Liberia: A Country Founded on Imperialist Principles

The New Dawn (Liberia)
Thursday, 08 March 2012
By Mohamed Dukuly (Sydney)


The present debate about returning Liberia to a Christian state is not only a malicious effort for destabilization but also a sign of how the colonial churches succeeded in their role as facilitators of Americo-black imperialism in the place now called Liberia.

The quest for Christian statehood is based on the misconception that Liberia was founded on Christian principles. This idea has been around for a while and mainly shared and promoted by some uncritical Liberian Christians who are seeking to continue the ideological imperialism in Liberia. The fact is, Liberia was NOT founded on Christian principles. Especially if Christian principles mean the “principles of living that Jesus Christ taught about our general behaviour and relationship with one another as human beings and creations of God”.

This paper is aimed to shed light on the idea that Liberia was founded on colonial imperialist principles to serve as dumping place for former American black slaves, primarily for the interest of those who once enslaved them. It was a situation whereby the imperialists American Government, through the American Colonization Society (ACS) imposed themselves on a foreign land and people for the purpose of enhancing their economy, political and social interest, as well as enforcing their imperialist culture and religion on the native population.

We are all aware that prior to the formation of the private organization that led the colonization of Liberia, the question of what to do with the black population in America was always alive in the minds of the American people. Amongst the various debates and discussions going on then, the popular solution most people leaned towards was the idea to remove free black slaves to some sort of territory beyond the border of the United States of America (see Sherwood, 1916).

Some of the well-known arguments advanced then were that: Politically, the two races could not live in harmony with equal political power because there will be prejudices and recollection of injuries between them. Physically, one race could oppose to the other on the bases of “color, form and beauty”. Morally, it was argued that blacks were inferior to whites in intelligence and moral ideals. The only solution therefore was “to transfer the blacks to another country” (ibid, p.493).

By the late end of the 18th Century, advocates for the deportation of blacks to Africa project had gained higher momentum and well known individuals like Thornton who was ready to sacrifice his entire fortune for the project and Hopkins who introduced the idea of the need to salvage Africa. However, Efforts made then were mainly through individuals but paved the way for the formation of the American Colonization Society (ACS) (ibid, p. 507)

The American Colonization Society (ACS) was formed in1816 as collective effort aimed to facilitate the colonization of free blacks of the United States (Poe, 1970).Key people behind the ACS were both “religious” and secular. There were individuals like Reverend Finley who believed in the idea of divine mission to colonize free blacks into Africa and slave holders from the South who supported the ACS because it meant to remove dangerous elements from their society. There was Paul Cuffe a philanthropist and rich businessman of the Quakers community whose interest was to just do something about the plight of black slaves. The interesting thing was that both religious and socio-political arguments were constantly used for different audience just to gain support for the ACS at all cost (see Sherwood 1970). The ACS later won the support of the American government under the leadership of James Monroe and no need to mention here that this was done purely for the interest of America.

Colonizing Africa was not an idea supported at all quarters of the black leadership. Some blacks truly argued that “colonization was an attempt to mask the ongoing problem of slavery, and in the process provided white colonizationists an opportunity to mollify their consciences without genuinely addressing the larger issues”. On the other hand, others saw it as once in a life time opportunity to obtain a full flesh freedom and sense of dignity in a land they can call theirs. While the religious patrons saw it as a God given opportunity to plan their form of Christianity in Africa in disguise of something else (see Stepp, 2007).

One year after what some called “dodgy procurement of land” by the ACS in Cape Mesurado of present Liberia; the first colonist ship arrived in March 1822. Despite intense resistance from the indigenous people the colonists occupied the Island, named it as Christopolis and began building dwellings (Holsoe 1971). Historians recorded that from March up till December that year (1822) indigenous people put up series of resistance against the colonists but failed in their efforts to prevent them from settling.

Even the questionable account of King Kamara’s (Sao Boso) intervention at the time did not help to prevent attacks against the colonist. As the indigenous leaders around the coastal areas of the Island who are mostly known by their imperialists imposed names including “Kings Bromley, Todo, Governor, Konko, Jimmy, Gray, Long Peter, George, Willey, and Ben, as well as all of King Peter's and King Bristol's…” (ibid, p .338); put their warriors together and executed a massive attack on the colonist in November of 1822 but failed to get them out.

Few months after the arrival of the first ship, ACS brought in Reverend Jehudi Ashmun, to administer the colony on their behalf. A Reverend that the black colonist led by Reverend Lott Carey revolted against due to what they called “Ashmum’s unfair attitude” towards them. Internal revolts plus perceived threat of encroachment from imperialist Britain and France were too real to be taken for granted. By 1847, the colony was declared Independent from ACS (White control) and named Liberia with its capital as Monrovia.

The story of Christianity on pre-Liberian soil can not be told without mention of Reverend Lott Cary. He and Teague led the first Baptist Mission into West Africa. The key source of the claim that Liberia was founded on Christian principles is principally premised on the works of those two men and later by activity of Reverend Day of the Southern Baptist Mission. Lott Cary established the first church in Liberia and became vice governor of the colony; while Teague became part of the team that drafted the 1847 Liberian Constitution. However, it is important to be aware of the following salient points about early Christianity in pre-Liberia.

Firstly, Lott Carey and Teague were never official delegates of the American Colonization Society (ACS) to Africa. They were sent by the Triennial Convention upon the recommendation of William Crane to spread Christianity in Africa. The two Christian missionaries plus their families first settled in Sierra Leone and later joined the colonist in 1822 for Liberia. In fact it was recorded that Lott Carey had Sierra Leone in mind as destination while his contract was being arranged by the Church group (see Poe 197 p. 51).

Secondly, prior to setting off for Africa, both Lott Carey and Teague were seriously urged to keep away from politics of the colony as much as they could and to “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s...” (See Stoughton to Carey and Teague in Seventh Annual Report of Baptist Board for Foreign Missions, 1821,p. 397) as cited by (Poe19 p. 55).

Thirdly, Lott Carey involvement into politics was not favoured by everyone in the Triennial Convention. This is why the first report sent to the six Triennial General Missionary Convention one year after his death included the remark that “.... could he (Lott Carey) had devoted his whole time to (the work of the church) much good might have been expected to have resulted from his labours....” (See Fisher, 1922, p. 416). This is one of the reasons why some writers argue that Lott Carey and his Christian team had plans different than that of the American Colonization Society. Unfortunately, their Christian work was somehow an encoded imperialism.

In spite all of these; indigenous Liberians will always remember Reverend Lott Carey as the great colonial missionary who died from injury sustained while preparing ammunition to be used for killing our people (Stepp, 2007, p. 51).

It should therefore be noted that reference made to Christianity and God in the 1847 Constitution should not seen as a genuine attempt to seeking goodness for all (indigenous inclusive). The reality then proved that this was not the case. Ironically, every social injustice issues they experienced as mentioned in the preamble of the 1847 constitution were the exact issues native people were to later be faced with from the so-called “Christian country” (see Liberian 1847 constitution). This is why it is important to raise the question of which Christianity were they talking about? Was it a Christianity that suited their understanding of “freedom”- a concept they understood as the acquisition of property, Black control of churches and their own destiny with their own “distinctive political culture”(Denise 2011). Or was it Christianity without Jesus Christ (Burrowes, 2011) that was being used as cover for imperialism and subjugation of the natives?

What is clear among scholars and at least echoed by Dunn (1997, p.712) is that once established in the place now called Liberia, these former slaves, and their descendents proceeded to enslave the ethnicities among whom they settled in the I820S in an exactly similar fashion which characterised European colonial rule over Africans in other parts of Africa .

These black colonists or settlers were filled with combination of anger about their past experience, extreme desperation and desires to get out of the control of their former slave masters. Their sole focus was on themselves and their plight. So they could do anything to get what they wanted. An example of their mindset then is illustrated by Burrowes (2001), when he recorded that once in 1841 when the president of the American Colonization Society (ACS) wrote Teage to complain about an offensive article in the Liberian newspaper against the whites, Teage (one of the Christian leaders then) responded that as in common with all colored men, he had certain sentiment.... and it was his indefeasible rights to hold those opinions against their former slave masters. What sort of Christianity then that the country is said to be founded on when everything that transpired since their presence on our soil were based on injustice, exploitation and unfair sufferings of native people?

Truly, Christianity filled with unfairness and injustice should not be equated with the Christianity connected to Jesus Christ. The latter is true Christianity while the former is imperialism in disguise. Against this background, it can be said that the founding of Liberia is nothing other than an exercise of imperialism.

In the first place the land was taken by treachery and presented to us as normal transaction. Fisher (1922) listed gunpowder; rum tobacco iron pots, looking glasses and other items not more than $ 300 as the exchange articles for the “valuable track of land which was the nucleus of Liberia”. The claim about signing treaty with native chiefs is a bit of mockery. How could they possibly do a fair deal with chiefs that were not literate in English language and did not speak English? No wonder the natives refused to allow them settle and put up fight to the best of their abilities.

Native people who out-numbered the imperialist at almost 100 to one ratio were denied every form of political participation in the so called “Christian country”. The 1847 constitution that is said to have set the Christian principle basis of Liberia did not assign any citizenship to the native people yet still they later introduced and imposed compulsory hut-tax on them. Not only that land was forcefully taken but natives were more or less a defector subjects to those colonial imperialists. A good “imperialist Christianity” – I guess!

They also practiced a very harsh form of assimilation policy in Liberia whereby natives were forced to undergo a “brainwashed education” to become “Christians” for several reasons. One of those reasons was to make religion an antidote to critical consciousness towards any attempt to question their hegemony. Another was to make their form of Christianity as a deliberate attempt to disrupt the cultural and moral value system existed in pre- Liberia (see Akpan, 1973, pp. 226-227). Not surprising that even in this day and age, one still sess the impact of the decade long brainwashed education in Liberia.

When it was clear that the assimilation policy was not working due to resistance from the Poro and Sande societies on one hand and Islam on the other, the colonial imperialists instituted an indirect rule system that subjected the natives to some of the harshest forms of maltreatments and exploitations. Like other colonial imperial powers, Liberia colonial imperialists placed natives against each other. They formed the Liberian Frontier Force, an on record notorious force to implement the indirect rule policy. Through this Frontier force, the Liberian colonial imperialists created the right atmosphere that allowed them to do to the natives what they experienced from their slave masters (see ibid pp. 229-231)

In conclusion, it is save to state that any claim that links the founding of Liberia to “Imperialist Christian principle” is not only demeaning to real Christianity but also an expression of concocted fallacy based on “brainwashed education”. In view of the historical situation explained earlier plus the realities seen on the ground in present day Liberia, the most rational position on the matter is the view that Liberia was founded on imperialist principles- those that advance domination, exploitation, institutional discrimination and social inequality.


Reference

    Akpan, M. B. (1973). Black Imperialism: Americo-Liberian Rule over African Peoples of Liberia, 1841-1964. In Canadian Journal of African studies, Vol. 7, No. 2.
    Burrowes, C.P. (2001) Black Christian republicanism: a southern ideology in early Liberia, 1822 to 1847. In the Journal of Negro History. Vol. 86, No. 1.
    Dunn, D. E. (1987). Black Colonialism: The Americo-Liberian Scramble for the Hinterland by Yekutiel Gershoni; African and American Values: Liberia and West Africa by Katherine Harris; Big Powers and Small Nations: A Case Study of United States-Liberian Relations by Hassan B. Sisay. Review work in: The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 25, No. 4. pp. 712-715
    Dennis, D. A. (2011) the Mississippi Colonial Experience in Liberia, 1829-1860 (Doctorate Desertation). Retrieved from ProQuest. UMI 3466928
    Fisher, M. M. (1922). Lott Carey. The Colonizing Missionary. In the Journal of Negro History, Vol.7, No.4
    Flowers, E. H. (2008). “A Man, a Christian... and Gentlemen?” John Day , Southern Baptists, and the Nineteenth Century Mission to Liberia. In Baptist History and Heritage, Vol.43, No.2
    Holsoe, S.V. (1971). A Study of Relation between Settlers and Indigenous People in Western Liberia, 1821-1847. In African Historical studies, Vol. 4, No. 2
    Poe, W. A. (1970). Lott Cary: Man of Purchases Freedom. In Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, Vol.39, No. 1 [Peer Reviewed Journal].
    Sherwood, H. N. (1916). Early Negro Deportation Projects .In The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol.2, No. 4
    Sherwood, H. N. (1917). The Formation of American Colonization Society .In The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 2, No.3

About the Author
The Author is a trainer and facilitator with several years of group work experience with families and individuals from CALD background. He holds a BA (ED) History from Bayero University in Nigeria and postgraduate qualifications in Social Science and Family Mediation from Australia. He is presently pursuing his Master degree in Social Work at the Charles Sturt University in Australia.

The Myall Creek Massacre, 1838

Creative Spirits

On 10 June 1838 a group of white settlers murdered 28 Aboriginal men, women and children near Myall Creek Station in northern New South Wales, near Bingara. Seven of the killers were tried and hanged.

The Myall Creek Massacre now serves as both a harrowing reminder of Australia's colonial violence towards Aboriginal people and an example of modern-day reconciliation.

Warning! You might find some of the text here disturbing. It describes strong violence and quotes racist language.

Historic background

In 1838 white people had settled Australia for just 51 years. Pastoralists were pushing into Aboriginal land, dispossessing Indigenous people from the land that nurtured them physically and spiritually.

Aboriginal people did not give up their land that they had looked after for millennia without a fight. White settlers engaged in many clashes with Aboriginal people at the frontier. Fearing to be outnumbered by Aboriginal tribes some settlers escalated low-level skirmishes to the atrocities we now know as Australia's massacres of Aboriginal people.

With the eyes of the law often several days' ride away the settlers had little to fear. Gangs of stockmen went on what was known as 'the Big Bushwhack' or simply 'the Drive': a hunt for Aboriginal people which lasted several months [2]. They thought there was nothing wrong with shooting Aboriginal people or raping Aboriginal women.

Among the massacres, the one at Myall Creek differs from the many other massacres of Aboriginal people in that it is a well documented and extreme example of what white people were capable of perpetrating on Indigenous peoples.

Myall Creek was the tip of the iceberg of frontier violence against Aboriginal people.—Prof. Rhonda Craven, Centre for Educational Research, University of Western Sydney [11]

The events of the Myall Creek Massacre on June 10, 1838

Many massacres, including Myall Creek, were witnessed only by the murderers. But because the Myall Creek Massacre has been extensively documented we know now what happened.

At the time about 50 Aboriginal people had moved to Myall Creek Station at the invitation of a stockman employed there.

The Myall Creek Massacre. Note the rope binding the Aboriginal people together and the little child on the back of her mother on the far right. Published in The Chronicles of Crime, 1841.

Ten of them, all able bodied males, were working on a neighbouring station, 50kms away, when they learned that a group of armed stockmen planned to go onto Myall Creek Station. They walked back as fast as they could, but it was already too late.

The stockmen, led by John Fleming, were already galloping towards the huts of Myall Creek Station where the remaining Aboriginal people were preparing their evening meal.

The stockmen herded the defenceless Aboriginal people together and tied their hands together with a long rope. Only two young boys escaped.

The men were deaf to the cries of their victims. Within twenty minutes of their arriving they hauled their captives westwards from the huts and over the top of a rise.

About 800 metres from the huts the defenceless Aboriginal people were hacked and slashed to death. They were beheaded and their headless bodies were left where they fell. The stockmen then set up camp, drinking and bragging about their killings.

Late that night the Aboriginal men who had been working at the neighbouring station arrived at Myall Creek Station. They were urged to move on and headed off into the night.

Two days after the Myall Creek Massacre the murderers returned and burned the bodies of their victims. They then set out to find the ten Aboriginal people they had missed.

They found them the next day and murdered most of them.

Two beautiful young girls were allowed to live so that they could be raped.—'Massacre at Myall Creek', The Sydney Morning Herald [14]

It seems likely that the same stockmen perpetrated another massacre near MacIntyre's (near Inverell) where the group of ten Aboriginal people had headed. Reportedly between 30 and 40 Aboriginal people were murdered and their bodies cast onto a large fire.

A woman was allowed to run with blood spurting out of her cut throat. She was then thrown alive onto the fire. Her infant child was thrown alive onto the fire. Two young girls were mutilated by the gang.

Eventually the party immersed into heavy drinking and dispersed five days after their first killings.

Investigating the Myall Creek Massacre

Almost three weeks later the atrocity was reported to police in Sydney in the absence of the local police magistrate. Governor George Gipps ordered an investigation which opened on July 28th, 1838. Eventually ten suspects were identified and marched 300kms to Sydney for trial. Their leader, John Fleming, escaped.

As news spread about the prisoners their capture attracted wide interest. Given the accepted opinion about Aboriginal people of those days the public were soon in favour of the accused and a prominent landholder offered to finance their defence.

I look on the blacks as a set of monkeys, and the earlier they are exterminated from the face of the earth the better... I would never see a white man hanged for killing a black.—One of the jurors, quoted in The Australian, 18 December 1838 [8]

The first trial in November 1838 was based on thin evidence. No-one apart from the killers had witnessed the massacre and they had removed all bodies before they could be recovered as evidence. The accused pleaded not guilty.

In the absence of any corpse the jury took only 15 minutes to pronounce the accused not guilty to the cheering of the crowd in the court. But Attorney-General James Plunkett asked for and was granted another indictment.

The second trial, ten days later, accused only seven of the original ten men and focused on the killing of just one Aboriginal child. Eventually the jury found them guilty of the murder of the child.

On 18 December 1838 the seven stockmen were hanged. For the first time in Australian history white men were punished for murder of Aboriginal people [3].

But the NSW governor's commitment to justice for Aboriginal people waned. The involvement of the other three men in the Myall Creek Massacre was never investigated.

The verdict and sentence caused outrage among settlers [2,3]. Petitions were signed and money was raised to employ the best lawyers to defend the murderers [14]. For the murderers it was inconceivable that they had committed a crime given that there had been many such killings. Often the leader of a 'punitive party' and the magistrate responsible for trials were one and the same man [3,11].

Protocols of the court proceedings.

The whole gang of black animals are not worth the money the colonists will have to pay for printing the silly [court] documents.—The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 October 1838 [3,8]

After Myall Creek

After the Myall Creek Massacre murderous attacks on Aboriginal people continued for many decades well into the 20th century. White people now went 'underground' using poisoned flour [2] which was harder to prove in court [13]. They also took greater care to conceal or destroy the corpses [13]. Many massacres never became known outside the district where they occurred [3].

One of the last big massacres occurred in 1928 when a group of policemen chained together and shot 50 Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. Three women were spared to be raped and later burned [10]. It became known as the Coniston Massacre.

Overall, "premeditated butchery of men, women, children and infants accounted in the aggregate for tens of thousands of black lives," reported the Sydney Morning Herald [14], a view Colin Clague confirms. Colin was head of the Aboriginal Land Claims Unit from 1983 to 1988 and vividly remembers the struggle to acknowledge many other massacre sites. Many of them could not be claimed, and when you walk along public reserves or in national parks you might as well come across a massacre site [17].

Myall Creek is all over Australia.

Calling for information on Pilbara massacres

The Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre in South Hedland seeks information, stories or recollections about Pilbara massacres.

Please contact the centre on (08) 9172 2344.

Massacres: The horrors of frontier violence

25:1

Ratio at which Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory were killed compared to white settlers from 1870s to 1900 [1].

12:1

Ratio at which Aboriginal people of Victoria were killed compared to white settlers from the 1800s [1].

Contemporary sketch of the Waterloo massacre. Note the firecrackers exploding in the background while white men shoot Aboriginal people. The Waterloo massacre occurred 50kms south-west of Moree (380 kms south-west of Brisbane), on Waterloo Creek (what is known today as Millie Creek [16]) on Australia Day (26 January) 1838, a few months before the massacre at Myall Creek. Five white men were killed, but between 120 and 300 Aboriginal people of the Kamilaroi nation were shot by Major James Nunn [15], making it the maybe the largest single massacre in Australia.

Black memories

"My mother would sit and cry and tell me this; they buried our babies in the ground with only their heads above the ground. All in a row they were. Then they had tests to see who could kick the babies' head off the furthest. One man clubbed a baby's head off from horseback.

They then spent the rest of the day raping the women, most of whom were then tortured to death by sticking sharp things like spears up their vaginas till they died.

They tied the men's hands behind their backs, then cut off their penis and testicles and watched them run around screaming until they died. They killed in other bad ways too." [4]

The main reasons why Aboriginal people were killed by white settlers were [1]:

• a struggle for land where stockmen often led cattle to graze well beyond the limits of the station
• as reprisals for attacks on white men, cattle or horses
• lack of communication because of linguistic barriers
• for being cheeky (e.g. for being "found standing in the moonlight in the doorway of [a squatter's] hut")
• fear of attacks by Aboriginal people (settlers thought Aboriginal people painted for important ceremonies were performing war dances),
• to remove all male Aboriginal people so that white settlers could sexually abuse women and girls.

White settlers found no reason to spare Aboriginal men, boys and children. Aboriginal girls and women, however, were often kept for sexual pleasure. Research uncovered "stories of girls as young as eight who were kidnapped and raped and infected with syphilis. Teenage girls were kept for sex and chained up at night to stop them running away. One group of girls was held in a chicken wire enclosure." [1]

Jack Watson, head stockman at Lawn Hill station in the Gulf country, in 1885 had 40 pairs of human ears nailed to the walls of his hut.—The Age [1]

Some other massacre sites include Appin, Bluff Rock, Slaughterhouse Creek, Waterloo Creek and Woodford Bay.

Myall Creek Massacre memorial

The Myall Creek Massacre memorial site is approx. 20 kms out of Bingara and 600km north of Sydney.

Initiatives to erect a memorial on the Myall Creek Massacre site date from as early as 1965. But it wasn't until 1998 that a conference on reconciliation decided to erect a permanent memorial because the participants felt that the 'bad history' had to be acknowledged along with the good. The Myall Creek Memorial Committee was formed to carry out the proposal.

There is a code of silence surrounding the massacres. —Paulette Smith, Myall Creek Memorial Committee [7]

On 10 June 2000 the Myall Creek Memorial Committee officially opened the Myall Creek Memorial.

The memorial consists of a single, large granite rock. A pathway which leads from the road to the site features seven plaques which briefly explain the history of the massacre. They were made according to artwork by Colin Isaacs.

Travelling to the memorial

The Myall Creek Massacre memorial is situated in northern NSW between the towns of Bingara and Delungra.

From Sydney travel north to Newcastle then on highway number 15 to Tamworth. Continue north via Manilla and Barraba to Bingara. In Bingara follow the highway number 95 along East St, and after leaving town turn right into Old Bingara Road.

Refer to the map on the right for further details.

Myall Creek Massacre memorial stone. The plaque reads: "In memory of the Wirrayaraay people who were murdered on the slopes of this ridge in an unprovoked but premeditated act in the late afternoon of 10 June, 1838."

One of the Myall Creek memorial plaques. Note the translation into Gamilaraay language on the top of the plaque. Seven plaques tell the story on your way to the memorial stone.

Myall Creek Massacre memorial added to national heritage list

On 7 June 2008, 170 years after the Myall Creek Massacre happened, the Federal Heritage Minister Peter Garrett declared the Myall Creek memorial an official national heritage site. Myall Creek joins as the 79th place to be included on the national heritage list which protects natural, historic and Indigenous places of outstanding heritage value to the nation.

The protection the Myall Creek Massacre memorial enjoys through its listed heritage status is welcome because the memorial was damaged in 2005 when vandals hammered words out of some plaques [6].

The events at Myall Creek resonate across the years and the listing of the Myall Creek Massacre and Memorial Site formally recognises a pivotal moment in Australia's history—Peter Garrett, Federal Heritage Minister [5]

Myall Creek Massacre site gets heritage listing. Heritage Minister Peter Garrett (right) hands over the heritage listing plaque to descendants of the Aboriginal people murdered: Sue Blacklock (left) and Lyall Munro.

On 14 November, 2010 the site was given the state's highest form of heritage protection and recognition when Minister for Planning, Tony Kelly, announced it was listed on the State Heritage Register because it represents an important part of the history of New South Wales.

Myall Creek Massacre memorial—a reconciliation site

With all the violence and atrocities associated with Myall Creek it is hard to imagine that the memorial is also a place of reconciliation.

Ever since the 1980s, annual commemorations recalled the events and remembered both the murderers and the victims of the massacre at Myall Creek.

In 1998 Sue Blacklock, a descendant of an Aboriginal survivor, approached the Rev. John Brown to offer Myall Creek as a reconciliation project. [3]

Coincidentally Beulah Adams, a woman descended from one of those hanged, and Des Blake, descendant of another murderer, also came forward.

Sue acknowledged the courage of Beulah and Des and all felt a strong connection between them. Des told his story in schools—any Australian with ancestors of the 'pioneering days' could have similar links to atrocities in the past.

By their coming together these people make Myall Creek an outstanding example of history used to reconcile and restore relationships. Sue, Beulah and Des still meet during the annual commemorations at the Myall Creek memorial site.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s I used to think, 'If they could do [the killings] then, they still might'. Deep down I sometimes still think that way... It's sometimes hard to lose the young girl inside.—Sue Blacklock [12]

Myall Creek reconciliation. In a gesture of reconciliation Lyall Munro (left), descendant of the Aboriginal people murdered at Myall Creek, shakes the hand of Des Blake, descendant of the white murderers.

Resources

Roger Milliss' Waterloo Creek: The Australia Day Massacre of 1838 describes the Australia Day 1838 Waterloo Creek and Myall Creek massacres of Aborigines.

It is easy to read and keeps you horrified and glued to it at the same time. Milliss was the co-winner of the National Book Council's 1992 Banjo Award. 'Waterloo Creek' includes a detailed reference with many endnotes and pages of bibliography.

This book inspired the group Kilminister to write a song about the Myall Creek Massacre (see below).

Demons at Dusk by Peter Stewart describes the Myall Creek Massacre in a half-novel, half-historic manner.

I can't put this book down. As an Australian I am appalled that not only did the massacre happen but also that this wasn't an isolated incident.—'browneyedgirl' in an ABC reader forum

Blood on the Wattle by Bruce Elder informs about massacres and maltreatment of Aboriginal people. It was voted one of the most influential works of Australian non-fiction by newspaper readers in the 'Spectrum Poll of the Century'.

Make sure to pick up the third edition which includes a new chapter on the massacres in the New England area of NSW and around the Three Rivers - the Hastings, the Macleay and the Manning (120 kms north-east of Newcastle).

Craig Lahiff's movie Black and White is about an Aboriginal man who is falsely accused to have murdered a nine-year-old white girl.

The movie documents how white people, police, judges, townsfolk, have no doubt of the Aboriginal man's guilt and what a white lawyer can lose when he sets out to defend the accused.

Read the full review about 'Black and White'.

Resources on massacres in Victoria: Gippsland Massacres - The Destruction Of The Kurnai tribe, 1800-1860, Peter Gardner and Scars in the landscape: A register of massacre sites in western Victoria, 1803-1859, Ian Clark.

The Wikipedia provides a list of massacres of Indigenous peoples in Australia.

Check out the website of the Sydney Friends of Myall Creek.

Songs about the Myall Creek Massacre

"Kilminister's Confession" by Kilminister

In 2007 the group 'Kilminister' recorded the song Kilminister's Confession which tells the thoughts of one of the white men, Charlie Kilminister, who murdered the Aboriginal people at Myall Creek.

Laurie McGinness from Kilminister says [9]: "The Kilminister character is an amalgamation of several of those involved so the song should not be considered as a completely accurate recount of the events... I changed the story for dramatic effect and to emphasise the cycle of violence, abuse breeds abuse, so the brutalisation of the convicts flowed into the brutalisation of the Indigenous people."

Lyrics: Kilminister's Confession

My name is Charlie Kilminister and tomorrow I must die When the sun comes up I will stand upon the scaffold high With six of my companions beneath the crowd's gaze At the end of a rope, short and strong, I will end my days  Jack Ketch will be the hangman and he'll hang us true and well When the sun goes down tomorrow, we'll be on pour way to hell God doesn't care for murderers or so the priest did say But if I go to hell I don't care, I already spent ten years there  I was sent to the colony of New South Wales for stealing a pound, a pound of nails They took me from my wife and child, it's the things a man loses that drive him wild  Out beyond the Big River, to Myall Creek I was delivered                                           In the heart of an Aboriginal nation well beyond the limits of location  My master was Henry Dangar and I was his convict fool I've known a lot of evil men but never one so cruel He had me march to Patrick Plains for twice times fifty on my back Then the bastard turned me round and marched me straight back  Most of the blacks were dead already from the work of Cobban and Nunn The few that were left hid in the bush and from the stockmen they did run Some women and kids and a few old men took shelter at our station They were about ail that was left of a great Aboriginal nation  There was a woman named Ippeta who with her husband I did share She felt the scars upon my back, I thought she cared though her skin was black Well Daddy was an old man and Billy but a boy Somehow into our misery they brought a little joy  John Russell was a stockman who hated all the blacks With George Cobban he had ridden on many great bushwhacks He heard about the group we had at Myall Creek like Satan he did tempt me, like Judas I was weak  We took them out and murdered them, for no reason that I know And when it came to Ippeta, I killed her with one blow The power of pure evil was strong upon my mind But still I cannot understand how I was so blind  The night is nearly over and the sun will surely rise Soon it will be time to die with those I do despise But one question still haunts me won't you tell me if you can Why Major Nunn, who did worse than me, will never hang and still is free  My name is Charlie Kilminister and tomorrow I must die When the sun comes up I will stand upon the scaffold high With six of my companions beneath the crowd's gaze At the end of a rope, short and strong, I will end my days 

Lyrics published with kind permission by Laurie McGinness from Kilminister. The CD features another song about a massacre, called Waterloo Creek.

Download a sampler of the song 'Kilminister' (mp3, 1.2MB; published with permission).

"John Fleming" by Timeline

Timeline recorded a song based on the Myall Creek Massacre called John Fleming (the leader of the stockmen) which can be heard in full on Timeline's website.

A play about the Myall Creek Massacre

Maurice Strandgard wrote a play titled Massacre which was published in 1991. It was performed at the Castlemaine Fringe Festival in Castlemaine, Victoria.

An excerpt is available at the Australian Script Centre.

Out of respect for Aboriginal culture I use Indigenous sources as much as possible.
[-] Source unless otherwise cited: Myall Creek Massacre & Memorial, brochure, Myall Creek Memorial Committee, 2008 [1] 'Skeletons are out', The Age, 2/7/2005 ('Frontier Justice' by Tony Roberts) [2] 'Myall Creek' section, Aboriginal Australia, Lonely Planet, 1st ed., p.143 [3] 'Survival - A History of Aboriginal Life in New South Wales', Nigel Parbury, pp.55 [4] 'Massacres to Mining: The Colonisation of Aboriginal Australia', Jan Roberts, 1981, p.19 [5] 'Myall Creek Massacre site heritage listed', ABC News, 7/6/2008 (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/07/2267910.htm?section=australia) [6] 'Vandals deface two Australian memorials', Sydney Morning Herald, 31/1/2005 (http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Vandals-deface-two-Australian-memorialss/2005/01/31/1107020322985.html) [7] 'The Myall Creek Massacre', booklet published by the Myall Creek Massacre Committee, Bingara, 1981 [8] 'Myall Creek murders still cast long shadow', Daily Telegraph, 10/6/2008, p.29 [9] Personal communication with Laurie McGinness [10] 'From Massacres to Mining, The Colonization of Aboriginal Australia', J.G. Roberts, 1978 [11] 'Teaching Aboriginal Studies', Rhonda Craven (ed.), 1999, p.107 [12] 'Myall milestone to reconciliation', Sydney Morning Herald, 7/6/2008 [13] 'Australia's worst racial years', SMH, 8/6/1978 [14] 'Massacre at Myall Creek', SMH, 5/11/1977 [15] 'Australia Day massacre swept under the mat', SMH, 25/1/1988 [16] 'The Encyclopedia of Australia's Battles', Chris Coulthard-Clark, 2001, p.12 (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=DLz6LJBgYHcC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=waterloo+creek+moree&source=web&ots=s848SwS_4m&sig=O-btdKH877bBMkoRHVfrx0xCcNM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result) [17] 'What about other massacre sites?', Koori Mail 429 p.25

How the Murdoch Press Keeps Australia’s Dirty Secret

By John Pilger

May 12, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The illegal eavesdropping on famous people by the News of the World is said to be Rupert Murdoch’s Watergate. But is it the crime by which Murdoch ought to be known? In his native land, Australia, Murdoch controls 70 per cent of the capital city press. Australia is the world’s first murdochracy, in which smear by media is power.

The most enduring and insidious Murdoch campaign has been against the Aboriginal people, who were dispossessed by the arrival of the British in the late 18th century and have never been allowed to recover. “Nigger hunts” continued into the 1960s and beyond. The officially-inspired theft of children from Aboriginal families, justified by the racist theories of the eugenics movement, produced those known as the Stolen Generation and in 1997 was identified as genocide. Today, the first Australians have the shortest life expectancy of any of the world’s 90 indigenous peoples. Australia imprisons Aborigines at five times the rate South Africa during the apartheid years. In the state of Western Australia, the figure is eight times the apartheid rate.

Political power in Australia often rests in the control of resource-rich land. Most of the uranium, iron ore, gold, oil and natural gas is in Western Australia and Northern Territory – on Aboriginal land. Indeed, Aboriginal “progress” is all but defined by the mining industry and its political guardians in both Labor and coalition (conservative) governments. Their faithful, strident voice is the Murdoch press. The exceptional, reformist Labor government of Gough Whitlam in the 1970s set up a royal commission that made clear that social justice for Australia’s first people would only be achieved with universal land rights and a share the national wealth with dignity. In 1975, Whitlam was sacked by the governor-general in a “constitutional coup”. The Murdoch press had turned on Whitlam with such venom that rebellious journalists on The Australian burned their newspaper in the street.

In 1984, the Labor Party “solemnly pledged” to finish what Whitlam had begun and legislate Aboriginal land rights. This was opposed by the then Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke, a “mate” of Rupert Murdoch. Hawke blamed the public for being “less compassionate”; but a secret 64-page report to the party revealed that most Australians supported land rights. This was leaked to The Australian, whose front page declared, “Few support Aboriginal land rights”, the opposite of the truth, thus feeding an atmosphere of self-fulfilling distrust, “backlash” and rejection of rights that would distinguish Australia from South Africa. In 1988, an editorial in Murdoch’s London tabloid, the Sun, described “the Abos” as “treacherous and brutal”. This was condemned by the UK Press Council as “unacceptably racist”.

The Australian publishes long articles that present Aboriginal people not unsympathetically but as perennial victims of each other, “an entire culture committing suicide”, or as noble primitives requiring firm direction: the eugenicist’s view. It promotes Aboriginal “leaders” who, by blaming their own people for their poverty, tell the white elite what it wants to hear. The writer Michael Brull parodied this: “Oh White man, please save us. Take away our rights because we are so backward.”

This is also the government’s view. In railing against what it called the “black armband view” of Australia’s past, the conservative government of John Howard encouraged and absorbed the views of white supremacists -- that there was no genocide, no Stolen Generation, no racism; indeed, whites are the victims of “liberal racism”. A collection of far-right journalists, minor academics and hangers-on became the antipodean equivalent of David Irving Holocaust deniers. Their platform has been the Murdoch press.

Andrew Bolt, columnist on Murdoch’s Melbourne Herald-Sun tabloid, is currently the defendant in a racial vilification case brought by nine prominent Aborigines, including Larissa Behrendt, a professor of law and indigenous studies in Sydney. Behrendt has been an authoritative and outspoken opponent of Howard’s 2007 “emergency intervention” in the Northern Territory, which the Labor government of Julia Gillard has reinforced. The rationale to “intervene” was that child abuse among Aborigines was in “unthinkable numbers”. This was a fraud. Out of 7,433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors, four possible cases were identified – about the rate of child abuse in white Australia. What this covered was an old-fashioned colonial grab of mineral-rich land in the Northern Territory where Aboriginal land rights were granted in 1976.

The Murdoch press has been the most lurid and vociferous in its promotion of the “intervention”, which a United Nations special rapporteur has condemned for its racial discrimination. Once again, Australian politicians are dispossessing the first inhabitants, demanding leasehold of land in return for health and education rights that whites take for granted and driving them into “economically viable hubs” where they will be effectively detained -- a form of apartheid.

The outrage and despair of most Aboriginal people is not heard. For using her institutional voice and exposing the government’s black supporters, Larissa Behrendt has been subjected to a vicious campaign of innuendo in the Murdoch press, including the implication that she is not a “real” Aborigine. Using the language of its soulmate the London Sun, the Australian derides the “abstract debate” of “land rights, apologies, treaties” as a “moralizing mumbo-j

Comments:

wreckedearth

I recently finished a book on Australia and I can tell you that today aborigines are still viewed with contempt, racism is alive and well in Australia.

In 1838 white people had settled Australia for just 51 years. Pastoralist's were pushing into Aboriginal land, dispossessing Indigenous people from the land that nurtured them physically and spiritually.

"My mother would sit and cry and tell me this; they buried our babies in the ground with only their heads above the ground. All in a row they were. Then they had tests to see who could kick the babies' head off the furthest. One man clubbed a baby's head off from horseback.
They then spent the rest of the day raping the women, most of whom were then tortured to death by sticking sharp things like spears up their vaginas till they died.
They tied the men's hands behind their backs, then cut off their penis and testicles and watched them run around screaming until they died".
This is how this land was taken from its original owners. A heritage that every Australian can be really proud of. But if you are white and of English extraction you are okay. Australia should hang its head in shame.