Bevan Carter and Lynda Nutter, Nyungah Land: Records of Invasion and Theft of Aboriginal Land on the Swan River 1829-1850, Guildford, Black History Series, Swan Valley Nyungah Community, 2005.
ISBN 0957998015
Price $9.95

In an address to the Legislative Council in June 1837, Governor James Stirling referred, on two occasions, to invading the Swan River region.

On the first occasion he talks of the colonists desiring to avoid on their invasion of this territory, every unnecessary injury to its earlier inhabitants.

In the second instance he refers to regulating the future intercourse between the invaders and the invaded.

It if was good enough for Stirling to describe the arrival of the British at the Swan River as an invasion, then we felt comfortable using the expression in the sub-title of our book.

No writer referred to the land being stolen by the British, but many euphemisms were used: Many of the early colonists discovered the land was owned by Aboriginal peopl and was forcibly being taken from them. Their reactions to this deepening realisation and the records of disruption to the lives of the original landowners fills the pages of this book.


Foreword by Robert Bropho
Nothing has changed since the white man stepped upon the foreshores of this continent with his Flag in one hand, the Gun in the other hand and his Bible in his back pocket.

We mean the attitude. We have moved on from then to the year 2005 and the attitude has been fashioned in another kind of way but the racism is still there.

The laws of today have changed in a way similar to the way they were put in place in the past when they had the power to move Aboriginal People on from one place to another.

The generations of people who passed through the years of my lifetime to now have come through the attitude and the poundering of the governments, shires and white neighbours. They always demand that Aboriginal People be moved on to some other area. Even Moora Reserve in the 1950s, there was a three-mile buffer zone. As long as there was a distance between the whitefellas' living and his house and the Blackfellas' Camps, he felt safe.

The book, 'Nyungah Land' is full of what happened to Aboriginal People and how the Land was taken and how the Aboriginal People were forcibly moved from one area to another.

The whitefella can't claim the Land by occupation. Terra Nullius (Land of No One) has been proved wrong by the High Court of Australia. Putting a fence up and standing in the middle of it with a gun to keep Blackfellas out was and is unlawful.

The Land is our Mother and we, the Aboriginal Nation, are her Children and all those who came after the Beginning of our Nation are trespassers.

We are the Legal and the Rightful Owners of the Sacredness by the First Law of the Land, that is Aboriginal Law. The white law today that says otherwise is false because they are the Second Race that came here afterwards and trespassed on our, the First Peoples' Land.

This book is all about the harsh treatment that was unleashed on them, our Ancestors when the whitefellas landed on the foreshores, driving the Aboriginal People from their Land, driving them from their Fish Traps, driving them from the Banks of the River and from where they gathered on the Hill, driving them from their Water Holes, their Springs, the River which was our larder. The women were raped. The men were shot, murdered. This truth has not been told from this day to then.

The harsh treatment there and then did not dishearten or weaken the grassroots Aboriginal People in their Culture and their Spiritual Beliefs and their Spiritual Dreaming which are still here today in their Gathering of Togetherness. Sleeping in the Eden Hill camps at night, the Old People used to speak about it in the midst of the hearing of the Waugal calling out in the Swan River at Success Hill. These Sacred Stories were told time and again around campfires.

The Lake Monger spirits are still in the Lake where they were killed as Human Beings.

The Ancient Sacred Site at Upper Swan, up to 110,000 years old, where our Ancestors lived and left behind their tools, and Walyunga Park belong to the Custodians of this area who are the Nyungah People of the Swan River and Swan Valley, the Last of the River People, combined with all the Nyungah Elders and People of the area. We are the Protectors of those Spirits where those People fell at Walyunga. We are Custodians and Protectors of the Spirits of the Ashfield Massacre Areas of our Ancestors. The State Government's white laws don't apply to our Custodianship as Protectors of our Dead Peoples' Spirits. We are the Experts in our own Sufferings.

This book is all about that cruel treatment.

You've got politicians, you've got Premiers, you've got Prime Ministers praising themselves up of their claimed good attitude to Aboriginal People, which is a myth. It is the other way round. With the white man came all the domination, the cruelty, the disrespect for the First People. They self-praised themselves too much and ignored and disrespected the Owners of the Land. They shot them. They raped the Women and used their brutality pushing forward. They make laws to discriminate against Aboriginal People and ban them from walking upon and being close to their Mother, the Land. The latest is the Move-On Policy in this year of 2005 where people can be gaoled for two years and be fined $12,000 if they don't move on when police order them to do so. This is not a new order. Police had been doing that since they first came here. There was no mercy shown in murderous attack then and that murderous attack is served out in a different way now by brute force and by lawmaking.

In the beginning we weren't allowed to walk with them. We were told to get out of the road otherwise you'd be shot. The pattern of using selected Blackfellas then to kill out Blackfellas still applies today. The Government set Blacks against Blacks. Nothing has changed since the coming of the white man. The whitefella has secured himself more, he has educated himself more and he has 'advanced', he is out in space, but still down here to earth he doesn't like the presence of the Black Man and Woman. He can't stand the Black Man living amongst him and using the public facilities. 'Move on. Move on'. Until there is cooperation and understanding and 'generosity of spirit' (Xavier Herbert) there will be no going forward together - not to assimilation but at our own pace as fellow human beings.

We are not the creators of the Aboriginal problem in Australia. We didn't come here. We were here first. We were here from the Beginning of Time. Our problem was the whitefellas coming here and dominating us and killing us, trying to control us and taking our Land. There was no going together. He overstayed. He wouldn't go away. He dominated us with his way of living, his laws and his culture. He stole our Land. He still believes it is his. He won't give Land back. He changed the law to suit himself. He is still trying to push us right out and away from our Mother, the Land. We are still facing the same problems.

The saddest thing about all this is that what happened to us, the Nyungah People, has never been told to the generations of white kids back in the past until now. The truth of what has happened in the past to the Nyungah People has never been told to the people as a whole.

They keep that history which is the truth from their children. They won't teach it. They don't want their children to learn the truth or hear the truth so that when they grow up and become men and women they do not have a balanced mind by knowing the truth. They continue on.

This book, 'Nyungah Land', proves from the whitefellas own records all that is being said here in this Foreword. This speaking platform belongs to the Nyungah People and we speak from human suffering and we speak about the things that have been inflicted upon us since the coming of the white man up until now. This is Australia, not Iraq.

Nyungah People in company with the authors of this book, Bevan Carter and Lynda Nutter, first worked on the history of the Homegrounds of our people around Success Hill for a display for the Bassendean Centenary. That display is standing there today at Success Hill.

A Lotteries Commission Grant to the Swan Valley Nyungah Community enabled this present book to be written. The research covers the whole Swan River and Swan Valley. The book was put together by men and women of high callibre who have gone through the records of the white people and white governments of the past to bring to you, the people, what happened then in the past - and is still happening today. It has to be looked at as factual evidence because it is records of white people in the early days of their coming to Aboriginal Peoples' Land. That attitude today of the white people then is still here today amongst a lot of white people from all walks of life who can't stand the sight of Aboriginal People in their own Land.

Following this book, two other books will be coming out. One will deal with Nyungah Land Owners in Eden Hill having their land taken from them in the 50's (Black History Series - 2).

The third book will be on the Government of Western Australia depriving the Nyungah people of the Swan Valley of their land in 2003 (Black History Series - 3).

In 1977, we, the Swan Valley Nyungah People stopped running. Our People were living under bridges beside the Swan River. The Meadows Camp in Guildford was deliberately burnt down by the authorities. We set up a protest camp, a tent village, in our traditional meeting place, the churchgrounds in Guildford, until we went back to our Homegrounds at Lockridge Campsite beside the Sacred Dreaming Track at Bennett Brook and the Sacred Swamp. This struggle is outlined in 'Fringedweller' by Robert Bropho, APCOL, 1980. Then we lived in tents and old mining company cabins in Third World living conditions for 18 years. In 1994 a small strip of Land was returned back to us by the then Premier Richard Court. After a 20 year struggle we built our rammed earth houses ourselves according to our designs, to be culturally suitable and environmentally friendly. This struggle is outlined in the book, 'The Fringedwellers Struggle: Cultural Politics and the Force of History' by Sharon Delmege, 2000. We were beginnning to settle down and starting to recover and the stabilise ourselves and enjoy peace and safety, and our health and lives were improving. Then, we the Nyungah People of the Swan Valley Nyungah Community had our Land and Homes taken from us by force, by Act of Parliament by the Gallop Government, on 13th June 2003, using unfounded claims of abuse and violence. We became homeless. A Parliamentary Inquiry chaired by the Hon. Peter Foss investigated with an all-party committee. Their Report outlines everything that happened and the wrong done to us - Report of the Select Committee on Reserves (Reserve 43131) Bill 2003 (available on www.parliament.wa.gov.au). What was done to us the Nyungah People, including women and children, and to our Land is planned to be the third book (Black History Series - 3).

This book 'Nyungah Land', with the factual records of the happenings of what was done to Nyungah People, should be read by everyone.

To the knowledge of the Nation of Aboriginal People, the first generation of whitefellas that landed here and the generations that unfolded after to the year 2005, we have not read or heard the full history of what the whitefellas did when they first invaded here, and thereafter generations of whitefellas up to 2005. He has not told his children he full history, meaning, has he in his home explained the history to his children? We are not talking about mums and dads in their own homes, and grandparents. We are talking about schools - do they have classes where the truth is told?

This book is to give you, the People of the World, the truth from the whitefellas own records.

Will the day ever come that we can say 'We are going Home at last, free at last, free at last'?

 Robert Bropho
October 2005

To order a copy contact Bevan Carter bevnjen@gmail.com.