WebsiteOur team has been dedicated to uncovering the truth of frontier conflict in Queensland, and in particular conflict that involved the Queensland Native Mounted Police (NMP). The NMP operated for over 50 years, from 1849 until at least 1904. It was organised along paramilitary lines, consisting of detachments of Aboriginal troopers led by white officers. It operated across the whole of Queensland and was explicitly constituted to protect the lives, livelihoods and property of settlers and to prevent (and punish) any Aboriginal aggression or resistance. This was often accomplished through violence in many forms, leading Henry Reynolds to characterise the NMP as “the most violent organisation in Australian history”.
Our work has included archaeological research investigating the physical remains of police camps and other sites, oral history recordings with Indigenous families, and archival research that provides vital clues allowing us to trace the activities of police, the recruitment of Indigenous people to the NMP, and the lives of individual troopers.
So far, we've been able to build a comprehensive database, including, tragically, a map of conflict events. Plotting many of these events on a map helps illustrate the true extent of frontier violence and conflict.
This can be gritty stuff, but our team believes it's important to continue the work in order to do justice to the reality of Queensland history.
This project has strong support from Indigenous community members, many of whom assisted in the original excavations. At it's core, this project is founded on the vital importance of truth-telling in colonial history.
You can find out more about our work here (including seeing where your transcriptions are going):
https://frontierconflict.org/
https://archaeologyonthefrontier.com/
https://theconversation.com/how-unearthing-queenslands-native-police-camps-gives-us-a-window-onto-colonial-violence-100814
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-24/native-mounted-police-indigenous-history-aboriginal-troopers/11296384