Native Title
The earliest direct evidence for Indigenous occupation in the area comes from a rock shelter near the area of Birrigai near Tharwa, which has been dated to approximately 20,000 years ago. However, it is likely (based on older sites known from the surrounding regions) that human occupation of the region goes back considerably further. Whether the original occupants of these early sites were ancestral to the Ngunnawal is not directly known, however Ngunnawal lore and tradition identify strongly with these sites and the surrounding lands, indicating a lengthy association.
They were gradually displaced from the Canberra area beginning in the 1820s when graziers began to occupy the land there. In 1826 a thousand Aborigines at Lake George protested an incident involving a shepherd and Aboriginal woman, though the protesters moved away peacefully. Some Ngunnawal people worked at properties in the region.
Some histories of Australia record the last full-blooded Ngunnawal person, Nellie Hamilton, dying in 1897. However, it has been regarded by some Indigenous Australians as a biased attempt to claim that they were wiped out when there are many Ngunnawal people still around today.
Read more about this topic: Ngunnawal People
Famous quotes containing the words native and/or title:
“I never see that man without feeling that he is one to become personally attach’d to, for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and native western form of manliness.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Bolkenstein, a Minister, was speaking on the Dutch programme from London, and he said that they ought to make a collection of diaries and letters after the war. Of course, they all made a rush at my diary immediately. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the “Secret Annexe.” The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.”
—Anne Frank (1929–1945)