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Reading Description:

Thompson, J. (2010). 1846 : A petition of the free Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land. In Documents that shaped Australia : records of a nation’s heritage (pp. 109-111). Millers Point, NSW : Pier 9.

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'We humbly

pray Your

Majesty the

Queen will

hear our

prayer' A PETITION OF THE

FREE ABORIGINES OF VAN

DIEMEN'S LAND

The writing of a petition addressed to �een Victoria in February 1846 by a group of inhabitants from the Aboriginal settlement at Wybalenna on Tasmania's Flinders Island stands without precedent in Australian colonial history. Until a recent reappraisal by historians, the significance of the petition was largely overlooked or downplayed. Today. however, it is honoured as the earliest formal Aboriginal protest, a set of immediate•complaints against abuse of power, an assertion of freedom and an emphatic statement of protest about the alienation from 'country'. In a careful examination of the issues, historian Henry Reynolds has described the petition as 'one of the most important, as well as one of the most neglected

·,

documents relating to the history of relations between Indigenous and immigrant Australians'.

The petition was written as a complaint against the authoritarian regime of the settlement's superintendent, Dr Henry Jeanneret (r8o2-r886), whose behaviour and arbitrary use of his power had made the lives of community

members a misery. Jeanneret had been dismissed as superintendent in 1844, but he had conducted a campaign in Hobart seeking a statement of reasons (or the loss of his position and vindication of his character. Achieving no redress, he had taken his case to the secretary of state for the colonies in London, with a demand for reinstatement and compensation. Those claims were upheld in a dispatch dated 11 August 1845. With this victory, Jeanneret prepared to return to Wybalenna.

On hearing news of Jeanneret's intentions, a number of the Aboriginal residents, led by Waiter George Arthur (c. r82o-1861), began to agitate against him. Their most significant action was to prepare a petition to �een Victoria, in which they made a robust denunciation of Jeanneret and demanded that he should not be permitted to resume his post.

Dated 17 February 1846, the petition was signed by 'Waiter G. Arthur, Chief of the Ben Lomond tribe' and seven others: John Alien, Davey Bruney, Neptune, King Alexander, Augustus, J(jng Tippoo and Washington. As the leading signatory and one who later claimed major responsibility for the petition, Arthur is an especially interesting figure. As Henry Reynolds has noted, he was the son ofRolepa, a leading man of the Ben Lomond tribe, who had been known to the Europeans as J(jng George. But he had been separated from his tribe in unknown circumstances and may have learnt little of the language. culture and traditions of his own people. Reynolds records that, at the Boys' Orphan School in Hobart from 1832 to 1835, Arthur learnt to read and write 'with a proficiency equal to that of the majority of [Tasmanian) colonists below the level of the professional and official elite'. Certainly Arthur was proud of his achievemeQt and he was energetic in using it both on his own behalf and in the wider interests of his community. He seems also to have had a keen sense of justice and a determination to right wrongs as he saw them.

The petition itself was immediately controversial and has remained so in later historical accounts. While sympathetic to the document as an expression of Aboriginal protest, historian N.).B. Plomley has cautioned that its relative sophistication both in method and expression indicates some active guidance or direction

109

110

by those local officials at Wybalenna who had their own reasons for opposing the return of Or Jeanneret. Jn this interpretation, theimportanceof the petition is diminished and its Aboriginal authors presented as lacking agency or independence. It is clear, however, that the petition uses the speech forms of Aboriginal English, and that it was treated seriously by the Tasmanian authorities, who sent it to England:. where it was presented to �een Victoria in March 1847

An inquiry into the circumstances of the writing of the petition was conducted by Matthew Friend (t792-1871),

the harbour master at George Town who had an interest in Aboriginal matters. This inquiry was carried out over three weeks in October 1846. Friend established that while the petitioners sought the assistance of several Europeans, the petition was largely their own work. Arthur's evidence to the inquiry was proprietorial and emphatic: 'The Petition to the �ecn is really the wish of my Countrymen no one

prompted me to write it, I did it of my own accord.' Nor does the petition stand in isolation and without

effect. It was followed almost immediately by a letter written by Arthur and others to the colonial secretary in which they enquired if their 'father the governor' had received the petition, and asking him 'to send some good men down to Flinders' to talk to them. Subsequently Walter Arthur together with his wife Mary Anne wrote several letters of their own to the governor seeking his support for their rights and those of their own people. Ultimately the petition played a part, if only indirectly, in the final termination of Jeanneret's appointment and the decision in r847 to close the Flinders Island settlement. But as the symbol of a larger aspiration, the petition has an enduring importance as a document of protest. It was grounded in Waiter Arthur's fundamental belief that it was the right of the Aboriginal people to be treated as equals in a free society.

\ BOVE Tlze Fli11ders Islmrd settlement cifwybalelllla, 1847

The humble petition of the free Aborigines Inhabitants ofVan Dieman's Land

now living upon Flinders Island ... That we are your free children that we

were not taken prisoners but freely gave up our country to Colonel Arthur

then the Governor after defending ourselves.

Your petitioners humbly state to your Majesty that Mr Robinson made for

us and with Colonel Arthur an agreement which we have not lost from our

minds since and we have made our part of it good.

Your petitioners humbly tell Your Majesty that when we left our.own place

we were plenty of people, we are now but a little one.

Your petitioners state they are a long time at Flinders Island and had

plenty of superintendents and were always a quiet and free people and not

put in gaol.

Your Majesty's petitioners pray that you will not allow Dr Jeanneret to

come again among us as our superintendent as we hear he is to be sent

another time for when Dr Jeanneret was with us many moons he used to

carry pistols in his pockets and threatened ver y often to shoot us and make

us run away in fright. Dr Jeanneret kept plenty of pigs in our village which

used to run into our houses and eat up our bread from the fires and take away

our flour bags in their mouths also to break into our gardens and destroy our

potatoes and cabbage.

Our houses were let fall down and they were never cleaned but were

covered with vermin and not white-washed. We were often without clothes

except a very little one and Dr Jeanneret did not care to mind us when we

were sick until we were very bad. Eleven of us died when he was here. He put

many of us into jail for talking to him because we would not be his slaves. He

kept from us our rations when he pleased and sometimes gave us bad rations

of tea and tobacco. He shot some of our dogs before our eyes and sent all the

other dogs of ours to an island and when we told him that they would starve

he told us they might eat each other. He put arms into our hands and made

us to assist his prisoners to go to fight the soldiers we did not want to fight

the soldiers but he made us go to fight. We never were taught to read or write

or to sing to God by the doctor. He taught us a little upon the Sundays and his

prisoner servant also taught us and his prisoner servant also took us plenty

of times to jail by his orders.

The Lord Bishop seen us in this bad way and we told His Lordship plenty

how Dr Jeanneret used us.

We humbly pray your Majesty the Queen will hear our prayer and not let

Dr Jeanneret any more come to Flinders Island.

Ill