Truganini

Truganini
Portrait of Truganini by Charles A. Woolley
Born	c.1812 Bruny Island, Van Diemen's Land
Died	8 May 1876 (aged 63–64) Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Other names	Truganini, Trucanini, Trucaninny, Trugananner, Lydgugee and Lalla Rookh
Known for	Being described as the last "full-blooded" Aboriginal Tasmanian
Spouses	Woorrady Maulboyheenner Mannapackername William Lanne

Truganini (c.1812 – 8 May 1876), also known as Lalla Rookh and Lydgugee, was a woman famous for being widely described as the last "full-blooded" Aboriginal Tasmanian to survive British colonisation. Although she was one of the last speakers of the Indigenous Tasmanian languages, Truganini was not the last Aboriginal Tasmanian.

She lived through the devastation of invasion and the Black War in which most of her relatives died, avoiding death herself by being assigned as a guide in expeditions organised to capture and forcibly exile all the remaining Indigenous Tasmanians. Truganini was later taken to the Port Phillip District where she engaged in armed resistance against the colonists. She herself was then exiled, first to the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island and then to Oyster Cove in southern Tasmania. Truganini died at Hobart in 1876, her skeleton later being placed on public display at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery until 1948. Her remains were finally cremated and laid to rest in 1976.

In being mythologised as "the last of her people", Truganini became the tragic and triumphal symbol of the conquest of British colonists over an "inferior race". In modern times, Truganini's life has become representative of both the dispossession and destruction that was exacted upon Indigenous Australians and also their determination to survive the colonial genocidal policies that were enforced against them.

Name and spelling

Other spellings of her name include Trukanini, Trugernanner, Trugernena, Truganina, Trugannini, Trucanini, Trucaminni, and Trucaninny. Truganini was widely known by the nickname Lalla(h) Rookh, and also called Lydgugee.

Early life

1831 painting by Thomas Bock, believed to be of Truganini

Truganini was born around 1812 at Recherche Bay (Lyleatea) in southern Tasmania. Her father was Manganerer, a senior figure of the Nuenonne people whose country extended from Recherche Bay across the D'Entrecasteaux Channel to Bruny Island (Lunawanna-alonnah). Truganini's mother was probably a Ninine woman from the area around Port Davey.

In the Indigenous Bruny Island language, truganina was the name of the grey saltbush, Atriplex cinerea.

At the time of her birth, the British had already begun colonising the region around Nuenonne country, severely disrupting the ability of her people to live and practise their traditional culture. The violence directed at the Nuenonne, who were regarded as helpful to the colonists, was sustained and horrific. Around 1816, a group of British sailors raided the camp of Truganini's family, stabbing her mother to death. In 1826, Truganini's older sisters Lowhenune and Magerleede were abducted by a sealer and never heard of again, while in 1829 her step-mother was abducted by mutinous convicts and taken to New Zealand.

There is also an account that around 1828 Truganini's uncle was shot by a soldier, and that she was abducted and raped by timber-cutters. The timber-cutters also brutally murdered and drowned two Nuenonne men, one of which was Truganini's fiancé, by throwing them out of a boat and cutting off their hands with an axe as they tried to clamber back in.

Guide for the "friendly mission"

From 1829 she was associated with George Augustus Robinson, later an official of the colonial government of Van Diemen's Land. She accompanied him as a guide and served as an informant on Aboriginal language and culture. In 1835, Truganini and most other surviving Aboriginal Tasmanians were relocated to Flinders Island in the Bass Strait, where the colonial British government had built the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment. This internment camp proved unsuccessful, and disastrous for the exiled Aboriginal Tasmanian people.

Flinders Island

Truganini, seated right

In 1835, Truganini and most other surviving Aboriginal Tasmanians were relocated to Flinders Island in the Bass Strait, where the colonial British government had built the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment. This internment camp proved unsuccessful, and disastrous for the exiled Aboriginal Tasmanian people. The stated aim of isolation was to save them, but many of the group died from influenza and other diseases.

Port Phillip District

In 1839, Truganini, among sixteen Aboriginal Tasmanians, accompanied Robinson to the Port Phillip District in present-day Victoria.

Oral histories of Truganini report that after arriving in the new settlement of Melbourne and disengaging with Robinson, she had a child named Louisa Esmai with John Shugnow or Strugnell at Point Nepean in Victoria, but anthropologist Diane Barwick stated that historians working on a legal case for the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service disproved those claims in 1974. Louisa was grandmother to Ellen Atkinson.

After about two years of living in and around Melbourne, she joined Tunnerminnerwait and three other Tasmanian Aboriginal people. The group became outlaws, robbing and shooting at settlers around Dandenong and triggering a long pursuit by the authorities. The outlaws moved on to Bass River and then Cape Paterson. There, members of the group murdered two whalers at Watson's hut. The group was captured and sent for trial for murder at Port Phillip. A gunshot wound to Truganini's head was treated by Dr Hugh Anderson of Bass River. The two men of the group were found guilty and hanged on 20 January 1842.

Oyster Cove

Photographs by Alfred Winter, c. 1869

Truganini and most of the other Tasmanian Aboriginal people were returned to Flinders Island several months later. In 1847, the few surviving Tasmanian Aboriginal people at the Flinders Island settlement, including Truganini (not all Tasmanian Aboriginal people on the island as some suggest) were moved to a settlement at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart.

According to The Times newspaper, quoting a report issued by the Colonial Office, by 1861 the number of survivors at Oyster Cove was only fourteen:

...14 persons, all adults, aboriginals of Tasmania, who are the sole surviving remnant of ten tribes. Nine of these persons are women and five are men. There are among them four married couples, and four of the men and five of the women are under 45 years of age, but no children have been born to them for years. It is considered difficult to account for this... Besides these 14 persons there is a native woman who is married to a white man, and who has a son, a fine healthy-looking child...

The article, headed "Decay of Race", adds that although the survivors enjoyed generally good health and still made hunting trips to the bush during the season, after first asking "leave to go", they were now "fed, housed and clothed at public expense" and "much addicted to drinking".

According to a report in The Times she later married a Tasmanian Aboriginal person, William Lanne (known as "King Billy") who died in March 1869. By 1873, Truganini was the sole survivor of the Oyster Cove group, and was again moved to Hobart.

Death

Photograph of Truganini in old age by Henry Hall Baily

She died in May 1876 and was buried at the former Female Factory at Cascades, a suburb of Hobart. Before her death, Truganini had pleaded to colonial authorities for a respectful burial, and requested that her ashes be scattered in the D'Entrecasteaux Channel. She feared that her body would be mutilated for perverse scientific purposes as William Lanne's had been.

Despite her wishes, within two years, her skeleton was exhumed by the Royal Society of Tasmania. It was placed on public display in the Tasmanian Museum in 1904 where it remained until 1947. Only in April 1976, approaching the centenary of her death, were Truganini's remains finally cremated and scattered according to her wishes. In 2002, some of her hair and skin were found in the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and returned to Tasmania for burial.

Legacy

Truganini is often incorrectly referred to as the last speaker of a Tasmanian language. However, The Companion to Tasmanian History details three full-blood Tasmanian Aboriginal women, Sal, Suke and Betty, who lived on Kangaroo Island in South Australia in the late 1870s and "all three outlived Truganini". There were also Tasmanian Aboriginal people living on Flinders and Lady Barron Islands. Fanny Cochrane Smith (1834–1905) outlived Truganini by 30 years and in 1889 was officially recognised as the last Tasmanian Aboriginal person, though there was speculation that she was actually mixed-race, later refuted. Smith recorded songs in her native language, the only audio recordings that exist of an indigenous Tasmanian language.

According to historian Cassandra Pybus's 2020 biography, Truganini's mythical status as the "last of her people" has overshadowed the significant roles she played in Tasmanian and Victorian history during her lifetime. Pybus states that "for nearly seven decades she lived through a psychological and cultural shift more extreme than most human imaginations could conjure; she is a hugely significant figure in Australian history".

Truganini Place in the Canberra suburb of Chisholm is named in her honour. The suburb of Truganina in Melbourne's outer western suburbs is believed to be named after her, as she had visited the area for a short time.

Cultural depictions

Visual art

Benjamin Law's 1835 bust of Truganini, commissioned by George Augustus Robinson

In 1835 and 1836, settler Benjamin Law created a pair of busts depicting Truganini and Woorrady in Hobart Town that have come under recent controversy. In 2009, members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre protested an auction of these works by Sotheby's in Melbourne, arguing that the sculptures were racist, perpetuated false myths of Aboriginal extinction, and erased the experiences of Tasmania's remaining indigenous populations. Representatives called for the busts to be returned to Tasmania and given to the Aboriginal community, and were ultimately successful in stopping the auction.

Artist Edmund Joel Dicks also created a plaster bust of Truganini, which is in the collection of the National Museum of Australia.

In 1997, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, England, returned Truganini's necklace and bracelet to Tasmania.

Music and literature

• "Truganini's Dreaming" is the title of a song written by Bunna Lawrie, the founding member, sole songwriter and lead singer of the Australian Aboriginal band Coloured Stone. It appeared on their 1986 album, Human Love, which won the Best Indigenous Release at the ARIA Music Awards of 1987.
• Truganinni, a play about her life by Melbourne writer Bill Reid, had its premiere at the Union Theatre, University of Melbourne on 21 April 1970, directed by George Whaley and starring Jan Hamilton as Truganinni.
• "Truganini" is the name of a song by Midnight Oil, from their 1993 album Earth and Sun and Moon; this song spoke partly of Truganini herself but also of what Midnight Oil saw as Australia's environmental and social problems.
• In Mudrooroo's roman à clef Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World, one of the main characters is Trugernanna, a somewhat fictional portrayal of Truganini.
• A steamer called Truganini sailed in the South Seas in 1886, visiting Papua New Guinea.
• A racehorse named "Truganini" ran in Britain in the early 20th century and another named "Trucanini" started racing aged 2 in the 2012 season.
• Truganini receives explicit mention in Yuval Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
• Truganani is the name of a song by Troy Kingi, from his 2019 album Holy Colony Burning Acres.

See also

• Black War
• Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World
• Tunnerminnerwait, leader and resistance fighter
• List of Indigenous Australian historical figures

Sources

• Barkham, P. & Finlayson, A. (31 May 2002). "Museum returns sacred samples". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 July 2006.
• Barwick, Diane (1985). "8. This Most Resolute Lady: A Biographical Puzzle". In Barwick, Diane E.; Beckett, Jeremy; Reay, Marie (eds.). Metaphors of Interpretation: Essays in Honour of W.E.H. Stanner. Canberra, Australia: Australian National University Press. pp. 185–239. ISBN 978-0-08-029875-7. OCLC 1011237151.
• Barwick, Laura (2005). "Briggs, Louisa (1836–1925)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7. ISSN 1833-7538. OCLC 70677943. Retrieved 7 October 2015.
• Crowley, Terry; Thieberger, Nick (2007). Field linguistics: a beginner's guide. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-19-921370-2.
• Davies, Caroline (16 September 2009). "Aborigines demand that British Museum returns Truganini bust". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 November 2015.
• Ellis, Vivienne R. (1981). Trucanini, Queen or Traitor?. AIATSIS. ISBN 0-391-02242-3.
• "Fanny Cochrane Smith". Index of Significant Tasmanian Women. Department of Premier and Cabinet (Tasmania). Archived from the original on 19 July 2010. Retrieved 21 March 2012. She is probably best known for her cylinder recordings of Aboriginal songs, recorded in 1899, which are the only audio recordings of an indigenous Tasmanian language.
• Flannery, Tim F. (1994). The Future Eaters: An ecological history of the Australasian lands and people. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-3943-4.
• Gough, Julie (2006). "Oyster Cove". The Companion to Tasmanian History. Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania. ISBN 0-08-029875-3.
• Hansen, David (May 2010). "Seeing Truganini" (PDF). Australian Book Review. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016.
• Harari, Yuval Noah (2011). Sapiens. London: Vintage. ISBN 978-0-099-59008-8.
• Kongfooey (23 July 2019). "Troy Kingi - Album Review: Holy Colony Burning Acres". MUZIC.NET.NZ. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
• Kühnast, Antje (2009). ""In the interest of science and the colony". Truganini und die Legende von den aussterbenden Rassen". In Hund, Wulf D. (ed.). Entfremdete Körper: Rassismus als Leichenschändung [Alienated Bodies: Racism and the desecration of corpses]. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. pp. 205–250. ISBN 978-3-8376-1151-9.
• "The Last Wish: Truganini's ashes scattered in the D'Entrecasteaux Channel". Aboriginal News. Vol. 3, no. 2. 1976.
• "Plaster bust of Truganini by Edmund Joel Dicks". National Museum of Australia. 1931. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
• "Port Phillip". The Australasian Chronicle. Sydney, NSW. 15 February 1842. p. 2. Retrieved 27 March 2015 – via Trove.
• Pybus, Cassandra (2020). Truganini: Journey Through the Apocalypse. Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-1-76052-922-2.
• "'Racism not art': Anger at Truganini bust auction". ABC News. 24 August 2009. Retrieved 29 November 2015.
• Radeska, Tijana (27 August 2016). "Truganini – The Last Full-Blood Speaker of a Tasmanian Language". The Vintage News. Virginia, Nebraska. Archived from the original on 29 March 2023. Retrieved 18 August 2023.
• Roth, Henry Ling (1898). "Is Mrs. F. C. Smith a 'Last Living Aboriginal of Tasmania'?". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 27: 451–454. doi:10.2307/2842841. JSTOR 2842841.
• Ryan, Lyndall; Smith, Neil (1976). "Trugernanner (Truganini) (1812–1876)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 6. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7. ISSN 1833-7538. OCLC 70677943. Retrieved 24 June 2013.
• "Schedule 'B' National Memorials Ordinance 1928–1972 Street Nomenclature List of Additional Names with Reference to Origin". Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (S24) (Special (National: 1977–2012) ed.): 14. 8 February 1978 – via Trove.
• "Tasmanian Aboriginal place names". Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. n.d. Retrieved 28 June 2022.
• "Truganini". Index of Significant Tasmanian Women. Tasmania's Department of Premier and Cabinet. October 2011. Archived from the original on 28 October 2009. Retrieved 21 March 2012.
• "Truganini (1812?-1876)". Australian Museum. Retrieved 28 November 2015.

External links

• The Last of the Tasmanians on Wikisource
• Truganini (1812–1876) National Library of Australia, NLA Trove, People and Organisation record for Truganini
• Images of Truganini in State Library of Tasmania collection
• Alexander, Alison Truganini at Companion to Tasmanian History, University of Tasmania
• Russell, John (Essay) The Representation of Trucanini 1999. at fotoworkz freelance photographic
• (Article) Truganini's Funeral
• (Radio Feature) Truganini – Bushranger
• (Article) Truganini (1812?–1876) A life reflecting the tragic history of the first Tasmanians.