Truganini

Truganini was a Tasmanian Aboriginal woman whose life spanned a period of immense upheaval for her people. The Tasmanian Aboriginal people, or Palawa, were an isolate population of Australian Aboriginal people separated from the mainland by rising sea levels around 10,000 years ago. Upon European arrival in the 17th and 18th centuries, their population was estimated at about 4,000.1

The colonization of Tasmania by the British, beginning in 1803, led to conflict known as the Black War. European settlers encroached on Aboriginal lands, depleted food sources, and attacked the Indigenous population. In an effort to protect the remaining approximately 200 Aboriginal people, they were relocated to Flinders Island in 1831, but disease and the destruction of their way of life led to many deaths.1

Truganini herself assisted in this resettlement effort. After survivors returned to Tasmania, she died in 1876. Her death was widely, though inaccurately, reported as the extinction of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. Despite this myth, Aboriginal identity persisted, particularly among mixed-race descendants, and a movement for Aboriginal rights and land rights gained momentum in the late 20th century.1