Telling Places in Country (TPIC)

Project Significance

For present day Aboriginal Tasmanians, Robinson's 'Friendly Mission' represents a notorious and disgraceful chapter in the colonial campaign to dispossess and expel their ancestors. It goes without saying that the events that lead up to, and surround, the Aboriginal journey into exile had profound and lasting effects on Tasmania's Aboriginal peoples, and that the present-day community is especially concerned with how stories of those events, their country and ancestors are told. Mannalargenna is an important figure, as one of a few bungunna's (leaders) who, in 1830, still remained in their country. Furthermore, Mannalargenna's standing as primary male progenitor of present day Aboriginal Tasmanians is a conviction firmly held and wide spread. The ancestral connections, in concert with the gravity of the circumstances and the consequences, makes this project and its subject of profound cultural and historical significance.