Democratic death at half mast

COMMENT: The City of Fremantle today flew the Australian flag at half mast to commemorate as part of its truth-telling journey the execution of Nyoongar leader Midgegooroo on May 22, 1833.
Council also ‘decided’ to lower the flag in 2023 as a sign of solidarity after a failed Yes campaign.
As StreetWise asked in 2023 at www.streetwisemedia.com.au/half-mast-mayor-raises-red-flags, under what authority did the City decide to lower the Australian, Aboriginal and City flags?
And given Midgegooroo’s death is fixed in time, what consultation was conducted to canvas people’s views about whether to honour the Whadjuk elder. Will the flag also be lowered for his son and Nyoongar leader Yagan in July?
StreetWise contacted the protocol units of the State and Federal governments to check whether they were aware of what appears to be the City’s unilateral decision to lower the national flag when it pleased against established protocols for raising and lowering the sovereign flag.
But it is the sugar-coated rewrite of history that shows in the City’s statement today that Midgegooroo was executed for “allegedly” having killed settlers contrary to history, police reports and eyewitness accounts. The City used the same terminology when considering Midgegooroo as the name for the new civic centre in a process designed to support the same ideological agenda that saw council walk away from Australia Day.
The father of indigenous leader Yagan was shot by firing squad in Perth after the brutal retaliatory killing of Erin Entwhistle, a servant at Archibald Butler’s farm at Point Walter.
Yagan was killed by settlers on July 11 the same year, having been involved in the Entwhistle incident with Midgegooroo and killing of two settlers, Thomas and John Velvick, in an ambush at Bull Creek, and settler William Gaze at Kelmscott in 1832.
Entwistle ushered his boys into the bedroom as Midgegooroo and Yagan approached, seeking ‘payback’ after Butler’s servant Thomas Smedley shot a relative for stealing potatoes and fowls from the farm. Having no concept of tribal law, settlers saw the killing as an unprovoked murder.
“They thrust spears through the wattle wall of the house, my father was ill at the time, he went out and was instantly speared. I saw the tall native called Yagan throw the first spear, which entered my father’s breast, and another native Midgegooroo threw the second spear, which brought my father to the ground. I saw an old woman rather tall and wanting her front teeth and who I have since been told by Midgegooroo himself is his wife, break my father’s legs, and cut his head to pieces with an axe. My father had always been kind to Midgegooroo’s tribe, and on good terms with them.”

Payback or murder?

This dark episode in British settlement history was recounted at council last year by Fremantle Society president John Dowson, his description of Midgegooroo as a “cold-blooded murderer” rejected by former mayor Brad Pettitt who said Midgegooroo’s involvement in the deaths would not have been categorised as a murder under Whadjuk Noongar law, as they were payback for the deaths of his kin. But under ‘installed’ British law, it was, bringing it into conflict with tribal law.
“Today, the flag on the Town Hall was lowered to half mast as part of a truth telling project, and next week we have Sorry Day and then Reconciliation Week,” Mr Dowson said at council tonight, recounting the tragic details of the Entwhistle incident.
“Ralph Entwhistle was a 10-year-old boy who saw his father killed as a first-hand witness … I think truth telling is very important, but if council is going to put out documents saying these are only ‘alleged’ incidents I think they need to redo their history.”
Two years before his death, Midgegooroo visited Lionel Samson’s store in Fremantle where he was given biscuits by servant James Lacey who stated: “Midgegooroo was not satisfied, I was obliged to put him out of the store by force. As I was in the act of shutting the door he threw a spear at me through the open space of the door-way; it lodged in the opposite side”.
The Noongar elder with a ‘remarkable bump’ on his forehead was about 50 years old when he was executed at Perth Gaol in the only firing squad execution in the history of Australian colonisation.
Midgegooroo had two wives, the younger Ganiup, and four sons including ‘Billy’, believed to be five years of age, also referred to as ‘young Midgegooroo’. He was sent to the Government schooner Ellen off Garden Island, “out of sound and hearing of what was to happen to his father”.
News of Midgegooroo’s death was kept from Yagan, who vowed to kill three white people if anyone harmed his father. After Yagan was killed two months later, his head was sent to England as an, ‘anthropological curiosity’, later returned to WA.
There is no dispute, settlers and soldiers killed Aboriginal people. Midgegooroo’s people and members of his family including two sons, Domjum and Yagan, the latter, with his father, was declared an outlaw by acting colonial administrator Lt-Governor Frederick Irwin. Domjum was shot breaking into a shop in Fremantle in May 1830.

City mourns

At the October 25, 2023 council meeting, Freo ratepayer Alan Greenwood said lowering the flag was a divisive gesture: “Flags are powerful. Half mast is when a person dies, it is very clear protocols were not followed.” He added: “I don’t see a consultative process. As a ratepayer I’d like a council to look at practical services. Virtual signalling, moral pontification has no place in council business.”
Mr Greenwood also reminded the mayor she did not have overriding decision making powers to make such a call, decisions are made for the whole of Fremantle.
Ms Fitzhardinge responded: “I do what mayors are asked to do in this situation which is check the protocol with the CEO and that was, you know, the outcome.”
As Claudia’s View of October 31, 2023, states at https://bitly.cx/65a: “The mayor appears to have unilaterally come up with the highly contentious and definitely political decision, to ignore the maths, to ignore the serious governance issue of formal decision making during a prescribed period of caretaker government, and to ignore the sheer symbolic hypocrisy of lowering a flag in a civic place that belongs to, and is being paid for by the WHOLE of Fremantle electors/ratepayers, and not the insignificant minority who voted for her.”
It adds: “From my reading of the situation, she has not only breached the protocol of City of Fremantle policy, made a formal decision without council in a caretaker period of government, but more significantly, NOT accepted the majority referendum decision of the people she represents, all those eligible voters/constituents who pay her not untidy allowance and not just the very few number of Party faithful and followers who voted for her as mayor, she has more likely, in fact, acted unlawfully on several counts.”
According to its own policy: “This policy has been created, as flags are recognised as the symbol of a nation, state or organisation and it is important for the City of Fremantle to be aware of, and observe the appropriate principles and flag flying protocols.”
The City says it is one of an increasing number of unnamed ‘local communities’ who are working together to acknowledge previously untold or unrecognised parts of their local histories.
Truth be told, expect more of the City’s sanitised version of the State’s precious history and cultural heritage.

Additional stories at www.streetwisemedia.com.au.