As Australia’s First Nations reflect after a bruising ‘Voice To Parliament’ referendum, they can take heart from the Bidjigal warrior’s legacy
Illustration: The Founding of Australia. By Capt. Arthur Phillip R.N. Sydney Cove, Jan. 26th 1788. Credit: Wikimedia Commons Leaders of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have called for a ‘week of silence’ to pause and reflect, after the country voted against recognising the continent’s First Nations on October 14, 2023.
The ‘Voice To Parliament’ was Australia’s first referendum after 1999, when the former British colony voted against becoming a republic. It asked Australians whether their indigenous counterparts should be recognised in the country’s 122-year-old constitution by appointing an advisory body that would give Aboriginal people a greater say in decision-making.
Over 60 per cent of Australians voted against having such an advisory body.
The run-up to the referendum — which was pushed by current Australian premier Anthony Albanese — divided Australia.
The proposals of the referendum being defeated have been ascribed by members of the ‘Yes’ campaign to wrong messaging and disinformation — with the majority White population fearing that it would give first peoples importance over them.
Then there were indigenous Australian leaders like Lidia Thorpe who voted ‘No’. In 2020, Thorpe, who was then an activist, had told Down To Earth that there could be no closure for indigenous Australians till the Australian government signed a treaty with them.
“We want a treaty first. Then we can negotiate constitutional recognition and a ‘Voice to Parliament’,” she had said.
After the result, indigenous leaders remarked at the bitter irony of it all: Of people who had been in Australia for only 235 years (those of European descent) not recognising those who had been there for 60,000 years (Aboriginal Australians are the oldest living culture on the planet).
It was on January 26, 1788, that the British started the colonisation of Australia. It was not long before it evoked resistance. Leading it was one man: Pemulwuy.
The ‘First Fleet’, a flotilla of British ships travelling from England, reached the waters of Port Jackson — the harbour of Sydney — with express orders to find a British penal colony in what is now Australia.
The location was home to three Aboriginal nations — the Dharug, the Eora and the Dharawal — who were themselves divided into various clans.
Pemulwuy belonged to the Bidjigal clan of the Eora (Dharug, according to some scholars). His people were the indigenous residents of Parramatta, now part of Greater Sydney. According to most historians, he was a traditional healer and lawman of his tribe.
Pemulwuy was not always opposed to the British settlement in Sydney. In Pemulwuy: A War of Two Laws, a documentary by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the late Aboriginal scholar, Eric Wilmot noted:
…he (Pemulwuy) was trading meat with them because, at that stage, the British colony in Sydney was pretty short of meat and Pemulwuy’s people were very good hunters. He would trade meat for them, for other things, but the trade broke down.
Wilmot, the late Australian Aboriginal activist Richard Green and others cited various reasons for the breakdown.
The start of the British settlement in the Sydney area saw settlers clearing Aboriginal land to grow potatoes as well as fishing in local waterbodies. The indigenous people, left with no other option, were forced to find alternative sources of food. They took the produce from White settlements. They did not think of this as ‘stealing’. But the Europeans did. With lethal results.
Matters came to a head on December 9, 1790, when Pemulwuy speared John McIntyre, the gamekeeper of Arthur Philip, governor of the fledgling colony.
Watkin Tench, a British marine officer, who was stationed at Port Jackson, noted in A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson:
In the course of the day, Colbee, and several more natives came in, and were taken to the bed where the wounded man lay. Their behaviour indicated that they had already heard of the accident, as they repeated twice or thrice the name of the murderer Pimelwi, saying that he lived at Botany Bay.
Green says in the documentary that Pemulwuy had attacked McIntyre as he had killed Aboriginal people, especially women.
After the killing of McIntyre, Pemulwuy started a full-fledged guerilla war against European settlers in the Sydney area. He united various Aboriginal clans and nations and adopted a scorched earth policy of burning crops and killing livestock.
Pemulwuy raided the Toongabbie government farm in March 1797. He and his party of 100 warriors later squared off against armed soldiers and settlers. He was wounded during the conflict.
David Collins, in An Account of the English Colony of NSW Vol 2, noted:
…and Pe-mul-wy, who had received seven buck shot in his head and different parts of his body, was taken extremely ill to the hospital. This man was first known in the settlement by the murder of* John McIntire in the year 1790; since which he had been a most active enemy to the settlers, plundering them of their property, and endangering their personal safety.
Pemulwuy managed to escape from the hospital, as Collins notes:
Having proceeded down the river, they stopped at a point near Botany Bay, where they met with several parties of natives, among whom was Pe-mul-wy, who, having perfectly recovered from his wounds, had escaped from the hospital with an iron about his leg.
On November 22, 1801, Philip Gidley King, the governor of New South Wales, proclaimed that Pemulwuy was to be brought in dead on alive. On June 2, 1802, he was shot and killed by “the master of the Nelson Brig”, according to the journal of a seaman, Samuel Smith.
The person who shot and killed Pemulwuy was identified by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2003 as sailor and explorer, Henry Harding, who incidentally had been a member of the First Fleet.
Pemulwuy died fighting for the sovereignty of his homeland. But before he died, “with simple spears, rocks, boomerangs, stones, he [Pemulwuy] defeated the British army that they sent here”, said Green.
Those fighting for recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people may well take inspiration from his legacy to continue with their goal.
We are a voice to you; you have been a support to us. Together we build journalism that is independent, credible and fearless. You can further help us by making a donation. This will mean a lot for our ability to bring you news, perspectives and analysis from the ground so that we can make change together.
.png)
Comments are moderated and will be published only after the site moderator’s approval. Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name. Selected comments may also be used in the ‘Letters’ section of the Down To Earth print edition.