Title: The Harris Case: The Murder of an Aboriginal Man by the Native Police in the Burnett District, 1863
Abstract: Queensland's parliament had just completed its first legislature when a former Native Police Force lieutenant appeared in the Gayndah Police Court charged with the murder of an Aboriginal man. The handling of this case by the Executive Council, the justice system and the colonial press laid bare the divisions within settler communities concerning their responsibilities towards Indigenous peoples, the ambiguous status of Aborigines in British law, and the readiness of the government to take advantage of those ambiguities in order to quash Aboriginal resistance to European occupation. Above all, it confirmed what many Queenslanders already knew: that whether or not legal due process was observed subsequent to the event, the Native Police could take Aboriginal lives almost with impunity.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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