Frank Chalk is Professor of History and Kurt Jonassohn Professor of Sociology (Emeritus) at Concordia University where they founded the Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies (see: http://migs.concordia.ca/personnel/FoundingCo-Directors.htm ) .
Professors Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn on the Tasmanian Aboriginal Genocide (1990): “A genocide was planned and intended by the settlers ...The last [full-blood] Tasmanian man died in 1869 and the last Tasmanian [full-blood] woman in 1876 [there were 4,000-6,000 at Settlement in 1803] .. This was the accepted view of Tasmanian history; however it ignored some little known facts. In 1881 the reserve system was introduced in Tasmania with the establishment of the Cape Barren island reserve. The reserve was abolished in 1951 as part of the assimilation policy., which declared that the aborigines had to live “like white people”. The existence of the reserve system was not widely known, while the history of the last Tasmanian was very well known. This situation was encouraged by the government; it seems self-evident that one does not need an aboriginal policy, need not deal with the problems of the aborigines, nor provide for a budget if the last Tasmanian died in 1876. The tradition version of Tasmanian history [web editor: that I was taught at school in Tasmania in the 1950s notwithstanding several aboriginal children in my year at primary school] is correct only in the sense that all present aborigines are the descendant of native women [Mainland or Tasmanian] who married white men and whose children intermarried. Regardless of such genealogies, the present community seems to have elected to identify with their aboriginal rather than white origins [there are about 6,000 Tasmanian aborigines today].” [1].
[1]. Chalk, F. and Jonassohn, K. (1990), “The History and Sociology of Genocide. Analyses and Case Studies” (Yale University Press, New Haven & London), “The Tasmanians”, pp204-222.