Rottnest Island's Aboriginal prisoners are Australia's forgotten patriots, elder says

by Guest Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:55 am

It is time for Australia to face the truth about hundreds of Aboriginal prisoners who died on Rottnest Island in the 19th century and are buried in unmarked graves, a leading Aboriginal academic says.

WARNING: This story contains images of Aboriginal people who have died.

Len Collard is a Whadjuk Noongar elder and professor of Aboriginal studies at University of Western Australia.
He has called for a more honest narrative about the jailing of 4,000 Aboriginal men and boys on Rottnest Island between 1838 and 1902.

The prison began as a "bold experiment" to give Indigenous offenders more freedom from confinement but became the centrepiece of a criminal justice system designed to crush any resistance to the spread of white settlement around the state, Professor Collard said.

"Rottnest became a prisoner of war camp where the patriots were chained up and removed from their country, from not only here in the Whadjuk lands but right across Western Australia, brought here to be imprisoned and do their time for whatever the allegation was," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-17/rottnest-islands-forgotten-aboriginal-prisoners/9149048

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