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Between 1842 and 1904, more than 55,000 people from more than 80 South Pacific islands were brought to Australia to work as slaves on sugar and cotton plantations in Queensland and northern NSW. Many had been coerced into fixed-term contracts or even kidnapped; a process known as 'blackbirding'. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people weren't immune either. From the 1860s to the 1970s, men and boys were taken from their homes and forced to work at cattle and sheep stations across Australia. And from the early 1900s, women and girls were forcibly removed from their families, placed in domestic training facilities and then, once they turned 15, dispatched to homes as domestic 'help'. According to NITV, their weekly income "had an approximate buying power at the time of [one] ice-cream cone or two apples." Between 1897 and 1972, Queensland law, for example, saw the wages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers held in government trust. It's estimated that $500 million has never been repaid. Particularly in the pastoral industry, where some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander laborers were bought and sold along with the land they'd been dispatched to work on. The pearling industry also has a dark past in this regard. Source: www.mamamia.com.au/australia-slavery/

By the late 19th century, Australia had already spent a century dispossessing its first inhabitants, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who had been here for over 65,000 years. It also controlled every aspect of their lives: where to live, whom to marry, and most importantly, where to work. Dispossession created a workforce that could be exploited for the pitiful price of cheap rations: flour, salt, and sugar. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were placed in work camps and were sent out to labour for the “new owners” of their traditional lands. They were legally prohibited from receiving their pay in hand; instead, their employers paid it to the government to hold it on trust. By the second half of the 19th century, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were increasingly reluctant to work for colonisers under the harsh terms on offer, and began to rebel against this system. In 1863, Robert Towns, a British merchant wishing to start a cotton plantation, needed cheap labour. There were men “willing” to work as indentured labour for a pittance, he was told, in the South Sea Islands to the east, including the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Easter Island and Gilbert Islands. Towns brought his first shipment of South Sea Island indentured labourers – the “sugar slaves” – to Queensland in 1863. Source: afsee.atlanticfellows.org/blog/2018/amanda-young-australi...

Mourilyan is a town and locality in the Cassowary Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. It was established around the Mourilyan sugar mill which provided much of the employment in the area until it was destroyed by Cyclone Larry on 20 March 2006. Construction of the Mourilyan sugar mill began in 1882, rendering it among the oldest in Australia. Excavation of the site was undertaken mainly by Kanakas, with assistance from Chinese and Anglo-Saxon laborers. After its completion in 1884, the mill had a processing capacity of 14 tonnes of sugar per 12-hour shift. In 1913, the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (now CSR) began purchasing sugar refined at the mill. Mourilyan remained a small settlement, growing only very slowly since. Mourilyan is prone to tropical cyclones; in 1918, a cyclone caused serious damage to the mill and surrounding community, having a drastic effect on sugar production in that year. In 1986, Cyclone Winifred also caused substantial damage to the area. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mourilyan%2C_Queensland .

Kanakas were workers (a mix of voluntary and involuntary) from various Pacific Islands employed in British colonies, such as British Columbia (Canada), Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Queensland (Australia) in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They also worked in California and Chile (see Easter Island and Rapanui people as related subjects). "Kanaka", originally referred only to native Hawaiians, from their own name for themselves, kānaka ʻōiwi or kānaka maoli, in the Hawaiian language. In the Americas in particular, native Hawaiians were the majority; but Kanakas in Australia were almost entirely Melanesian. In Australian English "kanaka" is now avoided outside of its historical context, as it has been used as an offensive term. According to the Macquarie Dictionary, the word "kanaka", which was once widely used in Australia, is now regarded in Australian English as an offensive term for a Pacific Islander.[1][2] Most "Kanakas" in Australia were people from Melanesia, rather than Polynesia. The descendants of 19th century immigrants to Australia from the Pacific Islands now generally refer to themselves as "South Sea Islanders", and this is also the term used in formal and official situations. Most of the original labourers were recruited or blackbirded (kidnapped or deceived) from the Solomon Islands, New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and New Caledonia, with others from the Loyalty Islands. Under the government-controlled terms of engagement in Queensland, Melanesian labourers signed on for three years and, at the end of that time, they received a pre-paid passage home. They had accumulated savings which they collected before departure from their bank savings accounts to spend on prized manufactured goods. After 1863, more than 62,000 Islanders were brought to Australia; in 1901, about 10,000 were living in Queensland and northern New South Wales. The majority of those were repatriated by the Australian Government between 1906 and 1908, under the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901,[9] legislation supporting the White Australia policy. Some were exempted on various grounds, including marriage to Australians. The descendants of those who avoided deportation today form Australia's largest Melano-Polynesian ethnic group. Many Australian South Sea Islanders are also of mixed ancestry, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, for whom they are often mistaken. As a consequence, Australian South Sea Islanders have faced forms of discrimination similar to Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. After 1994, the Australian South Sea Islander community was recognised as a unique minority group, following a report by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, which found they had become more disadvantaged than indigenous Australians. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanaka_(Pacific_Island_worker)