To recognise this traumatic history and its enduring legacy throughout WA will take a huge step in the reconciliation process that continues to foster distrust and disharmony within the Aboriginal community.
Within a decade of the arrival of British colonists to Western Australia in 1829, Wadjemup was first used as a prison for Aboriginal men and boys. The first ten Aboriginal prisoners arrived on Rottnest in August 1838 and the Island was formally pronounced by the Colonial Secretary in June 1839 as a penal establishment for Aboriginal people.
For almost a century the Island served as a prison for Aboriginal people during which approximately 4,000 Aboriginal men and boys were imprisoned. Many of the Aboriginal men and boys were sentenced to hard labour for crimes which they did not understand, these sentences under a colonial legal system that did not recognise Aboriginal traditional lore, kinship systems or their rights as a sovereign people.
Between 1838 and 1931, it is reported that 369 Aboriginal prisoners died. While most deaths were caused by disease, it is reported that five prisoners were hanged. During their time here these prisoners were subjected to mistreatment, overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and many succumbed and died from diseases. An Aboriginal cemetery is located within the Thomson Bay Settlement.
Wadjemup as an Aboriginal penal centre became a central platform to assist the disbursement, disengagement, and dispossession of Aboriginal people throughout Western Australia. There are linkages between the movement and spread of the colonists throughout Western Australia to the arrivals of Aboriginal prisoners on the island. The prison combined with continual policies and practices of the invasion set about the dislocation of Aboriginal inhabitants from their traditional lands to missions and prisons to free these lands for use by colonists. Such practices to dispossess Aboriginal land holders in Western Australia were recognised by the British Colonial Secretary who refused to hand over control of Aboriginal affairs because of the colony's poor reputation in its treatment of Aborigines.
Western Australian Aborigines entered the new Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 as aliens in their own land. Their many contributions to the white exploration and exploitation of the hinterland were not acknowledged or rewarded. The measures taken by the Western Australian Government over the next thirty years, flowing from the 1905 Aborigines Act, gave unprecedented power over Aboriginal people to the Chief Protector. The freedom for Aboriginal people to work and live where they wished was curtailed, The forced separation of many children from their Aboriginal families, and the systematic exclusion of Aborigines from white society through segregation had drastic consequences for Aboriginal people. It was little comfort to Aboriginal people that most Western Australians continue to believe the government and Christian missions carried out these measures against Aborigines for their own good.
The removal of tribal elders, lore men and warriors from their lands of birth crippled indigenous resistance to colonialists. The loss of leadership resulted in the breaking down of traditional family and clan structures to facilitate non-Aboriginal colonisation. These losses have disrupted the cultural knowledge of many communities in the Aboriginal nations, Aboriginal people are afflicted by the loss
