The kidnapping of Aboriginal people in colonial Queensland 1859-1897: labour, violence and government inaction

The kidnapping of Aboriginal people was a ubiquitous feature of European and Aboriginal relations in colonial Queensland which pervaded almost every major interface between the groups: war, land, culture, labour, and sex. It was a cause and feature of violent conflict, a means through which individuals could be displaced from their land and culture, as well as a method to procure labour and sex. Its impact has been overshadowed in the historiography by the parallel phenomena of frontier violence and dispossession of land, central themes from which kidnapping has been inconsistently acknowledged and underweighted by historians. Yet, it is a vital part of colonial Queensland’s story which requires a dedicated study. Especially prior to the 1897 Aboriginals Protection Act, kidnapping (mostly to procure labour) was rife and went virtually unpunished and unacted upon by government. The main perpetrators were settlers (particularly pastoralists), the Native Police and beche-de-mer fishermen. The practice was most common in the north and west of the colony. The phenomenon incited retaliatory attacks by Aboriginal people and contributed to violence between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal actors in the colony. The need for focused historical study of kidnapping became obvious upon identifying the major disconnect between the wealth of archival material on the subject and its patchy inclusion in the scholarship, most of which is decades old. Queensland State Archives, particularly the Colonial Secretary’s correspondence, provides the basis of primary source material which is supplemented by colonial newspapers, parliamentary papers and memoirs. This thesis is a qualitative, recuperative history which seeks to address a gap in scholarship and explain the phenomenon of kidnapping. In doing so, the findings expand our understanding of Aboriginal labour, frontier violence, sexual relations and slavery.