The European invasion is beginning.
Like people on the mainland, the lives of the pakana on lutruwita (Tasmania), are suddenly, swiftly and brutally changing forever.
European men abduct pakana children.
The bigger girls’ seal hunting skills are being exploited to forge a sealing industry.
The girls lie on the rocks beside the seals, then club the animal.
There were hundreds of thousands of seals, but their numbers are dwindling.
The Europeans will soon turn their efforts to hunting whales, and their numbers will dwindle too.
Then they will exploit the pakana girls to hunt mutton bird.
For the next two centuries, and probably beyond, despite displacement from their homelands, war, attempted genocide and the invader’s assimilation policies, the pakana’s ancestors will continue an annual mutton birding ‘season’ – an ancient pakana cultural practice combined with European practices, that will proudly connect the pakana of the future with a past that spans back to creation.
They will be saddened in not knowing many of their old, old stories and by the extinction and near extinction of many of the animals of lutruwita (Tasmania).