Settlers Take What Was Not Their Own
Colonial powers send out their soldiers and their settlers to conquer and found their new lands. This has occurred in Australia, the Americas, and many places around the world. Named the New World for these European colonists who come as invaders and refugees from their old countries. Settlers seek to become masters of their new home. They, who were likely, excess to requirements from whence they came now want to take centre stage. Settlers are rarely, if ever, friends to those who are Indigenous to the newly conquered territories. Settlers take what was not their own.
What Do The Children Of Settlers Feel About The Defeated?
We, the children, of settlers – their descendants, live in a land painted white with our transplanted cultures. I would ask you. What do you feel when you see those dark skinned people, often, living on the edges of towns and cities? Do you sense their status as the progeny of the defeated? Amid the flag waiving celebrations with your many little union jacks on southern crosses what do you feel for those original people of this land? Settlers have damned the lives of generations of Indigenous people.
A Few Facts About Settlers
A few facts about settlers to consider. Many settlers come to the new land with relatively little. They brave wilderness and bear hardship. Quite naturally, they band together to support their pioneering efforts. In most instances, they bring with them a collective religious belief, which tells them they are justified in their theft of this land. Their imperial cultural narrative indemnifies their actions by condemning and belittling what has gone before them as savage and, therefore, inconsequential. Settlers take what was not their own and flip the bird in the face of all and any inquiry as to the moral rectitude of their behaviour. Settlers are, indeed, sanctified as the founding spirit of the new nation. The dominant cohort, then, worship in an increasingly Godless land at their memorial statues and plaques.
“Possession of Australia was declared on the basis of unilateral possession. The land was defined as terra nullius, or wasteland, because Cook and Banks considered there were few ‘natives’ along the coast. They apparently deduced that there would be fewer or none inland. Their observations were soon proven incorrect. The governors of the first settlements soon found that Aboriginal people lived inland, and had special territories and associations with land on a spiritual and inheritance basis. Nonetheless, they did not amend the terms of British sovereignty.”
Settlers’ Savage Reprisals
In Australia, during the first hundred years of the settling of British colonisation there were continual conflicts between those who had been the original holders of their land and the invaders. Settlers were speared and members of native tribes were shot dead and poisoned. Instruction came from the British Colonial Office to allow Aboriginal access to their traditional water holes and hunting lands – this was politely ignored by the settlers. Land ownership was power for these new settlers and they were not going to sully their lands with savages taking livestock and space. Settlers delivered brutal reprisals for any violent actions and trespass committed upon them.
Poisoning gifts of food to tribal groups with arsenic was a favourite genocidal action taken by numerous settlers to rid themselves of native opposition. Men, women and children would die awful gut wrenching deaths.
“David Marr, the well-known writer, recently discovered his own ancestor was involved in the frontier police and, through his research, estimated he may have been directly involved in killing some 40, 000 native blacks. Australians don’t like to think that their lucky country was the result of such practices. Former PM John Howard was big on discrediting and diluting the views of Australian historians who brought this stuff up. “It all happened a long time ago,” was his message to the Australian people.”
Indifference To The Sons & Daughters Of The Defeated
Do yourself a favour and read David Marr’s new book on this topic. It is a balanced account of what actually went on, as his family ancestor led this tribal police force for many years. Modern Australia is so far removed from settler reality at this time that we have lost all touch with our history. Despite this the neglected realities of Indigenous Australians continue and we are seeing the outcome of this in places like Alice Springs. Here a number of Indigenous children, whose parents are often in gaol, are running amok breaking the law. You have to ask yourself what is going on here at the core. What do these kids have to live for? What is there for them to do? Are there any good jobs for them? Recreational pursuits? Nobody seems to care, the indifference to these fellow and sister members of our country and community is profound. The Peter Dutton’s of this world want to crush the dissent and lock up the law breakers. The end result of this is places like the United States with the largest prison population per capita in the world. Everyone will have to bear weapons and deadly force. Unfortunately, there are folk who wish they did live in the US and who seek to make Australia the 51st state. American domestic history is bathed in the blood of Native American Indians and African American slaves.
Settler DNA In Modern Oz Veins
Settlers take what was not their own. The DNA of settlers is imbued in the blood of property owners today. Property ownership is a fever and collective aspiration of modern Australians. Owning your own home has become very expensive in response to this conflation of human and financial appetites. I think that we can trace this back to the settler DNA, which founded white Australia. Recently, I spent 9 months visiting the private properties of Queenslanders in the northern suburbs of Brisbane. This was a government agency involved in Biosecurity and it afforded me the opportunity to physically walk these properties and speak briefly with many owners and tenants.
Queensland Home Owners
I encountered some of the concerns of these property owners, especially those with larger sites like hobby farms. Security is a major concern of these home owners and substantial investments had been made in gates, fences and guard dogs. There is, almost, a paranoia running through these folk fearing what bad people could and would do on their land. Following this I made a cursory examination of police and insurance data in these areas to check out what threats really existed. Crime rates are low and have consistently fallen over recent decades. My guess is that it is an urban myth this anxiety about burglars, house breakers and invaders. Perhaps, in the past there was some crime in their neighbourhood and stories about this have been shared and recounted over the years. Traditional media going online with clickbait crime porn like Channel 7 News sensationalise the few instances of violent crime. Our city populations are now in the millions and really you have to take statistical proportion into account of these things, despite their awfulness. Social media shares unsubstantiated gossip and misinformation in our current era about all sorts of things. Still, if you move into a new home next to someone who has high fences and guard dogs are you going to be the odd one out on this score? Not if the majority of your neighbours are in this protective camp mindset.
Settler paranoia DNA? Maybe. The ghosts of keeping out the dark skinned true owners of this land? Perhaps.
The crazy thing about many of these Queensland homes with their large yards enclosed by fences and gates was their default status. Covered in dog shit sums it up succinctly. Having walked them myself I can tell you this honestly, many were unusable due to this. Too few home owners pick up the dog turds in their yards and stepping on dog shit, especially a fresh one, is not a welcome thing. I could tell you about the grooves of the boots I wore and the challenge of removing this vile material from them. I could share the experience of the foul stench inside the Ute cabin from unchecked boots in a confined rubber-sealed space. I will not labour these points. Lastly, on this security issue I would mention the noise pollution that properties with multiple guard dogs produce. Dogs can be loving creatures as pets and I acknowledge this. However, they are medieval biotech when it comes to security and property protection. Dogs cannot differentiate friend from foe or neutral from nefarious agent to be more precise.
Dogs bark aggressively and loudly at the postman, the metre reader, and all unknown visitors to a property. I can attest first hand that this barking goes on and on, especially when properties contain several dogs. Talk about messing with the serenity of nature for your own private property concerns.
People complain about other manmade noise pollution like loud revving cars but guard dogs, it seems, are par for the course in the suburbs of Brisbane.
The descendants of settlers defend their homes and private properties with dogs, gates and fences. There is an undeniable anxiety or paranoia among some about reported home invasions and break-ins. Obviously, the sensationalising of these rare events cause disquiet among residents, especially older property owners. Businesses that sell gates, fences, home insurance, and the news have a vested interest in spreading shocking occurrences of violent crimes against people in their homes. This is how things work in free market economies. Create a market for things by hook or by crook. It is the way of the world, as they say.
Do collective fears ever truly go away? If generations of people have strong feelings about things like the dangers inherent within the bush, what lives in the wild, what happens to these anxieties? They fade to the background but they do not completely disappear. Settlers took what was not their own. You suddenly see a dark face appear from around a corner on the street and it startles you. An instinctive fear pops up from nowhere, your heartbeat goes up, why is that? Why do you think? It is not rational and it has no logical or reasonable basis. Still, it exists and comes from our past, our ancestral DNA for many folk. Grave crimes against humanity and their consequences do not just disappear. Nobody is asking you or anyone else to feel guilty. There is this false claim about such things put forward by deniers of our history that this is the black or white stark choice available. This is wrong and not the case.
Acknowledging the truth deepens you and us, it is not something to be feared or spurned. We cannot go through life walking on a thin and brittle surface, whilst ignoring the depth below us. Eventually, things break through and reach us.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
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