Tasmanian Aborigines: A history since 1803

Lyndall Ryan

May 2012 · Allen & Unwin

About this ebook

'Lyndall Ryan's new account of the extraordinary and dramatic story of the Tasmanian Aborigines is told with passion and eloquence. It is a book that will inform and move anyone with an interest in Australian history.' - Professor Henry Reynolds, University of Tasmania

'A powerful and insightful historical account about a unique island and its First peoples, their dispossession and their struggle for survival and cultural birth right/heritage that reaches from the deep past to the present day.' - Patsy Cameron, Tasmanian Aboriginal author, cultural geographer and cultural practitioner

Tasmanian Aborigines were driven off their land so white settlers could produce fine wool for the English textile mills. By the time Truganini died in 1876, they were considered to be extinct. Yet like so many other claims about them, this was wrong.

Far from disappearing, the Tasmanian Aborigines actively resisted settler colonialism from the outset and have consistently campaigned for their rights and recognition as a distinct people through to the present.

Lyndall Ryan tells the story of the Aboriginal people of Tasmania, from before the arrival of the first whites to current political agendas. Tasmania has been the cradle of race relations in Australia, and their struggle for a place in their own country offers insights into the experiences of Aboriginal people nation-wide.

Ratings and reviews

As a history buff of the Black War, I thought Id give Lyndall Ryans new book Tasmanian Aborigines: A History since 1803 the Keith Windschuttle treatment, to see if she had learned her lesson after the grilling she received over the mistakes in her last book. She had not. What follows is a select list of categorical mistakes: PP56-57: Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemens Land (1991, p69) says: at that early period the country was not sufficiently clear to enable the whites to harass them with impunity. Ryan removes the NOT. P90: Ryan messes up the Buxton incident. It was not Black Tom involved, and it was Thomas, not James Buxton. Also, Bonwick does not mention a man being killed. PP90-91: Ryan attributes Bonwicks discussion of the revenge that John Radford may or may not have taken following the Grindstone Bay murders in November 1823 to a revenge killing in 1827. P95: the military pursuit that Ryan refers to is not the one she thinks it is. See Colonial Times, p4. PP95-97: numbers 9 and 10 on Ryans mass killing Map 17 is a guess against the evidence. There is no reference to any Aborigines killed in either of these incidents, at least not in the sources she cites. Regarding no.10, discussed on p97, she makes one claim that they killed a number of Pallittorre, which is unsubstantiated in her references. P99, N42: Ryan quotes the Courier 22 March 1828: a party of volunteers came up with the murderers about 12 miles from hence, at a place called Bullocks hunting ground, where 4 men, 9 women, and a child of the Black people were killed. The real quote comes from Hobart Town Courier 21 March 1829, p1: a party of volunteers came up with the murderers about 12 miles from hence, at a place called Bullocks hunting ground, where four men, a woman, and a child of the Black people were killed. This is number 14 on Ryan’s Map 17. Then on p109 Ryan doubles up and tallies another six deaths by using the correct citation. Also on p99, N43: Ryan quotes the Courier 22 March 1828: Several small parties went after them. One party overtook them and killed five. The quote actually comes from Courier 21 March 1829, p1, and it is another correspondents version of the same attack she cited in N42. There are not two attacks, they are two accounts of the same attack near Launceston, not Ross. P99, N44: Henry Beames was killed on the 30 March, not the 2 April. Nothing is mentioned about a successful pursuit in either of the two cited newspaper articles, and there is no letter from Simpson in CSO1/321. Simpsons report on the incident appears in CSO1/316, pp137-38 on 1 April and says nothing about a reprisal. P103, N59: Ryan cites Ayton CSO1/320, pp152-54 as one of her sources for this killing of 16 in July 1827. Ayton’s letter is in CSO1/323 and he is referring to a killing by the 40th Regiment on 6 December 1828, which Ryan doubles up on (see p108). P103: only 3 were killed in this incident, one of Goughs daughters survived. P108: Ryan claims that two massacres of nine Aborigines each occurred in January 1829. This is found nowhere in the any of the six issues of the Colonial Times and the Courier that she cites. P109: Ryan neglects to point out that this incident was denied in the same article: his brother officers of the staff and comrades, (perhaps jealous of the honour of the field) declare that they did not see one of the black people during the whole of the excursion (Courier 28 February 1829, p2). P112: Ryan quotes: it is supposed eight or ten of the natives were wounded, but none of her references mention this. You get the idea. Josh.

Every one should read it should be compulsort reading. People think its a new thing that Aboriginal people march or lobby but they have been doing it since the invasion of 1788

About the author

Lyndall Ryan is Honorary Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Newcastle.