Yagan Totally Explained

Everything about Yagan totally explained

Yagan (; rhymes with pagan) (c. 1795–11 July 1833) was a Noongar warrior who played a key part in early indigenous Australian resistance to European settlement and rule in the area of Perth, Western Australia. After he led a series of attacks in which white settlers were killed, a bounty was offered for his capture dead or alive, and he was shot dead by a young settler. Yagan's death has passed into Western Australian folklore as a symbol of the unjust and sometimes brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia by colonial settlers. Famous throughout Australia, he's considered a hero by the Noongar people.
Yagan's head was removed and brought to London, where it was exhibited as an "anthropological curiosity". It spent over a century in storage at a museum before being buried in an unmarked grave in 1964. In 1993 its location was identified, and four years later it was exhumed and repatriated to Australia. Since then, the issue of its proper reburial has become a source of great controversy and conflict amongst the indigenous people of the Perth area. To date, the head remains unburied.

Yagan's life

Early life

A member of the Whadjuk Noongar people, Yagan belonged to a tribe of around 60 people whose name, according to Robert Lyon, was Beeliar. Lyon's information isn't entirely reliable, however, and it's now thought that the Beeliar people may have been a family subgroup of a larger tribe that Daisy Bates called Beelgar. According to Lyon, the Beeliar people occupied the land south of the Swan and Canning Rivers, as far south as Mangles Bay. It is evident, however, that the group had customary land usage rights over a much larger area than this, extending north as far as Lake Monger and north-east to the Helena River. The group also had an unusual degree of freedom to move over their neighbours' land, possibly due to kinship and marriage ties with neighbouring tribes.
Yagan is thought to have been born around 1795. His father was Midgegooroo, an elder of the Beeliar people; his mother was presumably one of Midgegooroo's two wives. Yagan was probably a Ballaroke in the Noongar classification. According to Green, he'd a wife and two children, but most other sources state that he was unmarried and childless. Described as taller than average with an impressive burly physique, Yagan had a distinctive tribal tattoo on his right shoulder which identified him as "a man of high degree in tribal law".

Relations with settlers

Yagan would have been about 35 years old in 1829 when British settlers landed in the area and established the Swan River Colony. For the first two years of the colony, relations between settlers and Noongars were generally amicable, as there was little competition for resources, and the Noongars welcomed the white settlers as Djanga, the returned spirits of the Noongar dead. As time passed, however, conflicts between the two cultures gradually became more frequent. The settlers took the view that the Noongars were nomads with no claim to the land over which they roamed, and so they considered themselves free to fence off land for grazing and farming. As more and more land was fenced off, the Noongars were increasingly denied access to their traditional hunting grounds and sacred sites, so by 1832 Yagan's family group was unable to approach the Swan or Canning Rivers without danger, because land grants lined the banks. The Noongars' response to the loss of their hunting and gathering grounds was to take the settlers' crops and spear their cattle. They also developed a taste for the settlers' food, and their constant theft of flour and other food supplies became a serious problem for the colony. Another cause of conflict was the Noongar practice of firestick farming, firing the bush to flush out game and encourage germination of undergrowth, which threatened the settlers' crops and houses.
The first significant Aboriginal resistance to white settlement in Western Australia occurred in December 1831 after Thomas Smedley, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler, ambushed some natives who were raiding a potato patch, and shot dead one of Yagan's family group. A few days later, Yagan, Midgegooroo and others stormed the farmhouse and, finding the door locked, began to break through the mud-brick walls. Inside was another of Butler's servants, Erin Entwhistle, and his two sons Enion and Ralph. After hiding his sons under the bed, Entwhistle opened the door to parley and was instantly speared to death by Yagan and Midgegooroo. Noongar tribal law required that murders be avenged by the killing of a member of the murderer's tribal group, not necessarily the murderer. The spearing of Entwhistle may therefore be understood as retribution under tribal law, as the Noongars would have thought of Butler's household as a family group.
During February and March, Yagan was involved in a series of minor conflicts with settlers. In February settler William Watson complained that Yagan had pushed open his door, demanded a gun, and taken handkerchiefs, and that Watson had to give him and his companions flour and bread. The following month, he was among a group who received biscuits from a military contingent under Lieutenant Norcott; when Norcott tried to restrict his supply, Yagan threatened him with his spear. Later that month, Yagan was with a group of Noongars that entered Watson's house while he was away. The group left after Watson's wife called on neighbours for help, but were brought back the next day to be lectured about their behaviour by Captain Ellis. The constant conflict prompted The Perth Gazette to remark on "the reckless daring of this desperado who sets his life at a pin's fee ... For the most trivial offence ... he'd take the life of any man who provoked him. He is at the head and front of any mischief."

Wanted dead or alive

On the night of 29 April, a party of Noongars broke into a Fremantle store to steal flour and were fired upon by the caretaker Peter Chidlow. Domjum, a brother of Yagan, was badly injured and died in jail a few days later. The rest of the party then moved from Fremantle to Preston Point, where Yagan was heard to vow vengeance for the death. Between fifty and sixty Noongars then gathered at Bull Creek, within sight of High Road, where they met a party of settlers who were loading carts with provisions. Later that day, the group ambushed the lead cart, spearing to death two white men, Tom and John Velvick. Tribal law only required a single death; the native Munday later explained that both were speared because they'd previously mistreated Aboriginal people. The Velvicks had previously been convicted for assaulting Aboriginal people and coloured seamen. Alexandra Hasluck has also argued that a desire to steal the provisions was an important motive in the attack, but this has been refuted elsewhere.}}
Since Moore had little knowledge of Yagan's native language, Hasluck suggests that this conjecture is probably more indicative of "a feeling of conscience on the part of the white men" than an accurate rendering of Yagan's state of mind. Keates departed the colony the following month; the reasons are unknown, but it's possible that he left from fear of being murdered in retaliation.

Yagan's head

Exhibition and burial

Yagan's head was initially taken to Henry Bull's house. Moore saw it there and sketched the head a number of times in his unpublished, handwritten diary, commenting that "possibly it may yet figure in some museum at home". The head was then preserved by smoking, by hanging it in a hollow tree over a fire of Eucalyptus wood for three months.
   In September 1833 Yagan's head was taken to London by Ensign Robert Dale. According to Paul Turnbull, Dale appears to have persuaded Governor Irwin to let him have the head as an "anthropological curiosity". After arriving in London, Dale approached a number of anatomists and phrenologists attempting to sell the head for £20, claiming that it was worth twice that much. Having failed to find a buyer, he then entered into an arrangement with Thomas Pettigrew for the exclusive use of the head for one year. Pettigrew, a surgeon and antiquarian who was well-known in the London social scene for holding private parties at which he unrolled and autopsied Egyptian mummies, displayed the head on a table in front of a panoramic view of King George Sound that was reproduced from Dale's sketches. For effect the head was adorned with a fresh corded headband and feathers of the Red-tailed Black Cockatoo.
   Pettigrew also arranged for the head to be examined by a phrenologist. Examination was considered difficult because of the large fracture across the back of the head caused by the gunshot. The findings, which were predictably consistent with contemporary European opinion of Indigenous Australians, which Pettigrew encouraged his guests to buy as a souvenir of their evening. The frontispiece of the pamphlet was a hand-coloured aquatint print of Yagan's head by the artist George Cruikshank.
   Early in October 1835, both Yagan's head and the panoramic view were returned to Dale, who was then living in Liverpool. On 12 October he presented them to the Liverpool Royal Institution, where the head may have been displayed in a case along with some other preserved heads and wax models illustrating cranial anatomy. In 1894 the Institution's collections were dispersed, and Yagan's head was lent to the Liverpool Museum; it's thought not to have been put on display there. By the 1960s Yagan's head was badly deteriorated, and in April 1964 the decision was made to dispose of it. On 10 April 1964, Yagan's head was placed in a plywood box, along with a Peruvian mummy and a Māori head, and buried in Everton Cemetery's General Section 16, grave number 296. In later years a number of burials were made around the grave, and in 1968 a local hospital buried 20 stillborn babies and two babies who had lived less than twenty-four hours directly over the museum box.

Lobbying for repatriation

For many years, at least since the early 1980s, a number of Noongar groups sought the return of Yagan's head.
It was unknown at that time, however, what had happened to the head after it left Pettigrew's possession. In the early 1980s, Ken Colbung was entrusted with the search for the head by tribal elders. In 1985 he engaged Lily Bhavna Kauler as a researcher, and a number of unsuccessful enquiries were made to various United Kingdom museums. In the early 1990s, Colbung enlisted the aid of University of London archaeologist Peter Ucko. One of Ucko's researchers, Cressida Fforde, was funded by the Government of Australia to conduct a literature search for information on the head. She successfully traced the head in December 1993, and in April the following year, Colbung applied for permission to exhume it under Section 25 of the Burial Act 1857. Home Office regulations required next of kin consent for the remains of the 22 babies to be disturbed, but Colbung's solicitors requested that this condition be waived on grounds that the exhumation would be of great personal significance to Yagan's living relatives, and great national importance to Australia.
   Meanwhile, divisions in the Perth Noongar community began to show, with Colbung's role in the repatriation questioned by a number of elders, and one Noongar registering a complaint with the Liverpool City Council over Colbung's involvement. There was much acrimonious debate within the Noongar community about who had the best cultural qualifications to take possession of the head, some of which was publicly aired. On 25 July a public meeting was held in Perth, where all parties agreed to put aside their differences and co-operate to ensure that the repatriation was a "national success". A Yagan Steering Committee was established to co-ordinate the repatriation, and Colbung's application was allowed to proceed.
   In January 1995 the Home Office advised Colbung that it was unable to waive the necessity of obtaining next of kin consent for the exhumation. It then contacted the five relatives whose addresses were known, receiving unconditional consent from only one. Accordingly, on 30 June 1995, Colbung and the other interested parties were advised that the application for exhumation had been rejected.
   The Yagan Steering Committee then met on 21 September and decided to proceed by lobbying Australian and British politicians for support. This approach led to an invitation for Colbung to visit the United Kingdom at the British government's expense. Colbung arrived in the United Kingdom on 20 May 1997. His visit attracted substantial media coverage and increased the political pressure on the British Government. It also allowed him to secure the support of the former Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, after gate crashing the Prime Minister's June visit to the United Kingdom.

Exhumation

While Colbung was in the United Kingdom, Martin and Richard Bates were engaged to undertake a geophysical survey of the grave site. Using electromagnetic and ground penetrating radar techniques, they identified an approximate position of the box that suggested it could be accessed from the side via the adjacent plot. A report of the survey was passed to the Home Office, prompting further discussions between the British and Australian Governments.
   Of concern to the Home Office were an undisclosed number of letters that it had received objecting to Colbung's involvement in the repatriation process; it therefore sought assurances from the Australian Government that Colbung was a correct applicant. In response Colbung asked his elders to ask the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to tell the British Home Office that he was the correct applicant. ATSIC then convened a meeting in Perth at which it was again resolved that Colbung's application could proceed.
   Colbung continued to press for the exhumation, asking that it be performed before the 164th anniversary of Yagan's death on 11 July, so that the anniversary could be the occasion of a celebration. His request wasn't met, and on the anniversary of Yagan's death, Colbung conducted a short memorial service at the burial plot in Everton. He returned to Australia empty-handed on 15 July.
   The exhumation of Yagan's head eventually proceeded, without Colbung's knowledge, by excavating six feet down the side of the grave, then tunnelling horizontally to the location of the box. Thus the exhumation was performed without disturbing any other remains. The following day, a forensic palaeontologist from the University of Bradford positively identified the skull as Yagan's by correlating the fractures with those described in Pettigrew's report.
   In 1998 the Western Australian Planning Commission and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs jointly published a document entitled Yagan's Gravesite Master Plan, which discussed "matters of ownership, management, development and future use" of the property on which Yagan's remains are believed to be buried. Under consideration was the possibility of turning the site into an indigenous burial site, to be managed by the Metropolitan Cemeteries Board.
   To date, Yagan's head remains unburied. It spent some time in storage in a bank vault, before being handed over to forensics experts who reconstructed a model from it. Since then it has been in storage at Western Australia's state mortuary. Plans to re-bury the head have been deferred or delayed numerous times, and this has caused ongoing conflict between Noongar groups. The reburial committee have been accused of acting against the wishes of the Noongar community, by deferring its burial in the hope of making money out of it with elaborate parks and monuments. Richard Wilkes, however, says that the committee has direct kinship lines to Yagan, and wants the head to be buried properly, but has been delayed by searches and burial site negotiations. Alternative proposals have been put forward: for example, early in 2006 Ken Colbung called for the head to be cremated and the ashes scattered on the Swan River. In June 2006, Wilkes stated that the head would be buried by July 2007.

Legacy

Yagan is now a famous historical figure throughout Australia, and Western Australia's school curriculum. He is of greatest significance, however, to the Noongar people, which was critical of the fact that the return of Yagan's head had become a source of conflict between Noongars instead of fostering unity. The cartoon could also be interpreted as insulting aspects of Noongar culture, and casting aspersions on the motives and legitimacy of indigenous Australians with mixed racial heritage. The content of the cartoon offended many indigenous Australians, and a group of Noongar elders complained about the cartoon to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The commission ruled that the cartoon made inappropriate references to Noongar beliefs but didn't breach racial discrimination law. This ruling was upheld on appeal by the Federal Court of Australia.

Yagan's statue

From the mid-1970s, members of the Noongar community lobbied for the erection of a statue of Yagan as part of the WAY 1979 sesquicentennial celebrations. Their requests were refused, however, after then Premier of Western Australia Sir Charles Court was advised by local historians that Yagan wasn't important enough to warrant a statue. Colbung claims "Court was more interested in spending tax payers' money on refurbishing the badly neglected burial place of Captain James Stirling, WA's first governor."

Literature and film

Mary Durack published a fictionalised account of Yagan's life in her 1964 children's novel The Courteous Savage: Yagan of the Swan River. When reissued in 1976, it was renamed Yagan of the Bibbulmun because the word "Savage" was by then considered racist.
The repeated beheading of Yagan's statue in 1997 prompted indigenous writer Archie Weller to write a short story entitled Confessions of a Headhunter. Weller later worked with film director Sally Riley to adapt the story into a script, and in 2000 a 35 minute movie, also named Confessions of a Headhunter, was released. Directed by Sally Riley, the movie won Best Short Fiction Film at the 2000 AFI Awards. The following year the script won the Script Award in the 2001 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.
In 2002 the South African-born Australian poet John Mateer published his fourth collection of poems, entitled Loanwords. The collection is divided into four sections, of which the third, In the Presence of a Severed Head, has Yagan as its subject.

Other cultural references

In September 1989 an early maturing cultivar of barley, bred by the Western Australian Department of Agriculture for performance on sandy soils, was released under the name "Hordeum vulgare (Barley) c.v. Yagan". Commonly referred to simply as "Yagan", the cultivar is named for Yagan, continuing a tradition of labeling Western Australian grain cultivars after historic people of Western Australia.

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