The settler-invaders had a code for it: Guardian Australia's series The Descendants

Guardian Australia's current series reminds us that the lack of an official Queen's English account, filed away in government documents, does not mean that First Nations people were not massacred at a particular site on a certain date or did not on another certain date at another site stoutly resist the arms of settlers, police and soldiers. Knowledge passed down through Indigenous generations can be robust evidence, too.

Guardian Australia authors Lorena Allam, Sarah Collard and Ella Archibald-Binge have produced The Descendants.

They write:

Among our most disturbing discoveries was the diary of one of Western Australia’s first politicians, Major Logue, whose coded entries about killing Aboriginal people have confirmed Yamatji stories passed down for generations.

These are not easy stories to tell. Along the way we encountered people who refused to speak publicly about their ancestors’ actions. Others were hesitant and intent on controlling the narrative. Historical records, invariably told from the perspective of the colonisers, made for callous reading, with key details often omitted, obscured or deliberately hidden.

But we also found descendants who are charting their own path towards truth-telling, healing and understanding. They are reckoning with the past through art, study and human connection – not to apportion blame but to better understand the foundations on which the nation was built and the enduring legacy of the Australian frontier. They do so in the hope of moving towards a more unified nation, with a better sense of its own identity.

Look for:

Major Logue's coded 1850s diaries and what they tell us about how pastoralists cleared the land for stock: podcast; report; families want diaries released in full;

Constable Bill McKinnon's descendants learn about his deliberate killing of First Nations man Yukun at Uluru in 1934 - and meet Yukun's descendants;

The possible role of sporting pioneer Tom Wills in events at Cullin-la-ringo in 1860s Queensland: report and podcast

Photo credit: Uluru 2021 (Wikipedia:  Ek2030372672uhhhhh daddy - Own work; CC BY-SA 4.0)