Truganini

“’Not, perhaps, before, has a race of men been utterly destroyed within seventy-five years.  This is the story of a race which was so destroyed, that of the aborigines of Tasmania--destroyed not only by a different manner of life but by the ill-will of the usurpers of the race's land.... With no defences but cunning and the most primitive weapons, the natives were no match for the sophisticated individualists of knife and gun.  By 1876 the last of them was dead.  So perished a whole people.’ (Clive Turnbull) On May 7, 1876, Truganini, the last full-blood Black person in Tasmania, died at seventy-three years of age.  Her mother had been stabbed to death by a European.  Her sister was kidnapped by Europeans. Her intended husband was drowned by two Europeans in her presence, while his murderers raped her ... Between 1803 and 1876 the Black aborigines of Tasmania were completely destroyed.” [2]

’Not, perhaps, before, has a race of men been utterly destroyed within seventy-five years.  This is the story of a race which was so destroyed, that of the aborigines of Tasmania--destroyed not only by a different manner of life but by the ill-will of the usurpers of the race's land.... With no defences but cunning and the most primitive weapons, the natives were no match for the sophisticated individualists of knife and gun.  By 1876 the last of them was dead.  So perished a whole people.’ (Clive Turnbull) On May 7, 1876, Truganini, the last full-blood Black person in Tasmania, died at seventy-three years of age.  Her mother had been stabbed to death by a European.  Her sister was kidnapped by Europeans. Her intended husband was drowned by two Europeans in her presence, while his murderers raped her ... Between 1803 and 1876 the Black aborigines of Tasmania were completely destroyed.”

 [From: The Global African Community Lecture Notes, Black War, the Destruction of the Tasmanian Aborigines (Dedicated to Dr Gracelyn Smallwood) Runoko Rashidi (webdoc)]