Why Warriors Lie Down and Die

I've started reading Why Warriors Lie down and Die, a book about North East Arnhem Land, the area belonging to the Yolngu people. I've hardly started and I've already read of many massacres that killed whole Yolngu families and clan groups. Pastoralists came to take the land and killed anyone in their way. Even if clans got away safely, they had nowhere to go. It was ok to visit another clan for a couple of weeks, but then you were supposed to go back to your own land. "According to Yolngu thinking, anyone who would kill women or children in cold blood had no right to exist." So Yolngu people naturally fought back against the men who killed their families and stole their wives. Sometimes they had a few years of 'normal' life, only for more pastoralists to come. Other times police would come to 'teach them a lesson', killing more Yolngu people and taking some to prison. "These white people know nothing of law when they march into someone else's estate and treat it as though they own it." Our history really is horrendous.

In 1916, when the Reverend James Watson arrived at South Goulburn Island, the people of Arnhem Land didn't trust him at first, "because he started building the Methodist Overseas Missions station ... on top of a restricted law council place." But he spoke of a man like the Great Creator Spirit, and unlike most white people in Arnhem Land, Watson paid people who worked for him and traded fairly. This man must know "the rule of the ancient holy law."