Resistance and reprisals: The Ewamian Frontier Wars 1863–98
Buhrich, Alice, Richards, Lewis, Bing, Brian, Richards, Jimmy, Prior, Sharon, Lacey, Jenny, Casey, Tania, and Mosquito, Megan (2024) Resistance and reprisals: The Ewamian Frontier Wars 1863–98. Aboriginal History, 47. pp. 111-131.
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Abstract
First Nations perspectives on the Frontier Wars are gaining increasing interest in historical, academic, political and social spheres. The arrival of squatters and miners brought momentous change to Ewamian people in Queensland’s Gulf savannah. Aboriginal resistance was followed by European reprisals, a pattern seen across Australia. A key aim of our paper is to address the dominant view of how Ewamian contact history is presented – Ewamian people did not passively accept the arrival of Europeans; the historic sources describe a resistance that continued over 35 years in three distinct phases. This paper has two aims. First, we challenge the colonial narrative that describes Ewamian as passive respondents to European colonialism. Second, we reinterpret the colonial narratives to identify three phases of resistance in the Ewamian estate in response to the changing nature of the colonial frontier in Queensland’s Gulf savannah.