The Two Faces of Jimmy Everett — Dark Emu Exposed - And the Assault on Australian History

Jul 3

Jul 3 The Two Faces of Jimmy Everett

Fair Michael Mansell, the Tasmanian firebrand, clearly has more European than Aboriginal ancestry....I’m saying only that this self-identification as Aboriginal strikes me as self-obsessed, and driven more by politics than by any racial reality…

- Andrew Bolt, It’s so hip to be black, Herald Sun, 15 April, 2009

Jimmy Everett, a founding colleague of Michael Mansell’s TAC, would also appear to be a case in point of Bolt’s critique. Everett claims to be:

“… a plangermairreenner [Aboriginal] man of the First Nations of north-east Tasmania.[Ref 2] I am not Australia’s imagined Aborigine, nor do I identify as an Australian citizen….

my matriarchal grandmother [sic] is wapperty [Ref 3] of the plangermairreenner, and my patriarchal grandfather [sic] is manalargenna of the leetermairremener. My mother is Ena Everett (née Maynard), and my father is Keith Everett.

I am known as Jim Everett-puralia meenamatta. My home is on truwuna-Cape Barren Island off the north-east coast of lutrawita/Tasmania, and one of fifty-two islands in the Furneaux Group.

I don’t identify as an Australian citizen because Aboriginal people haven’t made any agreements with Australia to be citizens. The Australian governments, right back to the colonial governments, have never asked us to be citizens: They never made any agreements with us to be citizens. We had no formal documentation or ceremonies to mark such an occasion.”

Jimmy Everett, 2022 [Ref 1]

According to the 1974 Mollison genealogy of the descendants of the Tasmanian Aborigines, Everett’s claims are correct but selective. Mollison’s genealogy of the Jimmy’s paternal Everett Family (Figures 1 to 4 below) traces Jimmy’s ancestry from the sealer James Everett [ca1794 -1876] and his second wife Betsy Miti, a daughter of wapperty [Woberrertee] down to Jimmy’s dad, Keith Everett, and finishes with Jimmy himself, born 1942 as ‘Keith James “Jimmy” Everett.’

Jimmy Everett’s Paternal Genealogy

[Mollison also published Jimmy Everett’s maternal family genealogy which includes very much a mixed ancestry (see Further Reading below)]

**Figure 1 - The Everett Family Genealogy according to Bill Mollison, *Tasmanian Aboriginal Genealogies*, 1974, University of Tasmania, p182ff**

**Figure 4 - Third Generation - F3 - Keith James “Jimmy” Everett b1942**

Jimmy Everett engages in `selective rememberance’ by not disclosing that he is also by necessity a direct descendant of the infamous sealer James Everett. He is as much a British descendant from his great-grandfather James as he is Aboriginal descendant from his great-grandmother Betsy Miti. Jimmy also fails to tell his audience that Betsy is half-Maori herself [Figure 1].

**Figure 5 - Said to be a photograph of James Everett, modern day Jimmy Everett’s British great-grandfather.** *Source*

The Infamy of Jimmy Everett’s Great-Grandfather, the White Sealer

Students of Tasmanian Aboriginal history will know that James Everett, the sealer, was recorded by Aborigines Protector, GA Robinson, as being the abductor of the Aboriginal woman, Worethmaleyerpodeyer [Piper River, b.ca1811]. He is later recorded by Robinson of murdering her on Woody Island because “she would not get mutton birds”, or that “she did not clean the mutton birds to please him.”

Page screenshots of excerpts of Robinson’s published journal below detail the difficult lives of the Aboriginal women said to have been brutalised by James Everett.

**Figure 6 - *Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals of G A Robinson,(Ed. NJB Plomley*, 2008), p284**

**Figure 7 - *Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals of G A Robinson,(Ed. NJB Plomley*, 2008), p304**

**Figure 8 - *Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals of G A Robinson, (Ed. NJB Plomley*, 2008), p424**

To date, we have not found any reference to the modern-day Jimmy Everett apologising or making amends for his white ancestor’s alleged actions.

This is the problem that Andrew Bolt was alluding to in the 2009 newspaper articles that got him “stitched-up” in Federal court. Instead of looking at their identity as a mixed-ethnic whole, like most of us Aussies do, many Aboriginal activists seem to be `self-obsessed’ in only selecting one part of their mixed ancestry, that which they perceive will give them political and financial clout - the Aboriginal one.

As Bolt perhaps “offensively” to some, but certainly effectively, told his readership:

…modern race politics [is]….where grants and privileges are now doled out. Hear that scuffling at the trough? That’s the sound of black people being elbowed out by white people shouting , “but I’m Aboriginal too.” They are the “white Aborigines” - people who out of their multi-stranded but largely European genealogy decided to identify with the thinnest of all those strands....the Aboriginal one.

- Andrew Bolt, White fellas in the black, Herald Sun, 21 Aug 2009.

The point of all this is to demonstrate that Jimmy Everett has reached deep into his mixed bag of ancestries and solely chosen his Aboriginal strand as the way to identify himself.

There is nothing wrong with this from a cultural, social, family or community point of view. He has the perfect right to self-identify anyway that he wants and it is no business of anyone else.

However, the moment Everett steps into the public square and demands special political and economic rights because of his ancestry, he is then making a direct challenge to Australia’s system of equality before the law. As Australian citizens and taxpayers, we have a perfect right to critique and even disagree with, and push-back against, his claims based on racism - the dividing of us by race.

This is not just a political jibe against Everett on my part. Jimmy himself is quite open about the professional, taxpayer funded route he took with his career, as a “professional Aborigine” in Bolt’s terminology:

Eventually, I got a job as the first State Liaison Officer for Aboriginal Affairs; the first state-government specified position for an Aboriginal person. Just prior to that, I had five months working for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre as a legal aid officer, and that was a big thing for me, to work with people like Michael Mansell, Heather Sculthorpe, and many others, including Pierre Slicer, who later became a justice of the Supreme Court here in Hobart. And they were the political thinkers that I grew up with. Very quickly, I learnt politics. And I was writing political papers, almost from the word go in 1980. I became involved in these politics, and I have been ever since.

- Jimmy Everett [Ref 1]

The Con-Job that is Modern Day Tasmanian Aboriginal Politics

The reason why Australians are not buying Jimmy Everett’s political story - that today’s so-called, Tasmanian Aboriginal people are something more than Australian citizens of Aboriginal descent - is that they can see just how spurious Jimmy’s claims are to an `authentic tribal past.’ Jimmy wants us to believe that he is the same as a Truganini, a William Lanne or a Woorrady, one of the ‘old people.’ (Figures 9 and 10 )

**Figure 9 - William Lanne (2nd from L) and Truganini (far R)** Source: A picture of the last four Tasmanian Aborigines of solely Aboriginal descent c. 1860s. Truganini, the last to survive, is said to be seated at far right. (Photo at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_Tasmanians.)

Many Australians still believe what they were taught in school - in a time when truth mattered - that the tribal Tasmanian Aboriginal people are extinct. Truganini was the last of her ‘race’ [Ref 4].

We are all in agreement that Tasmanians today who claim to be Aboriginal may indeed have ‘statutory Aboriginality’ (ie. they comply with the Commonwealth’s 3-part definition) and thus they are of Aboriginal descent when dealing with government programs. But they are not Parlevar, the old first peoples of Tasmania.[Ref 7]

This is evidenced by the fact that when Jimmy Everett was the Aboriginal cultural consultant to the 2018 film, The Nightingale, he realised that there were no Aboriginal Tasmanians who were black enough to play the parts of the Parlavar in the movie. All the Aboriginal Tasmanians alive today are only descendants, and often of such little Aboriginal ancestry that many are white, blue eyed and blond. This is not in anyway meant to be derogatory - it is simply stating an incongruous fact that we can all see with our own eyes. Just as most Australians are not convinced that a man who puts on a frock and some lippy can call himself a genuine woman, neither are they convinced that a modern-day ‘fair-skinned’ Tasmanian, who puts on an Aboriginal T-shirt and some face-paint, can really be recognised as a genuine Parlevar, a ‘Truganini.’

The film producers solved this ‘problematic’ dilemma by importing an Aboriginal actor from the Northern Territory, Baykali Ganambarr, whose most important attribute for the part seems to have been that he was black (Figures 11 and 12).

**Figure 11 - Jimmy Everett mentored Baykali Ganambarr on how to be an historical Parlavar, an ‘authentic’ tribal Tasmanian Aborigine.** *Source: Amanda Ducker, Brutal film The Nightingale takes viewers to Hell on Earth 31 Aug 2019*

In a 2020 interview about the film, Jimmy Everett was asked,

..how was it felt in the [local Tasmanian Aboriginal] community that there [were] actors coming from very different parts of Australia, a long way away, acting as Tasmanian Aborigines?

“They took it really well. In fact, they could see the sense of it because we have no trained actors who are 23 who have got really, really dark skin. So they understood the common sense of that and they had no problems at all.” [Ref 5]

These comments pretty much nail the absurdity and hypocrisy of Everett’s political position. There are thousands of so-called Tasmanian Aborigines who could have played the part given to Ganambarr. As he explained after he got the role:

One day I was just chilling, minding my own business and the next thing you know someone on Facebook tagged me on a post: “Need an Aboriginal actor with no acting experience.” I was just like, might as well just give it a try. I auditioned and after I got the role, the first thing I did was call my sister. I was like, “Hey, sis, I got a lead role in a feature film. [Ref 6]

Everett thus needs to explain why, if no specific acting experience was required, didn’t a young modern-day Aboriginal Tasmanian, such as depicted in the dance rap video below get the job? Could it be that they weren’t black enough? Doesn’t this just confirm the belief that because their Aboriginal ancestry is so low they look too white and thus are only of Aboriginal descent and not Parlevar in any meaningful way?

If that is the case, then that just proves Andrew Bolt’s point in his 2009 article - that skin colour is an indication of meaningful Aboriginality and it’s absence being politically weaponised by some activists to divide us by race.

**Figure 13 - Some lyrics of video rap (right) by self-identifying Tasmanian Aborigines**
…this is a product of invasion cause my skin is light - I know my mountain proud of old fellas sitting higher but my heart is black… ***Source:***

The Black-face of Jimmy Everett

And just in case readers thought that this story couldn’t get any worse, consider Everett’s appalling commentary and his desire to look more tribally authentic by going ‘black-face’ himself in 1992.

Let’s go and kill some whitefellas now!

- Jimmy Everett, a descendant of the Tasmanian Aborigines exclaimed after getting his face blacked-up to impersonate the authentic tribal Aborigines, like Truganini and the Parvelar [Source: Film clip below]

Blood Lust a 1984 Poem by Jim Everett

Australians you now call yourselves,

You mongrel mob invaders.

You deny your blood’s mixed past

Yet think your blood has made us.

Come on fools and say your piece,

Your argument we know so well.

Ancestral lines for you are farce,

On genetics you do dwell.

For you have a mixture beyond compare,

Of indigenous lines you fail.

And you come from countries over there,

With a heritage fairytale.

Conclusion

To date, Australians and particularly Tasmanians have rejected the divisive politics of the modern-day Tasmanian Aboriginal activists. The Voice referendum failed miserably, Jimmy Everett has had to come grovelling back to the British white man’s court as he is pursued like any other Australian citizen for breaking the ‘white man’s law’ [so much for his self-professed sovereign rights] and the Nightingale film bombed badly - it cost $2m to make but only grossed $1m. Ouch!

So Bolt’s advice still holds true:

Let’s go beyond racial pride. Beyond black and white. Let’s be proud only of being human beings set on this land together, determined to find what unites us and not to invent such racist and trivial excuses to divide. Deal?

- Andrew Bolt, It’s so hip to be black, Herald Sun, 15 April, 2009

References

Reference 1: Everett, J., There Is No Other World”: Country and Politics, a Keynote Presentation to the ASAL 2022 Conference. 26 October 2022. [An edited transcript of a speech given at the Stanley Burbury Lecture Theatre, University of Tasmania, prepared by Robert Clarke, 2023]

Reference 2: Yet Everett admits that, “I use Tasmanian Aboriginal language recorded by colonists and published in: Henry Ling Roth. The Aborigines of Tasmania. F. King & Sons, Printers and publishers, Broad Street, Halifax, England, 1899.” This is somewhat surprising given Everett’s rejection of Australian civic society - he can’t even describe himself without using terms of his British so-called colonisers.

Reference 3: Ena Everett also reports that her aunt told her that Everett’s second wife was known as "Granny Betty" and was ½ Maori, ½ Tasmanian and was given to John Miti after the death of ‘starker.’

Reference 4: Some say other lesser known Tasmanian Aboriginal women outlived Truganini. The use of the word ‘race’ here is in its historical sense.

Reference 5: Rebe Taylor & Jim Everett (2020) ‘I just felt sad and angry all in one thing’: Jim Everett in conversation with Rebe Taylor on making the Nightingale, Studies in Australasian Cinema, 14:1, p17

Reference 6: Nate Jones, The Nightingale’s Baykali Ganambarr on Bringing Aboriginal Culture to the Screen, Vulture, 8 Aug 2019

Reference 7: This spelling of Parlevar [palawa] is from the Report of the Aboriginal Affairs Study Group of Tasmania, Parliamentary Papers, 1978 where it was first officially used, so this spelling has been adopted.