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Watts: Indigenous ‘voices were not heard’ in a parliament which allowed ‘large-scale extrajudicial killings’

Watts went on to say he was grappling with his ancestor’s legacy.

He was a member of the Queensland parliament’s inquiry into the actions of the Queensland native police in 1861.

There were no Aboriginal or Strait Islander peoples invited to give evidence to this inquiry, neither native police troopers nor members of the broader community.

In the decades following the arrival of my ancestor, disease, violence and forced resettlement literally decimated the local Indigenous population.

This alone is a disturbing legacy to grapple with. Regrettably though, it was John Watts’ legacy and his actions as a parliamentarian that caused even greater harm to Indigenous peoples of south-east Queensland.

Historian Jonathan Richards described the operations of the Queensland native police in the following terms: ‘When an attack of any form was made on settlers, the native police responded by tracking Aboriginal people to their camps. Once they had been located, the troopers surrounded the camp, firing their rifles into the sleeping people at dawn. The bodies were usually burnt to cover up the killings.’

Historians’ estimates of the number of Indigenous Australians killed by the Queensland native police range widely, from 10,000 up to 60,000 people, but it was clear that there were many thousands of murders and rapes committed by this state-sanctioned organisation.