Flying Foam massacre


The Flying Foam Massacre was a series of confrontations between white settlers and Aboriginal people around Flying Foam Passage on Murujuga, Western Australia. The confrontations occurred between February and May 1868, and were triggered by the killing of two police officers and a local workman. The confrontations resulted in the deaths of unknown number of Jaburara people with estimates ranging between 15 and 150 dead.

Details

The confrontations followed the 7 February killing, by some Jaburara people, of Police Constable William Griffis, an Aboriginal police assistant named Peter, and a pearling worker named George Breem, on the south-west shore of Nickol Bay. along with the disappearance of a pearling lugger captain, Henry Jermyn. Three Jaburara were arrested and convicted of Griffis' murder. Initially sentenced to death, their sentences were commuted to twelve years' penal servitude on Rottnest Island.
Pearlers and pastoralists from the surrounding region, with the approval and support of the Government Resident in Roebourne, R. J. Sholl, organised two armed and mounted parties, which travelled overland and by sea to Murujuga, the heartland of the Jaburara. The two parties moved towards each other on the peninsula in a pincer movement. Anthropologist T. J. Gara - utilising official sources and oral tradition - suggests that one attack by the parties, on a Jaburara camp at King Bay, on 17 February, killed at least 15 people, including some children. Because these confrontations were the main factor in a sharp decline of the Jaburara population, they are significant and controversial in native title cases for descendants of the Jaburara, as well as cultural heritage issues surrounding the World Monuments-listed Jaburara rock art on Murujuga.

Remembrance

On 17 February 2013, the 145th anniversary of the first massacre, Aboriginal elders, and other leaders, held the first Flying Foam Massacre Remembrance Day at the King Bay Massacre site. Supporting actions were held at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, the Western Australian Parliament, the New South Wales Parliament, the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, the Tandanya Indigenous Arts Centre in Adelaide, in Brunswick, Melbourne, and in the Victorian Central Highlands towns of Taradale and Daylesford.