INDIGENOUS
TASMANIANS
Darya Voronina, Elena Filchenko, Yankina Maria
Who are they?
Tasmanian Aboriginal people,
self-name Palawa, any member
of the Aboriginal population of
Tasmania. The Tasmanian
Aboriginal people are an isolate
population of Australian
Aboriginal peoplewho were cut
off from the mainland when a
general rise in sea level flooded
the Bass Straitabout 10,000
years ago.
2
Their population upon the arrival of
European explorers in the 17th and
18th centuries has been estimated at
about 4,000. Historically, the
Tasmanian Aboriginal people spoke
languages that were unintelligible to
mainland Aboriginal peoples. The
island was divided among several
peoples who spoke different
dialects, each with a delimited
hunting territory.
Subsistence was based on hunting
land and sea mammals and
collecting shellfish and vegetable
food. In warm months the
Tasmanian Aboriginal people moved
through the open forest and
moorlands of the interior in bands
or family groups of 15 to 50 people,
and in colder months they moved to
the coast.
4
Wooden spears, waddies
(clubs, or throwing sticks), and
flaked-stone tools and
weapons were produced. Bone
implements, basketry, and
bark canoes for coastal travel
were also made. A few rock
carvings depicting natural
objects and conventionalized
symbols have survived.
5
The Black War
The first permanent white
settlement was made in Tasmania in
1803. In 1804 an unprovoked attack
by whites on a group of Tasmanian
Aboriginal people was the first
episode in the Black War. Attempts
by Tasmanian Aboriginal people to
resist were met with the superior
weaponry and force of the
Europeans.
Between 1831 and 1835, ostensibly in
a final effort at conciliation and to
prevent the extermination of
approximately 200 Tasmanian
Aboriginal people, they were
removed to Flinders Island. Their
social organization and traditional
way of life destroyed, subjected to
alien disease and attempts to
“civilize” them, most of them soon
died.
The death in 1876 of Truganini, a
Tasmanian Aboriginal woman who
had aided the resettlement on
Flinders Island, gave rise to the
widely propagated myth that the
Aboriginal people of Tasmania had
become extinct.
Aboriginal identity remained alive in
the Furneaux Group of islands
among the offspring of Aboriginal
women and European sealers. The
focus for this community became
Cape Barren Island, on which in 1881
a reserve was established for “halfcastes,” the official designation for
mixed-race individuals, who were
discriminated against even as their
Aboriginal identity was negated.
9
Modern Tasmanians
By the 1970s a movement for
Aboriginal rights in Tasmania
had begun to gain steam, led by
activists who pointedly identified
themselves as Aboriginal people
rather than as the “descendants”
of Aboriginal people. Soon the
movement’s goals moved beyond
recognition of Aboriginal
identity to the pursuit of land
rights.
10
With the adoption of the Aboriginal
Lands Act of 1995, the Tasmanian
government began returning control of
significant places (including most of
Cape Barren Island in 2005) to the
Tasmanian Aboriginal community. In
the 2011 census, more than 19,000
Tasmanians identified as Aboriginal
people, though disputes arose within
the Aboriginal community over the
authenticity of some of those claims.
Test your knowledge of
indigenous Tasmanians
The death of whom is mistakenly
considered the extinction of the
Tasmanians?
a. Truganini
b. Madora
c. Conturdo
13
What was the name of the war between
the Tasmanians and the Europeans?
a. The Great War
b. The Island War
c. The Black War
What did the aborigines call
themselves?
a. Palawa
b. Tasman
c. Wallow
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