WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

Woorunmurra are all recorded as taking part in the resistance. Bunuba women also
played a significant role in the resistance, providing food and acting as sentinels to
warn of approaching police patrols (Pedersen and Woorunmurra 1995, 146).
Throughout Australia, Aboriginal people resisted European occupation. Competition
for land and water, increased population pressures, European brutality and
encroachment on, or violation of, significant sites were all catalysts that contributed to
the onset of hostilities between Aboriginal people and European settlers.
The Bunuba resistance would not have been a success without the impenetrable
fortress-like qualities of their traditional country. The limestone landscape of the
Napier and Oscar Ranges provided the Bunuba people with a refuge from which
to defend their country and a fortress to attack would-be settlers and the police.
Control of the Devonian reef was crucial for the rolling frontier of European
settlement to move forward. The limestone ranges of the Devonian Reef have
outstanding heritage value to the nation under criterion (a) as the place where
Bunuba resistance held back the advance of European settlement for 13 years,
an unusual achievement by Aboriginal people in the history of Australian
frontier conflict.
Treatment of Aboriginal people after European settlement
Missions and reserves
There were three phases in the development of missions and reserves in Australia,
with many similarities among the colonies,states and territories, especially Western
Australia and the Northern Territory (DEH 2004, Pocock 2007). These phases align
with protection (segregation), assimilation and self-determination government policies
(DEH 2004).
The early phase from 1820–1910 saw the establishment of missions around Australia
under a variety of denominations. Missions provided a minimal standard of living and
operated to evangelise, protect and segregate Aboriginal people (Biskup 1973; Loos
2007; Pocock 2007). In the west Kimberley a number of Aboriginal missions were
established during this phase including Beagle Bay in 1890; Lombardina in 1892;
Sunday Island in 1898; Kalumburu in 1908; and Kunmunya in 1910. Prior to the
establishment of government institutions in Western Australia 'relations between the
missions and the government had their ups and downs…(missions) were tolerated
rather than encouraged' (Biskup 1973, 134). Western Australia had the majority of
missions and while Aboriginal affairs was under-funded across Australia, Western
Australia had the '…poorest per capita of all these administrations' (Loos 2007, 32).
With the exception of the Northern Territory, which came under Commonwealth
legislation until 1910, the states were responsible for Aboriginal affairs until 1967.
Following the 1904 Roth Inquiry in Western Australia and several inquiries in the
Northern Territory into the treatment of Aboriginal people, the Aborigines Act 1905
(WA) and the Northern Territory Aboriginals Act 1910 were passed, closely based on
the Queensland 1897 Aboriginal Protection Act (Loos 2007; Pocock 2007). Across
Australia, the police enforced the provisions of legislation which controlled all aspects
of Aboriginal lives.
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