In Australia, when we are taught of our pioneers in Australian history we are told that they were sturdy folk, those who struggled to survive against often great hardships and indeed most were, if they weren’t they commonly died. They were also of many different elks… some convicts, some emigrants, some pastoralists or squattocracy and others a mixture of all of the above and including the indigenous Aboriginal cross cultural people. Emphasis here is on the world indigenous (born of the country) and of any mixed cultural heritage.
Australia’s most forgotten pioneers, those who pioneered the culture and nation we now all enjoy and benefit from, were those too of aboriginal descent, often of mixed race or dispossessed of their country. They, more than any other group should be considered as Australian pioneers as they were seen to belong to neither the aboriginal people, nor the colonial population… they were a people unto themselves largely who were disdained by other cultures because they were of mixed race and culture, in many ways they were the first true-blood Aussies. I have heard it commonly said that cross-cultural sons and daughters were too white for the blackfella and to black for the whitefellas.
Jan Hawkins Author 