Greens and Invasion Day., page-296

 Sorry I'm not a mind reader so I suggest you elaborate.

 

The Nth cont.

The Jesuit missionaries had in mind the Paraguayan Reductions as a possible model,a series of Guarini Indian communes set up by Jesuit missionaries along the Rio Plata during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

 

In that place self-governing collections of farming people, the Reductions,preserved the Indians from total loss of land and capture into slavery. As well they promoted a 'civilised' way of life but were destroyed when the Jesuits were expelled from South America in 1768 and settled in the small township of Palmerston,now a suburb of Darwin.

 

The Aboriginal people of the immediate region were the Larakia, who owned all of what is now the city of Darwin but belonged to a much wider speech community which included a number of nearby language groups.

 

As has happened in Australian history, the rivers, harbours and lakes which the white settlers favoured were also important places to Aborigines, disrupting boundaries,causing friction between tribes.

Palmerston was at first a tiny colonial outpost with a population of less than 200 Europeans as its only real reason for existence was to maintain the Overland Telegraph---- completed in 1872.

 

But after gold was discovered in some of the Northern Overland Telegraph post holes,Palmerston grew rapidly and became a rough frontier town with a mobile population that chased gold.

 

When the Jesuits arrived in 1882, the non-Aboriginal population of the Northern Territory consisted of about 3,000 Chinese and 800 Europeans, rising to over 6,000 Chinese and 1,500 Europeans during the gold rush.

 

The Jesuits named their mission St Joseph's, and immediately set about constructing their station and planting gardens. Enticed with gifts of food and tobacco, the Larakia people gathered at the mission after a few weeks, interested in these unusual whites.

 

The Larakia were among the friendliest of Aboriginal groups and in all the years of change never harmed a white person, nor were massacres perpetrated against them,but they were susceptible to white man’s diseases and suffered traumatic social disruption that dogged their lives.

 

 As one of their elders said in 1974,      'Because we were a trusting and generous people, the white man has treated us like children and were left with nothing.

 

In time they lost their ancestral lands, but early on their traditional food supplies were not yet damaged or forbidden them, as was so often the case in the drier regions.And they were tempted by new and interesting European foods, alcohol and tobacco