Same script, different location: Indigenous people in the South Pacific lost more than control of their land when Europeans started to explore the area; as with Native people everywhere, they lost themselves. (Indigenous People--South Pacific).

In the 1830s, George Augustus Robinson saw himself as the "saviour" of the Aboriginal people of Tasmania. His idea of "civilizing" them was to move them from their land, and to rename them. They were thus robbed of their colourful Native names--each person usually had several names given to them at various ages according to the natural phenomenon best suited to that individual. With their names went their identities and their past. According to the book, Indigenous Cultures in an Interconnected World, this was a deliberate act by Europeans; its purpose was to displace the original tenants in order to claim ownership and control of the land for themselves. As far as the Europeans were concerned, life began in these strange lands when they arrived. So, the Aborigines of Tasmania ended up with such names as Princess Clara, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Charlotte, King George, Columbus, Milton, and Cleopatra. And, their land carried English place names, such as Buckingham, Dorset, Devon, and Somerset.

The issue of Indigenous people and racism continues to be among the most complex and divisive in Australia today. It precedes George Augustus Robinson's run-in with the Native people of Tasmania: it started in 1788 when the British settled there, declaring it to be terra nullius--land that belonged to no one. Britain established its first colony at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788 without consent and without negotiating a fair deal with the original inhabitants. The Aborigines, who had called it home for 40,000 years saw things differently but, after the British arrived, they quickly became second-class citizens. Meanwhile, other colonies developed around the continent, which Britain filled with convicts from home, as well as free settlers.

Many Aboriginal people were dispossessed and displaced from their lands and forced into reserves. Some were killed in battles for their land; many others died from introduced diseases.

As numbers declined and traditional lifestyles and cultures dissolved, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (who lost their independence when the Queensland government took over the Torres Strait Islands in the second half of the 19th century) became marginalized. Many were moved, often forcibly, to missions if not government reserves. Some became fringe dwellers on the outskirts of cities and towns, while others managed a meagre living in the casual labour force of rural and outback Australia. Not only were they robbed of their traditional way of life; they were not allowed to become equal partners and citizens in the wider society that had taken their land.

Over successive generations, policies and practices have aimed to eliminate Indigenous people altogether, or to assimilate them within the white culture. It wasn't until the 1960s that Indigenous people were given full citizenship rights including the right to vote, and improved access to health care, education, and welfare. (Even the early convicts had legal rights.) This discrimination has left Indigenous people profoundly disadvantaged. According to the country's International Review of Indigenous Issues in 2000, their situation "seems likely to continue for some time."

While violent battles over land, food, and water rights characterized race relations in the 19th century, colonial brutality seemed to know no bounds, tearing families apart. Throughout all the conflict, Indigenous children were kidnapped and exploited for their labour. As the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission documented in its report, Bringing them Home, Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families and communities from the 18th century until the 1980s. Governments and missionaries also targeted Indigenous children for removal from their families. They wanted to instill "European values and work habits in children, who would then [work] in service to the colonial settlers."

The past decade has seen some improvements:

* Australia's High Court handed down the Mabo ruling in 1992, rejecting the British notion that the land was nobody's until they arrived. The ruling recognized that Indigenous people owned this land prior to 1788, and may have continuing rights to land and waters;

* A Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody highlighted the relationship between Indigenous disadvantage and over-representation in the criminal justice system, and the role in this of historical treatment of Indigenous people;

* The National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children From Their Families studied actions taken against children between 1910 and 1970; and,

* In 1991, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation was established to promote better relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

To the south of Australia, New Zealand's Maoris have done somewhat better, although life with the Europeans has been no picnic. In 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, by which the Maori people transferred control of their country to Britain in exchange for protection and guaranteed possession of their lands. But, once again, the Pakeha (settlers) paid little attention to Indigenous rights outlined in the treaty. So, relations between the two quickly soured. In 1860, war broke out between them, and continued for much of the decade. The fighting eventually died down, and though there was no formal resolution, the Pakehas claimed victory.

Unlike North American Indians or Aborigines, the Maoris were never shoved into reserves, but were integrated into society. In 1985, the Treaty of Waitangi was overhauled and compensation was paid to a number of Maori tribes whose land had been unjustly confiscated. But, it's a continuing battle, as the Maoris seem to have to take a militant stand to be noticed. They have disrupted events, occupied land claim areas, set up roadblocks, and threatened to blow-up the New Zealand Parliament. Such actions have placed national reconciliation at the top of the political agenda.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. In June 2000, 250,000 Australians walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to show their support for reconciliation with the Aboriginal people. Do a report on this event.

2. Up to 1897, the Queensland government's policy had been dispossession of Aborigines of their land by force. From 1897, the policy of protection by segregation was adopted. Under the provisions of the 1897 Restriction of the Sale of Opium and Protection of Aboriginals Act and subsequent Acts in effect until 1971, Aborigines could be committed to a reserve and detained there against their mill, husbands could be separated from mires, and children from parents. Discuss the ethics of this situation, and how authorities could actually convince themselves that this was right.

FACT FILE

The National Aboriginal History and Heritage Council was established in July 1996 as a voluntary organization working for the recognition, respect, preservation, and promotion of Aboriginal history and heritage in Australia.

In the last 100 years, New Zealand's Maori population has increased 11-fold and now one in seven people is Maori; the Department of Statistics Census 2001 showed the Maori population was 526,281, substantially up on the 45,549 recorded in the 1901 census.

Websites

Bougainville Freedom
Movement--http://www.ecoaction.org/bougainville/

Maori Organizations of
New Zealand--http://www.
maori.org.nz

Reconciliation Australia
http://www.austlii.edu.au/
au/orgs/car/
Today, about 353,000 people in Australia see themselves as Indigenous.
They make up about 2% of the total Australian population, and more than
half (55.8%) of them live in New South Wales and Queensland. Another
14.4% are in Western Australia, and 13.1% in the Northern Territory.
Indigenous people represent only 3% or less of the total population in
each state, although in the Northern Territory Aborigines people make
up 26.4% of the population. Indigenous Barunga people of Australia
(right) create modern rock art in the Northern Territory.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

RELATED ARTICLE: Island in the sun.

The island nation of Fiji in the South Pacific seems to have an endless political problem involving its Indigenous people, who are a majority, and descendants of East Indians who were brought to Fiji to work the plantations of the colonizing English. The East Indians make up 44% of the population, but dominate the commerce of Fiji, and for some time have had a lock on political power. There have been a couple of coups in the past decade and a fair amount of bloodshed. The creators of Fiji's constitution sought to encourage cooperation between ethnic-Fijian and Indo-Fijian Members of Parliament. However, the politicians themselves don't seem too eager to get along peacefully with one another.

RELATED ARTICLE: Mineral wrongs.

Asian settlers have lived in Papua New Guinea (PNG) for more than 50,000 years. But, in a now familiar story, the Indigenous peoples of the island were pushed aside when European's hit the shore. The first European contact in 1526-27 was by the Portuguese explorer Jorge de Meneses. But, New Guinea is a large, rather daunting place, and it was left alone for several centuries. However, in the 19th century, various European nations claimed parts of the island.

In 1906, British New Guinea became Papua, and administration of the region was taken over by newly independent Australia, which also took control of German New Guinea, including Bougainville in 1914.

PNG was granted self-government in 1973, and full independence was achieved in 1975.

But, trouble was brewing for PNG on Bougainville Island, where the locals saw themselves as racially and culturally distinct from mainlanders. Bougainvilleans were angry about the environmental destruction caused by the giant, Australian-owned Panguna copper mine. They were also ticked off by the way revenue from the mine filled a third of the national coffers but did not find its way back to their island.

There was opposition to the mining on Bougainville from the very beginning. Negotiations, going back to the 1960s, had been made according to the principles of Australian law. This meant that anything below the surface, such as minerals, belonged to the government rather than the land titleholders. The Bougainvilleans did not understand or accept these laws excluding them from ownership of minerals. Traditionally, Bougainvillean land ownership was held through the clan system. Many expected that the wealth coming from that land should be distributed evenly through that system rather than accumulated by individuals.

In his 1997 book The Sandline Affair, Sean Dorney points out that what the people objected to most was that the mining company had removed 1.2 billion tonnes of their land and turned 99.4% of it into waste.

Bougainvilleans regarded the land as their life and livelihood and found it difficult to accept losing it.

These new tensions led to the formation of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, which forced the mine to close in 1989. This act, along with rebel demands for separation, sparked a major military confrontation with PNG forces and a resulting slew of human rights abuses.

After much bloodshed--including the notorious St Valentine's Day Massacre of 1990 when gunships, supplied by Australia, were deployed in an offensive role by the PNG security forces--peace talks were tentatively staged. But in 1992, then Prime Minister Wingti launched another major offensive against the rebels, further exacerbating the situation.

The Bougainville war officially ended in April 1998--during the course of the 10-year conflict around 40,000 Bougainville islanders became refugees, and up to 20,000 people were killed. But, natural disasters then added to the misery as a catastrophic drought hit the area, leaving 500 dead from the resulting hunger and disease and more than 650,000 people severely affected. Then, in July 1998, three giant tidal waves hit PNG's north-west coast, killing up to 3,000 people as villages were completely flattened.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Ngadjonji lands.

From an online version of the anthology A Short History of the Ngadjonji compiled, with the Elders of the Ngadjonji, by M. Huxley

The Ngadjonji traditionally occupied an area of upland rainforest country at the headwaters of the Russell and North Johnstone Rivers in northeast Queensland, Australia. White settlers arrived around 1880 and a decade later they had established communities engaged in dairy--and general-farming as well as sugar-cane growing. Sparse as European settlement was, it's estimated that tribes were probably reduced to less than 20% of their pre-contact numbers within 20 years. European diseases to which the Aborigines had no immunity, such as measles and influenza, caused many deaths, but the major factor in the decline in numbers was wholesale murder by the settlers. Within 60 years, most of the Native people had abandoned their nomadic lives and their dependence on hunting.

During the 20th century, until the 1950s, Ngadjonji people were sent compulsorily to missions throughout the country. The World Council of Churches admitted in 1980 that although the missions protected some Aboriginals from further murderous reprisals they had also largely destroyed the culture, by discouraging language, tribal tradition and, in some instances, family ties.

Ngadjonji elders say their tribe was decimated by miners and the Native Mounted Police Force (NMPF) before the turn of the century. The NMPF has been described by historian H. Reynolds as "the most violent organization in Australian History." The Weekend Australian, March 1989