Review: Genocide in the Kimberley

Chris Owen, ‘Every Mother’s Son is Guilty’:
Policing in the Kimberley Frontier of Western Australia 1882-1905, UWA Publishing

“Prisoners shall not be taken; unless absolutely necessary…if the natives show fight or violently resist the police in the execution of their duty; constables will use their firearms to protect themselves with.”

– Edwin Drewry, Police Inspector for the Kimberley, 13 October 1892.^[1]

“…it will be a happy day for Western Australia and Australia at large when the natives and the kangaroo disappear.”

– George Simpson, Member of the Legislative Council, “Protection of Northern Settlers Against Hostile Natives,” Parliamentary Debates Legislative Council, 14 January 1892, Vol II.^[2]

Police, pastoralists and politicians killed, enslaved, tortured and raped Aboriginal people and stole their land. This brutal history of colonisation in WA’s northernmost Kimberley region – one of the last areas of Australia to be colonised – has been whitewashed, but historian Chris Owen’s meticulously researched Every Mother’s Son is Guilty uncovers it. While the broad outlines of this story – dispossession and genocide – are known to the left, the details are not. Every page will make your blood boil. But this is valuable knowledge. Aboriginal people continue to experience systemic discrimination at the hands of the state, while mining companies profit from the theft of their land. The reputations of murderers and slave owners remain disgracefully intact. Their statues should be torn down, like those of US slave owners. Instead, they have suburbs named after them, while the names of Indigenous resistance figures are largely unknown. Owen’s book can thus be seen as an important intervention in the ongoing history wars. These wars are fought with intensity because both sides – racists and anti-racists – know that history is political. It matters whether the establishment of capitalist rule can be sanitised, or viewed in its full horror.

Owen divides his history into three periods. First, the period from 1882, when colonists first arrived in the Kimberley, through to 1890 when the state of Western Australia was granted self-government by Britain. The second period is from 1890 to 1898, during which time the violence against Aboriginal people intensified. The final period runs to 1905, when the findings of the royal commission into the mistreatment of Aboriginal people^[3] were handed down.

Massacres and monopolies: early pastoralism and policing in the Kimberley 1882-1890

In this early period there were very few police covering a vast distance in the Kimberley. Pastoralists themselves were the main force carrying out a reign of terror. The Kimberley was “opened up” after surveyor Alexander Forrest – brother of Premier John Forrest – toured the region in 1879 and excitedly described to the government the 25 million acres of fertile land it contained, suitable for farming sheep and cattle. The area was gazetted the following year. Owen describes how the land was apportioned among pastoralists. The government set up a process where individuals could apply for leases in the region. If more than one person applied for the same piece of land, a ballot would be held. A cartel of about half a dozen leading establishment figures – including William Marmion, Robert Sholl and Alexander Forrest, whose dastardly deeds are explored later in this review – rigged the ballot by grouping together and making overlapping applications. They ended up with around half of the leased land, much of it in prime locations near rivers.

It was 1883 before the first police were sent to Derby in the West Kimberley. There were only one sergeant, two constables and two “native assistants”. The police “station” was in fact a tent! Interestingly, police in this early period aided commercial interests by reporting on where the best land was and, where to find water, as well as relations with Aboriginal people. It was mainly Perth-based pastoralists who farmed sheep and cattle in the West Kimberley. In the East Kimberley, “t’othersiders” from the Eastern states – especially NSW and Queensland – dominated. This is significant as these states had less pretence of the rule of law. The Queensland native police force, consisting of forcibly conscripted Indigenous men, “eliminated whole peoples” and were estimated to have killed 24,000 Indigenous people.^[4] Among these “t’othersiders” was the prominent Durack family, who came from Queensland. Gadjerong man and stockman on Durack stations Jack Banggaiyerri Sullivan says that the pastoralists would “put a bullet” in “bush blacks” who could not be “tamed” and made to work.^[5] The first police in the East Kimberley arrived in 1886. That same year pastoralist John Durack was killed by Aboriginal people in an act of resistance. The response was brutal, with one account counting “100 or 150 natives slaughtered in cold blood”.^[6] The East Kimberley was also notorious for the poisoning of Aboriginal people. “One settler told me that it was quite common to get rid of superfluous niggers with strychnine – so much easier, don’t you know!” recorded an unnamed observer.^[7]

A code of silence prevailed among colonists. Owen notes: “Whilst the deliberate killing (including shooting, poisoning and burning) of Aboriginal people was illegal, it was accepted within sections of the European colonist community in the Kimberley, and most northern frontiers across the border and into Queensland, from the time of first colonisation apparently up until the 1920s and possibly later”.^[8] Colonists used euphemisms such as “dispersal” or “run in,” or would claim to have been acting in self-defence, in order to avoid incriminating themselves. Those who raised their voices were quashed. For example, Reverend John Gribble’s public allegations of mistreatment against Aboriginal people resulted in him being assaulted, threatened with death, libelled in the West Australian, and socially ostracised. When his three-year old son was ill with convulsions, no local doctor would treat him. The child died. The existence of some opponents such as Gribble shows that it wasn’t simply “the times”, or that colonists had good intentions.

In mid-1880s, the Kimberley pastoral industry struggled. The number of leases fell from 487 in 1883 to 133 in 1887, partly due to government regulations stipulating that each lease must have a certain number of cattle or sheep per acre, and difficulties in transporting stock. However, pastoralists also complained that Aboriginal groups would “fire the grass” (a land management technique), and kill or steal sheep (though Aboriginal people were by no means responsible for all stock losses as whites would also steal sheep and cattle). There were also numerous killings of Europeans by Aboriginal people around this time. Owen describes the repeated, furious lobbying by pastoralists for more police with greater powers. Some of this advocacy was by pastoralists who were also politicians. For example, Alexander Forrest (who had been appointed as the first MP for the Kimberley) advocated state terrorism against Aboriginal people. Owen outlines an 1888 speech to Parliament:

“Protection must be taken to protect the settlers in the Kimberley from the treacherous hostility of the Aborigines” and that the “most humane” way to deal with the Aboriginal groups was to engage groups of special constables to assist the police to use force “and leave a lasting impression on the minds of these aborigines…to make it plain to them that an attitude of hostility to the settlers will not be permitted.”^[9]

Their appeals to the state were successful; thereafter Kimberley policing became more aggressive. In 1888 Inspector Francis Wheatley Lodge – from the South African police – was brought in to head up the Kimberley police, replacing the more “moderate” Patrick Troy. He openly advocated extra-judicial murder, writing of Aboriginal people: “they are generally all implicated more or less, even should some be killed who had not actually committed the murder it would be the best and only way they the natives understand” (emphasis in original)^[10]. This approach was state policy; Lodge was backed up by Police Commissioner Phillips and the Governor.

Owen describes bush patrols, which were effectively “hunting parties,” in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Pastoralists would make a vague complaint to police, say about Aboriginal people killing cattle. A hunting party of police and native assistants, who were crucial for tracking, would be formed. The party would ambush Aboriginal camps at dawn: “[a]nyone who attempted to escape risked being shot and if they threatened or attacked an officer they certainly would have been shot”.^[11] This was state terror.

The violence intensifies: completing the colonisation of Kimberley, 1890-1898

Violence against Aboriginal people intensified once more after 1890. In that year Western Australia became a self-governing colony, and political leaders didn’t have to deal with pesky enquiries from Britain about allegations of slavery or abuse. That cruelty increased after the departure of the British (whose rape, torture, and extra-judicial killing knew no bounds in the half of the world they ruled at the height of the empire) testifies to capitalism’s endless potential for horrific cruelty.

In the 1890s, known as the “killing times” by Aboriginal people, policing became “semi-militarised and profoundly violent”.^[12] This came from the very top. John Forrest, pastoralist and the first premier of WA, led the charge. As colonial secretary, he had control over the police department “through the period of the greatest conflict in the Kimberley”, in the mid to late 1890s. Parliament passed or reintroduced numerous punitive and barbaric laws governing Aboriginal people. For example, in 1892 the criminal offence of cattle spearing was created, and whipping was reintroduced. Owen states that “pastoralists drove this change with many pushing for the greater use of flogging as instant retribution”.^[13] Restrictions were removed on Justices of the Peace (JPs) adjudicating on their own cases, that is, they could prosecute Aboriginal people caught eating beef on their own properties!

State terrorism as policy is illustrated by the public hanging in 1892 of Aboriginal men Coorandine, Teuibi and Tehawada. Police inspector Drewry got the cops to capture dozens of Aboriginal men, women and children to witness the hanging, which he personally took part in carrying out. Drewry stated: “The hole for the drop served as a grave. I had a good interpreter there and whilst prisoners were hanging told the natives why they were hanged and that if they too did the same thing they too would surely hang”.^[14] This was a premeditated, official state action that was documented and cannot be attributed to rogue police or colonists.

The following quote from 1895 aptly characterises the situation:

[A] war of extermination is being waged on these unfortunate blacks in the Kimberley district… How often do we read that the police “fell in” or “came up” with a party of natives and there follows a record of the slain or the statement that “they were taught a severe lesson” and in many cases there is nothing whatever to show that it was the guilty that suffered.^[15]

This was written by none other than the undersecretary of John Forrest himself, in a letter to his boss. In a perverse way, this “war of extermination” – that is, genocide – speaks to the scale of Aboriginal resistance to colonisation, dealt with later in this article.

The 1904 royal commission

The last chapter of the book deals with the report of the 1904 Roth Royal Commission which enquired into the treatment of Aboriginal people in the Kimberley. Pressure had been building for a number of years, as trade unions, the Labor party, the clergy and liberal newspapers in Perth “criticised the oppressive conditions of Aboriginal workers in the North West and the Kimberley”.^[16]

The royal commission, unsurprisingly, had narrow terms of reference. It dealt only with the 1901-1904 period, not the 1890s period of heightened brutality, and police killings were not addressed. Only two Aboriginal witnesses were called. Despite this, the royal commission showed the grave mistreatment of Aboriginal people at the hands of police, pastoralists and pearlers, including cruel punishments and arbitrary imprisonment. Commissioner Dr Walter Roth found that accused Aboriginal people were forced to plead guilty of cattle killing, at the barrel of a gun.^[17] Owen writes:

Near the end of Roth’s examination of PC Inglis he asked him a question: Was this informal, possibly unlawful yet widely accepted, arrest and gaoling system, where regulations regarding the arrest and the rules of evidence were so lax, a ‘rather one-sided justice” for Aboriginal people? Inglis admitted as much remarking, “It’s a queer country where I am. Every mother’s son is guilty.”^[18]

John Forrest, of course, defended the police as an exemplary class of men.

On the book’s cover is a photograph of dozens of Aboriginal prisoners chained to each other by the neck. Ironically the photo was taken after the royal commission and was intended to show how well Aboriginal people were now being treated! The report was essentially buried: its only result was the 1905 Aborigines Act which gave legal authority to the removal of Aboriginal children from their parents – i.e. the stolen generations.

Australian slavery

Aboriginal labour in the pastoral industry is not commonly defined as slavery and the author doesn’t define it as such. Yet the book contains ample evidence that we should call it that.

Ownership is a crucial element of slavery,^[19] and Aboriginal people were bought and sold. One colonist described the questions asked when enquiring about purchasing pastoral stations: “How many acres? How many miles of fencing? How many niggers? The niggers always went as part of the stock. If there were no niggers, or not enough, the sale was off or the price was dropped”.^[20] Pastoralists could simply apply to another pastoralist who was a JP “to sign him on” as many nearby Aboriginal people as he needed. Once signed on, police would round up any who “absconded” and either prosecute them or bring them back to the station, clearly demonstrating the coercive role of the police in the service of capital. According to Owen, “[t]he ‘unwritten rule of the north,’ that one ‘did not employ another man’s natives,’ meant that recaptured Aboriginal station workers were ordered by the local magistrate or JP to return to their station, and were punished, often severely”. Station workers were branded – permanently scarred by having a hot iron pushed into their skin – to keep track of which station they belonged to, or as punishment. Henry Whittall Venn, a station owner and member of parliament who has a North Perth street named after him, “branded an Aboriginal worker on the forehead for allegedly stealing from him”.^[21]

Aboriginal people who worked on the stations were not paid wages, receiving only rations: blankets, clothing, some meat, tea, flour, sugar and tobacco. They would supplement this with food from the bush. Aboriginal people as young as six were indentured to stations. Women worked as domestic helpers, while work such as shepherding, shearing, wool-scouring was undertaken by men and women. Aboriginal women were “taken” by colonists for sex. East Kimberley station owner Fred Booty, when asked how he got his labour force, replied “breed it meself”.^[22] Pastoralists and cops would reward station workers and native assistants by “giving” them Aboriginal women. Owen cites the treatment of women as one of the main reasons for Aboriginal attacks on Europeans.

Owen shows how Aboriginal labour was crucial for the viability of the pastoral industry:

The primary reason for using Aboriginal labour was financial. In fact it was widely understood that pastoralism in the North West and Kimberley could not have succeeded if owners had to pay for labour. But Aboriginal labour was a sensitive issue. One particularly blunt observer suggested that “the only reason natives were not improved off the face of the earth” or exterminated was because of the value of their labour. Station owners only needed a certain number of Aboriginal people to run their stations. The remainder were simply not required and, in fact, created problems, often by their presence, as well as when they killed stock for food.^[23]

This illustrates why some Aboriginal people were enslaved while others were killed.

Aboriginal slave labour was also used in the highly profitable pearling industry. Whites kidnapped Aboriginal people around Broome and Cossak, known as “native hunting,” “nigger-driving” or “blackbirding”. Aged ten and above, they were indentured and “employed” on fishing vessels, but were not paid wages. In 1884, 549 Aboriginal people were officially working in the industry, but the real number would have been higher.^[24]

The chief magistrate of Roeburne, Robert Sholl, personally benefitted from the kidnapping of Aboriginal slaves. Little wonder then, that no one was ever prosecuted for “blackbirding”, which was illegal. Sholl had earlier authorised the 1868 “Flying Foam massacre” at Nickol Bay, where “sixty natives men women and children [were] shot dead”.^[25] Politician William Marmion also directly benefitted from slavery, employing the notorious “professional blackbirder” Thomas Mountain. Mountain allegedly “publicly advertised to procure and put niggers aboard at 5 pounds a head for anybody or shoot them for the government for half a crown a piece”.^[26]

Pastoralists kidnapped and cooperated with pearlers who kidnapped Aboriginal people, and “[w]hile there were police enquiries into blackbirding and ample evidence that it took place, no men were arrested or ever prevented from engaging in this practice”.^[27] Owen doesn’t mince words, stating that “[t]he evidence of blackbirding, systematic kidnapping, coercion, cruelty and murder on the pearling fields was vast”.^[28]

Paid no wages, bought and sold, no ability to leave their employer, brutally punished: if this is not slavery, what is?

Aboriginal resistance

There was heroic, concerted resistance by Aboriginal people to this brutality. The story of the legendary resistance fighter Jandamarra is the most well-known. Born around 1873 on Bunuba country in the West Kimberley, Jandamarra led a guerrilla struggle which had colonists on the ropes for over two and a half years. He gained knowledge of police tactics through a stint working as a “native assistant,” later putting this to good use by taunting and evading police. Jandamarra was an extremely good shot, and could even make bullets.

On 3 November 1894 Jandamarra and an Aboriginal man called Captain killed PC Richardson (who Jandamarra was working for) at Lillamaloora police station, released thirteen prisoners and fled to Windjana Gorge. On 7 November they killed two stockmen. Commissioner Phillips instructed police inspector Edwin Drewry to “take such steps as you deem necessary to deal with the natives and settlers from further molestation…bold energetic measures…swear in as many special constables as necessary”.^[29] Drewry scarcely needed encouragement, holding the view that before his arrival in the Kimberley in 1892, “there had been very little work done amongst the natives”. As Owen points out, “work” here was a euphemism for “shooting”.^[30]

Drewry ordered 20 new rifles and 4,000 rounds of ammunition, and set up a punitive expedition of thirty men including PCs, special constables and native assistants. This was war. The party tried to get Jandamarra and his comrades both through trickery and all-out shooting on the caves and gorges area, but failed and were met by shooting in return. Owen gives details of the revenge wreaked by the hunting parties. These pages read like it was sport for them, going from station to station murdering Aboriginal people.

For the next few years, Jandamarra could not be found, while he and/or his followers carried out daring raids on stations and then retreating. It drove the police wild. Finally, on 27 March 1897, native assistant Mick shot and wounded Jandamarra. A police officer named Blythe approached Jandamarra who apparently rolled over, grabbed a rifle, shot the revolver from Blythe’s hand and escaped. Later that year Jandamarra was killed.

Jandamarra’s was by no means the only resistance. In fact, “Aboriginal people killed more Europeans in acts of resistance on Warwa, Nyikina, Unggarangi and Worowa country in the West Kimberley and on Kadjerong and Yitji country in the East Kimberley than in the area in and around Bunuba country where Jandamarra was fighting”.^[31] This resistance was effective, leaving colonists running scared:

In the late 1880s and into the next decade there were concerns at the highest level of government that Europeans might be driven out of the Kimberley, and these concerns grew as years passed. In 1893 local Aboriginal people were said by one newspaper to be “threatening Wyndham with absolute annihilation”.^[32]

Premier John Forrest stated that “[a] sort of warfare was going on there between the whites and the blacks”.^[33] This contrasts greatly with the myth of Aboriginal non-resistance that persists to this day. As historian Henry Reynolds has argued of Australian history books, “[t]he vigour of Aboriginal resistance was forgotten”.^[34]

It is a pity that Owen does not give more attention to this resistance, and focuses only on Jandamarra, whose exploits are relatively well known.^[35] This may be because Owen’s theoretical perspective eschews what he refers to as the “dispossession-resistance narrative”,^[36] viewing it as incapable of dealing with the complexities of the frontier. However, while accepting that resistance was not unified, and rather consisted of localised risings, there are good reasons to explore it further. Firstly, it contextualises the horrific violence of the police and pastoralists. If they were to establish settlements and profitable businesses against significant resistance, the terror had to be absolute (as they repeatedly stated, talking about “teaching them a lesson” and so on). A holistic picture of policing in the Kimberley requires a greater discussion on resistance. Secondly, we should celebrate the resistance of the oppressed. Not to discuss it adequately risks viewing Aboriginal people simply as victims. We need to be able both to recognise the brutality required for the completion of the colonial project and the establishment of capitalism, and to view Aboriginal people as agents who fought back with bravery and skill.

Police records

Owen’s main source is the written records of the WA Police Department held in State Records offices; that is, he has got it straight from the horse’s mouth. These records, while cryptic, are often more frank and detailed than those of other states. Police reports, written daily, are among the only records of this period. The most contentious were those of patrols where Aboriginal people accused of killing cattle were pursued, sometimes recording only “violent arrests and ‘dispersals’”.^[37] There are often silences reflecting the fact that police and pastoralists were breaking the law. There were almost certainly deliberate cover-ups of damning evidence:

There is a very curious correlation between the absences of records and an area known to have had a large number of police involved in “dispersals”. Thus Fletcher Creek Outstation records do not appear to have survived. The occurrence books from Halls Creek Station are missing from 1893 to 1900 and only a few bush patrol records are available. There are no station records from Fitzroy Crossing Police Station, from where notorious officer Sergeant Richard Henry Pilmer operated.^[38]

There are further examples. Owen has trawled through thousands of pages, some water stained, some with almost indecipherable handwriting, to bring us this story – a very impressive research effort. The notes at the end of the book are 140 pages long!

Every Mother’s Son is Guilty is a ground-breaking work which offers a damning refutation of Australia’s founding myths. It tells the truth about Australian history and challenges both historical amnesia and whitewashing. This infuriates racists. The response of right wing trolls, some linked to One Nation, to a Facebook page where Owen shares records the book drew on, gives a glimpse of this. The book is – and needed to be – bulletproof. Relying heavily on publicly available police records, as Owen does, means that right wingers have little ammunition with which to attack his account. Also, the plethora of examples he gives makes the case beyond reproach. As a consequence, the book is very detailed, with the text running to 455 pages. While the whole book is worth reading, a good sense of the argument can be gained from the introduction and chapters two to four, which summarise the book. The literature review in chapter one, which betrays the book’s origins as a PhD thesis, can be safely skipped. As many of the chapters are divided into time period or geographical area, readers could also choose their focus accordingly.

Conclusion

Every Mother’s Son is Guilty traces the bloody development of capitalism in the Kimberley, from early exploration by colonists through to successful colonisation and the establishment of a profitable pastoral industry from Aboriginal land and labour. This story of colonisation is not unique to the Kimberley but was carried out in one form or another across the continent, and bears a strong resemblance to the dynamics of other colonial settler states. The state was critical in establishing and maintaining capital accumulation in the Kimberley. The brutal violence meted out to, and murder of, Aboriginal people was no accident but flowed from the nature of the capitalist state. Anti-Aboriginal racism is woven into the fabric of Australian capitalism. The relationship between the state and capital was extremely close: state officials and the capitalist class were often one and the same. John Forrest’s 1891 ministry had the following Kimberley station owners: Colonial Secretary George Shenton, Attorney General Septimus Burt, Commissioner for Crown Lands George Marmion and Commissioner for Railways Harry Whittall Venn. These were powerful positions, with MPs exercising direct influence over the industry they were a part of.

There were tensions between the police and pastoralists. Owen writes: “Pastoralists, police claimed, were undermanned, incompetent, untruthful and too afraid to patrol their runs because Aboriginal resistance was so fierce. Police, pastoralists claimed, were incompetent, too far away, or too slow to arrest any ‘ringleaders,’ indeed were to blame for the entire state of affairs”.^[39] Yet ultimately the police carried out brutal acts on pastoralists’ behalf or in concert with them. They played a direct role in the productive process, for example, in ensuring the land could be used for farming, and by forcibly returning Aboriginal slaves to pastoral stations.

WA’s establishment has Aboriginal blood on its hands. Captain James Stirling, the first governor and founder of WA, not only ordered but was personally involved in the 1834 Pinjarra massacre, five years after the colony was established. As mentioned earlier, “explorer”, pastoralist and MP Alexander Forrest advocated state terrorism against Aboriginal people. His brother, the more famous John Forrest, not only oversaw the most brutal period of violence in the Kimberley, but elsewhere in WA personally took part in three punitive expeditions. In June 1874 at Weld Springs Forrest himself shot Aboriginal people.^[40] John Forrest is the great-great uncle of today’s mining magnate Andrew Forrest. The owner of Fortescue Metals Group refuses to pay the iron ore industry standard of a tiny 0.5 percent in royalties to the Yindjibarndi people on whose land he mines. To date he has not paid them a cent.^[41] Meanwhile, police continue to kill Indigenous people at will, and WA has the highest number of deaths in custody of any state or territory.^[42] Calls by racists to “get over it” can be met with an easy reply – systemic discrimination continues today.

The continued sanitisation of early WA history raises deeper questions. Today’s ruling elite don’t want the truth known about the formation of capitalism here because it delegitimises their system. It is a history we must fight to have heard.

References

Barrigos, Rebecca 2018, “Why Queensland is different”, Marxist Left Review, 15, Summer.

Gray, Stephen 2007, “The Elephant in the Drawing Room: Slavery and the Stolen Wages Debate”, Australian Indigenous Law Review, 11 (1).

Kolig, Erich 1989 (1987), The Noonkanbah Story: Profile of an Aboriginal Community in Western Australia, University of Otago Press.

Owen, Chris 2016, “Every Mother’s Son is Guilty”: Policing in the Kimberley Frontier of Western Australia 1882-1905, UWA Publishing.

Pedersen, Howard and Banjo Woorunmurra 2017, Jandamarra and the Bunuba resistance, Magabala Books.

Reynolds, Henry 2013, Forgotten War, University of New South Wales Press.

Vassiley, Alexis 2016 “‘There’s No Flies at Noonkanbah but the Scabs Are on the Way’: Trade Union Support for Aboriginal Rights at Noonkanbah 1979-80”, Labour History, 110.