- [Scott] When Australia was established,
yeah sure it was a pretty brutal settlement.
(chuckles) My forefather and foremothers were
on the first and second fleets.
It was a pretty brutal place, but there was no
slavery in Australia.
- That was Prime Minister Scott Morrison
speaking recently on 2DB Radio.
His comments really infuriated people around the country,
because they were so blatantly untrue.
He was actually forced to apologize
for what he said two days later.
- I don't intend to get into history wars,
my comments were not intended to give offense
and if they did, I deeply regret that
and apologize for that.
- Australia does have a brutal history of slavery.
It's a history that really didn't end all that long ago,
and it's one that leads to a continuum of violence
that's acted out against indigenous communities.
The Prime Minister's comments highlight how Australians,
including those in power, are still willing
to skate over this history, when really we should
be trying to understand it more because of
the continued harm it's doing to these communities.
And a warning for the aboriginal
and Torres Strait islander audience,
this episode is going to contain images
of deceased persons.
This story starts in the 1860s,
the US were in the middle of a civil war
over their use of slaves, and because of that
industries in Britain were drying up.
And that's where we stepped in.
Australian farmers decided that they wanted
to fill that gap, but to do that they needed manpower,
so they resorted to using slavery, indigenous workers,
and workers from the South Sea Islands.
State laws allowed for both, at the time government
statutes around the country allowed employers
on sugar cane farms, cattle stations
and in the pearling industry to take on
as many indigenous workers as they wanted.
Queensland, south Australia, western Australia,
and the NT were the biggest users of this practice,
basically because there weren't enough white workers
there to sustain industries.
Indigenous people were stolen away from communities
and effectively owned by their employers,
who treated them like property and controlled
every aspect of their lives.
Employers decided what they wore,
where they traveled, who they married,
and eventually what would happen to their children.
Indigenous workers were even sometimes branded
with tattoos to show that they belonged
to their employers for the rest of their lives.
And tens of thousands of indigenous people lived this way,
even into the 1950s and 60s.
Professor Thalia Anthony is an expert
who specializes in criminal law and
indigenous justice issues, and she told me that
this indigenous slave labor and exploitation
is what Australia's current wealth has been built on.
- Big corporations, especially over in Britain,
were able to reap the rewards of their labor,
while aboriginal people were left completely destitute,
and still weren't able to build any inheritance
to pass on, weren't able to create opportunities
for their children, and are still suffering
from that legacy.
- Besides Australia's exploitation of indigenous people,
people from the South Islands were also picked up
and forced into work, something that
came to be known as blackbirding.
State governments allowed for three year contracts,
where people from Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands,
Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, Kiribati and Fiji
could come to Australia to work for a minimal
amount of pay for three years.
Blackbirding ships started visiting islands
to pick up islanders in 1863,
and even though it's not written in official records,
there are countless community accounts
that people were actually kidnapped from their families,
to be taken to Australia.
Over 62,000 South Sea Islanders
ended-up working in Australia.
Because they were so abused, overworked and left
to diseases, around 30% of these workers
ended-up dying here.
And the money they supposedly accumulated
never reached their families back home.
After Australia became a federation in 1901,
these workers were just turfed out of the country
and deported back to their homes.
So, why doesn't Australia have a broad recognition
of our history of slavery?
Why is it that prime ministers past and present
have openly denied what happened to indigenous
communities and South Sea Islanders on our land?
Associate Professor Emma Christopher is an expert
in the history of South Sea Islander slavery,
and she told me that when it comes to blackbirding,
it's been easy for Australia to forget.
- Almost all of them are deported,
because they are not white enough for white Australia.
Which is why it's not in our news,
it's why we don't have people,
I mean it's not all the reason but it's a large
part of the reason that we don't have
people on the streets as much protesting this,
as happens in the US for example,
because most of the prisoners got deported.
All these ideas that we don't have a racism
problem in Australia, well we're not made to face it.
- Professor Anthony told me that while we've been
reminded of the violence that's now seen against
indigenous people in state institutions,
Australia has to remember that that kind of violence
also existed in the past in our industries.
- But we can't forget the violence of colonization,
in-terms of how businesses were able to profit
from aboriginal people.
- Emelda Davis is the chair of the Australian
South Sea Islander Association,
and she really wants to set the record straight
about her community's history in Australia.
Her grandfather was taken from his home
when he was 12 years old, and she's been lobbying
the government for a long time to establish
a representative organization to work with
the government and address the affects
of generational trauma that was caused
by the blackbirding practice.
- Don't think because you're not South Sea,
your not First Nations, you can't come in on it.
You know, don't be fearful, don't attach fear
to this voice of truth that's happening
for our country, for our globe, for the world.
Don't be fearful, because at the end of the day
we're human beings, we all bleed red,
and it's just about greater understanding for each other.
- Not only did slavery absolutely exist
in Australia, multiple communities were affected,
even into periods that are still in living memory.
And continuing to skate over the facts,
and ignoring this history as a country is only
going to continue doing damage to the descendants
of those tens of thousands of people.
(upbeat music)