By Greg Lehman
"But while actual warfare and convicts' brutality were the direct means toward the extermination of the Aborigines, there were other equally powerful forces at work in wiping them off the face of the earth." — H. Ling Roth, 1899
By the time the second edition of Roth's The Aborigines of Tasmania was published, it was apparent to the white population of Tasmania that the "Aboriginal troubles" were over. In the space of one lifetime, the British had overrun a sizeable part of the island and, at great expense, removed all but a few of the original inhabitants.
The objective of the government was simple: acknowledge the unfortunate but necessary demise of the natives, give gentle assistance to the process through employment of bounty hunters and other "men of persuasion" such as George Augustus Robinson, establish concentration camps for those who could be "saved" and let time be the judge.
In his Experience of Forty Years in Tasmania (London, 1859), H.M. Hull reported "that it was a favourite amusement to hunt the Aborigines; that a day would be selected and the neighbouring settlers invited, with their families, to a picnic ... After dinner all would be gaiety and merriment, whilst the gentlemen of the party would take their guns and dogs, and accompanied by two or three convict servants, wander through the bush in search of blackfellows. Sometimes they would return without sport; at others they would succeed in killing a woman, or, if lucky, a man or two."
The actions of the early invaders set the mould for prejudices against which the Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Council must struggle to regain control of Aboriginal land and heritage a century later.
Popular culture in Tasmania maintains that the apparent genocide of indigenous people counts as little more than historic achievement, unfortunate yet necessary. This version of history nearly prevailed with the release in 1978 of The Last Tasmanian, a film illustrating the theories of archaeologist and historian Dr Rhys Jones. In this imaginative saga, Jones paints a picture of a race on a small island where 12,000 years of isolation have extracted an inevitable toll, and where the British invasion only hastened an unavoidable end.
Aboriginal community outrage at this film launched a new offensive for regaining control of our heritage. However, Jones' public comments still act to entrench the popular view that Aboriginal heritage is a matter of "prehistory" and not the province of today's Aborigines. In fact, he claimed in the Bulletin (June 12, 1990) that "The reality is that Tasmanian Aboriginal culture is an invention of the present day"!
With the state government's Aboriginal Lands Bill going into mn session, the Tasmanian Aboriginal people are within sight of the first real opportunity since invasion to reassert our culture without threat of eviction.
However, public opinion lags behind social justice, and there are still many who require that Aboriginal families abandon the identity that has been forged by 300 generations of living on the land — this from a colonial society that is largely devoid of the spiritual and cultural links to the land which Aborigines enjoy.
While clutching with pride at being "a fifth generation Tasmanian", many whites demand that if they cannot claim an ancestry on the land further back than this, then no-one else can. According to this logic, any claim to spiritual oneness with a cave or island is an "invention of the present".
In this way, the invaders have not only stolen our land, but also seek to claim Aboriginal heritage as theirs: a scientific resource which becomes the property of the researcher.
The Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Council is reasserting Aboriginal community control over the past by demanding the right of the community not only to have a say in what happens to our land, but to be recognised as the rightful custodians. This means gaining a firm grip, not only on scientific research, but also on history.
Through the newly established Aboriginal Heritage Unit, the Land Council is currently training Aboriginal site officers to work alongside historical and archaeological researchers. Their job is to provide clear directions on the significance and proper treatment of cultural material and sites.
With the return of 23 areas of land on the horizon, including mutton birding islands, rock art sites and reserves, the Land Council is developing the resource base that will be necessary to meet the responsibility of managing Aboriginal land and heritage on behalf of the community. The obligation is now on research institutions and conservation agencies to demonstrate the respect and support demanded by a community that is asserting its rightful role.
Greg Lehman is secretary of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Council.