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This site may contain words, descriptions and images which may sadden and distress some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Survival
"Although they lost the Black War, the efforts of Tasmania’s Aborigines deserve to be commemorated. Armed with just spears and clubs, they put up the stiffest resistance of any indigenous people anywhere in Australia. They pressed the fight until scarcely two dozen of them remained."
The triumph in this quote lies in the very last word 'remained'. Although it is recorded that 'full-blooded' Tasmanian Aborigines were exterminated, those of mixed heritage did survive. This is a significant triumph!
(Honorary research associate in the School of Humanities at the University of Tasmania and historian, Dr. Nicholas Clements, 2014)
"The Tasmanian Aborigines have survived."
(Australian academic and historian, Professor Lyndall Ryan, 1996)
"The Palawa claim descent from two ancestors, Manalaganna from Cape Portland and Fanny Cochran Smith, the only known full blood Tasmanian Aboriginal given a government land grant."
(Manuta Tunapee Puggaluggalia, 2003)
The Palawa are a large Aboriginal group who predate the arrival of the British settlers by tens of thousands of years. Their heritage continues to this day.
This quote from 'The Guardian' was extracted from an article written by Richard Flannagan, a historian who has researched the Tasmanian genocide. He makes evident that the Tasmanian Aborigines did survive and this is reflected in the phrase "Tasmania is to this day frequently - and wrongly - cited as the site of the only successful genocide in history" (Flannagan, 2002).
"Even to Tasmanian Aborigines, some of whom are predicting bloodshed, the answer is divisive. To the rest of the world it is merely baffling, for Tasmania is to this day frequently - and wrongly - cited as the site of the only successful genocide in history."
(Australian historian and novelist, Richard Flannagan 2002)
A photograph of Richard Flannagan, the historian who is proving to people that the Tasmanians did survive their admiring fight for their home and way of life.
"Whatever the future historian of Tasmania may have to say," wrote the 19th century historian JE Calder, "he will do them an injustice if he fails to record that, as a body, they held their ground bravely for 30 years against the invaders of their beautiful domains."
(Australian historian and novelist, Richard Flannagan 2002)
"the descendants of Tasmanian Aborigines battled a bizarre and most Tasmanian of fates"
(Australian historian and novelist, Richard Flannagan 2002)
Although the descendants of the Tasmanian Aborigines have survived, Richard Flannagan points out that they still have to battle against a "bizzare" fate which maintains that they don't exist. This is obviously historical fiction. They do, and that is a cause for great celebration!
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