From Canberra — Australia’s National Capital by Crispin Hull
Chapter 1 — Indigenous People In Canberra
The Ngunnawal (or Ngunawal) people made their home on the Limestone Plains, upon which modern Canberra is built. They hunted, gathered, followed the paths of the Bogong moth from the coast to the highlands, marked their sacred sites — some of which remain to this day — lived where Canberra now stands and continue to live in Canberra now, contributing and adding to the city’s rich cultural life.
Radio-carbon dating establishes the occupation of Aboriginal people back at least 21,000 years, despite the cold conditions in the south-east of the continent. Rock art, stone arrangements and stone implements remain at Namadgi. Many Aboriginal names have survived, including Molonglo, Ginninderra, Tuggeranong, Weetangera, Narrabundah, and, of course, Canberra itself.
Hundreds of Aboriginal people were living in the Canberra area when Europeans settled in the early 1820s. They met regularly for corroborees and feasts and, breaking off into smaller bands, they moved about to take advantage of seasonal foods, such as bogong moths which arrived in their thousands during summer. But European settlement disrupted Aboriginal patterns of land use and movement, Many died from diseases brought by Europeans like influenza, smallpox and tuberculosis.
The extent of the dispossession was described at the opening of the Tharwa Bridge across the Murrumbidgee River south of Canberra in 1895. The guest of honour was a Ngunnawal woman, Nellie Hamilton. She was quoted as saying, “”I no tink much of your law. You come here and take my land, kill my possum, my kangaroo; leave me starve. Only gib me rotten blanket. Me take calf or sheep, you been shoot me, or put me in jail. You bring your bad sickness ‘mong us.”
Ngunnawal people continued to live in the area, often working on sheep properties, their numbers diminished by illness and starvation, their culture and language in decline.
More recently, though, Canberra has seen a revival of Ngunnawal culture. Also, after the referendum in 1967 which gave the Commonwealth power with respect to Aboriginal people, the national administration of the exercise of that power was centred in Canberra which required a greater Aboriginal presence in capital. Canberra is now the home of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission — the elected indigenous body that administers programs for indigenous people.
It was in Canberra, in 1992, that perhaps the most significant change to the aspirations of indigenous people took place when the High Court ruled in the Mabo case that indigenous or native title existed in all land in Australia that had not been taken after European settlement for specific use or individual title.
Since 1972 Canberra has housed the Aboriginal Embassy — an unofficial, informal place in front of the old Parliament House that focuses on the call for reconciliation between indigenous and other Australians and recognition of the dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land.