Appearing before the Yoorrook Justice Commission truth-telling inquiry, Suzannah Henty a sixth-generation Henty descendant, called for monuments to her family to be removed. Henty believes that the spray-painting of Henty monuments is evidence of the distress they cause to First Peoples. The inquiry opened in Victoria on Monday 25 March 2024.
Read more in Declan Brennan’s article in the National Indigenous Times, 28 March, 2024:
https://nit.com.au/28-03-2024/10510/its-embarrassing-truth-telling-inquiry-hears-descendant-of-first-coloniser-wants-monuments-removed
and Adeshola Ore’s story in The Guardian, ‘Descendant of Victorian colonial family calls for removal of monuments to her ancestors,’ Thursday 28 March 2024.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/28/descendant-of-victorian-colonial-family-calls-for-removal-of-monuments-to-her-ancestors
In 2020, Suzannah Henty referred to her ancestors’ ‘legacy of terror’. Read more in Sian Johnson’s story, posted on ABC South West Victoria on 25 June 2020:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-25/henty-monument-vandalised-in-portland/12379730
Henty’s Whaling Establishment, Portland Bay. John Helder Wedge, Portland Bay and Henty’s House, 1835, Victorian Collections, Federation University
The arrival of European and others to set up colonies on the Australian mainland and islands like Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) caused massive destruction and dispossession of much of First Peoples’ Country from 1788 with arrival of the First Fleet from England. Until recently Australian History was not taught in schools so many descendants of colonists and later migrants are still becoming aware of the truth of Australia’s brutal history.
For background on the Hentys, the first known European colonists to remain in the Port Phillip district, Victoria (in 1834 then part of the colony New South Wales), see:
https://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/explore-history/land-exploration/pastoral-practices/hentys-portland
Read more about the Henty Memorial at Portland, Victoria here: https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/landscape/settlement/display/33151-henty-memorial