Surviving New England

Book excerpt: Our people had thrived here on the so-called New England Tableland since the first sunrise. But in the 1830s, squatters began invading the region with their plagues of livestock. Colonization plunged Aboriginal society into utter chaos, driving us off our lands and decimating the traditional way of life. The traumas of the early colonial period remain carved deeply into the country and its people. But because of our ancestors' struggles, their fierce resistance, their unyielding determination to survive, we are still here. Clouded by the great conspiracy of silence, the dominant myth of peaceful settlement, and the proliferation of Eurocentric narratives touting the achievements of explorers and pastoral pioneers, our people's remarkable history of resistance and survival during the first few decades of the occupation has faded into obscurity. It is their story which this book sets out to reclaim, co-opting the colonial archive and subverting the colonial narrative, deconstructing their story in order to uncover our own.