What does the secret river by Kate Grenville say about dispossesion?

Answer 1

It seems that in the Secret River that dispossesion, in Australia at least, seemed to be caused more by a clash of cultures and its misundertsandings about land ownerhsip than anything else. Will Thornhill even comments that the indigenous people seem to wander and don't care about the ownership of land. He could fine nothing, in the sense that he knew what would represent land owndership such as a house or crops, existed in Australia when he arrived. He also believed the indigenous people could have "the rest" and leave his plot of land.

I guess it needs to be understood, in the case of this view on dispossesion, that these men were transported against their will from a society that refused them anything - either in the way of land or justice - and that when they came to Australia with their ideas of injustice and what Australia could offer them, they went for it and let nothing stand in their way. Some, like Blackwood and Dick, began to understand that it was a little give and take, but others, such as Smasher was unrelenting in his belief that a man has a right to defend what is his - a belief that most of us have to this day!

It's no hidden fact that Thornhill and the others were quite uneducated and that they understood little in the way of what indigenous people deserved.