Colonial descendants apologise for massacres and Aboriginal laws before Victoria’s truth-telling body

Peter Sharp, great grandson of Australia’s second prime minister Alfred Deakin, was among the colonial descendants who issued an apology to Indigenous Australians before Victoria’s truth-telling body.

Former prime minister Alfred Deakin.

Descendants of colonists have laid blame on their ancestors and apologised to the Indigenous population over their relatives’ role in passing the “Half Caste” Act and their likely contribution to “theft of land”.

Peter Sharp, great grandson of former prime minister Alfred Deakin, fronted the Yoorrook Justice Commission on Wednesday where he gave evidence that his family member was a “key force” in the passing of the 1886 amendment to the Aborigines Protection Act.

Katrina Kell, a descendant of Captain James Liddell, and Elizabeth Balderstone, who owns property where a massacre occurred, offered their own apologies and spoke to the importance of the truth-telling journey.

The commission heard that in 1886, Deakin was appointed as chief secretary of Victoria where he became responsible for Aboriginal policy and saw to a request from the Board for the Protection of Aborigines to amend the original 1869 legislation.

The amendment led to the changing of the definition of ­“Aboriginal” to exclude mixed-raced children, who were eventually forced off reserves.

“To all those viewing who themselves or their families have been or still are being impacted by the introduction of laws and policies in which a member of my family played such a significant role, I say that I am personally, profoundly sorry,” Mr Sharp said during the hearing.

He told the Victorian truth-telling body that he was “horrified” to learn that Deakin had been involved in the legislation.

Peter Sharp at the Yoorrook Justice Commission.

Katrina Kell at the Yoorrook Justice Commission.

“It came as a shock to learn that the attempted elimination (of Indigenous people) continued after frontier violence diminished, and I say diminished because it probably hasn’t ended,” he told commissioners.

“It was a greater shock when I stumbled on the evidence that indicated a member of my family had enabled the attempted elimination to be put into law.”

He said he had researched Deakin and described his relative as a “complex man” whose belief in higher powers and spiritualism was well documented.

“He was prepared to sacrifice himself for this cause, which he said was his race, the ideal of an Anglo-Saxon race to have exclusive occupation of this continent,” Mr Sharp said.

In his written submission, he wrote: “I believe now, after nearly 140 years, the evidence shows Deakin played a key role in ensuring that the critical element of the 1886 act was to categorically deny any Aboriginal people of mixed heritage the right to be recognised as Aboriginal and, furthermore, to forcibly deny them contact with those deemed Aboriginal, thereby destroying their culture, kinship and language.”

The commission also heard from Dr Kell, a fourth-generation matrilineal descendant of Captain James Liddell, who was responsible for captaining The Thistle, which brought the first permanent European settlement in what would become Victoria.

Captain Liddell brought over Edward Henty to Portland Bay in 1834 who then “took up land illegally”. The Henty family are known as the state’s earliest European settlers and pastoralists.

Dr Kell submitted that her ancestor was employed by the Henty family during a “violent period of land theft and genocide on Gunditjmara Country”.

Elizabeth Balderstone, who owns a Gippsland property on the site of the Warrigal Creek massacre, said she wanted to see those who died in the Frontier Wars honoured.

The 1843 mass killing involved a group of settlers known as the Highland Brigade who shot dead between 60 to 150 Brataualung people in response to the murder of Ronald Macalister, nephew of pastoralist Lachlan Macalister.