Forgotten genocide, the slaughter of the native Tasmanians in Australia

D.Antón

The island of Tasmania, an Australian state with an area of ​​68,000 square kilometers and 500,000 inhabitants, is known for being one of the main producers of poppy in the world (to make morphine, codeine and other opium derivatives). It is also known because there is an atmospheric observatory measuring the CO2 content of the atmosphere, the Cape Grim Observatory.
There is another reason why the Cape Grim has historical significance. It is not a technical or scientific reason neither. It is the place where the slaughter occurred that ended the lives of thirty members of the last survivors of the tribe Pennemukeer of the Palawa nation (also known as Tasmanians natives).

On February 10, 1828 four white settlers, who raised sheep, killed with muskets several members of this community who were unarmed and defenseless and threw them from a nearby cliff.
The story of the slaughter is narrated by George Augustus Robinson:
"On the occasion of the slaughter a tribe of natives, composed of women and children, had come to the islands Doughboy. Providence had favored them with good weather. They swam to the island leaving their children on the rocks in the care of the elderly. They had prepared their supply of birds, had been tied with grass, had been towed to shore, and all the tribe sat around the fire sharing the fruits of their hard journey. At that time a group of ferocious barbarians thirsting for the blood of the helpless and harmless people pounced. They fled leaving their provisions. Some were thrown into the sea, others wobbled around the cliff and those who remained were killed by monsters. Those poor creatures who had sought refuge at the top of the rock were pushed to the edge of a horrible precipice, were massacred and their bodies thrown down. I went to the foot of the cliff where the bodies had been dumped, and saw several human bones, some of whom brought with me, and a piece of bloody cliff. As the tide came I hurried away from this Golgotha. "
The bay and cliff where these events occurred is now known as Suicide Bay.
Before the arrival of Europeans in 1642, and the founding of the first British settlement at Risdon Cove in 1803, the native population of the island of Tasmania was estimated between 5,000 and 10,000 people.

Since the early years of British occupation aborigines were enslaved, their women raped, their communities and victims of organized hunts in order to exterminate them. In 1830 there were fewer than 300 individuals (220 or 72 according to various sources).
The last Palawa woman called Truganini died in 1876 completing one of the most efficient genocides in modern history. Some time later, it was learned that another Tasmanian Aboriginal Truganini had survived. This woman, born in Flinders island in Bass Strait, named Fanny Cochrane, escaped the massacre and had 11 children who were the ancestors of contemporary Tasmanian community that still exists in this sea area.
Belying the proclaimed disappearance of ethnic Tasmanian there are currently still 16,000 people who declared descended from the ancient island nation, demanding recognition and claiming their cultural and historical memory. Errol West, eclared,a young man who expresses tasmanian source puts it:
"As the dust blown across the plain
are the people of the Lunar Bird
And yet, there is no one to teach me the songs
that bring the Lunar bird, the fish
Or anything else
That makes me who I am "

From "Chronicles of the human journey", Danilo Antón, Piriguazú Editions.