Part 1: "The Black War of Van Diemen's Land"

This was the name of the British (European) campaign exterminate the aboriginal Blacks of the island of Tasmania near "Australia." Unfortunately they were sucessful, committing the only TRULY successful act of genocide. (See "Queen Trugannini" in the archived "OkayBlackOurstorymonth" for more details.)

An article published December 1, 1826 in the Tasmanian Colonial Times declared that:

"We make no pompous display of Philanthropy. The Government must remove the natives--if not, they will be hunted down like wild beasts and destroyed!"

UCLA professor, Jared Diamond, recorded:

"Tactics for hunting down Tasmanians included riding out on horseback to shoot them, setting out steel traps to catch them, and putting out poison flour where they might find and eat it. Sheperds cut off the penis and testicles of aboriginal men, to watch the men run a few yards before dying. At a hill christened Mount Victory, settlers slaughtered 30 Tasmanians and threw their bodies over a cliff. One party of police killed 70 Tasmanians and dashed out the children's brains."

and

"On Flinders Island Robinson was determined to civilize and Christianize the survivors. His settlement--at a windy site with little fresh water--was run like a jail. Children were separated from parents to facilitate the work of civilizing them. The regimental daily schedule included Bible reading, hymn singing, and inspection of beds and dishes for cleanness and neatness. However, the jail diet caused malnutrition, which combined with illness to make the natives die. Few infants survived more than a few weeks. The government reduced expenditures in the hope that the native would die out. By 1869 only Truganini, one other woman, and one man remained alive."

(Flinders Island was thirty miles away from Tasmania in 1830, where some of the aboriginal people were taken to and "Christianized" by missionary, George Augustus Robinson.)

James Morris, graphically noted:

"We hear of children kidnapped as pets or servants, of a woman chained up like an animal in a sheperd's hut, of men castrated to keep them off their own women. In one foray seventy aborigines were killed, the men shot, the women and children dragged from crevices in the rocks to have their brains dashed out. A man called Carrotts, desiring a native woman, decapitated her husband, hung his head around her neck and drove her home to his shack."



"Not, perhaps, before, has a race of men been utterly destroyed within seventy-five years. This is the story of a race which was so destroyed, that of the aborigines of Tasmania--destroyed not only by a different manner of life but by the ill-will of the usurpers of the race's land.... With no defences but cunning and the most primitive weapons, the natives were no match for the sophisticated individualists of knife and gun. By 1876 the last of them was dead. So perished a whole people." --Clive Turnbull



PEace
Solarus

***Words of Wisdom***

"If it's not about NATIONBUILDING, it's not about ANYTHING."- Dr. John Henrik Clarke

"We are not the victims! We are just fighting forces that we cannot see!"-2001 Sankofa Conference

"You don't have the RIGHT to have free time from your children."-Kwame Agyei Akoto

"It is the worst feeling to hear the call of the drum and not be able to respond."-Solarus

On understanding Afrakan thought:
"it's like explaining astrophysics to a whino, the explanation can't be done like that. when people try to simplify it, they ask the other person to tailor the answers their cultural context. and trying to cater afrikan ideals to european understanding is a REAL sin."-utamaroho