The 1828 Proclamation of Demarcation was issued by

George Arthur Sir George Arthur, 1st Baronet (21 June 1784 – 19 September 1854) was Lieutenant Governor of British Honduras from 1814 to 1822 and of Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania) from 1823 to 1836. The campaign against Aboriginal Tasmania ...

, governor of

Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...

, and ordered the white colonial populations and

Tasmanian Aboriginal The Aboriginal Tasmanians (Palawa kani: ''Palawa'' or ''Pakana'') are the Aboriginal people of the Australian island of Tasmania, located south of the mainland. For much of the 20th century, the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were widely, and ...

populations be temporarily separated from each other. Arthur clarified that the proclamation would not limit Aboriginals from traveling through Tasmania to shellfish hunting territories, provided a passport was coordinated with their leaders. The proclamation was justified as protecting Aboriginals from violence from colonists, and to protect the colonists from "repeated and wanton barbarous murders and other crimes" by the Aboriginals. The proclamation established a line of military outposts separating the declared Aboriginal and colonial territories, which the Aboriginals were forbidden to pass. Tasmanian Aboriginals were pressed into remote areas of Tasmania, and eventually relocated to

Flinders Island Flinders Island, the largest island in the Furneaux Group, is a island in the Bass Strait, northeast of the island of Tasmania. Flinders Island was the place where the last remnants of aboriginal Tasmanian population were exiled by the colon ...

; scholar

Rod Edmond Rod Edmond is a New Zealand writer and academic, specialising in cultural history and British Empire studies. Edmond was born in Hamilton, New Zealand, and studied at Victoria University and Merton College, Oxford. He was Professor of Modern Li ...

notes that the pretext of "protecting" the Aboriginals served as a mechanism to clear desirable land for colonial use.

References

{{reflist 1828 in Australia 1828 documents Indigenous Australians in Tasmania Anti-indigenous racism in Australia History of Tasmania Segregation