The Aboriginal South Australians are the Indigenous people who lived in South Australia prior to the British colonisation of South Australia, and their descendants and their ancestors. There are difficulties in identifying the names, territorial boundaries, and language groups of the Aboriginal peoples of South Australia, including poor record-keeping and deliberate obfuscation, so only a rough approximation can be given here.

Its people

The following groups' lands include at least partly South Australian territory which includes: Adnyamathanha, Akenta, Amarak, Bungandidj, Diyari, Erawirung, Kaurna, Kokatha Mula, Maralinga Tjarutja, Maraura, Mirning, Mulbarapa, Narungga, Ngaanyatjarra, Ngadjuri, Ngarrindjeri, Nukunu, Parnkalla, Peramangk, Pitjantjatjara, Ramindjeri, Spinifex people, Warki.

Colonial intent

The South Australia Act 1834 described the land as "waste" and "uninhabited",[1] but unlike other colonies in Australia, the British settlement of South Australia did not assume the principle of terra nullius (Latin for nobody's land) when the colonists originally arrived. The Letters Patent establishing the Province of South Australia issued in February 1836 "Provided 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 there in now actually occupied or enjoyed by such Natives".[2]

The Proclamation of South Australia read out on Proclamation Day, 28 December 1836, at the founding of the permanent settlement that became Adelaide, granted Aboriginal people and British settlers equal protection and rights as British subjects under the law.[3]

Protector of Aboriginals

Interim appointments (1836–1839):[4]

Gazetted appointments:

  • Matthew Moorhouse, 20 June 1839 – 31 March 1856[4]
  • John Walter, 21 November 1861 – 26 September 1868[4]
  • Edward Lee Hamilton, 1873–1908[4][5]
  • William Garnett South, 1908–1923[5]

Sub-protectors:

As first the first gazetted appointment in 1839, Moorhouse's role was described as protecting the interests of Aboriginal people, identifying the tribes, learning their language, and teaching them "the arts of civilization" - including reading, writing, and cultivation. He was also to give them a knowledge of Christian religion.[7]

Massacres

There have been a number of documented conflicts that resulted in mass deaths of Aboriginal people throughout the continent, now sometimes referred to as "frontier wars". In South Australia, the government tried to strengthen laws in an attempt to avoid the violence that befell earlier Australian settlements, and Aboriginal people were declared British subjects and afforded the same privileges. However, the laws were rarely enforced, and as the frontiers of settlement spread, dispossessed Aboriginal people responded with aggression.[8]

In July 1840, there was a massacre of Europeans by Aboriginal men in South Australia, when about 26 shipwrecked passengers and crew members of the ship Maria were murdered. The ship had run aground somewhere in the southern Coorong and all aboard made it safely to shore. They were initially assisted by the Ngarrindjeri people, until a misunderstanding or disagreement led to the murders. A punitive expedition was mounted by Governor Gawler, who gave permission to execute up to three suspects without formal trial. Major O'Halloran carried out the order.[9]

In 1841, at least 30 Aboriginal people were killed in an incident known as the Rufus River Massacre, after a series of skirmishes in the Central Murray along the old Aboriginal route recently made into the overland stock route. A party of which included police and the SA Protector of Aborigines, Matthew Moorhouse, and overlanders bringing cattle to market in Adelaide from New South Wales, became involved in a clash with the local Maraura people. Although the location was and still is in New South Wales, not South Australia, the official party was sent out from Adelaide on the orders of the Governor of South Australia, the newly appointed George Grey. The traditional lands of the Maraura people stretched deep into South Australian territory.[10]

In 1848, at least nine people of the Wattatonga clan (of either the Bungandidj people or Tanganekald people[11]) were allegedly murdered by the station owner James Brown in the Avenue Range Station massacre (near Guichen Bay on the state's Limestone Coast). Brown was subsequently charged with the crime, but the case was dropped by the Crown for lack of (European) witnesses.[12] Christina Smith's source from the Wattatonga tribe refers to 11 people killed in this incident by two white men.[13]

In 1849 at least ten Nauo people were killed in retribution for the killing of two settlers and the theft of food, in the Waterloo Bay massacre at Elliston on the west coast of Eyre Peninsula.[14][15]

Settlements

As Europeans spread across South Australia, a number of Christian missionaries set up mission stations to reach out to Aboriginal people. Many of these became Aboriginal towns and settlements in later years.

Ernabella was established as a Presbyterian mission station for Aboriginal people in 1937, driven by medical doctor and Aboriginal rights campaigner Charles Duguid (then president of the Aborigines Protection League), and supported by the South Australian government.[16]

Stolen generations

In 1909, the Protector of Aborigines in South Australia, William Garnet South, reportedly "lobbied for the power to remove Aboriginal children without a court hearing because the courts sometimes refused to accept that the children were neglected or destitute". South argued that "all children of mixed descent should be treated as neglected".[17] His lobbying reportedly played a part in the enactment of the Aborigines Act 1911. This designated his position as the legal guardian of every Aboriginal child in South Australia, not only the so-called "half-castes".[17]

Following the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families and the publication of the Bringing them Home report (1995–1997), the parliament of the Northern Territory and the state parliaments of Victoria, South Australia, and New South Wales passed formal apologies to the people affected. On 26 May 1998, the first "National Sorry Day" was held; reconciliation events were held nationally, and attended by a total of more than one million people. Mounting public pressure eventually caused Prime Minister John Howard to draft a motion of regret, passed in federal parliament in August 1999, which said that the Stolen Generation represented "the most blemished chapter in the history of this country."[18]

Native title

Despite the inequalities that transpired during the early years of European settlement, some areas of the state are now subject to native title of varying kinds and degrees. This ranges from freehold ownership to the right to access Crown Land in their former range. The Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Land Rights Act 1981 grants rights over about 10% of South Australia in the northwest of the state, including a former Aboriginal reserve and three cattle stations.[19]

Prominent individuals

Modern Aboriginal life

21st century Aboriginal people live in South Australia in a number of settings ranging from complete integration to English-speaking culture to near-traditional life in traditional homelands speaking predominantly the pre-European languages. Some live in or loosely associate with Aboriginal communities based on former mission stations such as Pukatja (formerly Ernabella). Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands are now freehold Aboriginal land in the northwest of the state, with limited access to tourists and visitors, created by Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Land Rights Act 1981.

The Kaurna language of the Adelaide Plains had become virtually extinct, but is now being revived and taught to children in Kaurna Aboriginal schools.[21]

See also

19th century Aboriginal missions in SA

References

  1. ↑ "Transcript of the South Australia Act, 1834" (PDF). Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House. 4 & 5 Will. IV c. 95. Retrieved 9 June 2018.
  2. ↑ William the Fourth (19 February 1836), Letters patent establishing the Province of South Australia (PDF), retrieved 3 January 2016
  3. ↑ "Proclamation of South Australia". Documenting a Democracy. Museum of Australian Democracy. Retrieved 3 January 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Protector of Aborigines Out Letter-Book: 7 December 8th, 1892 to September 4th, 1906: Including List of Addressees, And Subject Index" (PDF). Retrieved 18 November 2019.
  5. 1 2 Foster R. (2000), "'endless trouble and agitation': Aboriginal activism in the Protectionist era", Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, 28: 15-27.
  6. ↑ "Seventy Years a Colonist". The Advertiser. 3 July 1909. p. 8. Retrieved 3 January 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
  7. ↑ 'Moorhouse, Matthew (1813–1876)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/moorhouse-matthew-4239/text6843, published first in hardcopy 1974, accessed online 4 January 2016.
  8. ↑ "Out of the Silence The History and Memory of South Australia's Frontier Wars". Flinders Ranges Research. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
  9. ↑ "The Maria Massacre". Graham Journay. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
  10. ↑ Burke H., Roberts A., Morrison M., Sullivan V., The River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation (2016), "The space of conflict: Aboriginal/European interactions and frontier violence on the western Central Murray, South Australia, 1830–41", Aboriginal History, 40: 145-179.
  11. ↑ According to the ethnologist and anthropologist Norman Tindale, Wattatonga was the name used by the neighbouring Bungandidj people to refer to the Tanganekald people.
  12. ↑ Foster, Robert; Hosking, Rick; Nettelbeck, Amanda (2001). Fatal Collisions: The South Australian Frontier and the Violence of Memory. Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press. pp. 74–93. ISBN 978-1-86254-533-5.
  13. ↑ Christina Smith, pp62, The Booandik Tribe of South Australian Aborigines: A Sketch of Their Habits, Customs, Legends, and Language, Spiller, 1880
  14. ↑ "Waterloo Bay, Elliston, Eyre Peninsula". Colonial Frontier Massacres in Central and Eastern Australia 1788–1930. University of Newcastle. Retrieved 13 August 2018.
  15. ↑ Foster, Robert; Hosking, Rick; Nettelbeck, Amanda (2001). Fatal Collisions: The South Australian Frontier and the Violence of Memory. Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press. pp. 44–73. ISBN 978-1-86254-533-5.
  16. ↑ Edwards, W. H. "Duguid, Charles (1884 - 1986)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Originally published in Volume 17 of the ADB (Melbourne University Press, 2007, pp. 338-340). Retrieved 18 November 2019.
  17. 1 2 "Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission: Bringing them Home: Part 2: 8 South Australia". 1997. Retrieved 25 November 2016 – via AustLII.
  18. ↑ "No stolen generation: Australian Govt". The 7.30 Report (ABC). 3 April 2000. Archived from the original on 7 September 2016. Retrieved 24 November 2016.
  19. ↑ "Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Land Rights Act 1981 (SA)". Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 5 January 2015.
  20. ↑ "Bloodlines: The Nicholls Family". MessageStick. ABC. 19 September 2010. Archived from the original on 12 January 2016. Retrieved 5 January 2016.
  21. ↑ "Kaurna People". Adelaidia. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
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