Contact History  |  Impacts of laws on Noongar people before 1905

Law/rules

Impact/Effect

May 1829-

Western Australian Act 1829(UK)

British Government invaded and granted Noongar land to Europeans without Noongar consent.

June 1829  Lt Governor Captain James Stirling proclaimed that Aboriginal people were to be regarded as under the protection of British law (Proclamation) [i]

Noongar people continued to practice their own lore, largely unaware of British laws and what had been imposed on them.

Aunty Doolann Leisha Eatts tells of her grandmother's story of contact with Europeans

May 1832- Yagan and his father Midgegooroo were proclaimed outlaws and outside the protection of British law

1832. Midgegooroo was shot by military firing squad outside Perth gaol, without trial by jury or right of defence under British law. In May 1833. [ii]

Yagan was shot in an ambush by 15 year-old William Keats who claimed the 30 pound reward from the colonial government. Yagan's biography

In October 1834, Stirling led a punitive expedition against  Binjareb Noongar in Pinjarra which resulted in massacre of many Noongar people.

July 1835- Secretary of State for Colonies Lord Glenelg responded to Stirling's report on Pinjarra by reminding him that Aboriginal people were British subjects and should be protected under British law.

1837 - Avon Valley,York. In response to demands by settlers, Stirling led a punitive expedition against Noongars of that region. In July 1837, the first court of Quarter Sessions trials were held in Perth: R v Durgap, where Durgap was convicted in October for breaking and entering and stealing a lump of dough. He was sentenced to 7 years transportation 'beyond the seas'.

1841 -An Act to constitute the Island of Rottnest a legal prison.

The Prison on  Rottnest - 'Wadjamup' to Noongars - marks the beginning of a long history of imprisonment, as European settlers expanded south and then north in W.A. Noongar elder, Helia was one of the first to be sent to Rottnest for spearing another under his own law. He eventually escaped with others. Over 100 years there have been approx 3,670 Aboriginal people sent to Rottnest [iii] (probably a conservative estimate).

Master and Servants Act 1842

Noongars You-yat and Warbungga were summarily convicted under this Act for having 'absconded from the service of their several employers". You-yat was sentenced to three months and War-bung-ga to six weeks in prison.

The Perth Gazette in 1843 reported:[iv]-

"Several boys belonging to the institution having lately absconded, and been broughtback only after considerable trouble and expense,it was judged necessary to visit the offence of these lads with such as would strike terror into their comrades, and effectually deter them from following an example so prejudicial to the interests

of this meritorious establishment."

Weewar (1842)[v]

In 1841 Weewar was captured and charged with the 'wilful murder' of Dyung under British law. Wewar was a Binjareb- Noongar, and acting under his own lore when he speared Dyung. While he does not appear to have been allowed to speak for himself [vi], he was defended by lawyer Edward Landor who argued that (among other things),  Wewar was acting under his own laws. It raised for the first time the question of whether courts had jurisdiction to try the case involving Aboriginal customary lore.

Wewar was found guilty and sentenced to transportation over the seas. On the passage to Rottnest Island Prison, Building Superintendent Henry Trigg interpreted Weewar as saying (The Government Gazette 11 Feb 1842):

"I can not understand why the Governor is sulky or severe with me, if a white man kills a white man we never interfere. Sometime back the white man killed many of the natives and the Governor took no notice, now why should the Governor take any notice of me if I kill a fellow native that steals my wife, or kills my brother, when it is according to our law."

View the DVD of Weewar here

An Ordinance to provide for the Issue of Licences to kill Kangaroos 1853 (the Kangaroo Ordinance)

The State government issued licences to kill kangaroos in attempt to prevent large numbers of kangaroos being killed.

This was in response to commercial exploitation of kangaroo skins.

In 1848 as many as 8000 kangaroo skins were taken from Noongar country in one year, with up to 20,000 skins planned for export from Albany in 1849.

The plight of Noongars was highlighted at the time in August 1848 by Captain J Lort Stokes in a Letter to the Inquirer. He argued that Aboriginal people were being deprived of their food source:[vii]

"Sir, While lying in this harbour, my attention has been called to the extraordinary fact, that upwards of eight thousand kangaroo-skins were exported from this colony during the past year; and it is anticipated the number will be more than doubled during the present season....Let their white brethren remember the severe laws which fence in the owner's right to game at home, and in every other European country, where its pursuit and capture are not indispensable to existence, but are resorted to solely as relaxation and sport. Why then deprive the savage from his hunting grounds, as indisputably his birth-right as are those of the most aristocratic landholder a home,and compel him to commit depredations on those of adjacent tribes..."