[1][2] First arriving in Tasmania (then a peninsula of Australia) around 40,000 years ago,[citation needed] the ancestors of the Aboriginal Tasmanians were cut off from the Australian mainland by rising sea levels c. 6000 BC.

Genetic studies show that once the sea level rose to flood the Bassian Plain, the island's population was isolated for approximately 8,000 years, until European exploration in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

[22] More extensive contact between Aboriginal Tasmanians and Europeans resulted when British and American seal hunters began visiting the islands in Bass Strait as well as the northern and eastern coasts of Tasmania from the late 1790s.

Brian Plomley, who edited Robinson's papers, expressed scepticism about these atrocities and notes that they were not reported to Archdeacon William Broughton's 1830 committee of inquiry into violence towards Tasmanians.

The first took place between 1803 and 1808 over the need for common food sources such as oysters and kangaroos, and the second between 1808 and 1823, when only a small number of white females lived among the colonists, and farmers, sealers and whalers took part in the trading, and the abduction, of Aboriginal women as sexual partners.

[46] Henry Ling Roth, an anthropologist, wrote: "Calder, who has gone more fully into the particulars of their illnesses, writes as follows ...: 'Their rapid declension after the colony was founded is traceable, as far as our proofs allow us to judge, to the prevalence of epidemic disorders.

Even though many of the Aboriginal people managed to avoid capture during these events, they were shaken by the size of the campaigns against them, and this brought them to a position whereby they were willing to surrender to Robinson and move to Flinders Island.

[51] In late 1831, Robinson brought the first 51 Aboriginal people to a settlement on Flinders Island named The Lagoons, which turned out to be inadequate as it was exposed to gales, had little water and no land suitable for cultivation.

In the case of Tasmanians, as with other wild tribes accustomed to go naked, the use of clothes had a most mischievous effect on their health.By January 1832 a further 44 captured Aboriginal residents had arrived and conflicts arose between the tribal groups.

[30] Robinson befriended Truganini, learned some of the local language and in 1833 managed to persuade the remaining 154 "full-blooded" people to move to the new settlement on Flinders Island, where he promised a modern and comfortable environment, and that they would be returned to their former homes on the Tasmanian mainland as soon as possible.

[17] Aboriginal Tasmanians were primarily nomadic people who lived in adjoining territories, moving based on seasonal changes in food supplies such as seafood, land mammals and native vegetables and berries.

In return, the North West nation had free access to the ochre mines[79] Relatively isolated, the region was first explored by Europeans in 1824 with the Van Diemen's Land Company being given a grant of 250,000 acres (100,000 ha), which included the greater part of the clan hunting grounds.

The settlement was a failure, with the inland areas described as "wet, cold and soggy", while the coastal region was difficult to clear, as Superintendent Henry Hellyer noted the "forest [was] altogether unlike anything I have seen in the Island".

[70][85] To the east the natural boundary was the South-Esk River and, running northwards, the high tier of Mts Barrow, Arthur and Tippogoree Hills: beyond which lay the North-east nation.

[70][82] What is known of the composition of the North Midlands nation derives from settler description (who ascribed simple tribal divisions based upon locality), direct attribution from contemporary Aboriginal Tasmanians (recorded by Robinson collated by Plomley) and later research by Rhys Jones.

[84][93] The Panninher were affected early by settlement around Norfolk Plains and aggressive assertion of property rights by settlers at first hindered their hunting and migration through their country and, subsequently, led to outright hostility from both parties.

[70] The Panninher, or their neighbouring clansmen, retaliated in various attacks against settlers at Western Lagoon and in remote country up the Lake River, reaching a peak in aggression against the colonial interlopers by 1827.

[94] In 1831 a war party of "100 or 150 stout men" attacked settlers at the base of the Western Tiers and up the Lake River[94] but it is unclear whether this was the action of the Panninher alone or a confederation of warriors from remnant North Tasmanian nations.

The Tyerrernotepanner (Chera-noti-pana) were known to colonial people as the Stony Creek tribe, named eponymously from the small southern tributary of the South Esk at Llewellyn, west of modern-day Avoca.

Robinson recorded several discussions regarding spiritual entities that his companions describe as having agency or a source of interpretive power to aid their navigation of their physical world.

[117] Several researchers assert that there was belief in a kind of manichaean cosmos with a "good" and "bad" spirit – delineated by day and night – although this may reflect the cultural bias of the observers.

Milligan (a contemporary at Wyballenna) described a creator spirit called tiggana marrabona – translating as "twilight man" but as referred to above there are a number of supernatural beings associated with creation.

[131] Traditional Aboriginal Tasmanians saw the night sky as residence of creator spirits (see above) and also describe constellations that represent tribal life; such as figures of fighting men and courting couples.

[140] Approximately 4,000 years ago, Aboriginal Tasmanians largely dropped scaled fish from their diet, and began eating more land mammals, such as possums, kangaroos, and wallabies.

Several different species of plant were used, including white flag iris, blue flax lily, rush and sag, some of which are still used by contemporary basket makers, and sometimes shells are added for ornament.

[153] Aboriginal people inhabited Tasmania's South-west from the last glacial maximum and hand stencils and ochre smears are found in several caves, the oldest of which is dated to 10000 years ago.

His photographs mark historical sites, events and figures of great significance to Tasmanian and mainland Aboriginal people, and speak to their struggle in a subtle, poetic, and powerful way.

"[157] Modern painting in Tasmania is starting to use techniques shared by Aboriginal art in mainland Australia but incorporating traditional Tasmanian motifs, such as spirals and celestial representation.

[159] The earliest publication attributed to Tasmanian authors, predating the journalism of David Unaipon by a century, was The Aboriginal/Flinders Island Chronicle, written between September 1836 and December 1837, though it is unclear to what degree its composition was influenced by "The Commandant", George Robinson.

[170] Other scholars who have supported the assessment of the near-destruction of the Aboriginal Tasmanians as genocide including: James Boyce, Lyndall Ryan, Tom Lawson, Mohamed Adhikari, Ashley Riley Sousa, Rebe Taylor, and Tony Barta.