The Undisputed Possessors

NAIDOC Week (7-14 July) motivated me to hunt down a book I published for the University of Adelaide's John Bray Law Network, Hague's History of the Law in South Australia, 1837–1867.

In that book is a chapter, written almost 100 years ago, about the colonising of South Australia, a further 100 years before then. "The Aborigines and the Law" describes the brutal impact of the first thirty years of white settlement on the Aboriginal peoples, who until then in South Australia, had largely escaped the colonisations of the continent's eastern seaboard.

The author, Ralph Hague, wrote the manuscript in the 1930s but it had never been published. Hague is no literary stylist, and blocks of original quotes from the State's archives make up much of the overall text.

While clunky back then, now so many block quotes are historical gold. They cite judges, governors, well-meaning colonists, and not-so-well-meaning ones.

Officially, the British government gave the Aboriginal peoples British citizenship and protection under its laws. In practice, far away from Westminster the colonists set about clearing land for their farms and cities. They seemed so certain of their mission, and so blind to their impact on the peoples they were chasing away.

One example. South Australia's second governor, George Gawler, was considering the position of the Aboriginal peoples: "It must also be remembered that, if on the one hand we have set before them the blessings of Christianity and civilisation, we have, on the other, received from them the beautiful country, of which, until our arrival, they were undisputed possessors."

I was struck by the naivety of the blessings and the belief that the country had been given to them. Are we still making naive statements today?

Hague's full history is over 900 pages, with around 250 illustrations. The full chapter can be downloaded as a PDF. https://jjemerson.com/hagues-history/