In Queensland, as in the other Australian colonies in the nineteenth century, European settlers wrested control of the land from its indigenous owners by force and the threat of force. All colonies used police for this purpose, but Queensland went further than any other in creating a police corps specifically for the subjugation and dispossession of the Aborigines. Queensland’s Native Police comprised small units of indigenous troopers, commanded by European officers. These were moved around the colony to wherever on the leading edges of European expansion the Aborigines were most ‘troublesome’. Their tactics were simple and brutal. Whether the targets were entire Aboriginal groups or individual suspects, their standard strategy was lethal force in engagements that were known euphemistically as ‘dispersals’.
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