1828 Proclamation of Demarcation

{{Use Australian English|date=June 2020}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2020}}

The 1828 Proclamation of Demarcation was issued by George Arthur, governor of Tasmania, and ordered the white colonial populations and Tasmanian Aboriginal populations be temporarily separated from each other.{{cite book|author=James Bonwick|title=The last of the Tasmanians: or, The Black War of Van Diemen's Land|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LTwKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA78|year=1870|publisher=Johnson Reprint Corp.|pages=78–}} Arthur clarified that the proclamation would not limit Aboriginals from traveling through Tasmania to shellfish hunting territories, provided a passport was coordinated with their leaders.{{cite book|author=Dr Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll|title=Art in the Time of Colony|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P9CpBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA92|date=28 April 2014|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|isbn=978-1-4094-5596-7|pages=92–}} The proclamation was justified as protecting Aboriginals from violence from colonists, and to protect the colonists from "repeated and wanton barbarous murders and other crimes" by the Aboriginals.{{cite book|author=Sharon Morgan|title=Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: Creating an Antipodean England|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bTJeskna35YC&pg=PA151|date=11 December 2003|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-52296-0|pages=151–}}

The proclamation established a line of military outposts separating the declared Aboriginal and colonial territories, which the Aboriginals were forbidden to pass. Tasmanian Aboriginals were pressed into remote areas of Tasmania, and eventually relocated to Flinders Island; scholar Rod Edmond notes that the pretext of "protecting" the Aboriginals served as a mechanism to clear desirable land for colonial use.{{cite book|author=Rod Edmond|title=Leprosy and Empire: A Medical and Cultural History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=15U9YIr1masC&pg=PA193|date=30 November 2006|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-46287-7|pages=193–}}