"Tasmanian Aboriginals are 'extinct'"
The myth of Aboriginal extinction in Tasmania is grounded in the story of Truganini, the now famous woman from Bruny Island, who died in 1876 after being the sole returnee from the Flinders Island mission where Tasmanian Aboriginals were sent for resettlement.
Reconciliation Australia’s Mick Dodson explains the misconception that ‘having declared the very last Aboriginal person dead, her descendants could not, by definition, be Aboriginal.’15
Indigenous Tasmanians of mixed descent are in a constant struggle to remind the larger population of their existence, history and culture. While both the forcible and passive removal of Aboriginals from Tasmania resulted in a severe fracturing of traditions and languages, two distinct cultural lines continue, that of the Lia Pootah and Palawa nations.16 While their legacy is inextricably linked with those of European sealers and settlers, Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage is a living culture.
LINKS
- Tasmania – Statistics
These pages produced by the Australia Bureau of Statistics detail the arrival and experience of Indigenous Australian people in Tasmania. - Tasmanian aborigines join protest over NT plans
A rally against Federal intervention in Northern Territory aboriginal communities has drawn more than 200 people to the lawns of Hobart's Parliament House.
15 Mick Dodson; ‘The end in the beginning’in Blacklines p. 35
16 http://www.tasmanianaboriginal.com.au/liapootah/index.htm
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