WEBVTT - Invasion Day 0:00:02.680 --> 0:00:06.080 Just before nine o'clock last night, the jury returned guilty 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:10.080 verdicts against all three defendants. It was absolutely shambles, to 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:12.680 tell you the truth, just absolutely really coming. Blood on 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:15.080 his clothing the day after the alleged a top on. 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:17.520 A shallow mud bank and it fits through a river. Basically, 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:19.200 I think most of the people are used to me 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:22.400 are good people. I think a really important question we 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:25.800 need to ask is how many Indigenous prisoners in Australia 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:26.360 are innocent. 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:29.880 This is Curtain, a podcast where we pull back the 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:32.440 blinds to shine a light on the darkest parts of 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.240 our justice system and ask who are the victims. I'm 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:38.600 Amy maguire and. 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:42.120 I'm Martin Hodgson, a senior advocate for the Foreign Prisoner 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:46.480 Support Service. And a warning. This series contains the names 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:50.839 of deceased peoples and has distressing content that might upset 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:51.680 some listeners. 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:58.400 Welcome to Curtin the podcast an Invasion Day Special. In 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:02.760 a moment, you'll hear from my colleague Amy McGuire and 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:05.480 then I have a challenge for you that i'd like 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:10.080 you to undertake after you've listened to this podcast. It 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:14.680 helps explain why one date the twenty sixth of January 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:18.920 is not all that explains the history of this country. 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:24.520 Invasion Day didn't begin an end on the one single day. 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:31.080 It's ongoing and continues. But first, my colleague Amy McGuire. 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:36.160 She's been traveling Australia for the last few months looking 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:40.759 at the impact on Aboriginal people of the past, present, 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:45.720 and the future for BuzzFeed. She's created an excellent video 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:50.280 series about this, and she's also written an article about 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:54.720 why changing the date is so important. We'll post the 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.680 links to both the video series and the article on 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:02.279 our website. Stay with me after you've heard from Amy 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:06.520 for the challenge, But for now, he's my co host, 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:10.959 Amy maguire reflecting on what Invasion Day. 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:17.320 Means to her, Today's Australia Day. It's a day where 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:20.120 the rest of the nation comes together and celebrates. They 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:24.400 use this public holiday to drink to excess, to party 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:30.080 on beaches, to basically comfort themselves from any idea of 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:35.040 what this day, January twenty six actually represents. For Aboriginal people. 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:40.880 We view this date very differently. For years decades, it 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:45.120 has symbolized the attempted genocide of our people. It marks 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:49.239 the day that the first fleet sailed into Sydney Cove 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:54.320 in seventeen eighty eight. For US, it's the beginning of 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:57.360 the invasion, not just into Gategol lands around what is 0:02:57.400 --> 0:03:00.560 now called Sydney, but the beginning of the waves of 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:05.200 invasions that began into Aboriginal nations all across this country 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:09.120 at different times and under different circumstances. But one thing 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:13.160 is similar is that they left Aboriginal communities decimated, and 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:17.359 Aboriginal people had power and control ripped away from them 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:21.639 in the pursuit of white interests. Last year I went 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:25.800 over to Rottnest Island, which lies nineteen kilometers off the 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:29.960 coast of Fremantle near Perth and Rottenesst Island is now 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:36.120 one of Western Australia's most profitable tourism resorts. Thousands of 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:40.440 visitors go to Rottenest every year, including people from Western Australia. 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:44.720 But for Bodagna people it has a very different history. 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:47.760 It used to be and still is a place of 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:52.160 extreme cultural significance, a place where they're dead would go 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:57.760 to pass over. But when the invasion happened in Wa, 0:03:57.840 --> 0:04:01.560 which began at the Swan River colony around where now 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:06.480 where perf now sits. It was a prison camp where 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:11.280 up to four thousand Aboriginal men, many of them more men, 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:14.800 many of them resistance fighters in their own lands, not 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:18.200 just in normal country, but all across Western Australia, were 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:23.560 sent in chains. They were marched through Fremantle, put in 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:28.640 the roundhouse that still sits there, and put in chains, 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:33.320 made to row over choppy seas to Rotnest Island, where 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:37.320 many of them died. The conditions that they lived in 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:43.799 were horrendous. They would sit seven people in a very small, cramped, 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:48.480 dark cell, and they had to build that island's infrastructure, 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:53.080 infrastructure that is still there, with no food or with 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:59.159 very little food. Diseases were rampant, conditions were harsh. Many 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:05.120 of them died. Now in the nineteen seventies, workers who 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:08.560 were digging up part of that area discovered a mass 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:13.160 grave and the WA government attempted to cover it up. 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:18.640 They would have succeeded if not for a whistleblower who 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:23.200 actually came out and made news. And after that Aboriginal 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:29.800 people campaigned for that grave site to be respected, but 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:34.480 it took four decades. For a very long time, tourists 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:39.280 were still camping on that grave site, there's an estimated 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:43.240 three hundred and seventy Aboriginal monk who lied buried under 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:46.880 soil not six feet in some cases three to four feet. 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:52.080 People who went to Rotanness Island had no knowledge that 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:55.200 they were actually camping on top of the graves of 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:59.239 Aboriginal people. It was literally called tent land where people 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:04.000 would drink, sleep, party on the graves of law men, 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:08.760 on the graves of resistance fighters. Now it's only been 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:13.920 very recently that that area has been cordoned off. It's 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:18.480 only been very recently that the quad where many Aboriginal 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:21.120 people died, in fact, where five were hung in the 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:26.200 center of is going to be closed. But right now 0:06:26.279 --> 0:06:30.440 it's still a tourist resort. That concentration camp on Rottnest Island, 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:33.880 where three hundred and seventy maybe even more Aboriginal men died, 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:38.560 is currently a hotel where you pay three hundred dollars 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:42.280 a night to stay in. Can you imagine anywhere in 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:46.119 the world where a concentration camp, a place of such 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:50.880 extreme grief and trauma, could be converted into a tourist 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.120 hotel and the people who stay inside those walls and 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:58.240 pay hundreds of dollars are not told, but they're staying 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.880 in rooms where many men, many people died. Can you 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:06.159 imagine any place in the world. I visited that quad 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.320 and you could just feel the energy there. You could 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:11.880 feel the pain and you could feel the grief, and 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:15.200 I just wondered, how can anyone stay in these walls. 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:19.240 I walked a short walk down and saw the mass grave, 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:24.120 which is the largest death in custody site in Australia, 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:28.840 and I saw that there's barely any memorial to those people. 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:31.560 In fact, it's taken four decades to get a small 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:40.000 sign erected. Australia will celebrate on the graves of Aboriginal 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:44.960 people today. That's what's happened over in Rottenests, what's happening 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:48.680 right now, And it's a perfect metaphor for what Australia 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:53.360 does every year in January twenty six, which continues this 0:07:53.960 --> 0:08:00.880 horrendous display of amnesia, which continues to comfort Australians in 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:04.920 the knowledge that they can somehow barricade themselves from the past, 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:08.720 even though Aboriginal people deal with the past in their 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:12.680 present days every single day. And we see that in 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:17.160 the case of what we're talking about with Kurdin, we 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:22.800 see that outrages are still happening Australians refusing to own 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:26.560 up to their own complicity and Aboriginal disadvantage and dispossession 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.640 is exactly the issues that we continue to face when 0:08:30.680 --> 0:08:33.600 we talk about Kevin Henry, in the massive miscarriage of 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:38.080 justice that has happened. When Kevin Henry entered those walls 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:43.280 for Campton's Prison Capricornia Correctional Center, he was effectively rendered voiceless, 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:47.040 and for two long Aboriginal people have also been rendered voiceless. 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:50.920 Now we're using our voices, we're standing up on the 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:53.480 streets as we've done, and we're finally getting some sort 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:56.439 of coverage. And so if you believe in changing the date, 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:58.719 or if you believe like I do, in abolishing the day, 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:02.040 you should also believe in the wider issues as well, 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:06.920 helping Aboriginal people like Kevin Henry in ways that we've 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:10.360 told you, you can help supporting our fight because if 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:13.240 you have finally woken up to the fact that Australians 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:16.120 shouldn't be celebrating on a day of such deep pain 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:19.520 to Aboriginal people, if you believe that we should start 0:09:19.559 --> 0:09:21.920 addressing the unfinished business at the heart of this nation. 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.920 You should also be supporting fights like those for curtain, 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:29.360 fights like for so many other Aboriginal people who've been 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:34.600 denied their rights. You should be supporting the fight to 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:38.920 slow the rates of incarceration of Aboriginal people all across 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:44.600 the country. The issues are linked because what happened on 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:49.160 twenty sixth January seventeen eighty eight continues everything that we 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:51.800 talk about in this podcast, Everything that's happened to Kevin 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:55.800 Henry is a continuation of those boats that first sailed 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:59.079 into Sydney Cove. It's all connected. We don't have the 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:02.640 luxury of ign ignoring this. So today I just want 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:07.280 to push all our Aboriginal Islander listeners a safe day. 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:10.840 I hope that you take care of yourselves in the 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:14.600 face of so much horrendous disrespects that we see every 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:17.880 year in January twenty six and I also hope to 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:21.200 our listeners listening in Capricornia Correctional Center and all across 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:24.760 the country, and especially Kevin Henry, I hope that today 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:27.600 you have a good day and remember that we're all 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.360 thinking of you on the outside, and that we're going 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:34.240 to continue this flight just as Aboriginal people all across 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:36.640 the country protest on the streets. 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:42.480 Now I want to conduct with you in experiment. It's 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:47.479 an Invasion Day experiment to help you further understand exactly 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:53.360 what that means. Many in the non Indigenous community have 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:56.520 a simple argument when it comes to Aboriginal and Torres 0:10:56.559 --> 0:10:59.640 Straight Island to people calling for this date to be 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:06.280 chainedged Australia Day shifted to another time, a more appropriate 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:11.120 day and time, perhaps even when a treaty has been established, 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:18.439 when truth, justice and reconciliation have really been achieved, because, 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:23.520 as Amy pointed out, invasion didn't just begin on one 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:27.920 day and end the next. It was a continual process. 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:33.840 Australia as it's known today is a continent of nearly 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:43.760 eight million square kilometers. Sydney is roughly twelve thousand square kilometers. 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:49.320 To help you understand just how bad this invasion was, 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:54.600 I'm going to talk only about twenty square kilometers that 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:59.440 surround where I sit right now, and I want you 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:03.199 to do this. After you've listened to this, I want 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:07.080 you to research the twenty square kilometers that surround you 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:11.600 and what happened and is happening to the Aboriginal introstraight 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:16.119 island of people, whose land that belongs to and continues 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:21.240 to happen to them to this day. Within the twenty 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:25.800 square kilometers from where I sit right now recording for you, 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:32.920 these events took place. A man named Boyd, one of 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:38.080 the earlier settlers, as he was described, came to the 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:41.640 Beaga Valley on the far south coast of New South Wales. 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:48.760 Make no mistake, mister Boyd was a slave trader. How 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:52.080 do we know this? It was by his own admission. 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:58.320 In the eighteen hundreds, Boyd himself was being investigated for 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:02.719 conducting a slave trade. He was trafficking in Aboriginal and 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:07.480 Torrestrate Islander people as well as South Sea Islanders. He 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:11.320 did so with assistance of not just the British, but 0:13:11.400 --> 0:13:14.600 with people from many nations around the world who were 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:18.640 also involved in the slave trade. He was a well 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:24.880 established landowner and merchant around the world. In the Legislative 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:31.240 Council in New South Wales, Boyd, in defending himself, referenced 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:37.719 the African slave trade and made the discussion about introducing 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:44.680 such practice to the colony that would become Australia. He 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:49.680 used these slaves to enrich himself. They were brought to 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:53.880 a small place that to this day is still named 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:59.000 Boyd Town after this man, this self confessed slave trader. 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:04.079 The clerk sitting at the local bench of the magistrate's 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:10.280 court there took notes, and this is what he said. 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:14.800 None of the natives could speak English, and all were naked. 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:18.240 They all crowded around us, looking at us with the 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:22.200 utmost surprise and feeling at the texture of our clothes. 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:27.960 They seemed wild and restless. Here it's clear that a 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:32.920 no humanity was shown whatsoever, b that the state, through 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:36.960 a magistrate's court, was involved in assigning ownership to mister 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:43.360 Boyd of the Aboriginal people that they called natives. It 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:46.560 should also be noted that they were surprised at what 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:50.320 was happening to them. They were feeling the texture of 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:56.320 the clothes of these Europeans. They made no attempt at 0:14:56.320 --> 0:14:59.640 this point to resist. They were not acting in any 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:06.120 way violently, and yet over the coming years they would 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:09.520 be used as slaves, many of whom would be slaughtered 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:13.920 and killed. Others were never paid the supposed wage that 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:19.400 was guaranteed to them by the court, and many managed 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:25.560 to escape despite their goodwill despite the fact that it 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:28.360 was with surprise that they acted that they were being 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:34.000 treated this way. It took a number of years before 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:41.080 they acted in any way violently, and when they did, 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:45.200 what they did was simply to resist their own imprisonment, 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:48.480 to free themselves of the shackles of the slave trade 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:53.000 that operated in Australia, that was conducted not just by 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:57.840 the British, but by a global group of people who 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:02.280 had conducted the slave trade for centuries. When you think 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:05.120 about slavery, you should not just think about the African 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:08.840 slave trade, the slave trade that took place across the 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:12.720 Arab world, and slave trades that have operated up and 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:16.440 to this day. The slave trade was alive and well 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:22.240 in Australia. There was blackbirding from the South Sea Islands, 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:27.960 including what is now Vanuatu. A horrific history of people 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:32.200 being stolen away from places like Tanner Island and brought 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:37.520 to Queensland to work as slaves, never to see their 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:42.240 homes again, and it extends right around Australia. And that 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:46.960 slave trade took place within twenty square kilometers of where 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:51.400 I sit now. Another word, we hear a lot about 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:57.480 on Australia Day invasion day is massacre. If you look 0:16:57.520 --> 0:16:59.920 even at the maps that many of the universities off 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:04.680 for up, they show massacres right around the country. They 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:08.960 do not document them all. There was a massacre that 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:12.760 took place less than ten square kilometers from where I 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:17.880 sit right now, that isn't documented in the history books, 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:24.720 but is documented in diaries. Those diaries are those of 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:29.240 the men who carried out that massacre. This is from 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:33.840 an officer who observed what was going on. He wrote 0:17:33.880 --> 0:17:39.480 in his diary, Lieutenant H. W. Breton, that the invaders 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:44.600 invented all sorts of ridiculous tales concerning Aboriginal people in 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:47.240 order that they may be furnished with an excuse for 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:52.680 taking away their lives. When it came to this particular massacre, 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:57.800 first the men were shot. Every single man of this 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:02.280 tribe was shot and killed. This left the women and children. 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:06.679 So were the women and children allowed to escape or 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:11.680 allowed to go free. No, after they had witnessed their 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:15.800 men being slaughtered shot in cold blood for no reason 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:20.840 by settlers. The women and children were chased through the forest, 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:25.760 and they ran, and they fled. They fled for their lives. 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:31.080 One hundred and seventy three women and children took through 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:34.800 the bush and managed to evade men on horseback and 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:38.880 their dogs for days until they reached a cliff top. 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:43.560 There they were driven over the edge, some were shot, 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:49.000 some simply fell to their death. Women and children one 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:54.960 hundred and seventy three killed for absolutely no reason, and 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:59.040 no one was ever held accountable. That massacre is not 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:05.679 documented in the history books of Australia, but thankfully the 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:11.320 oral history, the diaries of both non indigenous and later 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:15.880 indigenous people who were told the stories by their relatives, 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:20.040 all match up. So much so we know the exact number, 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:24.399 we know the exact location Jinger of Rock, and we 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:30.000 know what happened. Men who had come to kill seals 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:35.040 in the Port of Eden to take Wales had decided 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:39.119 they would declare war on the most peaceful people on 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:43.560 the planet and kill every last one of them, including babies. 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:48.720 They were not the only children to die. Many in 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:54.320 the area died in forced burials, that is, children buried 0:19:54.320 --> 0:20:00.760 alive from a range of diseases deliberately introduced from random 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:07.840 attacks by settlers and new locals, and often in silence, 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:12.840 often at night, killed in ways that are almost too 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.360 horrible to imagine. Even in the context of what you've 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:21.760 already heard. These black massacres, as they were known at 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:29.280 the time, were often justified by misreporting. As one paper 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:33.679 said at the time, there was aboriginal cannibalism. Of course 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:37.040 it was totally made up. There were other stories of 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:41.000 black on black violence being far more frequent than white 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:47.840 on black violence. Again, the diaries of another lieutenant describe 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:55.280 how these pioneer recollections were but fables. They were not true. 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:59.040 But one crime documented by the courts of New South 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:07.480 Wales again took place right near where I sit. A 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:11.040 white woman had been involved in a relationship with an 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:16.080 Aboriginal man working on the local farm. To him, she 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:22.600 fell pregnant. When it was discovered by her father, also 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:26.760 a local Catholic man of high standing, that she was pregnant, 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:32.240 she was given two choices by her own father, be 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:37.280 killed or killed the baby. The night the baby was born, 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.600 she took the child with assistance from her sisters, and 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:47.600 buried it, still alive, wrapped in cloth, in the backyard 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:52.800 of the family home. That baby would later be recovered 0:21:54.119 --> 0:22:01.800 an Aboriginal child murdered purely because they were an Aboriginal child. 0:22:02.560 --> 0:22:05.680 This was more than one hundred years after the initial 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:11.760 invasion of Australia. To believe that it is only one 0:22:11.880 --> 0:22:15.280 date that is problematic is the problem to begin with. 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:22.119 But these crimes would continue. Less than sixty years ago, 0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:27.640 journalists from Canberra traveled to the Beaga Valley and were 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:31.760 horrified to note that not only were no Aboriginal people 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:36.320 in the town, they were pointed to a settlement at 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:42.440 Stony Creek where the Aboriginal people lived there. The journalists 0:22:42.520 --> 0:22:48.480 in the nineteen sixties described the conditions as disgusting, as 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:53.720 squalid and primitive, and were shocked to believe that the 0:22:53.840 --> 0:22:56.920 place this site where the people were forced to live, 0:22:57.840 --> 0:23:03.360 was the local rubbish tip. As Arnie Glenda Dixon describes, 0:23:04.040 --> 0:23:07.879 we were treated like animals at that time. They didn't 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:12.359 want the Blacks too close to town. Auntie Glenda was 0:23:12.440 --> 0:23:16.399 part of the first family allowed and I say that 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:20.520 in inverted commas to move into the township of Beager. 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:25.280 As she said, we had a stove, we had a shower, 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:28.040 which was a big deal to us. We had a 0:23:28.080 --> 0:23:32.440 toilet that we flushed all the time. But as she recalls, 0:23:33.280 --> 0:23:37.919 the locals called it Coon Avenue. This was two hundred 0:23:38.000 --> 0:23:42.960 years after the invasion of Australia first commenced, and only 0:23:43.000 --> 0:23:48.320 then was the first family of Aboriginal people allowed by 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:53.520 the new locals to live in that town with access 0:23:53.800 --> 0:23:57.399 to the facilities of the twentieth century instead of the 0:23:57.480 --> 0:24:02.919 rubbish tip they'd been sent so long ago, two hundred 0:24:03.000 --> 0:24:06.679 years later, and the invasion was still going. Because this 0:24:06.880 --> 0:24:09.920 was just the first family that was allowed to move 0:24:09.960 --> 0:24:15.000 into town. So how was this family treated when they 0:24:15.040 --> 0:24:19.320 moved into town? The first editorial in the local paper 0:24:19.960 --> 0:24:23.919 called it a betrayal and a shock. The editor claim 0:24:25.040 --> 0:24:28.399 there was not a large enough space to accept the 0:24:28.480 --> 0:24:32.840 new people and that the people of the town had 0:24:32.960 --> 0:24:37.200 grave concern. He said Aboriginal people would be moving into 0:24:37.240 --> 0:24:41.920 begas prime domestic area, ghettos would be formed, and property 0:24:42.000 --> 0:24:47.120 values would be affected. In the sixty seven referendum, the 0:24:47.160 --> 0:24:52.840 town had voted overwhelmingly no. Unlike ninety odd percent of 0:24:52.880 --> 0:24:59.640 the population in the same area where Aboriginal people had 0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:04.560 been massacred, where an Aboriginal child had been buried alive, 0:25:06.000 --> 0:25:11.600 where Aboriginal people had been held shackled, sold and killed 0:25:11.600 --> 0:25:17.359 as slaves, a single Aboriginal family brought such fear to 0:25:17.440 --> 0:25:22.800 a community that scenes not unlike those we've come to 0:25:22.840 --> 0:25:26.359 know from the South of America where the ku Klux 0:25:26.400 --> 0:25:31.280 Klan operated, were present in the very area where I 0:25:31.400 --> 0:25:35.600 sit now. This took place in the lifetimes of people 0:25:35.640 --> 0:25:39.199 who are still alive. Would you ask someone who was 0:25:39.240 --> 0:25:42.680 forced to grow up at the tip and only allowed 0:25:42.720 --> 0:25:46.240 to move into their town once it had been exposed 0:25:46.280 --> 0:25:49.439 by the Canberra Times, the squalid conditions they were forced 0:25:49.440 --> 0:25:52.200 to live in. Would you ask that person to get 0:25:52.240 --> 0:25:57.080 over it? Would you ask the families of all those 0:25:57.119 --> 0:26:02.040 who were massacred, the women and children shot and thrown 0:26:02.080 --> 0:26:05.879 off a cliff, driven off a cliff by dogs chewing 0:26:05.920 --> 0:26:09.600 at their body until they jumped, to get over it? 0:26:10.200 --> 0:26:12.480 Would you ask the families of those who were bought 0:26:12.520 --> 0:26:17.280 and sold, shackled and killed to get over it. We're 0:26:17.320 --> 0:26:22.480 not talking about one single day. We're talking about more 0:26:22.520 --> 0:26:27.639 than two hundred years. But as many people would say 0:26:28.480 --> 0:26:32.520 the slavery is over, many might even argue the killings 0:26:32.520 --> 0:26:35.919 are over. But what about the four hundred deaths in 0:26:36.000 --> 0:26:41.600 custody in the last twenty five years. Four hundred deaths 0:26:41.640 --> 0:26:45.280 of Aboriginal people in just twenty five years who were 0:26:45.359 --> 0:26:48.800 in the care of the state and of those four 0:26:48.880 --> 0:26:53.600 hundred deaths, not a single police officer or single corrections 0:26:53.640 --> 0:26:58.040 officer has ever been found guilty of murder. How did 0:26:58.119 --> 0:26:59.120 all these people die? 0:26:59.160 --> 0:26:59.320 Then? 0:27:01.080 --> 0:27:04.320 Is this not another massacre just by a different name. 0:27:05.480 --> 0:27:10.400 Once the Canberra Times had focused their attention on this area, 0:27:11.640 --> 0:27:16.960 things had to change, even if it was begrudgingly, Just 0:27:17.040 --> 0:27:21.920 as it has been begrudgingly right around the country. It's 0:27:21.960 --> 0:27:27.360 been a slow move from the massacred, the enslaved, forced 0:27:27.400 --> 0:27:31.280 to work, driven off their land. And what about those 0:27:32.280 --> 0:27:38.000 who wouldn't cooperate? Where once they were killed, now they're imprisoned. 0:27:39.680 --> 0:27:43.000 The stats when it relates to Aboriginal and torrestrate Islander 0:27:43.119 --> 0:27:46.720 people who are in prison are alarming and known to 0:27:46.840 --> 0:27:52.320 all two percent of the population and in many jurisdictions 0:27:52.400 --> 0:27:56.919 more than fifty percent of the prison population. For what 0:27:57.119 --> 0:28:02.320 reasons are Aboriginal people in prison? The same stats that 0:28:02.440 --> 0:28:07.119 show us these appalling numbers that must surely be built 0:28:07.160 --> 0:28:11.679 on racism, also tell us some alarming facts when it 0:28:11.720 --> 0:28:16.159 comes to the crime of homicide. Aboriginal entirostrate Islander people 0:28:16.520 --> 0:28:23.280 are underrepresented and per capita commit homicide, that is, murder 0:28:23.480 --> 0:28:28.919 at a much lower rate than non Indigenous people. What 0:28:29.040 --> 0:28:32.840 about sexual assault and the crimes we always hear about 0:28:32.960 --> 0:28:37.320 that were used to justify the Northern Territory intervention another 0:28:37.400 --> 0:28:42.480 invasion by an armed force into Aboriginal community. Here again, 0:28:42.760 --> 0:28:48.200 Aboriginal Entrostraate Islander people are underrepresented compared to the broader 0:28:48.400 --> 0:28:52.480 Nonindigenous community. This is from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 0:28:52.800 --> 0:28:58.520 Commonwealth of Australia, twenty fifteen. That doesn't say that there 0:28:58.640 --> 0:29:03.440 is no problem with either homicide or sexual assault in 0:29:03.480 --> 0:29:07.720 the Aboriginal and tore Straight Islander community. Any single one 0:29:07.760 --> 0:29:12.200 of these events is one horrific event too many. But 0:29:12.320 --> 0:29:15.280 the picture painted by the media and believed by the 0:29:15.320 --> 0:29:19.480 population that these crimes are committed far and away by 0:29:19.520 --> 0:29:24.920 Aboriginal people in numbers that means their imprisonment can be justified, 0:29:25.360 --> 0:29:29.440 are not backed up by the facts. But what about 0:29:29.680 --> 0:29:34.960 offenses against justice? That is things like not paying fines? 0:29:36.760 --> 0:29:40.600 Here we find Aboriginal and tore Straight Islander people are 0:29:40.680 --> 0:29:46.120 far greater represented than non Indigenous people. What about the 0:29:46.200 --> 0:29:51.400 crime of unlawful entry? Can you really break into your 0:29:51.400 --> 0:29:56.440 own country or break into your own land? Once again, 0:29:56.640 --> 0:30:00.600 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are far over rep presented. 0:30:01.840 --> 0:30:07.200 When it came time to invade Australia, young Aboriginal men 0:30:07.680 --> 0:30:11.960 were the first targets. They were seen as the biggest threat. 0:30:12.640 --> 0:30:18.080 They were killed first, as evident by the massacre that 0:30:18.120 --> 0:30:22.040 took place near to where I sit. The women and 0:30:22.160 --> 0:30:29.760 children were also killed. Nobody was spared, and to this day, 0:30:30.240 --> 0:30:34.160 young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men are targeted in 0:30:34.240 --> 0:30:39.320 the same way. From seventeen eighty eight up until the 0:30:39.360 --> 0:30:43.640