Indigenous people's leading role in Northern Australia

Written by: Ned K. on 25 January 2026

 

Australian historian Henry Reynolds latest book, "Looking from the North - Australian History from the Top Down" is a well-researched and eye-opening account of the struggles and working lives of Indigenous Australians in Northern Australia from the 1700s to the present day.

"Northern Australia" is described as the land mass above the Tropic of Capricorn.

Reynolds reveals that since the British invasion of Australia, there has been uneven development.  What became known as the "Southern States" of NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia were developed along capitalist lines by the British Crown and their colonial states' governments which formed between May 1856 and April 1857.

By contrast, the first colonial outpost in Northern Australia was at Bowen on 10 April 1861.

Reynolds points out that even in 1901 when the first Australian Government was formed, the Attorney General Deakin admitted that the new government had no effective control of the north of Australia.

The uneven development of Australia did not mean that Indigenous people of Northern Australia avoided the attempts by colonial settlers to take over their land. The Indigenous people of Northern Australia also conducted guerrilla warfare against the colonial settlers. Reynold's book details the strategies and tactics used by Indigenous people in defence of their lands in Northern Australia right up until the 1930s.

When the colonial settlers and their government armed forces eventually overpowered the Indigenous people's resistance in Northern Australia, these same settlers became reliant on Indigenous labour to ensure the settlers' economic interests were fulfilled. Indigenous people worked on cattle stations, sheep runs, sugar cane and banana plantations.

"On The Sheep's Back"? or By Killings and Labour of Indigenous People?

Northern Australia, like most of Australia, was not initially "developed on the sheep's back" but by a combination of killings of Indigenous people and use of the labour of Indigenous people. Reynolds refers to historians Ray Evans and Robert Orsted-Jenson whose research concluded that between 1859 and 1897, there were nearly as many Indigenous people killed by colonial forces in Northern Australia and other colonies as the total number of Australians killed in ALL overseas wars that Australia has been involved in.

In February 2022 the federal government's Office of Northern Australia met for the first time with its Indigenous Reference Group. At that time the Indigenous population of in Northern Australia was 230,000, 17.4% of the Northern Australia population,

Indigenous property rights and interests under current law in 2022 covered 78% of the Northern Australia land mass. 

Alan Dale professor of tropical regional development described Northern Australia as an "indigenous domain" and that Australian governments "need to ensure that development proceeds with the free, prior and informed consent of traditional owners,"

Reynolds adds that the mainly non-Indigenous 1.4 million population of Northern Australia is highly mobile, while there is a large FIFO population of over 100,000 workers.

On the other hand, the Indigenous population of Northern Australia stay in the north while moving around within their own lands.

From Pastoralist Settler Expansion to US Military Front Line - Indigenous People "In the Gun".

Northern Australia has become an expanding military base for US imperialism.

A dramatic change from the settler pastoralist days of Northern Australia of the 1800s, but no less dangerous for Indigenous people according to Reynolds and to astute observers of Australia from our northern neighbours.

As an example of the latter, Reynolds refers to Kishore Mahbuhani, Singaporean academic who in 2022 declared that Australia's dilemma in the 21st Century was simple: it could choose "To be a bridge between East and the West in the Asiatic Century - or the tip of the spear projecting Western power in Asia".

In May 2024 Defence Industry Minister Conroy at a defence industry conference in Darwin said northern Australia "was critical to the defence of the nation, not just in defending Australia, but projecting power out into our region against any potential adversary"!

He announced that the government planned to spend $18 billion over 10 years on northern defence bases in the NT, WA and Qld.

In August 2024, US Republican Michael McCaul, the chair of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee spent 10 days in Australia in northern Australia lauding the area as key for the US "as it sought to deter Chinese aggression"!

Defence Minister Richard Marles, according to Reynolds, added that "America's military was now operating in Australia's land, sea, air, cyber and space."

Reynolds argues that this expansion of US military activity and dependence in the north of Australia has proceeded at ever increasing speed without the slightest consultation or prior consent from Indigenous people.

Reynolds points out that Australia becoming "the thrusting spear of Western hostility" is completely contrary to the hundreds of years of peaceful relations and trading of Indigenous Australians and peoples from various parts of Asia, starting long before the aggression of British and then US imperialist agendas in Northern Australia. 

While Marles and his cronies cover this thrusting spear mentality with talk about a US made up "international rules-based order", they say nothing about the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People declared by 150 countries in 2007 and ratified by the Rudd Government of 2007.

On Invasion Day 26 January 2026, white Australians like me are reminded from Reynold's book about the pending latest danger to Indigenous people of Northern Australia. This time it's from US military takeover of their land and the repercussions of that.

 

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