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10.4.1 This Royal Commission was in part prompted by a belief by Aboriginal people, the families of those who died in custody, and many supporters that foul play or murder was responsible for deaths and that the culprits must be caught. The thrust of the Commission has since also turned to the Underlying Issues, in which social, mental and physical health and an Aboriginal sense of injustice feature prominently. The expectation that there would be individuals to blame (such as particular police officers) for Aboriginal deaths in custody is understandable given the perspective of history which Aboriginal people have experienced, as well as reflecting the present state of Aboriginal-police relations.

10.4.2 Past experiences, as passed down through the generations, create what is termed 'popular memory' or historical consciousness. A certain patterning, a logic of events, emerges which explains the predicament of the individual and the group. Past lessons create a basis upon which to assess the present, and contemporary events reinforce them. That Aboriginal people and others often believe that police or gaolers have killed those who died is a serious indictment of Australia's colonial past, as well as proof that the present society has yet to provide reassurance that that past is over.

10.4.3 Aboriginal perceptions of threat by various forces in non-Aboriginal society have been perpetuated by a long heritage of control, with often harsh means of enforcement.

10.4.4 In order to make way for British rule and its law to take effect, flagrant disregard of this same law was popularly accepted. There were also implicit contradictions in imposing such rule in a 'new' land, for British justice had not been designed to cater equally for people of other cultures, let alone those in the relationship of the colonised. Edicts on paper which required humane treatment of Aboriginal people were not carried out by frontiersmen. British statements that Aboriginal people came under the 'protection of the Crown' were inappropriate when they had not chosen to be invaded and taken over as 'subjects'.

10.4.5 The frontier period indicates the type of 'law and order' first imposed on Aboriginal people, which set the tone. In most parts of Australia during its various frontier eras, force or its threat became the key means of establishing British 'law and order'. Australia has many unrecorded battlefields, and the number of Aboriginal people killed by the newcomers during the frontier era probably exceeds 20,000.21 Aboriginal people were thus dispossessed of their land and traditional livelihood, making retreat, starvation and migrations to the fringes of non-Aboriginal settlements or reserves inevitable. Through its legacy of fear, violence thus had a lasting impact on Aboriginal people, as was intended. As elsewhere, it was often the most effective strategy in establishing control over indigenous peoples. Once they had come within its influence they would be more likely to obey not just British laws but any instructions given to them by any British person.

10.4.6 Many individuals literally took the law into their own hands. As colonisers they felt empowered to 'do their job' by participating in conquest. The legal authorities seldom intervened, and provided tacit approval of such actions.
As far as the whites were concerned the general view by the end of the century was that there was a direct relationship between colonial progress--the fulfilment of their mission and the destruction of Aboriginal society. It was in itself a proof of progress.22

10.4.7 Different styles of violence and techniques of subduing Aboriginal people were employed. This applied even in the earliest, more conciliatory contacts. In 1788, the Eora people who met the first British arrivals at Botany Bay were given displays of musket fire in order to instil a sense of fear of British weaponry. While Governor Phillip may have justified this show of military power in the hope of avoiding violence, it was aimed at making Aboriginal people submit to the authority of the newcomers. They wanted to be respected and to dominate, to leave no doubt as to who was in charge.

10.4.8 A series of kidnapping’s was another strategy used to command authority, the most famous being of Bennelong who was, as I have already noted, forcibly kept in British custody with chains, bolts and guards. Hostage taking was practised to acquire intelligence of the original occupants, and to force the establishment of diplomatic ties. After Bennelong was returned his freedom, some promising cooperation and coexistence occurred at Port Jackson and areas north. Conflict intensified as pastoral settlement expanded on the Hawkesbury River in the 1790s, then later on the Bathurst plains and along the Hunter River in the 1820s. It grew worse during the 1830s and early 1840s along the Macintyre, Gwydir and Namir, with the famous Myall Creek massacre of twenty-eight men, women and children in 1838. Aboriginal spokespersons repeatedly appealed to have their best hunting areas protected from intruders, but to no avail.23

10.4.9 Western Australia was occupied by the British in 1829, and was claimed without any negotiation of a treaty. Competition for land and resources led to violent struggles. In 1835 Governor Stirling led a punitive raid in Pinjarra where an estimated eleven Aboriginal people were killed. In 1833 an Aboriginal man from the south-west, Yagan, was shot and killed, and his smoked head removed and placed on public exhibition in Britain.24

10.4.10 In nineteenth century Queensland, frontier violence was often used to ruthlessly dispossess Aboriginal people. Its later date of occupation brought advanced rifle and revolver technology, plus the accumulated experience of past conflict in the southern colonies. Additionally, the strong humanitarian lobby of Sydney and Melbourne was absent. The effectiveness of the Native Police force was another factor. Queensland's vastness and the isolation of many pastoral and mining outposts meant it had a more protracted frontier struggle than in south-eastern Australia. By the 1880s and 1890s, the era of frontier violence in eastern Australia was largely over and colonial 'order' had been imposed.

10.4.11 One way in which authority was established in Queensland was by frontiersmen who consistently carried guns in case they encountered 'hostile' Aboriginal people; they considered they were in 'enemy territory'. The graziers' parliamentary power enabled them to clear and 'settle' the land unimpeded, which meant quelling Aboriginal opposition. Deaths of Europeans met calls for vengeance---'the deadly bullet must do the work of the more legitimate executioner--justice must triumph over law'. Given the 'punitive expeditions' which followed, it was indeed doubtful that Aboriginal people were being 'protected as subjects of British law'.25 In Queensland possibly 10,000 Aboriginal people and at least 1,000 Europeans died as a result of frontier conflict. The chronic anxiety caused by this situation affected both sides. As the Chief Protector of North Queensland, Archibald Meston wrote, Aboriginal people met him 'like hunted wild beasts, having lived for years in a state of absolute terror' .26 Such a fearful people could be forced more easily onto reserves away from their own land.

10.4.12 The Northern Territory was the last area to be continuously occupied by the British. Soon-abandoned settlements such as Fort Dundas (1826), Raffles Bay (1828) and Port Essington (1838) had left their legacy of violence and introduced animals.27 Little British presence existed then until the building of the overland telegraph line in the 1870s. The first encounter with outsiders for many inland Aboriginal people was with the Chinese goldminers, and for decades afterwards the British population remained low. Violence between Aboriginal people and newcomers was an integral part of pastoral expansion throughout Australia, and' fatal conflicts were widespread. They continued up to the 1920s and 1930s in Central, North and Western Australia.

10.4.13 Although some regions of Australia were less violent than others, such incidents were often hidden from the public records and so we lack much-of the evidence. A literate culture knew well the implications of committing deeds to paper which, although publicly condoned, did not conform to the 'letter of the law'. Frontier behavioural codes evaded prosecution by prescribed euphemisms: words like 'dispersing', 'breaking up', 'shaking up', 'giving a fright', 'teaching them a lesson' meant shooting, murdering any number of Aboriginal people.

10.4.14 The violence was certainly not one way; Aboriginal people often used force against the strangers, and posed a serious danger. At least 3,000 Europeans were killed and another 3,000 wounded by Aboriginal people attempting to defend themselves and their land.28 Their opposition to the newcomers has often been portrayed as a pan-Aboriginal desire to rid the country of non-Aboriginal people, but this is to misinterpret Aboriginal culture. Individual Aboriginal people fought for a variety of reasons. They were generally carrying out their own law, and defending their country from intruders. This might have been owned by individuals, clans or bands. The British had come uninvited; they had not followed the required protocol of introductions by elders to the land's spirits and contemporary custodians.

10.4.15 The late Phillip Pepper, a Kurnai man of Victoria, wrote of the struggles of past generations:
The white come here and took it by force with a lotta blood bein' shed by the Aborigines, they really died for their own country and got nothin' in return.29

10.4.16 Amy Laurie, a Gurinji woman, spoke of how her grandchildren could not understand why the past generations had not fought back harder when they were attacked. The elders explained:
You know why we bin let 'em shoot we. Why? We frightened? No, we never gotim rifle. And we didn't care, they reckon, 'We can die in our own country' 30

10.4.17 Introduced diseases such as smallpox in New South Wales and Victoria, and malaria and smallpox in the north, had devastating effects on most Aboriginal groups before they came into physical contact with Europeans. Populations were halved or virtually wiped out; the severe depopulation caused personal suffering and crises in community organisation, and put them in a weakened position by which to meet powerful outsiders.31 The title of Noel Butlin's book labelled disease as Our Original Aggression, and, although there is no strong evidence that it was intentionally used in Australia as a means of subduing Aboriginal people, closing off access to land and food resources and poor medical assistance constituted neglect if not malice. By the late nineteenth century--and in fact until the 1950s. those who expressed concern about Aboriginal health were largely motivated by the perceived threat of contagious diseases to the 'public health', that is, to non-Aboriginal people.

10.4.18 While in many areas, disease proved to be the main factor responsible for Aboriginal deaths, susceptibility was enhanced by the trauma of dispossession, unavailability of traditional food and water supplies, bans on traditional weapons, the unhygienic results of being required to wear European-style clothing, and the lack of immunity to introduced diseases. Alcohol and tobacco also played a role.

10.4.19 Colonies differed. The south-eastern peoples were badly hit by smallpox, whilst northerners probably had greater immunity because of earlier Macassan visitors. The Eora of New South Wales, the Port Phillip peoples and the Tasmanian Aboriginal people suffered speedy decimation. Predominantly convict populations stole their food, weapons, and raped their women. The desperation of the hungry newcomers to establish self-supporting agriculture and pastoralism led to a push for land and disregard for the original inhabitants. Van Dieman's land settlers were involved in sheep gazing, and the ex-convict population was little interested in humanitarian concerns. The death toll from violence and disease on their lands was shocking, but possibly even worse after they were detained on islands.32 Only a small population survived the 1830s, though the island people of Bass Strait who had formed a community with men of the sealing industry were to continue as a distinct and defiant people. Aboriginal people had more chance to pursue their traditional economy where there was less competition for resources and land. The hotter, northern and desert regions and areas without ports or reliable water supplies were less desirable to the newcomers, which gave local Aboriginal people more time to develop survival strategies. There were fewer intruders, and often they relied upon Aboriginal labour. The less successful the enterprises, and the less land-intensive the industries, the greater the chances for Aboriginal survival and relative independence.

Source
Royal Commission in Aboriginal Deaths in Custody
National Report
Volune 2
Chapter 10
Australian government Publishing Service Canberra 1991
Full report available on the web.