Indigenous flag raised on Rottnest prison island for first time
The Rottnest Island police station is the last of 161 police stations across Western Australia to install the Aboriginal flag alongside the Australian flag and the WA flag.
Police have raised the Aboriginal flag for the first time on the former prison island of Rottnest, where at least 373 Indigenous men from across Western Australia died in frigid, overcrowded and unsanitary cells.
More than 3700 Aboriginal men and boys were sent to the Rottnest prison from as far away as the Kimberley in WA’s remote far north between 1839 and 1904. The island, 22km off the Perth coast, is a holiday destination famous for friendly quokkas but it is also one of the biggest deaths-in-custody sites in Australia. Rottnest is important to the history of vexed and imbalanced relationships between police and Aboriginal people in WA in part because it became a source of “black troopers” who were made to work for police on the mainland as part of their sentence.
On Sunday the Rottnest Island police station became the last of 161 police stations across WA to install the Aboriginal flag alongside the Australian flag and the WA flag, which features a Union Jack and a black swan.
The work was done by Indigenous-owned Kardan Constructions, a Perth company that quoted 40 per cent below the price police had budgeted for because they used a metal plate with tree-like roots at the base of each flagpole instead of concrete. Three Indigenous workers and one non-Indigenous worker drove to the far corners of the state in a LandCruiser towing a trailer of flagpoles and equipment.
WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson’s decision to spend $1.5m on the flagpole project is seen as a gesture of respect that underscores incremental change inside his police force.
Mr Dawson signalled his intention to recast the relationship between his officers and Indigenous people in 2018 when he delivered an historic apology to the Aboriginal people of WA for past wrongs including the removal of children from their parents. While it was government policy to take Aboriginal children from their parents, it was police who were given the job of finding and removing them.
“This was not done as a popular thing because it wasn’t entirely popular,” Mr Dawson told The Australian last week when discussing the apology.
“But I underestimated the impact of that public statement.”
Mr Dawson established an Aboriginal affairs division to oversee cultural change inside the police force, began recruiting many more Indigenous police cadets and now takes guidance from an eight-member Aboriginal advisory forum.
They are respected Aboriginal elders and leaders from around state. They talk straight in our communication I listen,” he said.
“And I‘m learning more and more, despite the experience over the years that we’ve had. We are now walking with Aboriginal people far more closely. It is not at all the case that everything’s fixed it’s a case that there’s not more to be done.”
Elders joined West Australian Aboriginal Affairs minister Ben Wyatt at Rottnest, called Wadjemup in the Noongar language, for the flag-raising on Sunday. Mr Wyatt, an Indigenous man, described the ceremony as very moving.
Mr Dawson said it was significant, symbolic and sobering that the last police station in the state to raise the Aboriginal flag was on Rottnest Island in the presence of Aboriginal people and Western Australian Police.
“A flag that recognises Aboriginal people now flies at all our police stations, showing that police in this State respect and honour Aboriginal people as the original and present custodians of this land,” he said.
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