The tale of James Cook sailing the Endeavour into Botany Bay recognizes to many Australians.
But 250 years on, the descendants of the Aboriginal people who initially found the English explorer’s ship state the history books got at least part of the story wrong.
Our understanding of the events that unfolded on the afternoon of April 29, 1770 come mostly from the journals of Captain Cook and his crew.
They describe cruising into the harbour and being threatened and alerted off by the Native individuals on the shore.
Sydney Parkinson, a young artist utilized on the ship, wrote in his journal that local men made threatening gestures with spears and yelled the words “warra warra wai.”
He presumed that the words indicated “disappear,” and so for many years his journal entry defined the story of first contact between Aboriginal individuals and the British.
Now the Dharawal people are sharing their story.
They say the real significance of those first tape-recorded Indigenous words has actually been misinterpreted.
” Warra is a root word for either white or dead in our language,” said Ray Ingrey, a Dharawal guy and La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council deputy chairperson.
” Gradually, due to the fact that of outsiders trying to tell our story for us, it’s simply being equated into various pa