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6.6 Category 3: Tasmanian Indigenous Australians
6.6.1 Discourses of Indigenous Australians as a ‘problem’ to be dealt with
through government policy.
In discussing the conflict between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, samples of
terms used to describe Indigenous Australians include “aborigines” (Dunlop & Pike, 1963, p.
74, 75), “blacks” (Dunlop & Pike p. 74, 75), “primitive Tasmanian race” (Dunlop & Pike p.
75) and couched within a discourse of being a “social problem” (Dunlop & Pike p. 74). Traits
explicitly attributed to Indigenous Australians are first as a “peaceable, friendly people”
(Dunlop & Pike p. 74) and after provocation and the internment of all Tasmania Indigenous
Australians, referred to as “primitive” (Dunlop & Pike p. 75). Similarly, language used in
Landmarks: A history of Australia to the present day (Blackmore et al., 1969) to describe the
genocide of Tasmania’s Indigenous population attributes blame of the social issues that
emerged to “ex-convicts and the Bass Strait sealers” (Blackmore et al., 1969, p. 51). This
perspective holds specific groups in the community to blame for the “problem” (Blackmore
et al., 1969, p. 51) that arose when relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
Australians had negative repercussions. The government is left out of any discourse that
suggests it had a role to play in the situation, instead placed in the position of ending conflict,
with the narrative stating of the government activity of removing the Indigenous population
from their traditional lands as “eventually the problem was ‘solved’ when in 1888 the last
Tasmanian Aborigine died” (Blackmore et al., 1969, p. 51). Although the word solved is
placed in quote marks indicating the authors do not share the opinion that this was an
appropriate address of the issue, with no mediating of other possibilities or the wider
ramifications of this policy, students are provided with an incomplete profile of the
government policies towards Tasmanian Aboriginals in the 1800s. There is no problematising
of the removal of Indigenous Australians, with language such as “dying race” (Blackmore et
al., 1969, p. 51) used, nor is this term placed in an historical context.
The government policy of the time to stop violence between the Indigenous Australians and
the colonisers is described in this narrative as two forms of actions. The first, a “Black Drive”
(Dunlop & Pike, 1963, p. 74) whose purpose was to “...sweep all the surviving aborigines
into the Tasman Peninsula, ended in the capture of one old man and a boy, for an outlay of
£30,000” (Dunlop & Pike, 1963, p. 74) did not meet with success. Therefore, a second and
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