Truganini

Truganini (c. 1812 – 8 May 1876), also known as Lalla Rookh and Lydgugee, was widely described as the last of the "full-blooded" Aboriginal Tasmanians after British colonisation and one of the last speakers of the Tasmanian languages.

As a teenager with limited options during the Black War, in which her mother was stabbed to death, her uncle was shot, and she was raped, Truganini became a guide to George Augustus Robinson in expeditions to capture and forcibly exile the remaining Indigenous Tasmanians. Truganini was later taken to the Port Phillip District where she engaged in armed resistance against the colonists. She was then exiled, first to the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island and then to Oyster Cove, Tasmania. After Truganini died in Hobart in 1876, her skeleton was placed on public display at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery despite her wishes, since there was a fascination with Indigenous skeletons at the time. Her remains were finally cremated and laid to rest in 1976 on the 100th anniversary of her death.

In being mythologised as "the last of her people", Truganini became the tragic and triumphal symbol of the conquest of British colonists over an "inferior race". In modern times, Truganini's life has become representative of both the dispossession and destruction that was exacted upon Indigenous Australians and also their determination to survive colonial genocide.