Pemulwuy
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Pemulwuy (born about 1760, died 1802) was an Indigenous Australian man who came to public attention in 1790 when he was accused of the Cooks River killing of Governor Philip's gamekeeper John Macentire. Macentire was widely known to have killed a number of the local Aboriginal people. Although long ignored by white historians, Pemulwuy's actions have more recently come to be cited as evidence of the true strength of Aboriginal resistance against the white occupation of Australia.
Pemulwuy was a member of the Eora people who lived in the Sydney area between Castle Hill and Botany Bay.
Several military expeditions failed to find him and he managed to avoid detection whilst organising many raiding parties on the white settlers. These included setting fire to their crops. After several years of organised resistance against the settlers, he was wounded with shots to the back of the head and captured in 1797. Despite his injuries he escaped in the night. This was probably due to guards not paying close attention to him as they expected him to die in the night.
In 1802 a Madagascan convict shot and killed him. His head was cut off from his dead body and was taken to a British Museum for display and research. Pemulwuy's son Tedbury continued the resistance until he himself was killed in 1805.
Pemulwuy's head was severed, preserved in spirits and sent to London to Sir Joseph Banks accompanied by a letter from Governor Philip Gidley King who wrote: "Although a terrible pest to the colony, he was a brave and independent character."
Pemulwuy's skull was returned to Australia in the 1950s but has since been lost. In 1998 a skull believed to be Pemulwuy's has been identified but there is an ongoing dispute between a group of Aboriginals from Taree who believe that the skull is actually that of a Taree man and Redfern Aboriginal undertaker Allan Murray who believes it to be Pemulwuy's and wishes to have the skull buried and a statue erected.
The saga of the sending of Pemulwuy's head to England and its return to Australia with an ongoing controversy is remarkably similar to that of Yagan, a Western Australian Noongar who was killed there 30 years later.
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