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Truganini (c. 1812 - 1876) was a Palawan woman from Tasmania, Australia.
Known for being the last surviving full-blooded Aboriginal Tasmanian, a topic of longstanding debate and controversy, her legacy speaks of the systematic destruction of Aboriginal peoples and culture in Tasmania during colonisation, and of Aboriginal survival.
Truganini’s early life encapsulated the horrors of the European invasion of Australia. As a youth, she took part in traditional culture, but these traditions soon became impossible to practice as a result of two new policies which attempted to resolve the conflict between Aboriginals and settlers. The first of these policies awarded bounties for the capture of Aboriginal adults and children, and the second encouraged settlers to establish friendly relations with Aboriginals so that they could be persuaded or lured into camps.
By the time Truganini met George Augustus Robinson, “Protector of Aboriginals” in 1829, her mother and uncle had been killed by settlers, her sister abducted, and her fiancé brutally murdered by timber cutters who would then go on to sexually abuse her. A year later, Robinson forcibly displaced Truganini and her husband, Woorrady, to a camp on Flinders Island with the last remaining Tasmanian Aboriginals, of which numbered around 100. The official, stated goal of this camp was to protect them, but many of them died quickly from diseases brought by the Europeans. Not long after, Truganini joined other the ranks of other Aboriginals and became an outlaw, robbing settlers around Melbourne, and outrunning local authorities. Two of her fellow outlaws were hanged for murder, and Truganini was returned to the camp on Flinders Island.
Before her death Truganini had pleaded to colonial authorities for a respectful burial, and requested that her ashes be scattered in the D'Entrecasteaux Channel. She feared that her body would be dissected and analyzed for scientific purposes as Aboriginal Tasmanian Wiliam Lenne’s body had been. Despite her wishes, within two years, her skeleton was exhumed by the Royal Society of Tasmania and later placed on display. Only in April 1976, approaching the centenary of her death, were Truganini’s remains finally cremated and scattered according to her wishes.
Truganini is a longstanding symbol of Aboriginal women’s strong and enduring defiance in the face of extreme adversity at the hands of European colonisation. Despite witnessing the most horrific crimes against humanity, Truganini believed the only way to fight against white invaders was to learn their ways in order to gain empathy.
