'His Majesty's most gracious and benevolent intentions': South Australia's foundation, the idea of 'difference', and Aboriginal rights

Abstract

On 28 December 2007, I attended the annual Proclamation Day ceremony at Glenelg, South Australia's formal anniversary of European settlement. Official guests were seated on a podium beneath the iconic Old Gum Tree that marks the place where South Australia's first Governor, Sir John Hindmarsh, witnessed the reading of the Proclamation symbolically inaugurating the colony in 1836. As the current Governor walked through an honour guard of men dressed in the uniforms of colonial police, a pair of modern-day mounted police rode forward to shield a small group of Aboriginal protesters who waited on the footpath opposite the entrance gate. Once all the dignitaries had taken their places, the event began, as it had begun for generations, with the reading of the Proclamation. As the Chief Executive Officer of the Holdfast Council read the passage of the Proclamation which promised 'to punish with exemplary severity all acts of violence and injustice ... against the natives', an Aboriginal protester called out: 'what justice?' The protesters carried placards calling for a treaty, and stood before a banner that read: Aborigines were wrongfully deprived of their just dues. We must, as far as we can, right those wrongs.