Truth-telling is a cornerstone of the Uluru Declaration from the Heart. It is easy to say but hard to do. Truth telling is the act of revealing uncomfortable or long-hidden things. Truth-telling is a practice that takes place across the nation (and internationally, including Canada). It brings attention to historical injustices and societal inequalities, which are often difficult to hear.
The Native Mounted Police story is one of the most difficult stories in Queensland’s truth telling process.
In 1849, the Native Mounted Police began operating in Queensland. The Native Mounted Police consisted of six to fifteen Aboriginal troopers who were under the command and control of white officers. The majority of the troopers recruited were from far-flung areas.
Troops were sent on patrol regularly to cover large areas along colonial frontiers in pursuit of Indigenous people deemed “problematic”. They were tasked with protecting civilian settlers and the land they had taken over, as well as their livelihoods, by any means necessary.
Native Mounted Police have been known to engage in violent acts against Aboriginal people while on patrol. These include killing men, women, and children as well as kidnapping, rape and forcible removal.
The truth will require us to accept this violence. Their actions drastically changed the composition of First Nations groups. They reduced their population and altered where and how survivors were able to live.
Fiona Foley, a renowned Badtjala scholar and artist, has stated
I think this country is still scarred by the trauma caused by these border wars. We all carry these wounds in our hearts, whether we realize it or not.
What we found during our research
We have spent the last seven years reconstructing the Native Mounted Police to understand the history of Queensland better.
We researched Native Mounted Police camps, artifacts, and archaeological findings. We also examined historical documents from public libraries and archives (newspapers and colonial government records, private diaries and hospital records) and interviewed a variety of people including descendants of Native Mounted Police troopers and officers, as well as descendants of massacre victims.
Our findings, which total nearly 20,000 pages of documents, have been compiled into a database that sheds light on the lives and violence of the Native Mounted Police’s 450 officers and more than 1,000 Aboriginal troopers.
Many people wonder why Aboriginal men and boys would join a force that hunted down and killed other Aboriginals. In an article, we go into great detail about the reasons for enlisting. They are many and varied. Many were coerced by threats of violence, reduced sentences or other means. However, many others “volunteered”. Some recruits had no other options, or very few.
The Queensland Native Mounted Police, like other native police forces that the British used in Africa and India deliberately exploited, the fact Indigenous people often saw those from another part of the nation as strangers if not even enemies.
The scale of the frontier conflict
Researchers have also mapped events that occurred in Australia and in which six or more people were killed. However, not all frontier conflicts resulted in large numbers of deaths. Smaller incidents precede the majority of large massacres and then followed by more. The attacks were often on property or livestock rather than on people. Or, they could be the deaths of individuals on both sides.
We wanted to reconstruct the fullest possible picture of the nature and scale of the frontier conflicts, including the violence that occurred before the Native Mounted Police was officially formed. This conflict set the stage for Indigenous people’s subsequent interactions with colonial settlers.
We classified conflict into four different categories: attacks against stock or property; attacks against non-Indigenous individuals; attacks against Indigenous people themselves.
We mapped over 2,500 conflict events in colonial Queensland between 1623 and 1911. Violence was common throughout colonial Queensland, but especially along the east and Cape York Peninsula.
The violence in Queensland began in 1623 with the arrival of the Dutch ship Pera under the command of Janszoon Carstensz. In the early 1800s when settler colonists began arriving, violent incidents occurred in each decade, with the peak occurring in 1866.
The most common conflict recorded is the killing of livestock such as cattle, sheep and horses.
Pastoralists and farmers, as well as selectors and agriculturalists, invested much of their savings to buy livestock and acquire land. They couldn’t afford to lose any of their livestock to Aboriginal spears. They often called the Native Mounted Police to help them.