The Secret River: Settler Colonialism

So far while reading The Secret River, I've noticed many connections between the storyline and what I've learned so far about settler colonialism. Watching the newest micro-lecture on settler colonialism in a global context also helped me draw new connections. Something that stood out to me from the latest micro-lecture was a quote from Shoemaker that said "Large numbers of settlers claim land and become the majority." This reminded me of how the Englishmen are slowly but surely outnumbering the aboriginals in New South Wales. What used to be a land controlled by the aboriginal people has transitioned into a land run by the convicts, running off of the economies and societal systems that they are enforcing. Another quote that stood out to me from Shoemaker was "they attempt to engineer the disappearance of the original inhabitants everywhere except in nostalgia." I thought that this point was pretty interesting and also applicable to what we've seen from Thornhill thus far. For example, when he first saw the daisies, Thornhill wrote them off as weeds, when they were actually deliberately planted as a food source by the aboriginals. This is also evident in the fish carved into the rock that Thornhill admired. At first, he wonders how nature could achieve such art. Only once he notices the intricate details does it say "he had to recognise a human hand at work" (154). I thought that it was interesting to see how directly these examples correlate with the contents of the micro-lecture.