Woretemoeteryenner

Woretemoeteryenner ( – 13 October 1847), also known as "Bung", "Pung", "Maria" and "Margaret", was an Aboriginal Tasmanian woman who was taken from her family and had children with George Briggs, an English convict and sealer. She worked as a sealer and kangaroo hunter in the Bass Strait and on Kangaroo Island and was sold on to other sealers. She was one of five Aboriginal Tasmanian women who were taken to harvest seals at Île Saint-Paul in the southern Indian Ocean, and were later abandoned at Rodriguez Island near Mauritius. Upon being returned to Van Diemen's Land, Woretemoeteryenner became part of George Augustus Robinson's "friendly mission" to round up all the remaining Aboriginal Tasmanians. She, along with the other surviving Aboriginal Tasmanians, was placed into exile at the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island. In 1841, Woretemoeteryenner was allowed to leave Wybalenna and live with her daughter's family near Perth, Tasmania where she died in 1847.

Woretemoeteryenner and her sisters are among the few Indigenous Tasmanian people whose lives bridge the experience of Aboriginal people before and after British colonisation. She is the ancestor of many of today’s Tasmanian Aboriginal people.

Early life Woretemoeteryenner was born in the Cape Portland area of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). She was a member of the Cape Portland Tasmanian tribe, one of the nine Aboriginal nations in what is now Tasmania. Her father Mannalargenna was a leader of the Cape Portland Tasmanians.

Arrival of the British The life of the Aboriginal Tasmanians changed significantly after the late 1790s when the British began to colonise the region. The first capitalist industry to exploit the resources in Woretemoeteryenner's homeland was the hunting of seals for skins and oil. Approximately two hundred European men came to the Bass Strait islands in the early 1800s to work as sealers. Some of them abducted Aboriginal women to be used as workers or concubines in slave-like conditions. In 1803 and 1804, the first British settlements were formed at Risdon Cove and Port Dalrymple, respectively.

Permitted to live in British society In 1841, Woretemoeteryenner's daughter, Dolly Briggs, who was married to and living with a British settler named Thomas Johnson at Perth, Tasmania, requested that her mother be allowed to leave the terrible conditions at Wybalenna and live with her and her husband. The request was approved and in a highly unusual circumstance, Woretemoeteryenner was permitted to leave Wybalenna and live in the relative freedom of British colonial society, albeit mostly confined to her daughter's residence where she was a loving grandmother to her grandchildren.