How to have a conversation with someone who says, 'There was no slavery in Australia.'
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are warned that the following contains images of deceased persons.
This week, Black Lives Matter protestors in Bristol toppled a statue of 17th Century British slave trader, Edward Colston.
The image of the monument tumbling into the city's harbour was splashed across front pages around the world; an evocative symbol of the anti-racism movement that's swelled since the death in custody of African American man George Floyd last month.
Asked for his thoughts about the statue's destruction and the possible removal of a London monument to Captain James Cook, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison made a strange claim: that Australia has no history of slavery.
"When you’re talking about Captain James Cook, in his time, he was one of the most enlightened persons on these issues you could imagine. I mean, Australia when it was founded as a settlement, as New South Wales, [it] was on the basis that there'd be no slavery," he told Sydney radio station 2GB.
"While slave ships continued to travel around the world, when Australia was established, yes, sure, it was a pretty brutal settlement... but there was no slavery in Australia."
This is commonly cited by those who want to distance Australia from the dark history of race relations in the United States — "we're not America," they say. But unfortunately it's not true.
Here's how to have a conversation with someone who denies Australian slavery.
'There was no slavery in Australia.'
Australia wasn't a formal slave state like US south was; that's true. But slavery practices still took place.
Here are just a few examples.
Between 1842 and 1904, more than 55,000 people from more than 80 South Pacific islands were brought to Australia to work as slaves on sugar and cotton plantations in Queensland and northern NSW. Many had been coerced into fixed-term contracts or even kidnapped; a process known as 'blackbirding'.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people weren't immune either. From the 1860s to the 1970s, men and boys were taken from their homes and forced to work on cattle and sheep stations across Australia.
Pearling Captain Henry Hilliard with his family and Aboriginal domestic servants c. 1900s. Image: WA Maritime Museum.
And from the early 1900s, women and girls were forcibly removed from their families, placed in domestic training facilities and then, once they turned 15, dispatched to homes as domestic 'help'.
According to NITV, their weekly income "had an approximate buying power at the time of [one] ice-cream cone or two apples."
'But they were paid.'
Some were, yes. But only at a fraction of their white counterparts, and many were not paid at all.
In Queensland in the 1900s, for example, Indigenous stockmen received just 3 per cent of the wages given to white stockmen — and most never even got to see that money.
That was due to government policies now referred to as Stolen Wages.
Between 1897 and 1972, Queensland law, for example, saw the wages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers held in government trust. It's estimated that $500 million has never been repaid.
Similarly, in Western Australia, law allowed the state government to withhold up to 75 per cent of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person's wage in government trust accounts. That wasn't abolished until 1972.
'But no one "owned" another human being.'
Sadly, that's not true either.
Particularly in the pastoral industry, where some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander labourers were bought and sold along with the land they'd been dispatched to work on.
The pearling industry also has a dark past in this regard.
In the late 1800s, Aboriginal men from the Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia were rounded up and sold as freedivers to captains of pearling boats. Government Resident Colonel E.F. Angelo reported in 1886 some had been advertised at "five pounds a head for anybody, or shoot them for the Government at half a crown a piece", according to the ABC.
***
The fact that the Prime Minister appears not to be aware of these parts of Australian history speaks to how long and how broadly they were ignored.
But in his own words, "We've got to be honest about our history. We've got to acknowledge the positive and the negative."
The existence and ongoing injustice of Australian slavery must be part of that.
Feature image: South Sea Islander labourers on a Queensland sugar farm c. 1895. Via National Museum of Australia.
DARK PAST
Haunting pics showing Australian aboriginals shackled and chained around the neck expose the brutal treatment of indigenous people
Unearthed photos are a a reminder of the dark past of oppression aboriginals suffered at the hands of the white population
- 13 Sep 2017,
- Updated: 13 Sep 2017,
- HAUNTING photographs reveal the disturbing abuse of aboriginal people less than a century ago — a reminder of the dark past of oppression they suffered at the hands of the white population.Indigenous Australian men and boys are cruelly shackled together with heavy neck chains on the way to stifling jails and back-breaking work parties.
A group of aboriginal men in neck chains in Australia around 1890, when incarceration was used to weaken the indigenous populationCredit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media Cruel neck chains were commonly used on aboriginals such as these prisoners in the Carnarvon region circa 1906Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media Prisoners in chains working on the railway in Derby, Australia, circa 1897Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media Shackled men and boys were forced into hard labour in work parties on the roads and railwaysCredit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media Chained aboriginal prisoners on Australia's wharf rail line circa 1920Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media These prisoners were clapped in chains after allegedly being caught killing a farm animal near Wyndham, Australia, circa 1930Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media Neck chains were not phased out until the 1940s and continued to be used informally until the 1960sCredit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media The pictures were taken in the 19th and early 20th century, when incarceration was used as a tool to weaken the aboriginal people in Australia.They were often arrested arrested for petty crimes such as stealing cattle and police were paid more for each indigenous prisoner they brought in.Neck chains and other restraints were a common form of punishment for indigenous Australians at the turn of the 20th century.Aboriginal prisoners remained chained from their arrival in the jails - except in times of sickness - for years at a time.Prisoners shackled by the neck were also forced to work on the roads and railways for up to eight hours a day.Aboriginal prisoners shackled by the wrists in transit in Point Samson, Australia, circa 1902Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media Aboriginal prisoners in neck chains with a white man holding the end of the chain, near Wyndham, Australia, circa 1930Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media Chained aboriginal prisoners posed with a policeman and Aboriginal trackers, circa 1890Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media This chained aboriginal man was photographed around 1895Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media Prisoners in chains on a ship circa 1930Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media Aboriginal prisoners outside Roebourne Gaol, Australia, circa 1896Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media It was not until the 1940s that the use of neck chains on Aboriginal prisoners was phased out.They were still used informally in some areas until the 1960s.The shocking pictures emerged today on the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.The landmark international agreement was intended to tackle the discrimination and human rights violations against the 370 million indigenous people living in more than 70 countries.Chained aboriginals returning to Cossack Gaol, Australia, circa 1902Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media Cruel neck chains were a common form of punishment even for minor offences. This picture is from around 1930Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media Policemen were paid per aboriginal they brought back in chains. This picture is from 1897Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media the pictures, inlcuing this from 1910, emerged on the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous PeoplesCredit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media These prisoners were being transported by boat in Australia circa 1920Credit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media The declaration was meant to end the oppression of 370million indigenous people in 370 countriesCredit: State Library of Western Australia/News Dog Media It was adopted by the General Assembly on September 13, 2007, with 144 countries voting in favour.The four nations that voted against it were Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Eleven countries abstained.Last year Canada officially removed its objector status to UNDRIP, and the other three objectors have, to various degrees, changed their position.The declaration is not legally binding but the UN believes it reflects the commitments of member states to eliminate human rights violations against indigenous people.
posted by Satish Sharma at
08:04
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