In the 1800s, colonisers attempted to listen to First Nations people. It didn't stop the massacres

Note of warning: This article refers to deceased Aboriginal people, their words, names and images.

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The ConversationThe Conversation
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https://theconversation.com/in-the-1800s-colonisers-attempted-to-listen-to-first-nations-people-it-didnt-stop-the-massacres-204538https://theconversation.com/in-the-1800s-colonisers-attempted-to-listen-to-first-nations-people-it-didnt-stop-the-massacres-204538
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Thursday, June 1, 2023
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Tags: 
Adoption, Violence, Black War, Commons, Port, Indigenous peoples, Ethnic cleansing, Aboriginal Protection Board, Select committee (United Kingdom), History, Person, Gap, Movement, Government, Parliament, Human voice, Sheep, Name, Closing the Gap, Time, Police, Cattle, First Nations, 1998 Australian Constitutional Convention, Myall Creek massacre, Waterloo Creek, Select committee, House, Missionary, Whaling, Mining, Meat, Nursing, Aborigine, Flinders Island
Geotags: 
NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA, TASMANIA, PALAWA, UK
Summary
Key Points: 
  • Note of warning: This article refers to deceased Aboriginal people, their words, names and images.
  • Words attributed to them and images in the article are already in the public domain.
  • Also, historical language is used in this article that may cause offence.

Spotlight on the treatment of Indigenous people

    • During the 1830s, slave rebellions in Britain’s colonies and a growing humanitarian movement in the UK pushed the government to abolish slavery.
    • The spotlight was then turned on the treatment of Indigenous peoples, both within and on the edges of the rapidly expanding British Empire.
    • [had] directed their anxious attention to the adoption of some plan for the better protection and civilisation of the native tribes.
    • shewn [sic] himself to be eminently qualified by his charge of the Aboriginal Establishment at Flinders Island.

An aim to convey ‘wants, wishes or grievances’

    • Protectors were to “watch over the rights and interests of the natives” and protect them from “acts of cruelty, of oppression or injustice”.
    • The protector was also to be a kind of conduit to express the “wants, wishes or grievances” of Aboriginal peoples to the colonial governments.
    • Read more:
      90 years ago, Yorta Yorta leader William Cooper petitioned the king for Aboriginal representation in parliament

A failure from the beginning

    • The protectorates scheme was also bound up in the supposed superiority of the colonisers’ race and Christian religion.
    • The ultimate goal was for Aboriginal people to become “civilised” and Christian – just like white people apparently were.
    • It was a paternalistic concept that ultimately turned humanitarian ideals into an even more violent and coercive colonial system.

How this history feeds into failed policies today

    • These supposedly moral standards around “protection” and “civilisation” ultimately forced Indigenous people to become less Indigenous.
    • These beliefs continue to permeate our government today through failed paternalistic policies such as Closing the Gap.
    • Such racialised policies draw on Australia’s history of containment of Aboriginal land and the ongoing colonial violence of “protection”.
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