Yagan
It was an act of retaliation after Thomas Smedley, another of Butler's servants, shot at a group of Noongar people stealing potatoes and fowls, killing one of them.
[9] The group had customary land usage rights over a much larger area than this, extending north as far as Lake Monger and northeast to the Helena River.
[23] In addition, the Noongar practice of firestick farming, or lighting the bush to flush out game threatened the settlers' crops and houses.
Thomas Smedley, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler, apprehended some natives who were raiding a potato patch, and killed one of Yagan's family group.
[10][page needed] Not understanding tribal law (and unlikely to agree with its concepts if they had), the white settlers took the killing to be an unprovoked murder and dispatched a force to arrest Yagan's group, without success.
[25] In June 1832 Yagan led a party of Noongar in attacking two labourers sowing a field of wheat alongside the Canning River near Kelmscott.
[25] At the recommendation of John Septimus Roe, the Surveyor-General of Western Australia, Yagan and his men were exiled on Carnac Island under the supervision of Lyon and two soldiers.
Two settlers, Richard Dale and George Smythe,[citation needed] arranged for the men to meet a party of local Noongar to encourage friendly relations in the Swan River Colony.
Moore wrote in the Perth Gazette: Yagan stepped forward and leaning with his left hand on my shoulder while he gesticulated with the right, delivered a sort of recitation, looking earnestly in my face.
"[43] On 11 July 1833, two teenage brothers named William and James Keates were herding cattle along the Swan River north of Guildford when a group of Noongar approached while en route to collect flour rations from Henry Bull's house.
[52] Pettigrew, a surgeon and antiquarian,[52] was well known in the London social scene for holding private parties at which he unrolled and autopsied ancient Egyptian mummies.
[51] Dale published these in a pamphlet entitled Descriptive Account of the Panoramic View &c. of King George's Sound and the Adjacent Country,[55] which Pettigrew encouraged his guests to buy as a souvenir of their evening.
[62] The academic Hannah McGlade claims that these divisions were largely manufactured by the media, particularly The West Australian, which "aimed to and successfully represented the Nyungar community in terms of disharmony and dissent".
Using electromagnetic and ground penetrating radar techniques, they identified an approximate position of the box that suggested it could be accessed from the side via the adjacent plot.
[67] The exhumation of Yagan's head eventually proceeded, without Colbung's knowledge,[67] by excavating 1.8 metres (6 ft) down the side of the grave, then tunnelling horizontally to the location of the box.
[67] On 27 August 1997, a delegation of Noongars consisting of Ken Colbung, Robert Bropho, Richard Wilkes and Mingli Wanjurri-Nungala arrived in the UK to collect Yagan's head.
For example, U.S. News & World Report ran a story under the headline Raiders of the Lost Conk, in which Yagan's head was referred to as a "pickled curio", and Colbung's actions were treated as a publicity stunt.
A number of attempts were made to locate the remains of Yagan's body, which were believed to be on Lot 39 West Swan Road in the outer Perth suburb of Belhus.
[81] The burial coincided with a ceremony to mark the opening of the Yagan Memorial Park, which was attended by around 300 people, including Noongar elders and state government representatives.
[80] The art works for the Yagan Memorial Park were designed by Peter Farmer, Sandra Hill, Jenny Dawson and Kylie Ricks.
He was more of a maverick, a bold and courageous warrior whose actions on behalf of his people and their rights made him notorious.The repatriation of Yagan's head increased the Aboriginal leader's notability.
[93] The cartoon was interpreted by some as insulting aspects of Noongar culture, and casting aspersions on the motives and legitimacy of Indigenous Australians with mixed racial heritage.
[93] The commission ruled that the cartoon made inappropriate references to Noongar beliefs but was not in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 because it was "an artistic work" that was published "reasonably and in good faith", and was therefore exempt.
[96] Colbung claims "Court was more interested in spending tax payers' money on refurbishing the badly neglected burial place of Captain James Stirling, WA's first governor.
[68] The Western Australia Police did not succeed in identifying the vandals, nor in recovering the heads, and deemed it infeasible to have the statue fenced off or placed under guard.
[98] Stephen Muecke calls this the "satirical trivialising of Aboriginal concerns",[98] and Adam Shoemaker writes "This is the stuff of light humour and comic relief.
In 2007, for example, David Martin described the decapitation as "an act which speaks not only to the continuance of white settler racism, but also to the power of mimesis to invigorate our modern memorials and monuments with a life of their own".
[102] The repeated beheading of Yagan's statue in 1997 prompted Aboriginal writer Archie Weller to write a short story entitled Confessions of a Headhunter.
Weller later worked with film director Sally Riley to adapt the story into a script,[103] and in 2000 a 35-minute movie, also named Confessions of a Headhunter, was released.
Supported by Screen Australia, the documentary was written and directed by Kelrick Martin and produced by Derek Jowsey of Spear Point Productions, and released in 2012.
This portrait was painted from observations of Yagan's severed head, which had shrunk substantially during preservation by smoking. George Fletcher Moore said it bore little resemblance to the living Yagan, whose face was "plump, with a burly-headed look about it". [ 54 ]
