The recent commemoration on Anzac Day of Australia’s Killing Fields, otherwise known as the Frontier Wars, highlights the fact that Australia is yet to come of age as a nation state for several reasons. Firstly, it must be acknowledged that this country was invaded and this is confirmed by the actions of Captain James Cook when he fired at the first group of Aboriginal people he came in contact with. Cook records in his journal:
SUNDAY 29TH APRIL: …We then threw them some nails beeds &c a shore which they took up and seem’d not ill pleased in so much that I thout that they beckon’d to us to come a shore but in this we were mistaken for as soon as we put the boat in they again came to oppose us upon which I fired a musket between the two which had no other effect than to make them retire back where bundles of their darts lay, and one of them took up a stone and threw at us which caused by firing a second Musquet load with small shott, and altho' some of the shott struck the man yet it had no other effect than to make him lay hold of a Shield or target to defend himself emmidiately after this we landed which we had no sooner done than they throw’d two darts at us this obliged me to fire a third shott soon after which they both made off, but not in such haste but what we might have taken one, but Mr. Banks being of the opinion that the darts were poisoned made me cautious how I advanced in the woods…1
The recent exhibition in the National Museum, Canberra, of the Gweagal Shield that was on the Endeavour is now subject to an ownership dispute between the British Museum and the Aboriginal people whom Cook and his pirates stole it from, having shot at the people first.
Cooman was the man shot in the leg and he dropped the Gweagal Shield which Cook took back to London and has been housed by the British Museum. Rodney Kelly is a sixth generation descendent of Cooman, whose family has passed on the story over the generations. On Anzac Day Rodney Kelly proudly marched in the Commemoration of Australia's Killing Fields also known as the Frontier Wars. He carried a photograph of his ancestor's shield complete with musket bullet hole, which is a testament to the piracy of the British and their knowledge that the land was inhabited. This clearly set up the mode for the way in which Australia was later invaded.
The latest insult by the British Museum is their offer to loan the shield to the National Museum for show only. Clearly the British are very slow learners, to think that we are so forgiving is their greatest mistake.
The recent admissions in respect to the Appin Massacre in the Camden area of western Sydney and the story of the killer Angus McMillan recently published in The Australian dated 23-24 April 2016 are, in my view, well overdue public disclosures of the horrors and atrocities perpetrated against Aboriginal people throughout Australia.
There can be no meaningful talk of reconciliation or constitutional recognition without someone taking responsibility for the wrongs that have been perpetrated against First Nations and Peoples in Australia. There were no 'accidents'. What was done was murder and the British government, the free 'settlers', the soldiers and other government officials who gained land as soccage - Feudal tenure of land by a tenant in return for agricultural or other nonmilitary services or for payment of rent in money.
Thus the landholders have benefitted from the proceeds of major crimes and the land tenures granted and the proclamations issued by the governors were illegal. The correspondence between the colonial secretaries during the 1700s and 1800s clearly demonstrate the extent of the wrongdoings, which have been covered up and which we are now unlocking.
The establishment of representative government on the continent was a fraud, because the true and original inhabitants of the land, who had sovereignty over the whole of each nation under their settled Law and custom, were and are the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
The invaders imprisoned us and interned us in detention centres in the guise of looking after our welfare, protecting us from the barbarous acts of the squatocracy and their militias, supported by the police and redcoats, and then had the audacity to try and establish representative government on the land of others, while we were being imprisoned and killed.
The validation of past wrongful acts by any modern Australian parliament can only be described as another fraud to attempt to legalise the original fraud and wrongdoings.
It is now important to reassess the High Court's Mabo decision section by section and incorporate in our thinking the three NSW Supreme Court decisions of the first half of the 1800s - R v Ballard 1829, R v Murrell 1836/7, and R v Bonjon 1842, in which the Aboriginal plaintiffs were asserting their own sovereign status and were not accepting the label 'British subject'.
From this we can see that the only way in which Australia can gain legitimacy is to make treaties without prejudice with the true 'sovereigns of the soil'.
For my People, the Euahlayi, we will only treaty with a population who is prepared to become a republic, free and independent of the British and to break all ties with the Crown. Otherwise we will be treatying with a false state, a rogue state, which has no legitimacy and is itself a conglomeration of colonial states under the banner of the Commonwealth of Australia with HRH Elizabeth II the Head of State. This is confirmed by the fact that no legislation of the States, Territories or Commonwealth is law without the Queen's or her proxy's signature. This means that no matter who is elected to Parliament they do not have any legitimacy without a foreign queen authorising their decisions. This is pure colonialism.
Another point that establishes Australia's inability to be independent was during the bombing of Darwin in World War II, when 'the Australians' were not permitted to defend themselves against the Japanese, because 'the Australians' were still British subjects and England was not at war with Japan and the non-Aboriginal population was not permitted to arm themselves and resist.
It was this fact that angered the U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur who was in charge of the military forces in the Southwest Pacific Area. Essentially, England stayed out of the war with Japan and ceded its powers and authority to General MacArthur who then enlisted 'Australians' into a makeshift Australian military force under the American sovereign military authority.
It is not right that the RSL and the Australian War Memorial should continue to deceive the public about the truth of our military participations in the South Pacific. It is also time to examine to what extent our country was ceded to American during the Korean war which followed straight after the end of the second world war.
The Anzac legend is a reality, however, we need to understand what was gained and what was lost as a result of participation in all these wars, especially the question of the non-Aboriginal claim to sovereignty over this land.
As First Peoples we know we never ceded our homelands to anyone, but now everyone needs to know what England agreed to with the U.S. Army General MacArthur.
It is time all the killing fields are located and respectfully made into memorials, where we can finally bury our dead with dignity, where the bones of our ancestors are still exposed to the elements. For this we need the RSL to assist.
It is also not right that the RSL and the Australian War Memorial continue to deny the truth of the invasion of our lands by the British and the intent to exterminate First Nations and Peoples.
CONTACT:
Ghillar
Michael Anderson
Convenor of Sovereign Union of First Nations and Peoples in Australia
Head of State of the Euahlayi Peoples Republic
ghillar29@gmail.com 0499 080 660
1 From Captain Cook’s Journal, 1768-1771, entry for 29 April 1770, edited by Captain W.J. L. Wharton, 1893, pp.242-3 in Poad D., A. West & R. Miller 1985, Contact: an Australian History, Heinemann, Melbourne, p. 3 also Cook's Journal: Diary Entries, http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/cook
