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Aboriginal Tasmanians

The Aboriginal Tasmanians (Palawa kani: Palawa or Pakana[4]) are[5] the Aboriginal people of the Australian island of Tasmania, located south of the mainland. At the time of European contact Tasmanian Aboriginals were divided into a number of distinct ethnic groups. For much of the 20th century, the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were widely, and erroneously, thought of as extinct and intentionally exterminated by white settlers.[6] Contemporary figures (2016) for the number of people of Tasmanian Aboriginal descent vary according to the criteria used to determine this identity, ranging from 6,000 to over 23,000.[1][2]

Palawa / Pakana / Parlevar

6,000–23,572 (self-identified)[1][2][3]

First arriving in Tasmania (then a peninsula of Australia) around 40,000 years ago, the ancestors of the Aboriginal Tasmanians were cut off from the Australian mainland by rising sea levels c. 6000 BC. They were entirely isolated from the outside world for 8,000 years until European contact.


Before British colonisation of Tasmania in 1803, there were an estimated 3,000–15,000 Aboriginal Tasmanians.[a] The Aboriginal Tasmanian population suffered a drastic drop in numbers within three decades, so that by 1835 only some 400 full-blooded Tasmanian Aboriginal people survived, most of this remnant being incarcerated in camps where all but 47 died within the following 12 years.[7] No consensus exists as to the cause, over which a major controversy arose.[b] The traditional view, still affirmed, held that this dramatic demographic collapse was the result of the impact of introduced diseases, rather than the consequence of policy.[8][9][10][11][c] Geoffrey Blainey, for example, wrote that by 1830 in Tasmania: "Disease had killed most of them but warfare and private violence had also been devastating."[12][13] Henry Reynolds attributed the depletion to losses in the Black War.[14] Keith Windschuttle claimed that in addition to disease, the prostitution of women in a society already in decline, explained the extinction.[15] Many historians of colonialism and genocide, such as Ben Kiernan, Colin Tatz, and Benjamin Madley, consider that the Tasmanian decimation qualifies as genocide by the definition of Raphael Lemkin adopted in the UN Genocide Convention.[16][17][18][d]


By 1833, George Augustus Robinson, sponsored by Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur, had persuaded the approximately 200 surviving Aboriginal Tasmanians to surrender themselves with assurances that they would be protected and provided for, and eventually have their lands returned. These assurances were no more than a ruse by Robinson or Lieutenant-Governor Arthur to transport the Tasmanians quietly to a permanent exile in the Furneaux Islands.[19] The survivors were moved to Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island, where disease continued to reduce their numbers. In 1847, the last 47 survivors on Wybalenna were transferred to Oyster Cove, south of Hobart. Two individuals, Truganini (1812–1876) and Fanny Cochrane Smith (1834–1905), are separately considered to have been the last people solely of Tasmanian descent.[e][f]


The complete Aboriginal Tasmanian languages have been lost; research suggests that the languages spoken on the island belonged to several distinct language families. Some original Tasmanian language words remained in use with Palawa people in the Furneaux Islands, and there are some efforts to reconstruct a language from the available wordlists. Today, some thousands of people living in Tasmania describe themselves as Aboriginal Tasmanians, since a number of Palawa women bore children to European men in the Furneaux Islands and mainland Tasmania.[1]

Pleistocene Palawa language group – the first ethnic and language group in Tasmania; absorbed or displaced by successive invasions except for remnant group on Tasman peninsula. Absorbed population in Eastern Tasmania combined with speakers to form Mara language group across broader eastern Tasmania

Victorian

Furneaux speakers displace Palawa in north-east Tasmania as far south as Orford. Themselves disappear or are absorbed into the Mara language group, a composite of Pleistocene Palawa, Furneaux, and Victorian

Nara speakers invade, but are pushed back to Western Tasmania. Correlates with Western nation of Tasmanian Aboriginal people.

Tamar River: kunermurluker, morerutter, ponrabbel

[83]

Low Head: Pilerwaytackenter

Georgetown area: Kennemerthertackenloongentare

Launceston (Port Dalrymple): Taggener, Lorernulraytitteter

North-Esk River: Lakekeller

Mt Barrow: Pialermaligena

nama burag – or "the ghost of the thunderstorm"

ragi roba – (see rageowrapper) the "revered spirit" – frequently connoted to awesome/revered/dreaded and a signifier of ghosts/phantoms of the departed when connected with signifier ragi

[115]

laga robana – "awful spirit of the dead" i.e. the dead man, some kind of dreaded spirit, malevolent phantom

[116]

maian ginja – "the killer" – translates also to fiend/demon: bringer of death

[117]

muran bugana luwana – "the bright spirit of the night" – a kind of benign or ebullient entity, often described of female form "clothed in grass"

[118]

wara wana – "the spirit being" – also warrawah translates to transcendental/ethereal/spirit of dead associated with celestial bodies- may be malevolent

[119]

badenala – "shadow man" – ghost or spirit

[114]

kana tana – "the bone man" – Western Nation language term for spirit of the dead

[120]

nangina – "shadow/ghost" – contemporary association with "fairy" or "elf" – a supernatural entity dwelling "in the hill – dancing (and) fond of children"

[120]

buga nubrana – "the man's eye" – associated with the sun – possibly a benign entity

[121]

Ancestry

Self-identification

Community recognition

In June 2005, the Tasmanian Legislative Council introduced a reformed definition of Aboriginality into the Aboriginal Lands Act.[160] The bill was passed to allow Aboriginal Lands Council elections to commence, resolving the uncertainty over who was "Aboriginal", and thus eligible to vote.


Under the bill, a person can claim "Tasmanian Aboriginality" if they meet all of the following criteria:

Eumarrah

Kikatapula

Maulboyheenner

Montpelliatta

Tongerlongeter

Tunnerminnerwait

(Truganini) and Fanny Cochrane Smith, who both claimed to be the last "full blooded" Palawa.

Trugernanner

or "King Billy"

William Lanne

lawyer and activist

Michael Mansell

Mannalargenna

Arra-Maida

Australian rules footballer

Rhyan Mansell

Australian rules footballer

Alex Pearce

Australian rules footballer (first documented player in the AFL)

Derek Peardon

basketballer and Australian rules footballer

Marcus Windhager

The play by Louis Nowra

The Golden Age

The novel by Matthew Kneale

English Passengers

Historical novel by Mudrooroo

Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World

The poem Oyster Cove by

Gwen Harwood

The -winning 1980 film Manganinnie, based on Beth Roberts' novel

AFI Award

The novel The Roving party by Rohan Wilson – fictional account of Manarlagenna and William "Black Bill" Ponsonby during the Black War

[163]

The -winning 2018 film The Nightingale, written, directed, and co-produced by Jennifer Kent

AACTA Award

The play At What Cost? by , a Belvoir St Theatre production starring Luke Carroll, premiered in Sydney in 2022, and back for another run there[164] before touring to Brisbane, Adelaide, and Hobart in 2023.[165]

Nathan Maynard

, TV documentary series, featuring Aboriginal Tasmanians in Episode 2

First Australians

(1795–1847), one of the few Palawa people to bridge the times before and after European contact

Woretemoeteryenner

. Australian Bureau of Statistics. Archived from the original on 20 January 2017. Retrieved 16 July 2017.

"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Population: 2016 Census Data Summary"

(1999). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-60929-5.

Diamond, Jared

Garvey, Jillian (2006). . Australian Aboriginal Studies. 1: 58–63.

"Preliminary zooarchaeological interpretations from Kutikina Cave, south-west Tasmania"

(1974). "Tasmanian Tribes" (PDF). In Tindale, Norman Barnett (ed.). Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University Press. pp. 316–354. ISBN 978-0-708-10741-6.

Jones, Rhys

. Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. 1989. ISBN 0731667891.

Tasmanian Aborigines in their own write: a collection of writings by Tasmanian Aborigines

. Australian Aboriginal health Infonet. Archived from the original on 16 May 2016. Retrieved 8 May 2016.

"What details do we know about the Aboriginal population?"

from the Archives Office of Tasmania "Brief Guide No. 18". Retrieved from Internet Archive 13 December 2013.

Records Relating to Tasmanian Aboriginal People

(from the Australian Bureau of Statistics)

Statistics – Tasmania – occupation

The Lia Pootah People Home Page

Reconciliation Australia

Archived 31 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine of Tom Haydon's documentary "The Last Tasmanian" (1978)

1984 Review

from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.

A history

National Museum of Australia

by Lyndall Ryan, 5 March 2008

List of multiple killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804–1835

Media related to Tasmanian Aboriginals at Wikimedia Commons