, not accepted as citizens, they were in a sense stateless. A system of Government reserves was established, where Aboriginal lives were rigidly controlled under a system of apartheid. Some Governments went further into attempting to ‘breed out the recessive Aboriginal trait’ by controlling who could marry (and whom). 1906 Arthur’s adjective ‘unanimously’ seems to sit at odds with Pedder’s later dissenting voice in this Council meeting against measures tending to induce the Natives in tribes to consent to expatriation. 1907 Among these ‘amicable intentions’, Palawa imprisonment was not mentioned. Robinson used the same ‘ruse de guerre’, as he called it, to ‘induce’ Aboriginals into captivity. He promised them protection, without telling them what it entailed. Nothing was written down. There were no treaty arrangements. There were only verbal promises. Aboriginals gave their trust, but ultimately, their trust was misplaced. Both Robinson and Arthur deceived them. By this time, the British Government did not really care. 1908 Arthur’s dependence on Robinson’s ‘expertise’ is facile and self-serving. Robinson is a builder by trade. But Robinson learned more about Palawa languages and customs than Arthur ever bothered to pretend, had he been interested. The Aboriginals’ guerrilla war against the colonists was meticulously planned, and was far more effective than their numbers might suggest. The Palawa continued their war of resistance for as long as Arthur maintained his partisan campaign against them. Eventually, they were worn down by their diminishing numbers. 1909 Arthur here decides that Palawa imprisonment is better than continuing hostilities, for him, and for the British colonists. But Arthur’s ‘act of kindness’ in detaining them is revealed as hypocrisy, where they not only ‘pine away’ as predicted, but die from the imposed lethal conditions, as we will soon see. Once they are imprisoned, Arthur loses interest and concentrates on his career and self-enrichment. He was never going to protect the Aboriginals’ interests against invasive British occupation. His collusive despatches with his superiors clearly demonstrate that pattern of racist behaviour. Genocide was the almost inevitable consequence. A similar British bias would be shown across the continent as the intentional process of colonization played out, with similar results as for Tasmania. 1910 At this point, Arthur is attempting to deflect responsibility for his genocidal strategy towards his Executive Council and the Aborigines’ Committee that he organised. If the strategy failed, they would share responsibility. If it succeeded, he would claim the major credit. And he did. 1911 Throughout the latter part of the genocidal process in Tasmania, Arthur maintained a curious doublespeak, where the colonists were ‘peaceful’ and the Palawa were ‘miserable savages’, where ‘conciliation’ for Arthur meant hanging some key resistance fighters and capturing the rest, forcing them into imprisonment. A strange form of conciliation, until we consider that by ‘conciliation’, Britain meant that Indigenous people should accept their subjugation as an inferior race without any form of resistance. If they resisted, Britain could lawfully exterminate them. The weasel words to use ‘proportional force’ were merely lip service. 1912 AGL Shaw (ed.), Van Diemen’s Land Copies of all correspondence (1971): 84 - 85 1913 Arthur, as a military officer, was in his element when he was processing information within a set piece operation, giving orders, setting expectations. 1914 Robinson was sworn in as a Special Constable for this purpose, although he was not to exercise the power. 1915 No warrants against any sealer was ever issued. 1916 If the Palawa had known the compensation awarded to Robinson for their capture, it is unlikely they might have placed the same amount of trust in Robinson’s self-rewarding ‘conciliatory’ exertions. But he offered them a safe haven from ongoing persecution. The safe haven was to be a death trap. 1917 Article 2 (a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) 1918 Article 2 (a) 1328 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1919 Article 2 (b), 2 (c) Article 2 (c), 2 (d), 2 (e) 1921 Article 2 (b), 2 (c) 1922 Article 2 (d) 1923 Article 2 (e) 1924 Article 2 (a) 1925 Article 2 (c) 1926 Article 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (e) 1927 Arthur to Lord Goderich, 10th January 1828, Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence between lieutenantgovernor Arthur and His Majesty’s secretary of state for the colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land (1971): 3 - 4 1928 Arthur’s Proclamation, 15th April 1828, by copy to Secretary Huskisson, Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence between lieutenant-governor Arthur and His Majesty’s secretary of state for the colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land (1971): 5-7 1929 Bill Gammage (2011), The Biggest Estate on Earth How Aborigines Made Australia; Bruce Pascoe (2014), Dark Emu 1930 Arthur to Secretary Huskisson 17th April 1828, Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence between lieutenant-governor Arthur and His Majesty’s secretary of state for the colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land (1971): 4 - 5 1931 Present at this meeting were George Arthur, the Chief Justice John Pedder and Jocelyn Thomas, who became the Colonial Treasurer 1932 10th April 1816, I have this Day ordered three Separate Military Detachments to march into the Interior and remote parts of the Colony, for the purpose of Punishing the Hostile Natives, by clearing the Country of them entirely, and driving them across the mountains, Macquarie, Lachlan. Diary 10 April 1816 - 1 July 1818 Original held in the Mitchell Library, Sydney. ML Ref: A773 pp.1-8. [Microfilm Reel CY301 Frames #237-245]. Also www.lib.mq.edu.au/digital/lema/1816/1816April.html 1933 George Murray to Arthur, 20th February 1829, Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence between lieutenant-governor Arthur and His Majesty’s secretary of state for the colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land (1971): 8 1934 Arthur to Secretary Huskisson 17th April 1828, Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence between lieutenant-governor Arthur and His Majesty’s secretary of state for the colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land (1971): 9 - 10 1935 Britain did have some interest, through Darwinian theory, in scientifically showing that there was a hierarchy of humanity, based upon comparative anatomy. 1936 Arthur to Secretary Huskisson 17th April 1828, Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence between lieutenant-governor Arthur and His Majesty’s secretary of state for the colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land (1971): 10 - 11 1937 Arthur to Secretary Huskisson 17th April 1828, Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence between lieutenant-governor Arthur and His Majesty’s secretary of state for the colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land (1971): 9 1938 My emphasis. 1939 My emphasis. 1940 George Murray to Arthur, 20th February 1829, Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence between lieutenant-governor Arthur and His Majesty’s secretary of state for the colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land (1971): 8 1941 Excerpt from Arthur’s martial law proclamation, 1st November 1828. http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/4219798 1942 HRA 3/9: 201. Colonial Secretary’s Office, February 25th, 1830. Letter plus enclosures from George Arthur to Sir George Murray. Ed. Peter Chapman. 1943 John Batman (1801 – 1839) owned a large but unproductive grazing farm in the 1820s at Kingston, in Tasmania’s northeast, in the foothills of Ben Lomond. With Arthur’s proclamation, Batman saw the financial opportunity to become a bounty hunter. In this particular massacre near Ben Lomond, an estimated 15 to 17 people were 1920 1329 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited murdered. The woman he captured, Luggenemener, was sent to gaol at Campbell Town. Batman is remembered for his abortive attempt in 1835 to acquire the huge area around Port Phillip Bay for a proposed settlement (Batmania) through a treaty with the Kulin for a nominal annual payment. The ‘Dutigulla treaty’ was abrogated by Governor Bourke on the basis that the British Crown, not the Kulin, owned the land. Batman died of syphilis. 1944 Batman to Anstey, 7 September 1829, CSO1/320/7578, also cited by A.H. Campbell, John Batman and the Aborigines (1987): 31-32. Across Australia, it was common to shoot injured Aboriginal prisoners who could not walk. See FWAYAF: Recollections of a (Homicidal) Pastoral Frontier. Such firsthand accounts as Batman’s are quite rare, most pastoralists and police preferring secrecy around their activities. Batman was not unusually cruel for his time, when killing ‘black crows’ was normative, a collective behavioural dysfunction. 1945 Roderick O’Connor (1784 – 1860), settler, prominent landowner and confidante of Arthur. HRA 3/9: 843 – 844. He was a land commissioner in 1827, responsible for distributing Aboriginal land to immigrants. 1946 This may be a reference to a massacre at Fort Wellington in 1828, where soldiers murdered a number of Aboriginals, including at least one woman and child. Murray censured Governor Darling for this event, but the killings continued for as long as Aboriginal lands were invaded. Arthur’s proposed policy to use convicts against the Aboriginals appears to contradict Murray’s edict to Darling. See HRA 3/9, note 269: 845 - 846. However, Murray approved the use of convicts in a later despatch. HRA 3/9, Arthur to Sir George Murray, Despatch 19, 15th April 1830: 164 – 236, especially paragraph 10 (pp. 167 – 168). Also see Peter Chapman’s note [ibid, note 183, pp. 788 – 789] about the stupefying human consequences of Arthur’s proposal to use convicts as a paramilitary force. Arthur proposes to arm 2,000 convicts against the Aboriginals. Murray agrees (p. 574). 1947 HRA 3/9: 234 – 236. This curious rant by O’Connor shows that he believed British occupation of Aboriginal land was justified because the Palawa were non-people, a people without rights. Nor did he anticipate any evil from the arming of the Convicts Arthur was more circumspect: he talked conciliation and practised extermination, being careful to engage his superiors in the process of hand-wringing genocide. 1948 HRA 3/9, Peter Chapman, Note 140: 765. 1949 Ibid. 1950 HRA 3/9: 212 – 214. 1951 NJB Plomley (1991), Jorgen Jorgenson, Op. Cit.: 96 - 97 1952 Despatches, Arthur to Murray, HRA Series 3, Volume 9, (ed. Peter Chapman), pp. 202 – 236. The incisive notes are largely those of Peter Chapman, unless otherwise indicated. 1953 Note 227: ibid. pp. 822-5. Re. page 203 There is too much reason to apprehend, that as the White population spread itself more widely ... many outrages were committed which no interposition of the Government... could, with the means at its command, have been able to prevent This sentence comprehends the two major interpretations of the breakdown in Aboriginal-European relations (for the early period and later): the impact on the Aborigines of the increasing and potentially violent convict population on the frontier and elsewhere (as discussed in notes 178, 183 above) as well as the closely related pastoral expansion fuelled by generous land grants and assigned convict labour, producing a deteriorating situation as 'the settlers advance on the favourite haunts of the natives' (as discussed in note 185 below). Perhaps the most concise and relevant contemporary exposition of the first interpretation was given by the Surveyor General of New South Wales, John Oxley, as early as 1810 when he was sent from New South Wales to report on the state of colony. Making precise reference to the bushranging phenomenon discussed in notes 186, 207, 212. 214 above and to the linkage with the later pastoral expansion, he also refers to the hasty, under-resourced foundation of the colony in 1803, brought forward to thwart possible French expansion in the area. This had the consequence (as also discussed in the introduction) of producing a scanty, forage-based economy which impinged on the Aborigines from the beginning. The forage economy rested significantly on harvesting the kangaroo, and this was done largely by convicts nominally under the direction of settlers with the gains of the hunt being received by the Commissariat which then recompensed the settlers concerned. Oxley wrote: upon a scarcity arising it has been the constant practice to endeavour to remedy it by receiving kangaroo into the store and issuing it nearly in the proportion of 21bs for one of Salt Beef or Pork; by this method the evil was increased for not only double expence was incurred by the Crown, but all the labourers who might have been usefully employed in tilling the Ground were now sent out to hunt by their employers who found it infinitely more beneficial to their interests to receive One shilling per pound for the Game they procured than to wait for the distant contingency of a plentiful harvest ... It would have been well for the Colony if 1330 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited the evil arising from receiving kangaroo into the Store had terminated with the necessity that had induced it: but that was not the case. Men who had been used to the rambling unsettled life of a Hunter could never be brought to endure the labour requisite to raise grain. No sooner was that Scarcity of Meat removed by Fresh Supplies than those men betook it themselves to the woods living upon the Game they afforded, and receiving occasional supplies of dry provisions and ammunition from their friends in Town ... It was for a length of time supposed they would become tired of the wandering dangerous life they lead. And would voluntarily return to their labour; but those expectations were in vain ... some of them have forced the native women after murdering their protectors to live with them and have families . . ' (HRA III, I, pp. 575-6) The 'double' nature of the 'evil' of which Oxley writes is instructive and bears very directly on the two interpretations of the breakdown in relations with the Aborigines referred to above, as well on the Committee's interpretation of that breakdown, and, of course, on the interpretations of the later commentators and historians down to the present day. The essential point is the political consequences of the developing penal-rural economy of Van Diemen's Land. These began, as graphically demonstrated by Oxley, with the impact of the forage economy (necessitated by the near-sporadic foundation of the colony in south and north instalments) and government-initiated bushranger incursions of increasing brutality, on the lives of the Aborigines. More importantly this practice of forage economy was supported by the settlers, as Oxley makes quite clear above: 'all the labourers who might have been usefully employed in tilling the Ground were now sent out to hunt by their employers who found it infinitely more beneficial to their interests to receive One shilling per pound for the Game they procured than to wait for the distant contingency of a plentiful harvest’ (editorial emphasis). The economically driven complicity, or at least responsibility, of the settlers in this process, encouraged by the government, is clear This continuing theme integrates convict impact and later pastoral expansion as ultimately one process of penal-based economic development of the colony (albeit directed to convict reform) which first disrupted Aboriginal society and then made its destruction inevitable. The destructive integration of settler development and the penal process is perhaps most dramatically illustrated in the proposed use of freshly transported convicts as a proto-militia as discussed in note 183 below. However the most significant substantiation of the political impact of linkage or integration of penal and economic processes is given by Lieutenant-Governor William Sorell's appreciation of its dangers, expressed in his proclamation (more strictly a General Order) of 13 March 1819, which is only quoted in part (and a little inaccurately) by the Committee here (p. 204). Writing some nine years after Oxley, when both the European population and the amount of land granted to settlers had increased exponentially (see again note 185), not only does he state; But so far from any systematic plan for destroying the stock or people, being pursued by the Native tribes, their meetings with Herdsmen appear generally to be incidental; and it is the opinion of the best informed Persons who have been longest in the settlement, the former are seldom the Assailants, and that when they are they act under the Impression of recent Injuries done to some of them by White People (Hobart Town Gazette, 13 March 1819; quoted on p. 204 this volume) but he also instructs: A careful avoidance, on the part of the settlers and stockmen of Conduct tending to excite suspicion of intended injury and a strict forbearance from all Acts or Appearance of hostility, except when rendered indispensable from positive self defence or the Preservation of the stock may yet remove from the minds of the Native people the Impressions left by past cruelties, so that the Meetings between them and the colonists, which the extension of the Grazing grounds and Progressive occupation of the Country, must render yearly more frequent, may be injurious to neither; and that those Mischiefs, which a perseverance in Cruelty and Aggression must lead to, and which must involve the Stock in perpetual clanger, and the Stockmen in Responsibility for the lives which may be lost, may be prevented. (Hobart Town Gazette, 13 March 1819) Sorell then continues: To effect this object, is no less the interest than the duty of the settlers and Stockman;—to bring to condign Punishment any one who shall be open to Proof of having destroyed or maltreated any of the native People (not strictly in self defence) will be the Duty and is the Determination of the Lieutenant-Governor; supported by the Magistracy and by the Assistance of all the just and well disposed Settlers. {Hobart Town Gazette, 13 March 1819) From Sorell's statement it is clear that the exacerbation of relations by the incursions of bushranging convicts, initiated by Government policy and further encouraged by settlers, far from being checked, had reached a critical point which with the systematic expansion of land settlement by migration, land grant and sustained convict 1331 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited labour under the assignment system, must provoke the "systematic" resistance he writes of unless effective counter measures are taken. This is the real significance of Sorell's proclamation which does not appear to have been fully appreciated by the Committee: Sorell is describing an inevitable colonizing process which he perceives as provoking disastrous clashes unless particular measures, very difficult to effectively implement, are executed. His reference to ‘the Meetings between them and the colonists, which the extension of the Grazing grounds and Progressive occupation of the Country, must render yearly more frequent’ (editorial emphasis) refers to a continuing historical process of development which would not be checked or varied, nor does he suggest it should be checked or varied. Instead he is proposing counter-measures to avert the great dangers he sees in that process, in the hope that it ‘may be injurious to neither’ but not checking or revising the process itself In effect this system itself as it developed from the dangerous and precarious forage economy and produced a convict-settler dynamic of expansion, created a situation in which the authorities would almost always find "that no interposition of the Government ..could with the means at its command, have been able to prevent [or would be able to prevent] "outrages""", as the Committee complained. As land continued to be granted, this situation was perpetuated. The measures Sorell put forward—conciliatory deportment by the settlers, tight social control of convict assigned servants and stern retribution for white people who injured the Aborigines reinforced by the co-operation of the magistracy—to a degree anticipated the process of military aid to the civil power already discussed. But they clearly were not and perhaps, as suggested, could not be effectively introduced. Thus another nine years later in January 1828, Arthur is in fact reporting a further deterioration of essentially the same situation (see note 194 above for further expansion). He complains on the one hand of the legacy of stockkeepers firing on the Aborigines whenever the opportunity offered, and on the other hand of the development of a crisis of all the dimensions that Sorell had perceived as possible, as 'the settlers advance on the favourite haunts of the native’". In Van Diemen’s Land it seems that the irrevocable 'breakdown in relations with the Aborigines was caused more than anything else by the system of rapid rural economic development, integrated with the assignment system of convict reformation and management which as long as it continued could allow no latitude for an enduring conciliation with Aborigines, no matter how earnestly this conciliation was desired. It is significant too that in 1819 Sorell, as does Arthur in 1830, also asserts the possibility of conciliation of Aborigines who have not been antagonized, writing, 'there is strong reason to hope they might be conciliated’ and referring to tribes in the north-east and the west, which had 'been found unsuspicious and peaceable manifesting no disposition to injure' {Hobart Town Gazette. 13 March 1819). Davey's 1813 proclamation against the 'robbery of their Children’ reflects another shocking aspect of the same dynamic expansion, exemplified by the reference to retaliatory attacks by the Aborigines 'upon the herds grazing’ in the Coal River district. Again it is significant that Sorell six years later also condemns the 'cruelty ... of depriving the Natives of their children'. For further reference to Davey's proclamation, see Bonwick, op. cit., p. 41, and for Davey's view that ill-treatment of the Aborigines was 'a blot on the British name' see note 189 above. For the notorious activities of such individuals as 'Carrots', referred to here, as well as those of sealers and others, see note 230 below. For the Committee's gloss of Sorell's order as a warning rather than an analysis see note 239 below; for the impact of the destruction of kangaroos on the Aboriginal ecology and controversy concerning it. see note 242 below. PC Note 185, ibid., pp 789-791, re. p. 167 on estimated Aboriginal population and the effect on population by settler expansion and land grants: Their numbers I am persuaded are inconsiderable … but certainly their exploits in the pursuit of plunder have rendered them much more daring … during the last two years. For a detailed discussion of the population of Aborigines at this time see HRA, III, VIII, note 472, where the estimates, ranging from 4000 to 20,000 at settlement, and from 500 to 5000 (Captain Kelly's robust estimate) in 1830 are discussed in detail with reference to various authorities. The Quaker missionary, James Backhouse, who is not noted there, opined that their numbers were probably never more than between 700 and 1000, 'their habits of life being unfriendly to increase'. Backhouse, op. cit., p. 79. This echoes to a degree the earlier view of Commissioner J . T. Bigge on the Aborigines of New South Wales: 'Their numbers have been observed to diminish in the neighbourhood of the settled districts, and as an unfettered range over a large tract of country seems to be indispensab le to their existence, the black population will undergo a gradual diminution in proportion to the advances of the white population into the interior' (Report of the Commissioner of Enquiry on the State of Agriculture … p. 83). Such an observation has a further significance for Van Diemen's Land, as the advance of colonists into the interior there had 1332 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited already alienated the vast majority of the grazing lands, clearly with the effect on the population Bigge had foretold. See HRA III, VIII, p. 304 for Arthur’s report that 'the finest portion of the island has already been granted away’, and ibid., notes 23.5. 317 for further detail; some 1,500,000 acres had already been alienated, including 208.000 acres in 1829. and a further 108,000 acres were to be granted away in 1830. It is noteworthy that despite Arthur’s awareness that the crisis was being magnified 'as the Settlers advance on the favourite haunts of the natives’ (see HRA, III, VII, p. 27 for Arthur’s despatch of 10 January 1828 to this effect), no move was made to reduce or halt the rate of land-granting. Whilst the disturbing effect of such expansion on the Aboriginal’s population is clear, the lack of satisfactory solid contemporary data means a consensus upon a firm figure is unlikely, our view remains that the number at settlement in 1803 was somewhere between the 4000 estimated by Plomley and the 7,000 -plus estimated by James Kelly as being present in 1815. Keith Windschuttle has suggested a lower figure (‘less than 2000'—see op. cit. p. 37), and pp. 364-71 for a tightly argued analysis), but given the quite numerous separate sightings in the earlier period — c . 500 at Risdon Cove i n May 1804 (estimated by Knopwood), twenty families down the Huon on 21 June 1804 (reported by William Collins) and between 250 and 300 at Brown’s River on 9 October 1807 (estimated by Knopwood)—we are doubtful. See Knopwood in The Diary of the Reverend Robert Knopwood, 1803-1838: First Chaplain of Van Diemen’s Land, ed. Mary Nichols, Sandy Bay, Tas., 1977, pp. 51, 54, 145. It should be noted Murray received this despatch on 18 September, and responded forcefully and famously to this aspect of it on 5 November; see pp. 5 7 3 - 4 this volume for his concern: that the whole race of these people may. at no distant period, become extinct ... it is impossible not to contemplate such a result of our occupation the Island, as one very difficult to be reconciled with feelings of humanity or even with the principles of justice and sound Policy: — and the adoption of any line of conduct having for its avowed or for its secret object, the extinction of the Native-race, could not fail to leave an indelible stain upon the Character of the British Government. It is notable that this alarming possibility had not in the heat of the emergency occurred to the humanitarian Arthur as he wrote of the 'inconsiderable' numbers of the Aborigines. On the matter of ‘plunder', Arthur would have been mortified to learn that on 10 February 1830 Murray would have had the opportunity seeing William Thomas Moncrieff's play Van Diemen’s Land or Tasmania in 1818: A Drama in Four Acts ((London, 1830) performed at the Surrey Theatre in London, where an Aboriginal character. 'Benilong’, denounced the settlers thus: Have they not made my people liars—thieves? Before the White man came Caffre saw nought to covet and took nought— they taught me something. I will profit by it – taught me to plunder and deceive. Practice will make me perfect. Keep watch here girl while we go forth and prowl ... Come Warriors —Go-ran-go- ree Now for the White man's stores' (ibid., p. 13). For the military and political significance of 'plunder' and 'plundering activities', see notes 204 and 207 below, the Introduction to this volume, as well as the OED for the definitions: (I) ‘The action of plundering or taking as spoil spec. as practised in war or a hostile incursion; pillage, spoliation, depredation'; 1(2) 'Goods taken from enemy by force; spoil, booty, prey, loot'. PC Note 183: ibid. pp. 788-9. Re. pages 167-8. All the Transports about to sail with Convicts from England … may be ordered to proceed to this Colony – at once two thousand convicts might be assigned away … by … distributing them principally among the settlers in the most remote parts of the Colony, very great protection would be afforded at a very trifling expense to the Government … the Lieutenant Governor should have the power to order any Transport to proceed from Hobart to the port of Launceston. … a proportion of the Convicts may be landed at once at the North side of the Island. Perhaps there is no more striking an example of the seriousness of the emergency than that Arthur could contemplate, let alone request the use of, freshly transported (i.e. essentially 'unreformed') convicts as a protective, even paramilitary force against Aboriginal incursion or attacks. To put the matter into context, it is worth recalling Secretary of State Bathurst's immediate post-Bigge instructions to the Lieutenant-Governor concerning the management of convicts assigned to settlers: 'the utmost care must be exerted that the situation of the Convict, when taken of the Store by the Colonists, must be one of laborious employment tempered at the same time with every consideration of proper humanity and with every corrective principle of reformation' (Bathurst to Brisbane and Arthur. 30 May 1823, HRA, 1, XI, p. 85, and counter-referred to in HRA , III, IV, pp. 86-7). Taken in context with Arthur's strongly held view, articulated in 1825, that 'the moral improvement of these people [convicts] will be best, indeed can only be promoted by their being assigned as labourers in the country' (see note 45 above), the proposed 1333 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited measure is extraordinary. This is especially so when it is recalled that in reporting in 1828 'that all aggression originated with the white inhabitants and that therefore much ought to be endured in return before the Blacks are treated as an open and accredited enemy by the Government', he had specifically advised that Aboriginal grievances had been 'daily aggravated by every kind of injury committed against the defenceless Natives by the Stockkeepers and Sealers, with whom it was a constant practice to fire upon whenever they approached and deprive them, of their women whenever the opportunity offered' (see note 178 above). And even here (p. 126, cl. 5) he still refers to the exacerbation caused by 'lawless convicts'. Such a rushed paramilitary assignment (see below) could not of course allow for the careful scrutiny of all convicts before assignment, which Arthur insisted was an essential part of his reformatory system see particularly HRA, III, IV p. 312 for his report of how (in 1825) 'for the last twelve months 1 have taken upon myself the entire management of the assignment of the convicts and although the trouble has been very great, I have been resolved to go through with it, that I might have perfect insight into the circumstances of their employment' (see also HRA, III, VII note 147 for further reference). Extraordinary then was the sense of emergency which prompted this suggestion but equally extraordinary is the fact the British Government (despite its unwavering insistence on convict discipline and the maintenance of the terrors of transportation) was disposed eventually to accede to the proposal, rather than to respond to Arthur's earlier request for military support (see note 182 above). Arthur had in fact first mooted this radical proposal on 10 September 1829: 'I would submit that a very considerable augmentation of convicts may be received and assigned, and indeed, at they would be most useful as affording ... protection to the Settlers from the attacks of the Aboriginal Natives' (Arthur to Murray, 10 September 1829, HRA, I , VIII, p. 593). However this was only a closing aside in a despatch devoted to her matters (mainly the need for a second judge for the colony) and it was a mark not a request. The despatch arrived at the Colonial Office on 17 February 1830, but was not commented on in the direct reply to the despatch (Hay to Arthur. 30 April 1830, p. 317 this volume), or, significantly, referred to at all by Murray in his despatch of a week earlier (23 April 1830, p. 311 this volume) concerning the Aboriginal hostilities and refusing at that time to allow further military forces for Arthur's aid. (It is significant that Arthur received this despatch on 2 August, shortly before he initiates the vast paramilitary Black Line operation.) The present surprising request evokes a reaction: see Murray to Arthur, November 1830, pp. 572-6 below, especially pp. 523-5; also p. 577 where Sir Robert Peel's consent to suggestions of modifying the convict charter to allow the disembarking of convicts in the north of the island is noted. Meanwhile Arthur continues to request such strategic convict augmentation; Arthur to Twiss, 28 May 830, pp. 343-4 this volume, where Arthur hopes Murray will already be 'speedily sending out transports' to supply convicts to protect 'the more exposed settlers'. In the event however Murray's advice does not arrive until 9 May 1831, long after the 'Black Line' operation, and the convict option, and that of varying convict charters, lapse, as the need for both has passed. PC 1954 Almost certainly McRae 1955 Ibid, HRA 3/9: 202 – 236. 1956 Ibid, HRA 3/9: 841- 842. Note 262: For Knopwood’s background see note 72, Ibid: 741 and HRA 3/7, note 98. Knopwood was the first colonial chaplain of Tasmania. His account of Risdon on 3 May 1804, together with Surgeon Mountgarrett’s note reporting ‘the attack the natives made’, is to be found in Knopwood, op. cit., p.51; for a full discussion of his account in historical context see note 228 below, especially for his equivocation here as to who attacked whom. It is worth noting that on the day following the Risdon incident, neither Knopwood nor Surgeon Bowden ‘were able to get a boat to go to Risdon’ and it was not until 12 May that Knopwood and Lieutenant Lord first saw ‘where the natives attacked the camp and the settlers (ibid. pp. 51-2). Of his appearance before the Committee here, Knopwood noted he ‘gave them a very full information, having a journal’ (12 March 1830, ibid. p. 552) though the brief transcript here suggests he may have also spoken from memory. See also Executive Council Minutes, 26 February 1830) and 19 March 1830, in CO 280/2, PRO reel 1182. His diary for 1813 is not extant but in July 1814 there is no mention of one visit of the Aborigines ‘to his door’. Despite Knopwood’s report tha t the first white man killed was Devonshire man George Munday (Munden), Marjorie Tipping (op. cit. pp. 189, 296) has argued he may have been wounded only and recovered to live until 1867, though with ‘Birt’/ ‘Burke’ (see note 228 above) there may have been a confusion of names. It is notable that whilst before the Aborigines’ Committee, Knopwood refers to some hostility from Aborigines when departing in boats; this is not recorded in his diary, whilst friendly boating and landing encounters are recorded (see again note 228) but apparently were not reported to (or at least recorded by) the Committee. It is possible this omission reflects the fear and hostility in the settler community in 1830 noted elsewhere. TJ, PC. Note 228: Ibid. pp. 825-9, re. p. 205 1334 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The first act of decided hostility was committed at Risdon…the 3 rd May 1804…whether it is to be considered as originating in an aggression by the Natives…or in an attack upon them…the facility with which numbers are magnified. The Committee's discussion (and that of some later historians) of the Risdon clash has been to a degree weakened by the omission of two key contemporary documents from the collections of statements and evidence it gathered on this matter. This omission has perhaps also to a degree affected later evaluations of what happened, because it has allowed some latitude on the question of who was attacked by whom (as indeed appears for instance in the conflicting evidence of Kelly and White), when from even a brief perusal of the two documents it is clear beyond any doubt exactly what happened. The documents in question are the Official contemporary reports of the incident, that of Lieutenant-Governor David Collins (who was not actually present when it occurred) in a despatch dated 15 May 1804, and enclosed in that despatch a report dated 7 May 1804 from Lieutenant John Moore who was both present, and by his own admission, responsible for the clash which occurred. The documents are to be found in HRA, III, I, pp. 237-42. Both reports describe what happened with lapidary precision (which might have been emulated by subsequent commentators). Collins, referring to Moore's report, writes of 'a visit from the natives, which from its hostile appearance, as stated in the letter, was rendered fatal to them three of them having being killed on the spot'. Moore's account is of course the more important, and his summary of the events is a model of historical concision. He wrote to Collins: ‘Sir, Agreeable to your desire I have the honor of acquainting you with the Circumstances that led to the attack on the natives which you will perceive was the consequence of their own hostile appearance'. The great importance of Moore's report is that he refers unequivocally to ‘the attack on the natives’. This is in contrast to Colonial Surgeon Jacob Mountgarrett who wrote, in a note to Knopwood which the latter received on the day of the incident, of ‘an attack the natives made on the camp that day and I have every reason to think it was premeditated’, and also in contrast to the later hearsay evidence of Captain Kelly that ‘four or five hundred natives attacked it [the Risdon settlement] suddenly and unprovokedly’ (see p. 229 and note 264 this volume for the full letter). On the other hand the other eye witness (apart from Moore and Mountgarret), Edward White, like Moore writes ‘the Natives did not attack the soldiers’, and then goes further to assert ‘they would not have molested them’. These statements form the heart of the evidence of what happened at Risdon on 3 May 1804, and together with the body of Edward White's statement (p. 233 this volume) make clear what did happen. The importance of Moore's statement is paramount. As an officer he would have been acutely aware of the instruction, first issued by the British Government to Governor Arthur Phillip in 1787, concerning treatment of the Aborigines: 'You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an intercourse with the natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them; and if any of our subjects shall wantonly destroy them, or give them an unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations, it is our will and pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment according to the degree of the offence' (see HRA, I, I, pp. 13-14). This instruction had been re-issued to Collins verbatim on 7 February 1803, (see HRA, I. IV p. 12) and again to William Paterson as Lieutenant-Governor at Port Dalrymple on I June 1804 (see HRA, III, I, p. 590)). It being Moore's (and of course Collins's) duly to conciliate Aborigines and to protect them from acts of violence, it was clearly not in his interest to report he attacked them; indeed it is arguable he (and Collins) could have reported that the settlers were attacked by the Aborigines, without fear of contradiction. In fact Mountgarret, the only other witness (official or otherwise) to make any report at the time of the incident, reported that (‘Four or five hundred natives attacked suddenly…’ – see above). It was much later that the other surviving witness White made his statement. But Moore did report that he directed an attack on the Aborigines, and in the circumstances referred to it is clear that is precisely what happened. Whether or not the settler Birt was beaten (as Moore alleges and Edward White denies—see p. 233 this volume) or his wife frightened or intimidated, or violence threatened, violent action was actually initiated and committed by the alarmed and greatly outnumbered Europeans as Moore stated. First he authorized two soldiers .sent to Bin's farm to so act: 'I then dispatched two soldiers to his assistance with orders not to fire if they could avoid it; however they found it necessary, and one was killed on the spot and another was found dead in the valley' and then, 'But at this time a great party was in the camp and on a proposal from Mr Mountgarret to fire one of the carronades to intimidate them they dispersed'. From Moore's account, the incident closed thus, though the suggestion of some later commentators (see also below) that the carronade might have been firing a blank rather than grapeshot seems to be disproved by Moore's succeeding sentence: 'Mr Mountgarett with some soldiers and Prisoners followed them some distance up the valley, and had reason to Suppose more were wounded, as one was seen to be taken away bleeding'. In review it seems that the Aborigines’ Committee’s view of the matter was close to the mark: 'they [the Aborigines] had in view no other than a peaceful purpose, and ... they were not the first 1335 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Assailants. But whatever may have been the actual course of previous events, it is indisputable that a most lamentable encounter did at this time ensue, in which the numbers slain, of Men Women and Children, have been estimated as high as fifty' (p. 205). The impact of this initial episode on subsequent race relations was doubtless considerable but remains difficult to evaluate. Captain James Kelly asserted before the Committee in 1830, 'the attack at Risdon [he is positing an Aboriginal attack] was the cause of all that happened afterwards' (p. 229); W. C. Wentworth see below for detail) opined around 1819 that 'This deep rooted enmity' derived from the 'inconsiderate and unpardonable conduct of our countrymen shortly after the foundation of the settlement on the river Derwent'. More significantly Commissioner Bigge, in 1820 writing before the later emergency had excited opinion on the matter, reported of the Tasmanian Aborigines 'a spirit of hostility and revenge that they still cherish for an act of unjustifiable violence committed upon them' (see note 178 above). On the other hand, Knopwood had given account of amiable encounters with quite large populations by William Collins in Huon so soon after the clash as 21 June 1804 ('he stayed all night with them they were very friendly') and by himself at Brown's River on 9 October 1807 (‘They were all very friendly and we gave them presents'); see note 185 above. Again there was the initially successful visit of Aborigines to Hobart Town under Davey's auspices in 1814 (.see note 189 above). Undoubtedly damaging to subsequent relations though the Risdon clash was, it was clearly not decisive, and possibilities for conciliation remained (as noted by Sorell, see note 227 above), though they were to be increasingly occluded by the violence and dispossession previously visited on the Aborigines by convicts and their expansionary settler-masters as previously discussed in notes 178 and 227 particularly. The question of how many Aborigines were killed at Risdon is unlikely ever to be resolved given Edward White's graphic first-hand evidence (if documented in 1830), and fact of the firing of the carronade; the conclusion of the Committee of a significant death toll of possibly fifty and probably less is as good an estimate as is is ever likely to emerge. The fact that the episode has lasted so long and vividly in historical memory suggests that rather more than the two or three reported by Moore were killed. For instance Governor Phillip's report of 9 July 1788 'that one of the natives had been murdered and several wounded' in a clash at Rushcutters Bay in New South Wales six months after the settlement of that colony has not assumed anything like the historical dimension of the Risdon clash (see HRA, I, I, p. 50). What is of clearer determination is whether the carronade, the firing of which was heard by Knopwood on the other side of the Derwent ('at 2 p.m. we heard the report of the cannon once from Risdon'; Knopwood, op. cit., p. 51), was loaded with lethal ammunition, grapeshot or cannister, or merely discharged blank shot. As suggested above, Moore's account implies a discharge of live ammunition, and as will appear there is silent internal evidence this may have en the case. W. C. Wentworth in 1819 was categorical: ‘At first the natives evinced the most friendly disposition towards the new comers and would probably have been actuated by the same amicable feelings to this day, had not the military officer entrusted with the command directed a discharge of grape and cannister shot to be made among a large body who were approaching, as he imagined with hostile designs; but as it has since been believed with much greater probability, merely from motives of curiosity and friendship. The havoc occasioned among them by this murderous discharge, was dreadful; and since then all communication with them has ceased, and the spirit of animosity and revenge, which this unmerited and atrocious . of barbarity has engendered, has been fostered and aggravated to the highest pitch by the incessant rencontres which have subsequently taken place between them and the settlers.’(W. C. Wentworth, Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land, London, 1819, pp. 116-17). Godwin in 1823 also believed there had been a discharge of grape and canister shot which 'killed many and wounded others' (Godwin, op. cit., p. 16); West around 1851, writes, 'a ... discharge of ball and cartridge brought down many' (West, op. cit., p. 262); whilst John Pascoe Fawkner (who was twelve years old at the time) in his later and sometimes unreliable unpublished 'Reminiscences' claimed the carronade was loaded 'with pieces of iron and broken bottles'. On the other hand J. B. Walker in 1899 speculated of the firing of the carronade, 'We know from Knopwood the gun was fired, but whether it was loaded with blank cartridge or grape, we have no means of deciding'. Keith Windschuttle, in his detailed revisions of casualty estimates, asserts rather surprisingly that carronades were 'often used for ceremonial purposes ... it might have fired ammunition but it was more likely to have been loaded with one of the blanks regularly used for ceremony' (Windschuttle, op. cit., p. 18). This seems unlikely not only for the reason cited above, but also because, given the instructions to protect the Aborigines from acts of violence, had Moore actually ordered a blank to be fired he (and for that matter Collins) would surely have made this very clear so as to escape any unfair censure in the matter, especially considering his frankness in admitting an 'attack on the natives'. 1336 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited The matter will doubtless continue to be debated, but the estimate of exact casualties in this and other clashes— especially, as the Committee observed, with the 'facility with which numbers are magnified' —will never be satisfactorily established, though, given the historical resonance of the episode, the consensus must be that significant casualties were sustained by the Aborigines. For Mountgarrett's full written account of the episode, sent to Knopwood on the evening of 3 May 1804, see note 264 below. For an example of varying estimates and, indeed rumours, of casualties, see the evidence of Dr Turnbull and the merchant Robertson on pp. 225-6 this volume (HRA 3/9), as well as note 186 above, where West makes much the same comment with reference to John Batman. Detailed analyses of the reporting and the reliability of the reporting of such clashes in Van Diemen's Land are given in Windschuttle, op. cit., passim . A minor but intriguing aspect of the episode is the identity of the settler William Birt who with his wife was alleged to be menaced by the Aborigines. He is described clearly as 'Birt' by Moore and Collins and all succeeding historians, including Keith Windschuttle (2002) and Philip Tardiff in his recent John Bowen's Hobart: The Beginning of European Settlement. Hobart, 2003. Yet he is consistently named 'Burke' in the original manuscript depositions to the Committee produced here—see p. 232 (Knopwood) and p. 233 (White)—and the name was published as such with the other papers for the House of Commons in 1831. I g31. The variations on the naming of this settler are almost deserving of a study in themselves: see for example J. B. Walker's determined transliteration (without acknowledgment) of the 'Burke' in Knopwood's evidence here to 'Birt' in Walker's version of Knopwood's evidence. For Walker's reference both to the matter of the carronade and to the settler in question see J. B. Walker, Early Tasmania, Hobart. 1950, pp. 52, 54. For Fawkner's comment and the reliability pf his later unpublished 'Reminiscences', as 'neither impartial or disinterested and at times ... demonstrably incorrect', see John Currey, David Collins: A Colonial Life, Melbourne, 2000, pp. 220, 363. Fawkner is of interest however as he arrived in the colony as a boy with Collins's expedition, travelling with his father, the Calcutta convict John Faulkner. PC 1957 Murray to Arthur, 25th August 1829, Despatch No. 72, Received 12th January 1830, HRA 3/8: 587 – 588. 1958 Arthur to Murray, 15th April 1830, Despatch No. 19, Received 18th September 1830, HRA 3/9: 164 – 236. 1959 Murray to Arthur, 25th August 1829, Despatch No. 72, Received 12th January 1830, HRA 3/8: 587 – 588. Murray is forced to accept Arthur’s proclamation of martial law ‘as a means of compelling the natives to keep within certain Districts prescribed beyond the Settled Country’ but admonishes Arthur ‘for the ineffectual efforts which you have used to establish a friendly intercourse between the White Population and the Native Tribes’. 1960 Arthur to Murray, 15 April 1830, HRA 3/9: 164 - 168 1961 Sir George Murray to Lieutenant-Governor Arthur, Despatch No. 43, 5th November 1830, HRA 3/9: 572 – 576. Read in the Executive Council 1st June 1831. 1962 Arthur to Twiss, 9th March 1830, HRA 3/9: 133. In this despatch, Arthur mentions that ‘I am anxious that Sir George Murray should possess the fullest information upon the origin, progress, and present state of our differences with these benighted people, I have desired a Committee of gentlemen (whom I have appointed for the especial purpose of collecting information as to their outrages, and considering the best means of effecting a reconciliation’. That is, Arthur’s primary focus is on the effects of the Aboriginal insurgency, the ‘outrages’, not white predations. We can conclude the Committee’s enquiry focus will lend support for his military campaign against the Palawa and the need for more armed manpower, as indeed it did. This seems at odds with Peter Chapman’s view that ‘Arthur’s previous experience [in the Honduras] and the way the Committee evolved do not substantiate the view sometimes put forward by Plomley and others that the Committee was a device to protect or exonerate the government..’ HRA 3/9, note 140: 765. 1963 Murray to Arthur, 20th February 1829, HRA 3/8: 261 – 262. Also see Peter Chapman’s note 141, pp. 766 – 767. Arthur’s contradictory approach to conciliation is shown by his hasty notice, published in the Colonial Times, 19 February 1830 ‘that a reward of 5 pounds shall be given of every adult native and two pounds for every child who shall be captured alive at any one of the Police Stations’ that encouraged further indiscriminate killing, following which, Arthur was forced to publish a clarification that some settlers had misapprehended his reward offer, and it was not meant to promote or condone violence. No one was charged. 1964 Poster issued in Van Diemen's Land in 1816 prior to the height of the Black War depicting Lieutenant-Governor Arthur's policy of friendship and equal justice for settlers and Aborigines. An original copy is held by the Mitchell Library in Sydney. 1965 A transcript is available in: Henry Melville (1836), Van Diemen’s Land (ed. George Mackaness): 90, 91. The document is not otherwise easily available. 1337 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 1966 The Cape Grim massacre took place in February 1828, before Arthur declared Martial Law . The massacre was never investigated. Under Arthur’s edict that opposing ‘force by force’ was justified, the penalty for killing sheep became death. See Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People: 97 – 98, edict from the Colonial Secretary’s Office, authorised by Arthur, 29 November 1826. ‘when a felony [by Aborigines] has been committed..the persons pursuing may use such force as necessary’. However, there was an ongoing pattern of massacres by VDLC, including an earlier mass killing in January 1828 that was also at Cape Grim, where the captain of the Caroline, along with members of his crew and four VDLC shepherds reportedly killed twelve Aboriginals. [Lyndall Ryan, List of multiple killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804 – 1835 http://www.massviolence.org/Article?id_article=106 citing Lee, I. Ed. (1927), Rosalie Hare, The Voyage of the Caroline to Van Diemen’s Land and Batavia in 1827-28. 1967 Friendly Mission (2008), The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834 (ed. NJB Plomley): 216 – 217; Ian McFarlane (2002), Aboriginal Society in North West Tasmania: Dispossession and Genocide: 101 - 121 http://eprints.utas.edu.au/220/ 1968 Friendly Mission (2008), ed. NJB Plomley: 229 – 230, 266. In December 1827, over a hundred sheep were killed. Four VDLC employees, Charles Chamberlain, John Weaver, William Gunshannon and Richard Nicholson conducted a reprisal massacre that was endorsed by Edward Curr. They were never charged. At the time of the massacre on 10 February 1828, martial law was not yet in force. However, as was his custom, Arthur took no action to punish the offenders. The use of lethal force was common and accepted for killing sheep. When Goldie, the superintendent, reported the massacre to Curr, he also mentions the Company practice of sexually enslaving Native women: The woman is in irons I make her wash potatoes for the horses and intend taking her to the hills and making her work...the Woman will not speak and is often very sulky. She broke her irons once and was neatly getting away I think she is about 20 or 22 years old. I have no doubt she will work. Barras can make her do anything. [Goldie to Curr, 16 September 1829, AOT, cited by Ian McFarlane (2002), Aboriginal Society in North West Tasmania: Dispossession and Genocide: 123 http://eprints.utas.edu.au/220/. 1969 The Emu Bay massacre took place in August 1829. 1970 The ‘Company’ refers to the Van Diemen’s Land Company, to whom the British Government had awarded a large tract of land in Tasmania’s north-west. 1971 Friendly Mission (2008), The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834 (ed. NJB Plomley): 637. Following the Goldie massacre, Aboriginals began a sustained period if attacks on VDLC. By 1832, there were almost no Aboriginals left in the North West. 1972 Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834, Ed. NJB Plomley (2008): 225. 1973 Ibid 229. 1974 Edward Curr (1798 – 1850) was appointed as the Van Diemen’s Land Company manager in 1825, with the support of Earl Bathurst. He held the position until 1841, during which period he was also a magistrate. 1975 Sir Alfred Stephen (1802 – 1894) was appointed by the Van Diemen’s Land Attorney General JT Gellibrand in 1825 as solicitor general and shortly after as crown solicitor. He was attorney-general from 1833 to 1837. 1976 Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834, Ed. NJB Plomley (2008), note 133: 269 – 270. Plomley cites the source: CSO 1/326/7578. In the unusual event that police were found to have committed murder, resignation or relocation became a pattern, and the pattern continued until at least 1930. Between 1788 and 1930, with the exception of the Myall Creek perpetrators, no white man was ever convicted of Aboriginal murder within Australia. 1977 Inward Despatch No. 150, Curr to Directors, 7 October 1830, Hellyer Reference Library, SLTX/A0/EP/72, VDL 5, Reel 3, p. 112, cited by Ian McFarlane (2002), Aboriginal Society in North West Tasmania: Dispossession and Genocide: 125 http://eprints.utas.edu.au/220/. 1978 Letter from Goldie to Arthur, 5 October 1829, AOT CO 280/25, pp 468 – 474, quoted by Ian McFarlane (2002), Aboriginal Society in North West Tasmania: Dispossession and Genocide: 127 http://eprints.utas.edu.au/220/ 1979 Geoff Lennox, The Van Diemen’s Land Company and the Tasmanian Aborigines: A Reappraisal, Tasmanian Historical Research Association (THRA) Papers and Proceedings, 1990, Vol. 37: 20. Paper is available for a small fee from http://search.informit.com.au/browsePublication;py=1990;vol=37;res=IELAPA;issn=0039-9809;iss=4 1980 Something similar happened after Gipps sought the prosecution of those responsible for the 1838 Myall Creek murders in New South Wales. The settlers and newspapers were outraged. A chastened Gipps subsequently ignored 1338 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited all other murders of Aboriginals. This was to be the pattern for the entire occupation process until well into the 20 th century. If charges were ever brought, the perpetrators were always exonerated by an all-white jury. 1981 See Gibbons, FWYAF, Recollections from a (homicidal) pastoral frontier for the horrifying eyewitness account of Tasmanian Aboriginal extermination. 1982 Henry Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 1995: 122; Arthur to Spring-Rice, 27 Jan 1835, Select Committee on Native People, British Parliamentary Papers, VII, 45: 126. 1983 For the amounts of land alienated by year, see: John West, The History of Tasmania, ed. A.G.L. Shaw, Melbourne, 1981, p. 585; Sharon Morgan, Land Settlement in Early Tasmania, 1992; Leonie Mickleborough, William Sorell in Van Diemen’s Land, Lieutenant Governor, 1817 – 24, A Golden Age, 2004; Henry Melville, The History of Van Diemen’s Land From the Year 1824 to 1835, inclusive During the Administration of Lieutenant Governor George Arthur, 1836. 1984 HRA 3/9, Arthur to Sir George Murray, Despatch 19, 15 th April 1830: 164 – 236. 1985 HRA 3/8, Arthur to Murray, 3 April 1829, Despatch No. 21, p. 304, and notes 235, 255, 317. 1986 R.M. Jones, Tasmanian Tribes, Appendix N in N. Tindale, Aboriginal Tribes of Australia, 1974:325; N.B. Butlin, Economics and the Dreamtime: A Hypothetical History, 1993: 133-134. 1987 Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain: 82–85; The Fate of a Free People (1995): 183-189.: 1988 Robert Hughes (1986), The Fatal Shore: 424 1989 New Wharf as it became known - to distinguish it from the original wharf – was built in 1830 on the present site of Salamanca Place, and rapidly became one of the biggest whaling ports in the world until, by the end of the century, many whaling species were driven to the point of extinction and the local whaling industry collapsed. 1990 www.adbonline.anu.edu.au 1991 Also see Henry Melville, The History of Van Diemen’s Land 1824 – 1835, p. 122. 1992 Article 2 a), 2 (b), 2 (c), 2 (d) 1993 http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/encounter/collection/B15292083_154.pdf Freycinet, Louis de. Voyage de decouvertes aux terres : Atlas historique, Part 2. (1811) - Plate no. 1. 'Carte Generale de la Nouvelle Hollande.' The chart was published in 1811 as part of Francois Peron’s publication on Baudin’s voyage in 1802-3. The chart was drawn by Louis de Freycinet and makes no acknowledgment of Flinders’ prior discoveries. http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/encounter/baudin/maps.htm The Australian south coast was named Terre Napoleon. The French charts of ‘Australia’ were published three years before those of Flinders. 1994 Henry Reynolds (1972), Aborigines and Settlers: 71 – 93. 1995 Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People A radical re-examination of the Tasmanian wars: 184. 1996 Ibid: 185, and quoting James Bonwick (1870), The Last of the Tasmanians: 85 (more correctly, Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians). 1997 NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission: 742 - 856 1998 Western Tasmania remains a rugged and relatively unpopulated wilderness today, particularly the southwest. It escaped development because it is unsuitable for agriculture. While at University, I had the good fortune to be asked by the Lands Department to spend a memorable month at Port Davey, an experience I have never forgotten. 1999 NJB Plomley (1992), The Aboriginal/ Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1831: 10-11. http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/upfiles/qvmag/cont/publications/occasional_papers/aboriginal_settler_clash.pdf last accessed 18 November 2020 2000 C Creighton (ed. 1894), A history of epidemics in Great Britain: 300 – 433 2001 JK Taubenberger and DM Morens, Pandemic Influenza https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2720801/ 2002 Frank Horner (1987), The French Reconnaissance Baudin in Australia 1801 – 1803: 347 – 348 2003 Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain? The question of genocide in Australia’s history: 71 2004 Ibid: 78 2005 Ibid: 83 2006 Ibid: 84 2007 Ibid: 84 2008 Ibid: 85 2009 Ibid: 85 2010 Ibid: 85 2011 Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 79-80. 2012 Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 175. 1339 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2013 Ibid: 175, 176 Ibid: 129 2015 Grummet Island, in Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s rugged west coast, was used for solitary confinement of convicts from Sarah Island, where the worst of the worst prisoners were held between 1822 and 1833. Sarah Island had the reputation as the one of the harshest penal settlements in the Australian colonies. It should therefore be no surprise that Aboriginals, kept in such harsh conditions, should succumb to often fatal respiratory disease. What is more surprising: Robinson imposed those conditions on his captives, even when he saw the genocidal consequences. 2016 Ibid: 169 2017 Ibid: 78. 2018 NJB Plomley ed. (1966), Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834: 143. 2019 Ibid: 260 2020 Peter Roberts-Thomson, Department of Immunology, Allergy & Arthritis, Flinders Medical Centre (2014), Impact of Introduced Disease into Tasmanian Aboriginal Populations and its Role in Depopulation. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326000215_IMPACT_OF_INTRODUCED_DISEASE_INTO_TASMANIAN_A BORIGINAL_POPULATIONS_AND_ITS_ROLE_IN_DEPOPULATION 2021 JA Backhouse (1843), A Narrative of a visit to the Australian Colonies: 103. Cited by N Clements (2013), Frontier Conflict in Van Diemen’s Land: 328. 2022 https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/backhouse-james-1728 2023 We are given an insight into the diet that Robinson was imposing on his captives. He records: ‘With the flour and pork I drew from the commissariat at the same time 12 lb sugar which I used for the natives’. NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission The Tasmanian journals and papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834: 29 July: 807 While barely adequate for a convict, the food was completely unsuitable for any Aboriginal who typically had a varied and wholesome diet from berries, eggs, shellfish and game. 2024 We note that Robinson ordered that the Aboriginals be removed to an island, from which they could not escape. Of course, another solution that Robinson might have considered would have been to release the Aboriginals back into their home territory. That this option was not taken speaks to Robinson’s real motivation, the success of the ‘friendly mission’ and his remuneration from Arthur. 2025 The settlement to which Robinson refers is probably the infamous Sarah Island penal settlement. 2026 Robinson cannot see that he was at fault for the man’s death. 2027 It seems that the man, PENE.NE.BOPE, apart from being in severe pain from his lung infection, was also suffering extreme despair from being incarcerated by Robinson, and simply wanted to escape the pain and escape captivity. He could not walk, so he crawled to the precipice. That he would attempt suicide speaks to his state of mind at Robinson’s hands. We will find further evidence of Aboriginal mental distress in the next few pages. 2028 Robinson is here being disingenuous. He was moving the detainees from one squalid prison to another. 2029 The one thing the Palawa wanted was their freedom, something Britain would not countenance. 2030 This comment by Robinson is cogent: if it was not evident before, it admits to the Government policy of ethnic cleansing. 2031 It is not clear, after Robinson’s self-serving soliloquy, if all Aboriginals were subsequently given proper food as an important part of their routine treatment. 2032 This may be also PARLOUNDERRICK on Phillips Island towards the mouth of the Harbour. 2033 NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission The Tasmanian journals and papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 1834: 803 – 814 2034 Ibid: 313. 2035 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines A history since 1803: 143. Ryan does not give her sources for this figure. 2036 Palawa depopulation statistics are examined in the later chapter: Analysis. 2037 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence A history of the Flinder’s Island Aboriginal settlement: Medical Reports: 917 – 946. 2038 The incidence of STD’s seems quite low. 2039 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 937 – 946.. 2040 These statistics are summarized from NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 937 - 945 2014 1340 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2041 Also see Peter Dowling (1977), “A Great Deal of Sickness” Introduced diseases among the Aboriginal People of colonial Southeast Australia 1788 – 1900 https://openresearchrepository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/7529?mode=full 2042 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 927 - 946 2043 Diagnosis derives from Plomley. The autopsy reports were made out by M Walsh. See M Walsh (1837), Autopsy Report, 25 October, to GA Robinson, in Robinson Papers, ML A7068: 53 -54. Cited by NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence; and M Walsh (1838), Autopsy Reports, in Robinson Papers, ML A7070, cited by Plomley, Ibid.. 2044 Phthisis was the general term at the time for ‘consumption’ or pulmonary tuberculosis. It is unclear why Walsh confused phthisis with miliary tuberculosis. 2045 Peter Dowling (1977), ibid: 164 – 165. Dowling notes: In all cases but one the disease began as primary tuberculosis exhibiting adhesions and well-developed external and internal granuloma of the lungs. The exception was a seven-year-old female, whose lungs were described as ‘healthy except [for] a few adhesions of the left of a chronic nature with two or three small specks on its posterior surface in and incipient state of suppuration [Walsh, 1838] Systemic dissemination of the disease by haematogenous and/ or lymphatic distribution to the abdominal organs followed the primary infection in ten of the twelve cases. [p. 165]. The British Government understood the transmission vector for tuberculosis, close contact with other sufferers, but took no action to quarantine the disease. 2046 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 148 – 149. 2047 Ray Gibbons, Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide (in draft) 2048 Data derives from NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 937 – 945. Also see: Ray Gibbons (2019), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa 2049 There have been various hypotheses on what caused the resource (mainly tree) loss on Easter Island, from ecocide (Jared Diamond, Collapse) to the impact of rats (J.B. MacKinnon, The Once and Future World). There is no evidence that the people were starving or that warfare was a significant factor. There is evidence that rats formed part of their diet. However, they did lack the means to build ships. 2050 Geoffrey Blainey (2015), The Story of Australia’s People, Volume 1: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia 2051 Annual 10 deaths per 1,000 (or 1%) is considered to be abnormally high. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/C67A858BA00CB846CA2568A9001393C6?Opendocument 2052 It was once common to use rates per 100,000 population for deaths and rates per 1,000 population for live births. However, most population statistics now tend to use deaths per 1000. In 2016, Australia was ranked at 124 with about 7.2 deaths per 1000. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook/rankorder/2066rank.html http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/sp.dyn.cdrt.in http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CDRT.IN 2053 The approximate doubling formula is to divide the percentage annual growth rate into 69. 2054 We have more to say on this in a later chapter on Retroactive Culpability under Population Statistics. 2055 http://www.population.net.au/population-of-tasmania/ 2056 https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/profile-of-indigenous-australians 2057 PJ Dowling (2011), A Great Deal of Sickness Introduced diseases among the Aboriginal People of colonial Southeast Australia 1788 – 1900 https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/.../02Whole_Dowling.pdf 2058 This was not the case for other Australian colonies, where eugenics was actively practised in the early 20 th century in an attempt to breed out the ‘recessive’ Aboriginal trait. 2059 10 deaths per 1000 per year (1% pa) is considered to be high. 2060 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 74, based on a census by Robinson in March 1832 2061 Ibid: 75 2062 Ibid: 75 2063 Ibid: 75 2064 Reynolds quotes the Aboriginal numbers in 1833 at about 220.No source is given. [Reynolds (2001): 71] 2065 Ibid: 99 2066 Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain: 99 2067 See for example, Henry Reynolds (1995), The Fate of a Free People: 10, 32, 154 2068 Weep in Silence (1987), ed. NJB Plomley: 983. The soldiers were primarily from the 50 th and 51st regiments. 2069 Dr. Henry Jeanneret was commandant of the Wybalenna detention facility on Flinder’s Island between June 1842 and early 1844, when he was dismissed and then reinstated in 1845 by secretary of state Stanley, prompting the Aboriginal detainees to write a letter of petition to Queen Victoria, objecting to their living conditions, objecting 1341 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited to Jeanneret’s treatment of them, requesting that Jeanneret not be reinstated, and requesting that verbal fiduciary promises made to them on behalf of the Government be honoured. 2070 Ibid: 299. Arthur ignored Ryan’s findings. Aboriginal conditions did not improve. The deaths continued. 2071 Ibid: 635 2072 Smith was dismissed. Plomley writes: From this time (under Franklin) any expenditure on the Aborigines was begrudged, it being held that the more quickly they died the better for the government purse. [Op. Cit., Weep in Silence: 130 2073 Appointed by Sir John Franklin. Recalled by the Admiralty in 1842. 2074 Jeanneret was appointed by Sir John Franklin. He petitioned the Secretary of State (Lord Stanley) in February 1845 for reinstatement. Stanley granted his reinstatement in 11 August 1845, with all arrears of salary, for which he was congratulated by Dr. Nixon, the Bishop of Tasmania. 2075 In 17 February 1846, the Aboriginals wrote a petition to the Queen, objecting to Jeanneret’s reappointment. The petition was influenced by Robert Clark, the catechist or religious instructor, who was appointed by Arthur in August 1834. 2076 Sir William Denison advised Jeanneret that the Wybalenna Aboriginal settlement would be closed. Forty four Aboriginals were relocated to Oyster Cove, under the supervision of Joseph Milligan. They arrived in 20 October 1847. 2077 Appointed superintendent and medical officer for Oyster Cove Aboriginals 2078 Sources: Op. Cit., Weep in Silence; www.adb.anu.edu.au 2079 The Companion to Tasmanian History http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/W/Wybalenna.htm 2080 Op. Cit., Weep in Silence: 983 - 989 2081 Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Logan bought his promotion for £4,500, the standard rate. He was Commanding Officer of the 63rd Regiment and reached Hobart on 18th October 1830. He was previously a Major in the Rifle Brigade, when he fought at Waterloo. 2082 Sir John Pedder (1793 – 1859): First Chief Justice of Tasmania, 1824-1854 2083 Van Diemen’s Land, Copies of all correspondence between Lieutenant Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the subject of the military operations lately carried out against the Aboriginal inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land, ed. A.G.L. Shaw, Tasmanian Historical Research Association (1971): Extract of the minutes of the Executive Council, 23rd February 1831, Van Diemen’s Land copies of all correspondence: 82. 2084 Map originates with Cassandra Pybus (1991), Community of Thieves: 201. 2085 Map originates from NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence A History of the Flinders Island Aboriginal Settlement: facing page 1. 2086 Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People: 152, citing AOT CSO 5/39/833 2087 Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People: 122, citing Arthur to Spring-Rice, 27th January 1835, Select Committee on Native People, British Parliamentary Papers, VII: 126 2088 Ibid: 104 2089 Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain?: 84 2090 Henry Reynolds (1995), The Fate of a Free People: 185, citing James Bonwick (1869), The Last of the Tasmanians: 85. I have been unable to confirm this quote by Clark in my facsimile edition of Bonwick. Reynolds means Bonwick (1870), The Daily Life and Origins of the Tasmanians: 85 https://ia800306.us.archive.org/12/items/dailylifeandori02bonwgoog/dailylifeandori02bonwgoog.pdf 2091 Although the town does not exist, this allusion may to the area of the existing Marlborough Highway in the Western Tiers, between Bronte and Miena. 2092 Bonwick probably means internecine or intertribal. At the time of the so-called black War, intertribal conflict was generally caused by the effect of the British invasion (economic and social disruption) and settler predation on Aboriginal women, forcing tribes to try and capture women from other tribes, or forcing displaced tribes to come into conflict with other tribes as they struggled to feed themselves, or forcing tribes to trade their women for food and other goods, or forcing remnant tribes to find alliances with other such tribes in their fight for survival against the British. 2093 This was Tarereenore (or Tarenorerer or Walyer or Mary Ann) who was born around 1800 to the Plair-LekeLiller-Plue people in the north west around Table Cape and died in 1831. For an overview, see http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/W/Walyer%202.htm 1342 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited http://www.convictcreations.com/history/walyer.html Robinson also mentions her several times, including February 1831in a letter to Arthur. [NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission: 474 ‘For some considerable time I had received information respecting that ferocious aborigine whom I have designated the Amazon.] Walyer was abused by whites and her own people. Captured by a sealer in 1830, Walyer, now called Mary Ann, was handed over to George Augustus Robinson and exiled to Gun Carriage (Vansittart) Island, where she died of influenza on June 5. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/tarenorerer-13212 . 2094 Ibid: 84 - 85 2095 Ibid: 85 2096 http://www.aboriginalheritage.tas.gov.au/cultural-heritage/aboriginal-burials 2097 Bonwick’s use of the pejorative adjective ‘feeble’ was common at the time, a misconception extant before Darwinism and made a ‘law of Nature’ after. It was the wrong-headed concept that some races fell before British Imperialism because they were less fit to survive. 2098 This paragraph reflects the prejudices of Bonwick rather than dependable evidence. When the British arrived, they brought a subsistence economy, where they first foraged for their food. Fortunately, they had access to the game-plenty grasslands that the Palawa had maintained through firestick farming over millennia. There is no verifiable evidence that the Palawa population was declining at the time of the British invasion, but clear evidence of a population collapse thereafter. 2099 James Bonwick (1869), The Last of the Tasmanians: 255 – 256. Robinson’s Progress Report, dated 17th May 1837, was self-congratulatory, but included some revealing comments: ‘The schools and religious services are still maintained, and the Natives are constant and regular in their attendance. They are rapidly acquiring industrious habits. The settlement is in a very powerful, tranquil state.’ He added: ‘The only drawback on the establishment was the great mortality among them’. Robinson had a strange view of success. [Ibid: 255] 2100 Ibid: 85 2101 Ibid: 85 – 86. 2102 Bonwick is incorrect. If he is aware that he is wrong, why would he deliberately mislead his British readers? Perhaps to protect their self-belief as a ‘civilized’ and compassionate society, eager to assist other races into civilization. If he is unaware, then his observations – in general – must be highly suspect and tested for their accuracy as we are doing here. Epidemics did not affect the British and Palawa equally, as Bonwick must have known. People without immunity succumbed rapidly, as Britain saw before its eyes. But Britain refused to give the Palawa what they wanted: a territory or territories to call their own, free from ongoing persecution Epidemics did not ‘occasionally spread havoc among them’; they almost always resulted from their close confinement by the British. 2103 We have deconstructed this ‘myth’ earlier. From what we know of influenza epidemics in this period, the outbreak was usually restricted to a local community, and was invariably caused by the unhealthy conditions imposed on them by the British. There is little evidence of pandemics, from medical and other reports. Influenza seems to have been the primary cause of mortality from chest infections. 2104 The correct conclusion from this observation is that British civilization was destroying the Palawa, socially and physically, but it was a conclusion the British Government would not accept as it ran counter to their colonizing policy and practices. 2105 Kickerterpoller. 2106 Ibid: 87. Bonwick’s is pure speculation. The early French explorers noted some cutaneous disorders, but nowhere as severe as reported by Bonwick. Also see JB Cleland (1939), Some Aspects of the Ecology of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Tasmania and Southern Australia https://eprints.utas.edu.au/13255/1/1939-cleland-aspectsecology.pdf Cleland, who was Professor of Pathology at the University of Adelaide, thought that the skin condition (which Bonwick refers to as a type of “leprosy”) might have been yaws. However, the yaws spirochete (Treponema pertenue) is endemic in tropical conditions, not those of Tasmania. For a detailed analysis of introduced disease, see PJ Dowling (1997), “A Great Deal of Sickness” Introduced diseases among the Aboriginal People of colonial Southeast Australia 1788 – 1900 (PhD thesis, ANU). https://openresearchrepository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/7529/1/02Whole_Dowling.pdf Dowling identifies acute respiratory disorders as the primary cause of mortality among the Palawa. 2107 Bonwick, Daily Life, Ibid: 88. Bonwick’s increasingly florid hyperbole reflects the values of intemperance but fails to fault those who were taking advantage of vulnerable Aboriginals. Nor was the Government interested in clamping down on such malpractices. If the Palawa were a lower form of humanity, as many believed, then what did it matter if they were debased further. 1343 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2108 Ibid: 88 – 89. Peter Dowling (1977), “A Great Deal of Sickness” Introduced diseases among the Aboriginal People of colonial Southeast Australia 1788 – 1900: 189, citing NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 937 - 946 https://openresearchrepository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/7529?mode=full 2110 J Allen (1837), Letter to GA Robinson, 10 September, in Robinson Papers, ML A7067: 201 – 221, citing NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence 2111 Citing Plomley (1987), ibid: 941 2112 Archaic name for tuberculosis. 2113 Dowling (1977), ibid: 192 There are more than 30 organisms - including bacteria, viruses and fungi – that can cause ‘pneumonia’, for which the streptococcus (or pneumococcal ) pneumonia or the mycoplasma pneumonia bacteria are the most typical. The common symptom is a cough that produces discoloured mucous, high fever, chills, excessive sweating, rapid breathing, rapid heart rate, pain when coughing, shortness of breath, poor appetite, bluish tint to lips and nails caused by a lack of oxygen, and exhaustion. It is akin to drowning. Because ‘pneumonia’ can have multiple causes, 19th century doctors often used a general diagnosis of phthisis, which we might call Acute Respiratory Disorder today. ‘Pneumonia’ can often arise as a complication of a compromised immune system resulting from respiratory disease such as influenza. The chance of developing ‘pneumonia’ can depend on age, health and lifestyle. The Palawa detainees became a disease reservoir, with cold, damp conditions, poor food and unhygienic accommodation all contributing to recurrent group ill-health, as noted by the Wybalenna doctor. There was nothing accidental about their death rate. Britain was responsible. 2114 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 923 2115 J Allen, Surgeon, to GA Robinson, 10th September 1837, cited by NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 920 – 922. To improve readability and logical analysis, we have added paragraphs and – where necessary – highlighted certain sections of text. 2116 On 24th June 1834, Darling argued against Arthur’s proposal that Aboriginals should be moved elsewhere. Sir George Arthur papers regarding Aborigines, 1825 – 1837, Mitchell Library A 2188: 144 - 145 http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2014/D06294/a1771.html Also see correspondence of WJ Darling with Arthur and Colonial Secretary, May 1832 to June 1843, NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 991 – 1003 2117 Ibid: 293 - 295 2118 Op. Cit., Bonwick: 257 - 258 2119 We know little of Nickoll’s biography apart from what Plomley discovered in the Mitchell Library archives. See NJB Plomley, Ibid, Henry Nickolls 1834 – 1835: 78 – 89. 2120 Murray Johnson, Ian McFarlane (2015), Van Diemen’s Land An Aboriginal History: 238 citing Plomley, Op. Cit.: 79 and Lyndall Ryan (1982), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 180 2121 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence A History of the Flinders Island Aboriginal Settlement: 79 2122 Ibid:80 2123 Ibid: 80, Arthur was less interested in securing better food, or ensuring that they had healthy living conditions, or protecting the Palawa from convicts, than developing their Christian education under Clark, believing it was the path to ‘civilizing’ them. Arthur instructed Nickolls that he must restrict himself to operational matters and give Clark his full support. 2124 As Plomley points out: ‘The Aborigines had been induced to leave their native land by a promise that all their wants would be supplied and they expected this undertaking to be honoured. However unreasonable this attitude may have seemed to the government, which had consciously or unconsciously thought the future of the Aborigines as lying in europeanisation, that is, in working for one’s living, it was quite logical for a hunter/ gatherer people to think as they did. They could not visualize either the accumulation and storage of foodstuffs or a system of trading under which they produced goods and services in exchange for food. For the Aborigines, therefore, the situation must have ben quite clear and definite: they had been told that all their wants would be supplied, and this is just what they expected. Regular labour was not part of the bargain, though they did not mind helping with odd jobs if they were treated properly.’ [Ibid: 83]. 2125 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 85. 2126 Robert Clark was appointed catechist in August 1834 and arrived at Wybalenna a few weeks before Nickolls. From the beginning, Clark seems determined to find fault in the settlement’s administration if it furthered his own position: he complained to the Colonial Secretary (and Arthur) of cattle trampling his garden; he complained that the Aboriginal children were too influenced by their elders and managed to send many of them back to the Hobart 2109 1344 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited Orphan School where their fate is unknown; he complained of convict negligence and that they should be punished; he complained about Nickolls; he had rigid views on Christian teaching; he complained if Nickolls tried to soften Arthur’s rigid views on Christian education for strictly observing the Sabbath. [Ibid: 81 – 88] 2127 Ibid: 81 2128 Ibid: 86. 2129 Ibid: 86 – 87. 2130 Dated 24 June 1836 but completed 5 September, GAR to Colonial Secretary, ML A7044: 218 – 327, cited by NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 698 – 700. 2131 See Plomley (1987), Ibid: 53 – 54. The British refusal to accept responsibility for the deaths is disingenuous at best. It is evident from the shipboard conditions on the Charlotte that disease was inevitable. This lack of Government accountability forms a consistent pattern through the period of Aboriginal detention, where they were dying at a sufficiently disturbing rate to be characterized as genocidal deaths in custody, according to the Lemkinian Convention. In Arthur’s time, the deaths were merely a matter of passing regret in the British military and juridical process of asserting settler sovereignty and economic hegemony. 2132 Nickolls (Nichols) was Wybalenna commandant from September 1834 until October 1835. During this period before GAR returned, Nichols also suggested to Arthur that the settlement be developed as an Aboriginal farming community. Arthur rejected the proposal. [NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 966]. We can speculate that Arthur did not want Aboriginals to become economically self-sufficient, preferring to use Wybalenna as a place of detention. 2133 Ibid: 261 - 307 In September 1834 Darling rejoined his Regiment, which had proceeded to India. Nichols took his place. 2134 Flinder’s Island is the topmost 2135 Wybalenna was euphemistically called a ‘settlement’. It is more appropriately described as a detention centre under the administration of a Government commandant, where Aboriginal lives were strictly supervised along with convicts. There was no possibility of escape. 2136 N.J.B. Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence: 464, 22 July 1837 2137 Ibid: 465 2138 Ibid: 698 – 699 [citing ML A7044: 218 – 327]. On 3rd August, Governor Franklin forwarded a copy of Robinson’s report to Lord Glenelg, with the comment he was ‘unable to entertain the idea’ of their removal to a healthier environment, notwithstanding the appalling death rate at Wybalenna. However, he supported Robinson’s proposal for the creation of native police in ‘the future management of native tribes’. This proposal was soon adopted, with disastrous consequences. The Native Police became roving death squads. [Ibid: 700 – 701] 2139 Ibid: 701. Plomley notes that Austin’s log of Wybalenna for that day mentions that even small wounds healed with difficulty, a symptom of scurvy. 2140 Ibid: 702, citing Major Ryan to Alfred Stephen ML A7067: 41 – 44. 2141 Wybalenna was also called Wyba-Luma. See J.E. Calder (1875), Some Account of the Wars, Extirpation, Habits, &c., of the Native Tribes of Tasmania: 72. 2142 Lyndall Ryan, Tasmanian Aborigines: 219 2143 Ibid, p. 14, citing various sources, including: Jones, Tasmanian Tribes, 324-7; Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission: 1006-13, although some modern estimates place the pre-contact population band between 8,000 and 15,000 2144 Mathinna (1835 – 1856) was born on Wybalenna, then adopted and abandoned by Governor Franklin. http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Mathinna.htm 2145 Henry Reynolds, Fate of a Free People A Radical Re-examination of the Tasmanian Wars (1995): 122- 124 2146 The question of any treaty arrangement is predicated on resolving the question: Was Australia lawfully and legitimately colonized by Britain? That is, a formal enquiry of some sort is mandated to expose the myth of British sovereignty. This would logically lead into a form of self-government for many areas in Australia where there is an Aboriginal majority, an uncomfortable outcome for some racist Australians who cling predominantly to the One Nation and Nationalist Parties for mutual support. We should recall that Aboriginals were disenfranchised until 1967 because of this very reason, a white fear that Aboriginals could achieve any sort of political representation. Right wing Liberal politicians still tend to reject any change to the Constitution that grants exceptional status to Aboriginals. The deeply entrenched and racist problem that Arthur grappled with, more to achieve British superiority than any consideration of human rights, remains with us today. 1345 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2147 Ibid: 175. Reynolds cites that this accounting is based upon the Report of Finance Committee, Legislative Papers, 1845, AGL Shaw, Convicts and Colonies, 1966: 254. Yet, Robinson constantly notes the ‘shortage of supplies’, cited by Reynolds, ibid: 175. 2148 Reynolds’ mathematics do not add up: 365 x 1/3d is closer to £23 per person pa., unless either the daily or annual amounts are incorrect. But if supplies were erratic, the expenditure amount is theoretical, confusing what ought to be with what was. 2149 Ibid: 183 2150 Ibid: 165 2151 Cassandra Pybus (1991), Community of Thieves: 139. The Aboriginal comments appear in George Robinson’s journals, transcribed in Weep in Silence (1987), ed NJB Plomley, notes, 2 July 1836: 643; 21 March 1837 (note on p. 211) 2152 Ibid, Weep in Silence: 213 2153 Op. Cit., Fate of a Free People: 184 2154 Ibid: 189 2155 Plomley records the loss of hope; ibid: 195, 211, 213; ‘gloom’, ‘melancholy’, ‘an absence of excitement’, ‘hopelessness’, ‘place of sickness’. Also see 17 November 1837: ‘much gloom and melancholy appear to hang over the aborigines’ dwellings’ (p. 498); 25 May 1838:’ Nome asked who among them would die next’. (p. 563). 2156 Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain?: 78 2157 Ibid: 84. Reynolds’ statement is demonstrably incorrect, given the known poor housing conditions and inadequate diet. 2158 Reynolds neglects to point out , between 1832 and 1847, the Wybalenna death rate was over 80%. The deaths would have continued, unless Walter Arthur’s petition to Queen Victoria belatedly caused Grey to order their release back to mainland Tasmania. But even here, the relocation order was executed without compassion. The survivors were moved to a dirty, run down, disused penal settlement at Oyster Cove on Bruny Island, where even their upkeep was begrudged by the local settlers. The deaths continued. 2159 Ibid: 85. Reynolds requires the condition for genocide to be: an intent to cause extinction. This is not the meaning of Lemkinian genocide but is his own definition. 2160 Weep in Silence (1987), ed. NJB Plomley: 937 - 946 2161 Ibid: 947 2162 Ibid: 946. The reason for the high infant mortality is unclear. The reason for the low birth rate can be expected from the conditions: different tribe fragments had been forced together in detention and there was a sense of despair, hardly conducive to bringing up a family. 2163 Ibid: 634 – 636; George Augustus Robinson Papers 1818 – 1856, 72 volumes, available as microfilm manuscripts, arranged by N.J.B. Plomley, 1961 – 1962, with papers relating to Tasmania contained in Mitchell Library ML A 7023 – A 7031, and a copy of Major Ryan’s report is found at ML A 7063: 213 – 261. 2164 Ibid: 78 - 89 2165 The correct number of deaths recorded by Robinson was 22. 2166 There were seventy convicts held on the Island between 1833 and 1837, together with a military detachment. Major Ryan, who in 1836 was asked to conduct an enquiry into Wybalenna, writes that there was nightly fraternisation. [Henry Reynolds (1995), The Fate of a Free People: 165]. The detention arrangement confirms the view that Arthur used Wybalenna as an open prison, where Aboriginals were on a similar level as convicts, and both were under a military guard, with the entire facility managed by a Commandant. 2167 James Calder (1875), Some Accounts of the Wars, Extirpation, Habits, etc. Of the Native Tribes of Tasmania: 114 - 115 2168 NJB Plomley (1987), Weep in Silence A history of the Flinders Island Aboriginal settlement: 148 – 149, citing Aborigine’s petition to the Queen, 17 February 1846, CSO 11/26/378, pp. 13-15; WG Arthur and others to Milligan, 17 February 1846, CSO 11/26/378, p. 12; Milligan to Clark, 17 February 1846, CSO 11/26/378, pp. 5-8; Milligan to Colonial Secretary, 18 February 1846, CSO 11/26/378, pp. 3-4; Colonial Secretary to Milligan, 30 September 1847, CSO 24/8/824, p. 243 2169 Apart from introduced disease, especially in the later stages of British occupation from 1833, when the Palawa were being detained in crowded, unhealthy conditions, this single factor – sexual predation - probably caused the greatest loss of Aboriginal population viability in Tasmania. If a female was kidnapped, she was removed from the Aboriginal procreation pool, whether or not she became infertile through venereal disease. The incidence and 1346 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited population effects of introduced STDs among tribal groups is less clear. Ryan notes: The demand for Aboriginal women by the convict society in Tasmania was considerable during the first twenty-five years of settlement, owing to the shortage of women. Even in 1828 there were still three males for every female in the colony, and most conflict between Aborigines and stockkeepers took place over women and kangaroos’. [Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 176]. Palawa society often tried to incorporate the British into their extended community by offering women in exchange for food. It was a form of mutual obligation that the British abused, particularly around the coast where the sealers operated. The loss of women had a major effect on the Aboriginal birth-rate. The British Government took no measures to stop the predation, perhaps fearing a backlash from a predominantly male population. In this respect, Government inaction was a form of action. 2170 Geoffrey Blainey is among those historians who argue that a major factor in population decrease for Palawa society (and Aboriginals generally) was due to inter-tribal warfare. It is a theory that cannot be substantiated. 2171 Although drugs and alcohol caused significant damage to Aboriginal society on the mainland, it does not seem to have been a contributing factor in poor health for the Palawa, nor was it mentioned by Robinson as a problem. 2172 Nicolas Baudin, The Journal of Post Captain Nicolas Baudin, Commander-in-Chief of the Corvettes Geographe and Naturaliste, Assigned by Order of the Government to a Voyage of Discovery, trans. By C. Cornell (1974), quoted by Judy Campbell (2002), Invisible Invaders Smallpox and Other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia 1780 – 1880: 5. Although Ryan notes that venereal syphilis was prevalent among the early sealers and settlers, it was uncommon among the Palawa [Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 175-176]. This may have been because non-venereal endemic treponemal infection (syphilis or treponarid) often found among nomadic societies may have provided some protection [Hackett, Origin of the Human Treponematoses, Bulletin, WHO, no. 29, 1963: 7 – 41, quoted by Campbell (2002): 6]. However, venereal disease was common among mainland Aboriginals, particularly in Queensland, as noted by Noel Loos. The appalling story of widespread and mostly untreated venereal disease among North Queensland Aboriginals is very well told by Noel in his seminal 1976 PhD thesis: In 1901, the Sydney Bulletin reported that Roth had estimated that 6,000 of the 16,000 Aborigines he was responsible for were then suffering venereal disease. [Part III, Aboriginal – European Relations in the Pacified Areas, p. 14 (71 pages), or p. 466 of entire thesis. Part III focuses on the heavy suffering caused by introduced disease, poor nutrition, and economic exploitation.] Noel informs us that the quote refers to The Bulletin, 10 August 1901, Bertie Newspaper Clippings, 68 (N.L.), where the Bulletin wrote: ‘6,000 are suffering from virulent contagious disease obtained originally by contact with the noble white man.’ Noel notes that ‘The use of the singular ‘disease’, the tone of moral disapproval, and the refusal to be specific strongly suggest that ‘venereal disease’ is implied.’ Loos, Noel (1976), Aboriginal – European Relations in North Queensland, 1861 – 1897, PhD thesis, James Cook University http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/10414 2173 They will not, however, cultivate the ground, or build houses and remain stationary, or even take the trouble of tending a flock of sheep when given to them. On the whole they appear to me to stand some few degrees higher in the scale of civilization than the Fuegians. Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, pp 431 – 436. 2174 There is a semantic lexicon and referential typology for the term: slaughter. It includes the overlapping meanings for massacre, genocide and ethnic cleansing. See Gibbons, Ray, For We Are Young and Free Political Uses of Australian Genocide, [FWAYAF, 2014]. We will define massacre to include direct and indirect killing. We will argue that indirect killing continues today, through unnecessary early Aboriginal deaths caused by preventable physical and social pathology such as diabetes, renal failure, suicide, and deaths in custody. This extant indirect killing corresponds to the type dynamical attributes of a late-stage Lemkinian process. 2175 J.A. La Nauze (1959) in Different Perspectives on Black Armband History, Mark McKenna, Research Paper 5, 1997 – 1998, http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/RP9798/ 98RP05 2176 W.E. Stanner, The Boyer Lectures 1968 After the Dreaming 2177 The appalling story of widespread and mostly untreated venereal disease among North Queensland Aboriginals is very well told by Noel Loos in his seminal 1976 PhD thesis: 1347 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited In 1901, the Sydney Bulletin reported that Roth had estimated that 6,000 of the 16,000 Aborigines he was responsible for were then suffering venereal disease. [Part III, Aboriginal – European Relations in the Pacified Areas, p. 14 (71 pages), or p. 466 of entire thesis. Part III focuses on the heavy suffering caused by introduced disease, poor nutrition and economic exploitation.] Noel informs us that the quote refers to The Bulletin, 10 August 1901, Bertie Newspaper Clippings, 68 (N.L.), where the Bulletin wrote: ‘6,000 are suffering from virulent contagious disease obtained originally by contact with the noble white man.’ Noel notes that ‘The use of the singular ‘disease’, the tone of moral disapproval, and the refusal to be specific strongly suggest that ‘venereal disease’ is implied.’ Loos, Noel (1976), Aboriginal – European Relations in North Queensland, 1861 – 1897, PhD thesis, James Cook University http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/10414 2178 Keith Windschuttle (2000), Myths of frontier massacres, Quadrant Online, October 2000, quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2000/10/myths-of-frontier-massacres/ 2179 Bill Thorpe (1995), Frontiers of Discourse; Assessing Revisionist Australian Colonial Contact Historiography, Journal of Australian Studies, 46: 34 – 45. 2180 Connor, John (2005), The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838: 82 2181 By ‘war’ we shall mean ‘an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will’, and is now the generally accepted and classic definition, as given by the Prussian General and military thinker Karl von Clausewitz (1780 – 1831), which seems more apt than the terser Macquarie Dictionary’s ‘armed fighting’. In the Clausewitz definition, the will of the British was that Aboriginals should cede all rights to their land without resistance or objection, and if they resisted, they were forced by the use of weapons to comply. 2182 Raymond Evans and Bill Thorpe (2001), Indigenocide and the Massacre of Aboriginal History, overland.63.2001, ehttp://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/101.pdf last accessed 2 July 2014. 2183 Richard Broome (1982), Aboriginal Australians: Black Responses to White Dominance, Allen & Unwin. 2184 Jacques Semelin (2013), Purify and Destroy The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide, p. 4 2185 Connor (2005), Op. Cit.: 81 – 83. 2186 Bryce Barker (2007), Massacre, Frontier Conflict and Australian Archaeology, Number 64, June 2007, Australian Archaeology, www.library.uq.edu.au/ojs/index.php/aa/article/viewFile/393/423 last accessed 2 July 2014. 2187 A more comprehensive investigation of Australian genocide is set out in Ray Gibbons, FWAYAF, Political Uses of Australian Genocide, 2014 2188 Alison Palmer (2000), Colonial Genocide, p. 1 2189 Ibid, p. 58. 2190 1897 Opium Act, see Ray Gibbons, FWAYAF Documents That Shaped Our Nation for a transcript. 2191 Geoffrey Robertson, An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Remembers the Armenians? 2192 In 2002, the Australian Government enacted into domestic legislation Article 2 of the UN Convention on Genocide, but not the other articles. The legislation is NOT retrospective. http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=CHAMBER;id=chamber%2Fhansards%2F200203-19%2F0103;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansards%2F2002-03-19%2F0000%22 2193 There is, yet, no agreed semantic typology for ‘mass killing’ in all its variants, including genocide, war, ethnic cleansing and massacre. Gibbons, For We Are Young and Free, attempts to address this question. 2194 My italics. In fact, Richards’ assertion can be contested, as we will see. 2195 Jonathon Richards, The Secret War A true history of Queensland’s Native Police: 206, 207. Although Richards quotes Evans’ contention that most of the Aboriginal killing was carried out by settlers, Evans may now have changed his thinking, after a recent collaboration with Orsted-Jensen.[See Appendix: A partial case for Queensland genocide]. 2196 See for example the 1861 Queensland Government enquiry into making police methods more ‘efficient’, where ‘dispersal’ was made official Government policy, ruthlessly enforced by Police Commissioner Seymour from 1864 until 1895. 2197 People such as Andrew Bolt deny that any Aboriginal children were stolen through harsh and discriminatory Government policies. Bolt claims, without evidence, that the period of ‘stolen children’ was a humanitarian Government policy to help assimilate certain Aboriginal children into white society. One of the most thorough rebuttals of this Bolt denialist position is expressed by Robert Manne, where he exhaustively identifies state-by-state the thousands of children of mixed descent who were forcibly removed from their mothers. Robert Manne (2006), The Stolen Generations: A Documentary Collection, 172 pages, download from 1348 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2006/september/1244160772/robert-manne/stolen-generations Op. Cit., Connor. After 1838, the British military transferred the prosecution of the war to the fledgling colonies as a cost saving measure, and the killing of Aboriginals accelerated. The political and economic uses of mass killing, dispersal and legislatively imposed Aboriginal subjugation remained shared (to varying degrees) between the Australian self-governing colonies and Britain until Federation in 1901. 2199 The land war is the longest war in our history, lasting from 1788 until roughly 1928, the date of one of the last massacres, although the war is unrecognised by the Australian War Museum in Canberra. 2200 The case for Australian genocide was noted by Justice Wilcox in Nulyarimma v. Thomson in his summary judgment, but that it was conditional on ‘intent’. Wilcox is also quoted by Henry Reynolds in An Indelible Stain, p. 32. Ethnic cleansing is a variation of genocide. Ethnic cleansing also requires the physical removal of the unwanted group from an area or areas, but not necessarily with their deliberate mass extermination in concentration camps or through other instruments of wholesale killing, say the use of lethal gas or phosphorous bombs on a target population group. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are still not crimes under Australian law, although crimes against humanity have now been criminalised. A Bill of Rights would help resolve these omissions and contradictions, where Australian law is out of step with international law but lacks political support. Gen-o-cide:1: the use of deliberate systematic measures (as killing, bodily or mental injury, unlivable conditions, prevention of births) calculated to bring about the extermination of a racial, political, or cultural group or to destroy the language, religion, or culture of a group; 2: one who advocates or practices genocide. [Webster] 2201 In Research Online, D. Manderson of Macquarie University reminds us of the 1992 Mabo decision, where, in the 1992 Mabo decision, Justices Deane and Gaudron describe Aboriginal mistreatment: An early flash point with one clan of Aborigines illustrates the first stages of the conflagration of oppression and conflict which was, over the following century, to spread across the continent to dispossess, degrade and devastate the Aboriginal peoples and leave a national legacy of unutterable shame. http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1224&context=ltc We must all share the inter-generational collective guilt. We must all be able to say ‘Sorry’. [See Mabo v. Queensland (No.2) (1992) 175 CLR 1 F.C. 92/014] http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgibin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/high_ct/175clr1.html?stem=0&synonyms=0&query=~mabo 2202 Genocide: Gk ‘genos’ race, ‘cide’ killing. But the Convention is much broader in its definition than this, which is perhaps why there is some public confusion, where there is a tendency to associate genocide with Nazi death camps, where millions of Jews (and others) were exterminated. 2203 Rafael Lemkin (1900 – 1959) was a Polish lawyer and Jew who coined the word genocide in a paper called Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation – Analysis of Government – Proposals for Redress (1944). After WWII he continued his campaign for international laws defining, preventing and punishing genocide, both physical and psychological. The Convention on Genocide was formally adopted by the UN in 1948 and came into force in 1951. 2204 (1999) 96 FCR 153; (1999) 165 ALR 621; (1999) FCA 1192 http://www.austlii.edu.ay/au/cases/cth/federal_ct/1999/1192.html 2205 See the earlier note. 2206 Also see Colin Tatz, Confronting Australian Genocide, Aboriginal History 2001 Vol 25, and Genocide in Australia, Research Discussion Paper, AIATSIS, Number 9, 1999. http://www.kooriweb.org/gst/genocide/tatz.html 2207 Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain, p. 27 2208 See FWAYAF, The Political Uses of Australian Genocide. 2209 Colin Tatz, ibid, Genocide in Australia, p. 6 2210 Intent in the legal sense of mens rea (or ‘guilty mind’) means a prior intention to commit a criminal act, with the knowledge that the act is a crime [Macquarie]. The legal concept is fundamental within criminal law to establish guilt. There is no clearer exposition of intent than in extensive and repressive Government legislation, such as Aboriginal dispossession through land alienation, or official dispersal policy, or the Queensland Aboriginal Act (with amendments) and the state variations, which introduced a Reserve system of Aboriginal detention centres. 2211 Beyond Article 2 a (mass killing by police and settlers, none of whom were convicted), Articles b, c, d, and e were a further key part of the Queensland Government’s pattern of oppression against Aboriginals that extended until the 1970s and can be argued still continues today. 2198 1349 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2212 The full United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide can be found at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CrimeOfGenocide.aspx last accessed 19th December 2017. 2213 Rafael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation – An Analysis of Government – Proposals for Redress, Chapter IX: Genocide a new term and new conception for destruction of nations www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/AxisRule1944-1.htm 2214 Part 2 of this document is an extended case study into Tasmanian genocide, using some of the analytical methods developed for the investigation of Murdering Creek. See Ray Gibbons (2015), Deconstructing Colonial Myths The Massacre at Murdering Creek. 2215 https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/ij/icty/5.htm 2216 https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2004A00993 2217 Colin Tatz, With Intent to Destroy: 67 – 106, in the chapter Australia: Defining and Interpreting Genocide. 2218 Ibid, p. 95. 2219 Chris Cunneen, Julia Grix, The Limitations of Litigation in Stolen Generations Cases, AIATSIS Research Discussion Paper, Institute of Criminology, University of Sydney Law School, 2004: 11, 12. (Judge Gaudron) 2220 http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=s230 2221 http://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/senate/work/notice/2005/snpf_019.pdf Anti-Genocide Bill 1999 [2004]— (Senate bill)—(Senator Greig) Second reading (restored pursuant to resolution of 17 November 2004). 2222 https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=s230 Shirley Scott (2004), Why wasn’t genocide a crime in Australia? Accounting for the half century delay in Australia implementing the Genocide Convention , AUJlHRights 22; (2004) 10(2) Australian Journal of Human Rights 22 http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUJlHRights/2004/22.html 2223 Scott points out that, in June 2002, the Australian Government introduced two pieces of legislation in preparation for ratifying the International Criminal Court (Consequential Amendments) Act 2000 (Cth) which Scott notes was ratified by Australia in July 2002 through the International Criminal Court Act 2002 (Cth) (ICC Act), with an amendment later that year. See https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2004A00993 The Government thereby made genocide a crime in Australia, arguably removing the need for legislation specifically to implement the 1949 Genocide Convention. For a transcript, see the appendix. 2224 Canada introduced such inclusive domestic legislation in 2000. Every person is guilty of an indictable offence who commits a) genocide b) a crime against humanity, or c) a war crime http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-45.9/page-1.html The Canadian act extends the UN Convention, consistent with a UN 1996 document ( http://www.un.org/press/en/1996/19960329.l2770.html ) to include commission, omission (knowing or being aware of a crime but failing to act), and negligence, and is clarified by a case study. https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/canada-crimes-against-humanity-and-war-crimes-act In 2004, the International Criminal Tribunal published a case finding that clarified a crime against humanity, based on the ICT prosecution of the former Yugoslavia. https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/ij/icty/5.htm A legal comparison of the 1949 UN Convention with the ICC 2002 (Cth) Act and the Canadian 2000 legislation is outside the scope of this book, but we will make the observation that when a Convention is reinterpreted, it leaves open the possibility of revisionary self-protection. However, the appendix has transcripts of the relevant genocide legislation, both UN and Australian. 2225 We also note that parts of UN Article 2 have been re-worded by the Australian Government in its 2002 legislation. The general intent of the UN Convention may or may not have been preserved, but the question is: why not just adopt the UN resolution in its entirety? 2226 United States Library of Congress, Crimes Against Humanity Statutes and Criminal Code Provisions in Selected Jurisdictions http://www.loc.gov/law/help/crimes-against-humanity/index.php It is difficult to find an index of such open access documents through Australian sources. 2227 The 2002 amendment of this act is transcribed in the appendix. Also https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2004A00993 2228 Criminal Code Act 1995 § 268.1; see also International Criminal Court Act 2002, § 3(2). The relevant offenses are set out in §§ 268.8 to 268.23 of the Code. 2229 Id. §§ 268.117(1) & 15.4. 2230 Id. §§ 16.1 & 268.121. 2231 Id. § 268.118. 2232 Ibid, United States Library of Congress 1350 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2233 In March 1996, the United Nations further clarified the Lemkinian Convention to include omission, negligence and conspiracy: ACTS OF OMISSION, NEGLIGENCE, CONSPIRACY RESULTING IN CRIMES DISCUSSED BY PREPARATORY COMMITTEE FOR INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT http://www.un.org/press/en/1996/19960329.l2770.html Australia has not responded. 2234 This is a summary of the methodology and semantic typology set out in FWAYAF Political Uses of Australian Genocide. 2235 Fact based analysis is one method to investigate the relationships between data and functions. But is not the only method. Object modelling is another, which identifies ‘services’ performed by some defined object, say a particular Government, based on some specified event, in order to achieve some expected outcome. However, fact based analysis, with a focus on processes, will suit our purpose here. Both methodological approaches embed the concept of intentionality. 2236 ‘Theories are blind without data; data is lame without theories.’ The quote is often attributed to Albert Einstein, but it probably originates, in a slightly modified form, with Emanuel Kant. Of course, the point is unambiguous: we need both. 2237 These and many other testable assertions, within the myths of Australian narrative history, are examined in greater detail in For We Are Young and Free Recollectios from a (Homicidal) Frontier [Gibbons, 2014] 2238 Many sources state that whites knew of the main bora at Yandina Creek from 1865. The primary source for these derivative comments regarding the Yandina Creek bora seems to be Steele, who states: ‘A bora ring has been preserved near Yandina Creek. It is situated in front of a house on a knoll about one kilometre west of the creek and about three kilometres north-east of Mount Ninderry. The ring, which is 16.5 by 14 metres in size, was known to white men as early as 1865; its use was discontinued before 1900’. Steele quotes his source as DAIA file KC: A29. But the reference is circular: the DAIA file refers back to Steele as the source. Therefore, Steele’s 1865 date cannot be verified. [John Steele, Aboriginal Pathways in Southeast Queensland and the Richmond River, p. 178]. Steele fails to mention that the use of the bora was ’discontinued before 1900’ because those who could use it, and for whom it had important cultural significance, had been removed from the surrounding area, often violently, or if not violently, through legislated dispossession and forcible relocation. It is more likely that the bora was known to whites from at least 1862, when someone working for Scott, who was the lessee of the Yandina run, built a homestead near the bora, and which Bull records was the cause of great antagonism between whites and Aboriginals, for whom the bora was a sacred place. We know that the Scott homestead existed from 1862, because we have the evidence of a dated hand drawn map by Pettigrew, which he used to support a land application. Pettigrew’s map shows the ‘Scot’ homestead near Yandina Creek. 2239 The subject is examined further in For We Are Young And Free The Political Uses of Australian Genocide [Gibbons, 2014]. 2240 I borrow this term from the excellent book by Clive James (2007), Cultural Amnesia, W.W. Norton, New York. Much of our written history is being lost, awareness of our past progressively forgotten, slowly sliding into irrelevance as publishing runs expire. Even the Historical Records of Australia, Series III, still in copyright, I had to obtain second-hand from a UK source. If we have not the means of remembering the past, except through elongated library searches and overseas acquisitions, how can we not repeat past mistakes, our cultural history hoisted on shire-subsidized hagiography. 2241 Michel Foucault examines the role of the ‘archives’ in the Archaeology of Knowledge, where he deconstructs the ‘system of relations between the known and unknown’. What we know, if not properly ‘remembered’, can quickly become unknown, as happens when books go out of print, or historical records become increasingly inaccessible. 2242 This use of case instances to verify a theoretical model is consistent with an empirical inductive approach. See for example KATHLEEN M. EISENHARDT, MELISSA E. GRAEBNER, Theory building from cases: Opportunities and Challenges, Academy of Management Journal 2007, Vol. 50, No. 1, 25–32 .http://aom.org/uploadedFiles/Publications/AMJ/Eisenhart.Graebner.2007.pdf 2243 In the Murdering Creek Conclusion, we will show an event flow diagram for Murdering Creek. The event flow diagram is also called an event-driven process chain, which is an ordered graph of events and functions (or triggering conditions and their associated actionable components). The event flow can be further specified by logical operators, such as OR, AND, and XOR, although – for simplicity – we will not use this level of detailed notation, which is commonly seen in Petri nets. However, on the process diagrams, we will show concurrency and iteration at a high level. We will also show cross-functional process maps, where relevant, as they highlight the roles of various Involved Parties in the execution of some process and give emphasis to accountability. 1351 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2244 Gibbons, FWAYAF, Political Uses of Australian Genocide. This legal view is consistent with functionalism, where causes and effects determine a mental state, or its relationship to sensory stimulation (input), to other inner states, and to behaviour (output). That is, functionalism asserts we are responsible for our actions. Conversely, behaviorism asserts that behaviour is fundamental in understanding mental phenomena, that behaviour is determined by the environment and genetics, and that free will is an illusion, making it the logical obverse of functionalism. 2246 For an excellent exposition of Aboriginal placenames and their provenance, see Harold Koch, Luise Hercus (ed.) Aboriginal Placenames Naming and Re-naming the Australian Landscape (518 pp). http://epress.anu.edu.au/wpcontent/uploads/2011/02/whole_book10.pdf We address toponymy more fully in Gibbons, Recollections of a (Homicidal) Pastoral Frontier. (draft) 2247 The account of this massacre is given later, by W. H. Corfield, in Reminiscences of North Queensland, 1862-1878. D. T. Seymour was police commissioner during the peak killing times in Queensland from 1861 to 1895, and from his records, he is revealed as the principal Government architect of ethnic cleansing. 2248 Michael Cannon, Black Land, White Land, 49. No charges were laid against the Whytes or any other in the Port Phillip district, which was under the administration of La Trobe during the peak killing time of the 1840s. 2249 In 1912, Chinchilla Shire renamed Cutthroat Creek to Barakula, in order to hide its violent history involving a wealthy local landowner and ruthless speculator called Matthew Goggs, who was also credited with introducing the Prickly Pear plague into Queensland, when he used the plant as an ornamental shrub. 2250 We will meet Goggs later in these pages; he leased land next to Yandina Run in the 1860s. 2251 Inspector Paul Foelsche (1831 – 1914) was in control of all Territorian police north of Barrow Creek from 1870 until 1904, when he oversaw an extended period of brutal Aboriginal repression and extermination. 2252 The Henty family owned many large properties in the Western district, among them ‘Sandford’ at the junction of the Glenelg and Wannon Rivers. In 1840 a local squatter called Augustine Barton reported to La Trobe that one of the Henty’s overseers, a man called Thomas Connell, had provided poisoned damper to Aboriginals, killing about 16. No one was charged. The practice thereafter became more common. The effete La Trobe sat on his hands during most of the Victorian killing times and took no action against homicidal pastoralists, preferring the popular view that Aboriginals must make way for the British, and must be removed from their land one way or another. 2253 Henry Dangar (1796 – 1861) was a Government surveyor and pastoralist. His surveying work in the 1820s along the Hunter valley, into the Liverpool Plains, and along the Manning, caused a rush of applicants for land grants, including himself. By 1850, he controlled about 300,000 acres of prime grazing land, along with inns and stores. Among his pastoral properties was that at the infamous Myall Creek, where there was a massacre in 1838. Dangar sacked his manager for providing witness testimony, which resulted in the first (and only) successful prosecution of people responsible for Aboriginal murder right up until the 20 th century. He was a strong supporter of accelerated immigration. He was instrumental, through his surveying and extensive land-holdings, in early Aboriginal dispossession for the upper Hunter and Liverpool Plains. In common with most landowners, his writings show little regard for Aboriginal welfare. 2254 Sir John Forrest (1847 – 1918), made a Baron by Britain in 1891 for his services. From 1871 to 1890, his surveying work in the Kimberley opened it up for pastoralism and Aboriginal dispossession. He was a key political figure in Western Australia and the Commonwealth for over twenty years. From 1890 to 1901, he was the state’s first premier, and in this role, he was widely praised, but he also oversaw the destruction of Aboriginal society in the north by encouraging pastoralism and giving his approval for a number of lethal ‘dispersal’ operations, resulting in Aboriginal depopulation. Aboriginals still fearfully remember this period in the Kimberley between 1885 and 1905 as the ‘killing times’. 2255 Frank Jardine (1841 – 1919) was an explorer and pastoralist, who regarded the far north around Somerset in Cape York as his personal domain. From 1864, he had a murderous reputation and his casual disregard for Aboriginal life led to large scale depopulation of the area. In 1896, Meston noted ‘Today the tribe which held the country from Somerset to Cape York is extinct... Such has been the contact between the races in that locality. [Archibald Meston, Aboriginal Protector, Report on the Aboriginals of Queensland, to Horace Tozer, Home Secretary]. Jardine was never charged, nor was it possible, because for many years he was the local police magistrate. 2256 Source: Reader’s Digest Atlas of Australia, 1977, prepared in conjunction with the Department of Natural Resources. 2245 1352 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2257 These genocidal assessments are evaluated more thoroughly in Gibbons, Recollections of a (Homicidal) Frontier 1788 – 1828 (in draft) 2258 Ray Gibbons (2015), The Australian Land War and Aboriginal Depopulation. 2259 1838 was a watershed. After the significant settler backlash by pastoralists against the singular Myall Creek convictions, NSW Governor Gipps succumbed to public pressure and ignored later massacres of Aboriginals. He was not alone. For the next century, authorities did not see killing Aboriginals as a punishable crime. Nor had it been for the previous 50 years until Myall Creek. 2260 See, for example, John Cribbin 1984), The Killing Times the Coniston massacre 1928. 2261 Launceston Examiner, Thursday 7th September 1865, p. 2 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/38662146?searchTerm=%27dispers%27%20%27blacks%27%20%20%2 0%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20&searchLimits= Such breathless tales of the bush were common newspaper fodder for the time, containing a mixture of tall yarns and racist rants. But Walker was real enough 2262 http://www.massviolence.org/The-Online-Encyclopaedia-of-Mass-Violence-calming-the-dead Jacques Semelin (2007), Purify and Destroy The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide ; JACQUES SEMELIN (2003), Toward a vocabulary of massacre and genocide, Journal of Genocide Research (2003), 5(2), 000–000 http://conference.unitar.org/ny/sites/unitar.org.ny/files/vocabulary%20of%20massacre%20and%20genocide.pdf 2263 www.massviolence.org 2264 Ibid: 376 - 378 2265 Mark Levene, The Meaning of Genocide; also The Rise of the West and the Coming of Genocide; Scott Straus, New Directions in Comparative Research on Genocide, 2006, www.yale.edu/macmillan/ocvprogram/straus.pdf 2266 2014 USDA Evidence Analysis Library. http://clg.portalxm.com/library/keytext.cfm?format_tables=0&keytext_id=187 ; 2267 At one time, Aboriginals were derogated by pastoralists as ‘vermin’ (among other dehumanising terms), the implication being that unwanted species could legally be exterminated. Eradication was usually by shooting or poisoning. Strictly speaking, vermin were species that attacked crops. Pastoralists often extended the meaning of the term to include feral pests, many of which had been introduced by pastoralists themselves: foxes, rabbits, pigs, dogs, cats, and others which had been allowed to run wild; but the term also referred to non feral species such as dingos and snakes which were native. 2268 In gravitational terms, this is also called rotational frame dragging, where the distortion of space-time geometry by a spinning massive object has a profound effect on neighbouring bodies. In this sense, the gravitational attractor is some societal normative dysfunction, which amplifies other negative behaviours, causing further dysfunction. The effect of gravity itself is an artefact of space-time distortion by any massive object. 2269 Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain (2001): 27; A Dirk Moses, Genocide and Settler Society in Australian History http://www.dirkmoses.com/uploads/7/3/8/2/7382125/01-ch1moses.pdf 2270 The term ‘black line’ usually refers to Arthur’s farcically unsuccessful ethnic cleansing plan between 1830 and 1831 to drive the Big River and Oyster Bay (Mairremmener) Aborigines from the ‘settled districts’ to the isolated Tasman Peninsula in the southeast. It was a scheme similar to a British game drive, where beaters moved their prey before them and into entrapment. Arthur was aware of a similar plan by Governor Macquarie in 1817 to drive the local Aboriginals out of the fertile Cumberland Plains and across the Blue Mountains, a campaign that resulted in the Appin massacre where Aboriginals were forced over a gorge, and reduced the threat of Aboriginal resistance in the area. In fact, Arthur approved multiple human ‘lines’, for which the best known was a zigzag across the island, about 190 kms wide, with the paramilitary force deployed under three divisional commanders. The abortive Freycinet ‘line campaign’, instigated by local landowner George Meredith in 1831 (with Arthur’s approval), was at the isthmus to Freycinet Peninsula, probably initiated from near Coles Bay. [See John Connor (2002), The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838: 93 - 101; Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines a history since 1803: 131 – 141; Graeme Calder (2010), Levée, Line and Martial Law: 192; Lyndall Ryan (2013), The Black Line in Van Diemen’s Land: Success or Failure?, Journal of Australian Studies, Volume 37, Issue 1: 3 - 18]. 2271 Charles Darwin (1845), The Voyage of the ‘Beagle’: 446 - 447 2272 Henry Reynolds (2013), Forgotten War: 150 2273 Ibid: 155 - 156. 2274 Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain: 76 – 78, 85. 2275 Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain?: 80 2276 Van Diemen’s Land, Copies of all Correspondence Between Lieutenant Governor Arthur and His Majesty’s Secretary of State ed. A.G.L. Shaw, Extract of the minutes of the Executive Council, 23 rd February 1831: 82. 2277 Ibid, p. 82. 1353 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2278 Bringing Them Home, Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, 1997. This was a ground breaking report, commissioned by the Attorney-General at the time (Michael Lavarch) into the ‘stolen generation’, which chronicled continuing Aboriginal disadvantage and mistreatment. The report was savaged by some historians, particularly those who deny the evidence for Australian genocide. https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/bringing-them-home-stolen-children-report-1997 Other studies of systemic Aboriginal disadvantage have followed, among them: J Stanley, A Tomison, J Pocock (2003), Child Abuse and Neglect in Indigenous Australian Communities https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/child-abuse-and-neglect-indigenous-australian-communities I am not aware of any longitudinal Aboriginal studies on the hypothesis of epidemiological PTSD that measures the ongoing population effect of Aboriginal dispossession and marginalisation, but it seems an urgent area of investigation since it involves trans-generational trauma, possibly epigenetic. Tasmanian Aboriginals share similar psychosocial burdens as Aboriginals across Australia. Going part way to this empirical objective is: P Campbell, P Kelly, L Harrison (2010), The problem of marginalisation: labour markets, and emotional well-being www.deakin.edu.au/research-services/forms/v/3280/wps-31w.pdf 2279 Inga Clendinnen (May 2001), First Contact, The Australian Review of Books: 6 – 7, 26 last accessed October 2015. http://press.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ch0251.pdf Also cited by A. Dirk Moses, Genocide and Settler Society in Australian History: 19 [Genocide and Settler Society (2004), ed. A. Dirk Moses]; Tom Lawson (2014), The Last Man: 16. 2280 Racism: the belief that one race is superior to another; discrimination or hostility towards another race. 2281 See Gibbons (2015), The Great Australian Land War and its Consequences. 2282 Arthur to under-secretary Twiss, 9th March 1830, ...a system which combines conciliation with the absolute necessity of expelling the Natives altogether from the settled districts until they shall conduct themselves in a more peaceful manner, HRA 3/9: 133 2283 See FWAYAF Recollections From a (Homicidal) Pastoral Frontier.); George Murray, Secretary of State Despatch, 5th November, 1830. papers on Van Diemen’s land, 1831, No. 259, p. 56; HRA 3/9: 573-574. 2284 A. G. L. Shaw, 'Arthur, Sir George (1784–1854)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/arthur-sir-george-1721/text1883, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 21 October 2015. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/arthur-sir-george-1721 2285 For a commentary by Peter Chapman on this significant massacre event, see HRA 3/9: 825 - 829 2286 Judge-Advocate Atkins’ Opinion on the Treatment of Natives, 20 July 1805, HRA 1/5, 1804 – 1806: 502 – 504. 2287 Nicholas Clements ( 2015), The Black War: 36; Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 55 – 56; M. Fels, Culture contact in the country of Buckinghampshire, Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1811, Tasmanian Historical Research Association (THRA) Papers & Proceedings, vol. 29, no. 2, 1982: 47 – 69. 2288 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 58 - 63 2289 Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: 5 – 41; Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigine: 74 – 83; From 1803 to 1831, free grants of land were made, subject to a quit-rent. In February 1831, the New South Wales Government ordered that Crown Lands could only be disposed of through public auction. However, Arthur did not introduce land sales for some years. It is possible that he first wanted to build up his extensive land holdings. 2290 Clive Turnbull (1965), Black War: 65 – 66; For a transcript of this proclamation, see Henry Melville (1835), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 – 1835: 31 – 32. 2291 HRA 1/12: 21 2292 www.vdlfarms.com.au www.woolnorthtours.com.au NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission: 4th August 1830, 225 – 226, notes at 266 – 267. 2293 In fact, all Aboriginal killings were extrajudicial, for Arthur charged no one. He did not want the public, excluding Aboriginals, to become antagonistic to his authority. In some instances, Arthur went further by legalising the genocide through edicts condoning the violence by settlers and hs proclamations of martial law. 2294 John Connor (2005), The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838: 84 – 101 (Van Diemen’s Land 1826 – 1831); Nicholas Clements (2015), The Black War: 68 – 93; Clive Turnbull (1965), Black War the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines: 64 – 123; Arthur’s use of hangings was not restricted to Aboriginals. During his term, public execution reached unprecedented levels. Arthur left the bodies to rot as an example. [James Boyce 2008), Van Diemen’s Land: 169] 1354 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2295 Arthur hanged Musquito and Black Jack on 25 February 1825. Also see Henry Melville, The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 – 1835: 55 - 59. 2296 Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People: 97 – 98, edict from the Colonial Secretary’s Office, authorised by Arthur, 29 November 1826. ‘when a felony [by Aborigines] has been committed..the persons pursuing may use such force as necessary’. 2297 Lyndall Ryan http://www.massviolence.org/Article?id_article=106 2298 http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Cape%20Grim%20Massacre.htm ; http://press.anu.edu.au/apps/bookworm/view/Edward+M.+Curr+and+the+Tide+of+History/10411/ch01.html Ian McFarlane (2003), Cape Grim, in Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Robert Manne (Ed.): 277–298. 2299 For a transcript of Arthur’s proclamation, see Melville, Op. Cit. : 72 – 74. Arthur’s plan failed spectacularly. Wandering Palawa had no knowledge of it or the need for a ‘passport’. 2300 Melville writes: At the time it was promulgated it was almost certain death to any native who would shew himself to a European, and it was also death to any European that might fall within the reach of the spear or waddy of the Aborigines. [Ibid, p. 75] 2301 For a transcript of Arthur’s proclamation, see Henry Melville, ibid: 77 - 78. Melville writes: The effect of the proclamation of martial law, was to destroy, within twelve months after its publication, more than two thirds of these wild creatures, who by degrees dwindled away till their populous tribes were swept away from the face of the earth. [Ibid, p. 79]. 2302 Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834, Ed. NJB Plomley (2008): 225, 637. 2303 The details of the Emu Bay massacre are set out earlier in this document, under the chapter: The role of Martial Law in genocide. It becomes a contextual referent or case instance in the genocidal process for Tasmania. 2304 Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834 (ed. NJB Plomley), p. 637; Plomley cites the source as : CSO 1/326/7578. The Tasmanian colonial administration under the British Foreign Office never prosecuted acts of violence against Aboriginals. In consequence, there is an absence of case law. Also Ian McFarlane (2002), Aboriginal Society in North West Tasmania: Dispossession and Genocide: 120 – 144 http://eprints.utas.edu.au/220/ 2305 Report of the Aborigines’ Committee, 19th March 1830, Despatches, Arthur to Murray, HRA 3/9 (ed. Peter Chapman), pp. 202 – 236. 2306 Government Order No. 2, Colonial Secretary’s Office, 25th February 1830, HRA 3/9: 201. The bounty is for any captured Aboriginal, but ‘roving parties’ often killed in order to capture, with no questions asked under Arthur’s martial law proclamation. Also see Peter Chapman’s note, pp. 141 – 142. 2307 HRA 3/9, Arthur to Sir George Murray, Despatch 19, 15th April 1830: 164 – 236, especially paragraph 10 (pp. 167 – 168). Also see Peter Chapman’s note [ibid, note 183, pp. 788 – 789) about the profound human consequences of Arthur’s proposal to use convicts as a paramilitary force. Arthur proposes to arm 2,000 convicts against the Aboriginals. Murray agrees (p. 574). 2308 HRA 3/9: 201. Colonial Secretary’s Office, February 25th, 1830. Letter plus enclosures from George Arthur to Sir George Murray. Ed. Peter Chapman 2309 Clive Turnbull (1965), Black War the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines: 99- 123; David Davies (1973), The Last of the Tasmanians: 71 – 101; Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People: 87 – 119; Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 101 – 113; Nicholas Clements (2015), The Black War: 125 – 157. 2310 N.J.B. Plomley, Weep in Silence a history of the Flinder’s Island Aboriginal settlement; Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 219 - 251 2311 HRA 3/9: 825 – 829. 2312 HRA 1/5: 502 – 504. 2313 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 55 - 56; Nicholas Clements (2015), The Black War: 36; M. Fels (1982), Culture contact in the country of Buckinghamshire, Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1811, THRA Papers and Proceedings, vol. 29, no. 2: 47 – 69. 2314 Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 58 – 63. 2315 Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: 5 – 41; Lyndall Ryan (2012), Tasmanian Aborigines: 74 – 83. 2316 NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission, 4th August 1830, 225 – 226, notes at 266 – 267; www.vdlfarms.com.au www.woolnorthtours.com.au 1355 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2317 HRA 1/12: 21. NJB Plomley (2008), Friendly Mission, 4th August 1830, 225 – 226, notes at 266 – 267; www.vdlfarms.com.au www.woolnorthtours.com.au 2319 All Aboriginal killings were extrajudicial, although some were legalised by Arthur, especially during his Proclamations of Martial Law 1828 – 1832. In his term of office, Arthur did not prosecute a single white person for killing an Aboriginal. 2320 Melville, Op. Cit.: 72 – 74. 2321 Arthur hangs ‘Musquito’ and ‘Black Jack’ on 25th February 1825. Henry Melville, Op. Cit.: 55 - 59 2322 Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People: 97 – 98. Edict from the Colonial Secretary’s Office, authorised by Arthur, 29th November 1826: ‘when a felony [by Aborigines] has been committed.. the persons pursuing may use such force as necessary.’ 2323 John Connor (2005), The Australian Frontier Wars 1788 – 1838: 84 – 101 (Van Diemen’s Land 1826 – 1831); Nicholas Clements (2015), The Black War: 68- 93; Clive Turnbull (1965), Black War the Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines: 64 – 123; James Boyce (2008), Van Diemen’s Land: 169 2324 Government Order No. 2, Colonial Secretary’s Office, 25th February 1830, HRA 3/9: 201. The bounty is for any captured Aboriginal, but ‘roving parties’ often killed in order to capture, with no questions asked under Arthur’s martial law proclamation. Also see Peter Chapman’s note, pp. 141 – 142. 2325 Melville, Op. Cit.: 72 – 74; Arthur’s plan fails spectacularly. Wandering Palawa cannot read English, nor do they see the need for a ‘passport’ to travel around their own country. Apartheid was about to be born. With Australia’s oppressive system of apartheid, after Aboriginals were stripped out of their country, many survivors of the ‘killing times’ gravitated to towns, from where they suffered a second wave of dispossession, being forcibly relocated by Governments to ‘settlements’ and missions, where their lives were rigidly controlled. For example, Queensland Aboriginals still fearfully recall this period as ‘living under the Act’, a period that continued beyond the middle of the 20th century. Arthur’s idea of a passport was regenerated in other Australian colonies in their post-extermination phases. For example, between 1927 and 1954¸ Perth was declared a prohibited area for Noongar Aboriginals, for whom the Government required a permit to enter the city. I remember, when our family made a road trip in the early 1960s to Wellington, in New South Wales, wondering why Aboriginals had to remain in a roped off area at the front of a movie theatre. At the time, Aboriginals across Australia were not allowed to use white restaurants or swimming pools or RSL clubs or other public places, except under onerous conditions. Charlie Perkins’ 1965 Freedom Ride exposed some of these racist practices. Aboriginals were not allowed to vote until 1967, after a referendum. Eugenics was widely practiced by Governments, notably the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia early in the 20th century, Auber Neville, and emulated by other states. The Government intent was to attempt to ‘breed out the recessive Aboriginal trait’. The story has been accurately portrayed in the Australian film, Rabbit Proof Fence. The Stolen Generation was one consequence. Well into the 20th century, Aboriginals were still being exterminated by police and pastoralists in the northern half of Australia. The damning subject is addressed in Gibbons, Recollections of a (homicidal) pastoral frontier. 2326 Melville writes: At the time it was promulgated it was almost certain death to any native who would shew himself to a European, and it was also death to any European that might fall within the reach of the spear or waddy of the Aborigines. [Ibid: 75]. 2327 Henry Melville, ibid: 77 – 78. Melville writes: The effect of the proclamation of martial law, was to destroy, within twelve months after its publication, more than two thirds of these wild creatures, who by degrees dwindled away till their populous tribes were swept away from the face of the earth. [Ibid: 79] 2328 Friendly Mission, The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834, Ed. NJB Plomley (2008): 225, 637. 2329 Report of the Aborigines’ Committee, 19th March 1830, Arthur to Murray, HRA 3/9, (ed. Peter Chapman): 202 – 236. 2330 HRA 3/9, Arthur to Sir George Murray, Despatch 19, 15th April 1830: 164 – 236, especially paragraph 10 (pp. 167 – 168) and Peter Chapman’s note [note 183, pp. 788 – 790] about the profound human consequences of Arthur’s proposal to use convicts as a paramilitary force, which Murray approves. 2318 1356 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2331 Murray’s reply to Arthur, 5th November 1830, is seen at HRA 3/9: 573 – 576. Rather than exercising a ‘restraining influence’ on Arthur (as Reynolds argues), Britain fully supports Arthur’s genocidal measures. 2332 Clive Turnbull (1965), Black War the Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines: 99 – 123; David Davies (1973), The Last of the Tasmanians: 71 – 101; Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People: 87 – 119;Lyndall Ryan (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians: 101 – 113; Nicholas Clements (2015), The Black War: 125 – 157; HRA 3/9, Arthur to Murray, 20th November 1830, Enclosure 7 ‘Field plan of movements of the military’ and enclosure 8 ‘Memorandum by Lieut. Governor’: 655 – 659, and notes by Peter Chapman, pp. 936 – 939. In this enclosure, Arthur’s state of mind is evident. As an authoritarian, he will not tolerate Aboriginal resistance. He gives up the pretence of ‘conciliating’ Aboriginal affections. For Arthur, settler sovereignty is paramount. He writes: ...any attempt to conciliate and reform the Aboriginal Inhabitants while totally cut off from all but hostile intercourse with the White Residents, and while living in habits so utterly incomprehensible with the interests and customs of civilised man, would be vain and hopeless. [Ibid: 655]. Although Lord Goderich (who by this time had replaced Murray) had approved the ‘Black Line operation, he mollified Arthur for its complete failure: considering the difficulties with which you had to contend a different result was rather to be hoped for than expected. Goderich, like Murray, was to be a strong supporter of Arthur’s genocidal actions against the Aboriginals. 2333 Ian McFarlane (2003), Cape Grim: 277 – 298 (in Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Robert Manne (Ed.). The Cape Grim massacre took place in February 1828, before Arthur declared Martial Law. The massacre was never investigated. Under Arthur’s edict that opposing ‘force by force’ was justified, the penalty for killing sheep became death. See Henry Reynolds (1995), Fate of a Free People: 97 – 98, edict from the Colonial Secretary’s Office, authorised by Arthur, 29 November 1826, ‘when a felony (by Aborigines) has been committed..the persons pursuing may use such force as necessary’. Arthur is here restating Bathurst’s edict of 1825 to ‘oppose force by force’. Robinson interviews one of the VDLC murderers, Gunchannon, on 10 th August 1830: Friendly Mission (2008), ed. NJB Plomley: 216 – 217, 229 – 230, 266; Ian McFarlane (2002), Aboriginal Society in North West Tasmania: Dispossession and Genocide: 101 – 121 http://eprints.utas.edu.au/220/ In December 1827, over a hundred sheep were killed. Four VDLC employees, Charles Chamberlain, John Weaver, William Gunshannon (Gunchannon) and Richard Nicholson conducted a reprisal massacre that was endorsed by Edward Curr. They were never charged. At the time of the massacre on 10 th February 1828, martial law was not yet in force. However, as was his custom, Arthur took no action to punish the offenders. The use of lethal force was common and accepted for killing sheep. When Goldie, the VDLC superintendent, reported the massacre to Curr, he also mentions the Company practice of sexually enslaving Native women: The woman is in irons. I make her wash potatoes for the horses and intend taking her to the hills and making her work.. the Woman will not speak and is often very sulky. She broke her irons once and was nearly getting away. I think she is about 20 or 22 years old. I have no doubt she will work. Barras can make her do anything. [Goldie to Curr, 16th September 1829, AOT, cited by Ian McFarlane (2002), ibid: 123 2334 http://ozcase.library.qut.edu.au/qhlc/documents/CrownLandsAlienationAct1868_31Vic_46.pdf See FWAYAF Documents that Shaped Australia for transcript. 2335 See Gibbons, FWAYAF In Search of History: the massacre at Murdering Creek revisited. (academia.edu ) 2336 Friendly Mission The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829 – 1834, Ed. NJB Plomley (2008): 225 2337 Letter from Goldie to Arthur, 5th October 1829, AOT CO 280/25, pp. 468 – 474, quoted by Ian McFarlane (2002), Aboriginal Society in North West Tasmania: Dispossession and Genocide: 127; Geoff Lennox, The Van Diemen’s Land Company and the Tasmanian Aborigines: A Reappraisal, Tasmanian Historical Research Association (THRA) Papers and Proceedings, 1990, Vol. 37: 20. 2338 Note that the sub-processes (Initial Occupation, Protection, Consolidation, Repression and Subjugation) are further broken down into repeatable activity strings such as Sexual Predation, Punitive Expeditions, Military Campaigns, and so on. For simplicity, this further decomposition is not shown in the Case detail, but you will find it summarised under the chapter Case instantiations for the genocidal process in Tasmania. 2339 Sealers first began operations around the coast of Tasmania from 1798. 2340 For a transcript of the 1901 Constitution for Australia, see http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/cth1_doc_1900.pdf in particular, s 51(xxvi) 1357 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2341 We commemorate this significant defeat as Anzac Day on the 25 th April. But was the sacrifice worth it? The real war was on the Western front against the Germans; the Turkish war was a sideshow, of little relevance in the overall WWII outcome. 2342 This is an extract from Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa 2343 See FWAYAF The Political Uses of Australian genocide. See Ray Gibbons (2015), academia.edu, Deconstructing Colonial Myths: the Massacre at Murdering Creek. In this case, Murdering Creek becomes an instance of the independent variable. Also Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa for a mapping of the Emu Bay massacre. 2345 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention (Lemkin). https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf 2346 We will argue that all points of Australian territorial invasion followed a similar dispossessory pattern. 2347 Ray Gibbons (2020 planned publishment), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 2348 For the analysis, see Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Queensland Genocide under the section: The growth in Queensland’s economy: 1860 - 1900 2349 See, for example: Noel Loos (1982), Invasion and Resistance Aboriginal –European Relations on the North Queensland Frontier 1861 – 1897; Libby Connors (2015), Warrior a legendary leader’s dramatic life and violent death on the colonial frontier. 2350 Raymond Evans, Robert Ørsted–Jensen (2014), “I cannot say the numbers that were killed”: Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier. https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:353456 2351 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Queensland Genocide 2352 This type process was replicated for all beachhead invasion points around the country, including Queensland, showing a self-similar pattern. 2353 See Context in this document. 2354 Ray Gibbons (2015), Typology of Australian Genocide 2355 For a detailed analysis, see Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 2356 For example, see Case Instance: Arthur’s declaration of martial law 1828 - 1830: the massacre at Emu Bay 1829 in Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 2357 Ray Gibbons (2016), The Semantic Typology of Australian Genocide. 2358 The generalised association type between all vectorial agency triggers is uses (or is used by), depending on the direction of the association. The network of type triggers overlays the Occupation/ Genocide type process. 2344 2359 See Context, in Ray gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. Repeatability means that each instantiation becomes a contextual referent. 2361 For detailed analyses, see Ray Gibbons (2019), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide; Ray Gibbons (2019), Deconstructing Queensland genocide 2362 See Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Queensland Genocide 2363 This total figure for ‘removals’ is slightly inconsistent with Thom’s earlier figure of 1587. The figure excludes 228 people (see next footnote), making Thom’s later total 1478. 2364 In addition, Thom identifies: Removals from other settlements, 99 (6.7%); Prisons, 56 (3.8%); Other institutions, 73 (5.0%). 2365 Thom Blake (1992), A dumping ground : Barambah Aboriginal settlement 1900-40: 61, PhD Thesis https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:185624 2366 Ibid. 2367 Annual Report of the Chief Protector, 1911: 14. https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/63771.pdf 2368 Bright’s disease is the historical term for Glomerulonephritis or a type of kidney inflammation that can be caused, among other things, by a strep throat. 2369 The Queenslander on 14 June 1919 2360 1358 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22373494?searchTerm=dr.%20junk%2C%20visiting%20medical%20offi cer%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20&searchLimits=exactPhrase|||anyWords|||notWords|||re questHandler|||dateFrom=1919-06-14|||dateTo=1919-06-14|||l-advstate=Queensland|||lword=*ignore*%7C*ignore*|||l-illustrated=*ignore*%7C*ignore*|||sortby 2370 Thom Blake (2001), A Dumping Ground a history of the Cherbourg settlement: 89. 2371 Thom Blake (1992), A dumping ground : Barambah Aboriginal settlement 1900-40 , PhD Thesis https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:185624 2372 Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain? The question of genocide in Australia’s history: 84 2373 Ibid: 85. My own figures show that, between 1833 and 1837, 87 Palawa people died. See Ray Gibbons (2019), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 2374 Ibid: 92, citing Register of Deaths, 1913, 1916. 2375 Ibid: 103. 2376 Ibid: 92 2377 Ibid: 92 – 93, citing WP Semple to Chief Protector of Aboriginals, 7 December 1931, QSA A/3555 31/9445 2378 Ibid: 93, citing QPP (1916) 3: 1738, (1927) 1: 1121; Register of Deaths, 1915, 1926. 2379 Ibid: 91, citing QPP (1908) 3: 939, (1909) 2: 1010, (1911) 3: 1313, (1912) 2: 1015, (1916) 3: 1738, (1919) 2: 542, (1920) 2: 231, (1923) 1: 1071, (1925) 1: 1091, (1934): 882, (1939) 2: 1330. 2380 Ibid: 91 2381 Ray Gibbons (2018), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa 2382 Ray Gibbons (2018), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. Also see Peter Dowling (1977), “A Great Deal of Sickness” Introduced diseases among the Aboriginal People of colonial Southeast Australia 1788 – 1900 https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/7529?mode=full 2383 Ray Gibbons (2018), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa 2384 NJB Plomley (1992), The Aboriginal/ Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1831: 10. Plomley tabulates the number of individual clashes by years. These statistics have been revised by Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 2385 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa 2386 Op. Cit., Plomley: 11 2387 Ibid: 26 2388 For the complete analysis, see Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 2389 See Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa for a depopulation analysis 2390 See, for example: Katherine Ellinghaus (2003), Absorbing the ‘Aboriginal problem’: controlling interracial marriage in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries Aboriginal History 2003 Vol 27 http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p73641/pdf/ch1128.pdf White Australians relied on interracial sexual relationships to bring about assimilation through a generation-bygeneration loss of physical identity [Ibid: 202} 2391 Under Aubrey Neville’s eugenics policy, Aboriginal absorption or ‘breeding out the colour’ was promoted as a way of saving the race, which was expected to die out. Neville was Western Australia’s Chief Aboriginal Protector (1915 – 1936) and Commissioner of Native Affairs (1936 – 1940), when he oversaw a child removal programme. Also see Robin Holland (2003), THE IMPACT OF ‘DOOMED RACE’ ASSUMPTIONS IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF QUEENSLAND’S INDIGENOUS POPULATION BY THE CHIEF PROTECTORS OF ABORIGINALS FROM 1897 TO 1942, MA Thesis https://eprints.qut.edu.au/61774/2/Robin_Holland_Thesis.pdf 2392 See, for example: Colin Tatz (1999), Genocide in Australia https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/products/discussion_paper/tatzc-dp08-genocide-in-australia.pdf We know something about Article II (a), "killing members of the group", because they, the Aborigines, were members of a definable group. We know something about the physical killings, particularly in the latter half of the last and the early part of this century. The first white settlers came to Tasmania in 1803, and by 1806 the serious killing began [See Lyndall Ryan (1981), The Aboriginal Tasmanians ]. 1359 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited In retaliation for the spearing of livestock, Aboriginal children were abducted for use in forced labour, women were raped and tortured and given poisoned flour, and the men were shot. They were systematically disposed of in ones, twos and threes, or in dozens, rather than in one systematic massacre. [Ibid: 14] 2393 We set out a more rigorous analysis of this hypothesis and those associated with each L categorial agency in Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 2394 Oxford English Reference Dictionary. 2395 James Bonwick (1884), The Lost Tasmanian Race: 40 2396 HRA 3/5: 70 2397 For a transcript, see Henry Melville (1835), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 – 1835: 31 – 32. 2398 Henry Melville (1835), The History of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 – 1835: 30 – 32. Although Arthur was acutely aware of violence towards Aboriginals, he charged no one during his term of office. Shortly after Arthur became Governor, he was causing the violence through his policies and proclamations. 2399 See for example Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: 109 – 125 under the subject ‘If it moves, shoot it...’ the impact of European settlement on the environment. 2400 Despatches, Arthur to Murray, 15th April 1830, HRA 3/9 (ed. Peter Chapman): 202 - 236, Aborigines’ Committee Report, finding number 22. 2401 Arthur to Murray, 15th April 1830, HRA 3/9: 164 – 236. This despatch included the Aborigines’ Committee Report. 2402 Murray to Arthur, 5th November 1830 (read in the Executive Council by Montagu on 1 st June 1831), HRA 3/9: 575 2403 In a scathing investigation of corporate and government corruption in the downfall of Gunn’s Limited, a Tasmanian forestry company, Beresford writes: ‘government policy in Tasmania was built around a culture of antienvironmentalism and destruction of the natural environment. [...] anti-environmentalism has been a defining theme of government policy since early colonial times’. [Quentin Beresford (2015), The Rise and Fall of Gunns Ltd: 385]. 2404 Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians (1996): 77. 2405 NG Butlin (1993), Economics and the Dreamtime: 129 2406 Louisa Anne Meredith (1852): My Home in Tasmania During a Residence of Nine Years (Volume 1): 244 2407 John Oxley (1784 – 1828) was an explorer and New South Wales surveyor general from 1812 to 1828. He visited Tasmania in 1809. 2408 HRA 3/1: 575-6. 2409 The Parliamentary Report on Fisheries of Tasmania, Report of the Royal Commission (Fisheries of Tasmania 1882); Shellfish Reefs at Risk, p. 16 https://www.conservationgateway.org/ConservationPractices/Marine/Documents/Shellfish%20Reefs%20at%20Ris k-06.18.09-Pages.pdf 2410 Louisa Meredith, My Home in Tasmania, p. 245 (no volume number is cited), quoted by James Boyce, Fantasy Island, in Whitewash On Keith Windscuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, edited by Robert Manne (2003): 50. Louisa Anne Meredith (1812 – 1895). Louisa migrated with her family to Tasmania in 1821, but Arthur denied them a land grant. They moved to Oyster Bay in 1840, where they bought the estate next to her father-in-law. There are two different versions of this book. One version is in two volumes. The citation for Boyce’s quote is incorrect. Also see Louisa Anne Meredith (1852), My Home in Tasmania: During a Residence of Nine Years, vol. 1: 98 – 99 , where Meredith is regretting the vanished black swan, not out of any ecological reason, but because there are none left for her and others to shoot or otherwise capture during the moulting season. She goes on to write what they are like to eat. ‘..dressed goose-fashion, they are thought to taste like that bird, but I consider them superior, being less coarsely fat, and of a more game-like flavour, especially if served without customary strong “illustrations” of sage and onion bestowed upon the goose.’ 2411 Louisa Anne Meredith (1852), My Home in Tasmania during a residence of nine years, Volume 1: 98. Britain’s invasive and exploitative culture extended to the Palawa, whom it displaced and destroyed almost as quickly as the Black Swans. 2412 Lieut-Governor Collins to Under-Secretary Sullivan, 4th August 1804, HRA 3/1: 276 - 277 2413 Louisa’s father-in-law, George Meredith, was among those involved in shore-based whaling. 2414 Some Palawa descendants try to reclaim their history by asserting that their women were deliberately offered to sealers in trade, to preserve the blood line, because they saw no future for themselves as a race, being shot at by graziers if they used their own hunting grounds. However, most of the evidence supports sexual predation by whites as the major reason for mixed progeny. 1360 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2415 HRA 3/9, Arthur to Sir George Murray, Despatch 19, 15th April 1830: 164 – 236, especially paragraph 10 (pp. 167 – 168). Also see Peter Chapman’s note [ibid, note 183, pp. 788 – 789) about the profound human consequences of Arthur’s proposal to use convicts as a paramilitary force. Arthur proposes to arm 2,000 convicts against the Aboriginals. Murray agrees (p. 574). 2416 This deception became a favourite means of plausible deniability in killing from a distance. It was cloaked as an act of kindness. The ‘generosity’ was soon extended to other Australian colonies. No one was prosecuted. 2417 The Hobart Town Courier, Saturday 11 December 1830, p. 2 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article-article4205955 2418 NJB Plomley (1966), Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian journals and papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829– 1834, uploaded to academia by Gregory Lehman https://www.academia.edu/4801570/Friendly_Mission_The_Tasmanian_journals_and_papers_of_George_August us_Robinson_1829_1834_by_N._J._B._Plomley 2419 Friendly Mission, The Tasmanian Journal and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, ed. NJB Plomley (2008), 23 rd November 1829, Bruny Island: 100-101. 2420 This is the specious argument by misdirection and reframing we hear often from special interest groups and populist identity politicians who are wedded to non-evidence-based ideology and a conservative constituency, where inconvenient facts are brushed aside (displaced) to be replaced by mere opinion. 2421 https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/australia-not-on-track-to-meet-climate-targets/ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-01/is-australia-on-track-to-meet-its-paris-emissions-targets/10920500 2422 Ray Gibbons (2020), Genocide, ecocide academia.edu 2423 Also see Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa 2424 These processes are deconstructed in Context and Introduction. 2425 The occupation process is further outlined in Gibbons (2015), FWAYAF Deconstructing Colonial Myths: the massacre at Murdering Creek and detailed in FWAYAF The Political Uses of Australian Genocide, which sets out the overall methodology and semantic typology for investigating the rise of settler sovereignty and the consequent destruction of Aboriginal society. 2426 One of these remote settlements was Weipa, but when bauxite was discovered, Aboriginals were relocated by the Queensland Government’s Aboriginal ‘Protector’ (Pat Killoran, a member of the far-right wing Bjelke-Petersen Government). Another was Maralinga, in the northern desert of South Australia, where Aboriginals were living unmolested until the British Government demanded its use for nuclear weapons testing, whether or not Aboriginals remained there. Some number perished from radiation poisoning. The examples abound. Aboriginals were allowed to reclaim (but not own) land that appeared worthless, until some worth was discovered. See Gibbons (2016), Recollections from a (Homicidal) Frontier; for Killoran policies, see Kidd, Rosalind, The Way We Civilise, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1997. 2427 Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania Creating an Antipodean England: 13 based upon the register of Van Diemen’s Land land grants held by the Archives Office of Tasmania (LSD 354) 2428 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa 2429 In 1823, Sorell was the Tasmanian Governor, under Brisbane. 2430 https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guides-and-indexes/land-grants-guide1788-1856 Also Tasmanian Archive Office, LSD 354 2431 Ibid. 2432 On 3 April 1816 Sorell was appointed to replace Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Davey as lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen's Land …..He sailed in the transport Sir William Bensley and reached Sydney on 10 March 1817. During a brief stay there Sorell impressed Governor Lachlan Macquarie before going on to Hobart Town. On 9 April he assumed office http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sorell-william-2680 2433 https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/archives/collections-and-research/guides-and-indexes/land-grants-guide1788-1856 2434 WN Hurst (1938), A Short History of Land Settlement in Tasmania: 12 – 14 https://eprints.utas.edu.au/22625/1/Hurst-history-tasmania.pdf 2435 Adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010065b.htm last accessed 25th September 2013. 2436 Bathurst also asked Bigge to enquire into the system of transportation as an effective deterrent against crime. Bigge’s terms of reference are set out in Bathurst to Macquarie, 30th January, 1819. HRA 1/10, pp. 22 – 31. 2437 Ibid, Maurice Cornish (2000), EARLY LAND DEALINGS IN TASMANIA FROM SETTLEMENT TO 1827: 2 1361 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2438 John Thomas Bigge (1822 - 1823), Reports of the commissioner of inquiry on the state of the colony of New South Wales 2439 See Regulations respecting Grants of Land and Allotments in the Towns J.T. Bigge, Report of the commission of inquiry on the state of agriculture and trade in the colony of New South Wales, 13 March 1823, pp. 33 – 51; HRA 1/10, pp. 330 – 334; Also see Gibbons (2016), Recollections of a (homicidal) pastoral frontier 1788 - 1928 2440 http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/tas/num_act/aatpftrodwjacerp8gin51017/ On 4th July 1829, Arthur wrote to Murray about his new land regulations to operate as ‘a wholesome check upon the existing mania for acquiring land’. [HRA 3/8: 436] 2441 Op. Cit., Cornish (2000): 4 2442 John West (1852), The History of Tasmania (republished, with editing by A.G.L. Shaw, in 1971): 314 2443 R. M. Hartwell (1954), The economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850: 29, citing John West (1852), The History of Tasmania: 134 (republished, with editing by A.G.L. Shaw, in 1971) 2444 Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: 10 2445 Cumulative data derives from Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: 13 (citing Register of Van Diemen’s land grants, L.S.D. 354, Archives Office of Tasmania). Note the extraordinarily steep increase in 1823, in the most part driven by the huge rise in the number of grantees, as the number of settlers surged on the back of conducive British immigration policies. In 1823, the average Tasmanian grant was about 430 acres. 2446 HRA 3/3: 585-586. Cited by James Boyce, Fantasy Island, p. 54 (Robert Manne (Ed.), Whitewash On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History). Also Land Musters, stock returns and lists: Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1822 (edited by Irene Schaffer) available as a CDROM from www.gould.com.au 2447 RM Hartwell (1954), The Economic Development of Van Diemen’s Land 1820 – 1850: 110 2448 Arthur to Murray, 17th August 1830, ‘During the Year 240,655 Acres were granted; of this quantity 19,215 Acres were sold at an average of 5s/10/½ per Acre. 216,880 acres were granted at a Quit Rent of 5 per Cent, and 4,560 Acres were granted to Naval and Military Officers free of Quit rent under the regulations in their favour’.[HRA 3/9: 442] 2449 These figures differ slightly from Sharon Morgan (1992), Land Settlement in Early Tasmania Creating an Antipodean England: 13. Her figures derive from the Register of Van Diemen’s land grants, L.S.D. 354, Archives Office of Tasmania. For example, she quotes acreage granted in 1823 as 441,871 acres, with a cumulative grant between 1804 and 1823 of 574, 421.5 across a total of 1776 grants. Also see CJ King (1957), An outline of Closer Settlement Part I The sequence of the land laws 1788 – 1956; 1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 1911 Land Tenure and Settlement http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/featurearticlesbytitle/88FD067140FC3F4DCA2569E300102388?OpenD ocument ; Maurice Cornish (ca. 2000) PROJECT OFFICER Office of the Recorder of Titles, EARLY LAND DEALINGS IN TASMANIA FROM SETTLEMENT TO 1827 (based upon the research of John Marrison) http://dpipwe.tas.gov.au/Documents/Early-land-dealings-in-Tasmania-from-settlement-to-1827.pdf 2450 Source: NJB Plomley, Friendly Mission (2008): 45 2451 www.utas.edu,au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/V/VDL%20Co.htm 2452 Source: Sharon Morgan, Land Settlement in Early Tasmania (1992): 21 2453 Rebecca Kippen (2014), The Population History of Tasmania to Federation, Melbourne University, , https://www.apa.org.au/sites/default/files/atoms/files/Wed%20Plen%201100%20Kippen.pdf 2454 HRA 3/8, Arthur to Murray, 3 April 1829, Despatch No. 21: 304, and notes 235, 255, 317. The ‘land question’ is also exposed by Henry Melville, The History of Van Diemen’s Land From the Year 1824 to 1835; 116 – 137. 2455 Melville was campaigning for the recall of Arthur and for the reintroduction of land grants. Hence the tone of his declamation. 2456 Ibid, Melville: 116 - 118 2457 NJB Plomley (1992), The Aboriginal/ Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land 1803 – 1831: 10. Plomley tabulates the number of individual clashes by years. These statistics have been revised by Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa. 2458 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa 2459 Op. Cit., Plomley: 11 2460 Ibid: 26 2461 See Ray Gibbons (2015), Deconstructing Colonial Myths the massacre at Murdering Creek; (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide. 1362 Tasmanian Genocide Revisited 2462 RC Kramer, RJ Michalowski, D Kauzlarich (2002), The Origins and Development of the Concept and Theory of State-Corporate Crime, Crime & Delinquency. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.515.7792&rep=rep1&type=pdf 2463 Kristian Lasslett, A Critical Introduction to State-Corporate Crime http://statecrime.org/state-crimeresearch/state-corporate-crime-crit-intro/ Queen Mary University of London 2464 The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, established in December 2017 https://financialservices.royalcommission.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx 2465 Ray Gibbons (2020), On Values the origins of Australia’s social order academia.edu 2466 See Ray Gibbons, Introduction, the myth of settler sovereignty. Academia.edu 2467 Ray Gibbins (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa 2468 An epigram by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in the January 1849 issue of his journal Les Guêpes (“The Wasps”). Literally “The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.” 2469 This is an ironic play on: The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. [Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2, oration by Antony]. 2470 https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/2001-john-howard 2471 Also see Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa; (2020), Whitewash the rewriting of Palawa genocidal repression in Tasmania 2472 Elizabeth Farrelly, A backup plan to bring on our demise, The Sydney Morning Herald, News Review, 28, February 4-5, 2017 2473 https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf 2474 See this document: Ray Gibbons (2017), Myths and Reality academia.edu 2475 http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA/1992/23.htm 2476 Inga Clendinnen (2007), Agamemnon’s Kiss: Selected Essays: 156. Also quoted by Peter Sutton (2009): 211 2477 Ray Gibbons (2017), Recollections of a (homicidal) pastoral frontier (in draft). 2478 S Eliot, Burnt Norton 2479 Also see Ray Gibbons (2020), Whitewash: the rewriting of Palawa Lemkinian repression in Tasmania 2480 See, for example: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter12_FINAL.pdf 2481 See, for example Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Australian Omnicide a brief history of the future academia.edu 2482 Ray Gibbons (2020), On Values the origins of Australia’s social order academia.edu 2483 Henry Reynolds (2001), An Indelible Stain? The question of genocide in Australia’s history: 27 2484 See, for example: Ugo Bardi (2020), Before the Collapse: A Guide to the Other Side of Growth 2485 See, for example: José Fontanari (2018), The Collapse of Ecosystem Engineer Populations https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/6/1/9 2486 The Buddhist Vipassana meditation technique is a way of seeing ‘things’ as they really are, that is: paring the cP layers back to P. We can also use logical analysis, as here. 2487 Hitler established the Reich ministry of public enlightenment: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005202 https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007677 2488 In 2008, Barack Obama won 78 percent of the Jewish vote. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-andpolitics/97638/the-most-jewish-election 2489 https://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/28/1077677004840.html 2490 See AGL Shaw http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/arthur-sir-george-1721 2491 Ray Gibbons (2020), Deconstructing Tasmanian Genocide the extermination of the Palawa 2492 1 square kilometre is 1 million square metres, so 1 million acres is (1000000 x 4,047 / 1000000 =) 4,047 square kms or 63.6 kms squared. 2493 £1 (UKP in the year 1800) is roughly the equivalent of £50 (UKP in 2010) or $85 (AUD in 2010). Australia introduced a decimal currency system in 1966, with a conversion rate of: £1 pound to 2 dollars, and one shilling to 10 cents. 1363

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