As Good Oil readers are no doubt only too well aware, so-called ‘truth and reconciliation’ is not just a lie, but very much a one-way street. Not only are the most ludicrous, easily debunked falsehoods paraded as ‘truth’, but only one side is ever held to account for the sins of its past. Where, for instance, are the Māori apologies and reparations for the Moriori genocide? Instead, it was left up to the NZ government to apologise, not the descendants of the people who actually committed the genocide.
Change the race, though, and the descendants of past wrongdoers are expected to apologise, grovel and hairshirt themselves ’til the end of time.
Case in point:
West Australian Governor Chris Dawson will make a historic apology for the Pinjarra massacre led by his predecessor – the state’s first governor, James Stirling – as newly recovered historical documents reveal the agitations of a station owner who took part in the ambush urged Stirling to “destroy” yet more Bindjareb people.
So, not even an ancestor, just a predecessor in a government role.
Yet, even the most cursory investigation reveals that this was not merely some random genocidal effort by wicked white people, but a retaliation for years of murder and theft by the Bindjareb.
In February 1832, Private George Budge was ambushed by the Bindjareb and speared to death. In July, Sergeant Wood of the 63rd Regiment was speared and nearly killed. In July 1834, Hugh Nesbitt was murdered and mutilated by Bindjareb, who also looted the flour mill that provided rations to settlers and Noongars in the district. Another white was speared but lived.
Even in the retaliatory expedition that eventually followed, another settler was killed. Clearly, this was very far from one-sided violence.
So, can we look forward to an apology from the Bindjareb, too?
Mr Dawson has been invited by the Bindjareb people to attend an annual commemoration of the Pinjarra massacre on Tuesday. While there, he will deliver an address summarising his findings from the State Records Office and apologise for the actions of Stirling on October 28, 1834.
So, that’s a no, then?
Even the accounts from Bindjareb Aborigines of the time explicitly acknowledge that the violence ran both ways.
As two Bindjareb men complained at the time:
They consider it very hard that the parties who were slain at Pinjarra by the soldiers and police should have been made to suffer for crimes in which they had had no participation – save the lads Unia and Merega who were killed at Pinjarra.
While they are absolutely correct to complain about collective punishment, note that they admit that at least two of the killed were guilty of the crimes that spurred the battle.
They were also unrepentantly still threatening violence.
Dolliong and Ninda most earnestly recommended Mr P (Thomas Peel) or Mr Armstrong with their soldiers on no account to venture out kangaroo-hunting in the district where Calhott and his party frequented as they would inevitably be spear’d ... Informants beg’d Mr P and Mr Armstrong to go from home in boat and not venture out by land anywhere as they would certainly be spear’d.
So, there had not only been multiple murders, injuries and looting, but the open threat of more. In which light, pastoralist Thomas Peel’s appeal to Stirling seems not at all unreasonable.
“I consider it my duty to forward to your Excellency the enclosed statement for your consideration – and trust that you may be induced to adopt some speedy measure in the security of this settlement by directing the Supt of Native Tribes to proceed at your earliest convenience hitherto authorizing Lieut Armstrong to proceed in conjunction with the police to extirpate this nest of hornets who are in their old haunts close around us and beyond any doubt waiting only for an opportunity to extinguish all of us they can. My own conviction is that no security can be or ought to be placed either on life or property until the leading men four or five at least are destroyed of this desperate gang of natives,” Peel wrote to Stirling on April 1, 1835.
In other words, the settlers were, not unreasonably given the events and continuing threats, living under the apprehension that they faced an existential threat. Historian Keith Windschuttle was within rights to call it “a battle between warring parties”.
A key event in the months before the Pinjarra massacre was a raid by Bindjareb men on a mill. Peel had helped authorities capture Bindjareb man Calhott over that raid. The statement attributed to Ninda and Dolliong says that Bindjareb men then speared three of Peel’s mares as revenge.
Their ultimate goal was to kill Peel. As a non-Aboriginal party looked for Peel’s horses, Bindjareb men speared two of the colonialists and killed one, a 19-year-old servant called Hugh Nisbett.
So, I ask again: are the Bindjareb traditional owners going to likewise issue a formal apologies for the crimes of their forebears?
I won’t hold my breath.
