This article was originally published by Willow Tohi at Natural News. A deceptive undercover operation targeted a health freedom conference, using AI-generated fake research to discredit attendees.

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By the end of the Black War in 1832, Aboriginal men, women, and children in the Settled Districts had either been killed, imprisoned, or captured. The authorities were faced with a crucial question: what should be done with the survivors? They ultimately decided to deport them to Flinders Island, a large island in the Bass Strait, northeast of Tasmania, to a designated place called the Wybalenna Aboriginal Settlement. Wybalenna was eventually abandoned due to its poor health standards and the survivors were relocated to Oyster Cove, the second death trap in the history of Tasmanian friendly missions.The Wybalenna Aboriginal SettlementAboriginal people on Flinders Island, painting by John Skinner Prout, 19th century. Source: National Museum of AustraliaThe Aboriginal men, women, and children captured during the Black Line and those who had surrendered to G.A. Robinson were dispatched to the Wybalenna Aboriginal Settlement on Flinders Island. In October 1835, Robinson himself took up the position of superintendent. Wybalenna represented the basis for assimilation programs across Australia.As the settlements superintendent, Robinson had boys and girls removed from their parents and sent to the Orphan School in Hobart, where they were trained to lead a proper Christian life. Many resented Robinson for this, even with his staunch refusal to use physical violence in the settlements administration. Despite Robinsons promises that Aboriginal people at Wybalenna would see their customs respected, adults were treated like children.St Josephs Catholic School in Strathalbyn, South Australia, 1884. Source: National Museum of AustraliaEvery morning, they had to await inspection and women were expected to attend sewing classes in the afternoon. Every day, someone ensured that their houses were clean, their mattresses were regularly aired, and their clothes were washed. Wybalenna remains a unique experiment. Despite the settlements many flaws, Aboriginal people were looked after by an unprecedented number of officials and convicts. Sir George Arthur, the Governor of Van Diemens Land (as Tasmania was known back then) appointed a surgeon, a catechist, a gardener, as well as four soldiers and a corporal to ensure law and order. Their families followed.Arthur also appointed six male convicts to build huts and the most basic infrastructures, take care of the veggie gardens and tend the cattle and sheep. Aboriginal people also enjoyed a certain amount of freedom, within the confines of a white-oriented society.These Shell worked Slippers commemorate the Aboriginal children of the Stolen Generations, by Esme Timbery, 2008. Source: Museum of Contemporary Art AustraliaSome Aboriginal families were even allowed to move to the bush outside the main settlement, where they built their huts, performed ceremonies, painted their bodies ochre, and hunted kangaroos and wallabies like their ancestors had done for centuries. However, the situation quickly deteriorated; 29 people died in 1837 alone of gastroenteritis and pneumonia. Among them, there were feared guerrilla leader Tongerlongter (1790-1837), the widow of another warrior, Montpelliata (1790-1836), and Kartiteyer, the son of Mannalargenna (1770-1835), the older leader in the group. These deaths were directly caused by the poor living conditions at Wybalenna, possibly by Escherichia coli bacteria. As people kept falling sick around them, many fled to the bush.Who Were the Aboriginal Men and Women at Wybalenna?Truganini, by Alfred Winter, 1869. Source: Wikimedia Commons123 people were initially stationed at Wybalenna. They were divided into three distinct groups led by seven chiefs and came from different clans and nations. The largest group was made of almost 50 people from the North West and South West nations. Truganini (1812-1876), perhaps the most well-known Aboriginal woman from Tasmania, was one of them. The second group comprised more than 30 men and women from the North East, North Midlands, and Ben Lomond nations. The third and smallest encompassed at least 20 members of the Big River and Oyster Bay nations.Some of them, like Montpelliatta, Tongerlongter, and Mannalargenna, were feared guerrilla leaders who had led a staunch resistance in the Settled Districts beginning in the 1820s. Others maintained friendly but complex relations with Robinson.Aboriginal People Hunting Emus, painting by Joseph Lyncett, 1820. Source: National Library of AustraliaEumarrah (1798-1832), for instance, was reportedly one of Robinsons most trusted confidants. It has been reported that Eumarrah repeatedly pressured Robinson to promise some guarantee that at Wybalenna his people could finally be independent. However, most of them eventually died on Flinders Island, homesick and depressed, after being given (sometimes willingly) an English name. Tongerlongter, for instance, was assigned the name of King William (he would, ironically, die on the same day as the monarch he was named after, William IV, Queen Victorias uncle, on June 20, 1837).Australian historian Lyndall Ryan notes in her Tasmanian Aborigines that by renaming some of the chiefs as kings and the young warriors after heroes in recent as well as ancient history, Robinson wanted the Aborigines to believe that their own authority structure was similar to that of the British.The River Nile from Mr. Glovers farm on the ancestral lands of the Ben Lomond Nation, painting by John Glover, 1837. Source: National Gallery of VictoriaTheir new, British names represented the first step in their much-hoped-for transition from Aboriginal to British culture. The truth is that Aboriginal men and women on Flinders Island were determined to retain their culture and their ancestral practices. They even developed a lingua franca, so that people from different clans could communicate among themselves and with the catechist assigned to Flinders Island, Robert Clark.In 1839, another outbreakinfluenza this timekilled eight people, in addition to the 29 who had died in 1837. Robinson left Wybalenna in April of that same year. Of the 123 Aboriginal men, women, and children on Flinders Island in October 1834, 59 of them had died.From Wybalenna to Oyster CoveThis kelp water container was collected by Joseph Milligan at Oyster Cove, 1850-51. Source: National Museum AustraliaThe situation at Wybalenna continued to deteriorate after Robinsons departure and the appointment of Scottish medical officer Dr Henry Jeanneret. In 1846, along with seven other men, Walter Arthur (1821-1861), son of Rolepa of the Ben Lomond Tribe from north-eastern Tasmania, drew up a petition to Queen Victoria to complain about Jeannerets brutal methods. The petition was received.James Stephens, the under-secretary of state for the colonies, recommended that the Flinders Island Aboriginal people should be transferred to a new site, preferably in Van Diemens Land. Wybalenna was abandoned in 1847 and the survivors were promptly transferred to Oyster Cove. Many believed they were finally going home. The night of their arrival on October 18, 1847, they celebrated with dancing and ceremonies. What they didnt know was that Oyster Cove was a former convict settlement that had been abandoned because the health conditions were too poor, even for convicts.Oyster Cove was a death trap, even more so than Flinders Island. Interestingly, while the settlement on Flinders Island was known by the Aboriginal name of Wybalenna (which translates as Black Mans House), the new establishment had only one name, the British one. It was located 35 miles south of Hobart and about 12 miles southwest of Kingston, on the ancestral lands of the Oyster Bay Nation, now entirely belonging to colonists.The arrivals consisted of 14 men, 23 women, and 10 children. The group was initially satisfied with the station as they could row across to Bruny Island, the ancestral country of the Nuenonne Clan of the South East Nation, to collect shells and mutton-bird eggs, and they could rely on the DEntrecasteaux Channel for shellfish. The settlements main section was located at the mouths of the Little Oyster Cove Creek and Oyster Cove Rivulet.Three Aboriginal children, photograph by Anton Faymann. Source: Wikimedia CommonsThe second section, an area of little less than 700 hectares, was set apart for Aboriginal people to hunt wallabies, wombats, and possums. Once again, the children (5 boys and 5 girls) were promptly removed from their parents and sent to the Queens Orphan Asylum in Hobart. Authorities never considered opening a school at Oyster Cove and their removal deeply affected people at Oyster Cove.At the end of 1854, seven years after their arrival, only 17 people of the original Oyster Cove community were still alive. In 1859, the number dropped to 14, five men and nine women. Among them were Truganini, William Lanney, Mary Ann Arthur, and her husband Walter George Arthur. Walter Arthur was particularly vocal in demanding better conditions for his people. Eventually, the new governor Sir Henry Fox Young granted him a 3-hectare block of land near Oyster Cove.Truganini, Mary Ann, William Lanney, and Bessy Clark, photograph by Henry Frith, 1866. Source: National Portrait GalleryHere, Arthur, Mary Ann, Fanny (Mary Anns sister), and Tarenootairrer (Mary Anns mother, renamed Sarah by Robinson) built their cottage. They even hung a portrait of Queen Victoria in the living room. Lyndall Ryan observes that like so many other Aboriginal men in his position, he appears to have developed a schizophrenic personality: sometimes he was a resistance leader demanding better conditions for his people; at other times he was a desperate conformist aching for the acceptance of white society. But he was never good enough.Tarenootairrer, an important elder in the Oyster Cove Community, died in 1858. Walter Arthur passed in 1861, as he was rowing back to Oyster Cove from Hobart. He probably fell overboard and his body was never found. William Lanney, the last full-blood male, died in 1869.The Last Survivor of Oyster CoveTruganini and her (alleged) partner William Lanney, 1870. Source: Wikimedia CommonsAfter Lanneys death, only two women remained at Oyster Cove: Truganini and Mary Ann. Mary Ann died in July 1871, ten years after her husband. For decades, Truganini has been hailed as the last Aboriginal Tasmanian, and her death in 1876 was announced as the death of the last full-blood Tasmanian. While she was far from the last person of Aboriginal Tasmanian ancestry, she was the last survivor of the so-called Oyster Cove mob.A member of the Nuenonne Clan of the South East Nation, the Traditional Custodians of Bruny Island, she was born at Recherche Bay in 1812, the daughter of Mangerner, chief of the Lyluequonny clan. The site where the Oyster Cove buildings were established was sacred to the Nuenonne. Truganini lived at Oyster Cove until the winter of 1874 when the mission was heavily flooded.Aboriginal family in front of their house, photograph by Anton Faymann, 1957-8. Source: Wikimedia CommonsFrom 1874 until her death in 1876, she resided in Hobart, in the house of Mrs Dandrige, the wife of the former superintendent at Oyster Cove. She died there, surrounded by her faithful dogs. Oyster Cove closed down in 1874. Little more than 100 years later, in 1981, the government officially proclaimed 30 hectares of Oyster Cove a historic site. In 1984, the Tasmanian Aboriginal community reclaimed it as putalina and the Tasmanian government returned it to them in 1995. Since 1999, it has been an Indigenous Protected Area, managed by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre Rangers.On December 19, 2013, under the Aboriginal and Dual Naming Policy, six places in Tasmania were assigned Aboriginal and dual names, including Kunanyi / Mount Wellington. As of February 2023, 44 Aboriginal and dual names have been assigned to lakes, bays, rivers, and islands across the island. Tasmania is itself referred to as lutruwita/Tasmania in honor of its Traditional Custodians.

Famous and wealthy friends of Pauline Bonaparte and her husband, Camillo Borghese, gathered at their residence to admire the shocking sculpture of their hostess. The marble Pauline reclined half-naked on a couch, sensually posed as Venus Victrixthe Roman goddess of love, beauty, and victory.Did you really pose completely naked? one of the guests finally dared to ask.Of course, Pauline replied. The studio was warm. The roar of indignation, admiration, and astonishment swept through the hall. The guests were shocked, while Pauline was pleased by the commotion she had caused.The Scandalous Rise of Pauline BonapartePauline Bonaparte, by Robert Lefvre, 1806. Source: Palace of VersaillesPaula Maria Bonaparte Leclerc Borghese was the sixth child of Letizia Ramolino and Carlo Maria Bonaparte. Her ambitious father served as Corsicas representative to the court of King Louis XVI of France until his death. After his passing, the family fell into poverty. Letizia could no longer afford to educate the younger daughters, so Pauline received little formal schooling. But that was never a problemsince childhood, she possessed extraordinary beauty, which would become her greatest asset. Clemens von Metternich wrote about her: Pauline was as handsome as it is possible to be; she was in love with herself, and her only occupation was pleasure.Napoleon didnt know his younger sister for a long time, as he had left for his studies before she was born. When the young Lieutenant Bonaparte returned home on leave, Pauline was already nine years old. Brother and sister immediately took a liking to each other, although it was already clear that Pauline was far from the modest and virtuous ideal of a well-brought-up young lady.Napoleon quickly realized that he needed to marry off his sister before her scandalous reputation ruined her future. After considering several candidates, he settled on General Charles Leclerc, whom he had known since the Siege of Toulon.Villa Borghese in Rome, now home to the Galleria Borghese. Source: Wikimedia CommonsNapoleon sent Leclerc and Pauline to the colony of Saint-Domingue, where Pauline reveled in her near-royal status. She hosted grand balls, lavish receptions, and her famously exclusive private gatherings. Rumors swirled about her scandalous behavior, including alleged affairs with low-ranking officers and soldiers. When Leclerc succumbed to yellow fever in November 1802, Pauline mourned him in dramatic fashionher grief as theatrical as her lifestyle. But by the time she returned to France, her mourning had faded, replaced once again by indulgence and spectacle.But at that point, her brother had to find her a new husband, and he didCamillo Borghese, one of the richest men in Italy. He owned a vast art collection in his Villa Borghese in Rome, which inspired him to commission a semi-nude sculpture of his wife from Antonio Canova.The Naked PrincessNapoleon as Mars the Peacekeeper, by Antonio Canova, 1806. Source: The Wellington Collection, Apsley HousePauline enjoyed Rome and her almost Queen of Rome status. However, she did not enjoy her husband and let everyone know he was impotent. She began to follow her desires again by having affairs.Her husband still wanted to please her and commissioned a sculpture from Canova, although it was more her idea than his. Canova initially proposed to depict her as Diana, likely to pair it with another semi-nude sculpture of Napoleon himself as Mars the Peacemaker. But Pauline knew who she truly wasthe goddess of love and pleasure. So, she chose to be depicted as another Roman goddess. Of course, it was Venus.While Pauline did not fear for her reputation, even as people began to call her the Messalina of the Empire, referring to Messalina, the young wife of Emperor Claudius, who was rumored to have an insatiable sexual appetite and followed her desires without restraint. Canova worried about his own. To depict a semi-nude woman of such status might harm his reputation, so he decided to focus more on mythology to help downplay the political aspect of the statue.Pauline Bonaparte princess Borghese, by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, 1808. Source: Palace of FontainebleauAntonio Canova faced a difficult task: to depict 25-year-old Pauline as soft, sensual, sexual, and goddess-like. To make it lifelike, Canova used live casting, essentially creating a mold of Pauline Borgheses body. Afterward, he cast a plaster model from this clay version. Rumors circulated that she posed completely naked, and true to her character, Pauline reveled in these whispers, which sparked a scandal even before the statue was completed.Canova carved Venus Victrix at the height of the neoclassical craze. In the wake of the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, Europe became enthralled with the art and ideals of ancient Greece and Rome. Everyone aspired to be depicted in this fashionclassical, poised, and subtly sensualand the aesthetic quickly seeped into fashion, architecture, and the decorative arts. Pauline Bonaparte, a recognized trend-setter, was no exception: she favored sheer, flowing gowns and coiffed her hair like a Greco-Roman goddess. Canovas marble immortalizes precisely that image.Carved in EternityPaolina Bonaparte Borghese as Venus Victrix, by Antonio Canova, 1805-08, The Borghese Gallery, Rome. Source: La Civilta CattolicaThe guests gathered around the heavy curtains, behind which the infamous statue of Princess Pauline bathed in candlelight. Her husband drew them open, revealing a marble goddess reclining on a couch.Her marble skin glowed because itwas rubbed with beeswax, her body shamelessly turning around, since the whole sculpture was placed on a rotating stand so everyone could admire her.Pauline hoped to impress, shock, and make people talk about her, and she easily achieved her objective.It was a private showingonly selected viewers had the chance to see Canovas masterpiece. And there was truly something to see.Pauline is depicted as Venus triumphant in the Judgment of Paris, holding the apple awarded to the fairest of them all.All her body parts are slim, elongated, and sensualneck, fingers, torso, even toes. She raises her head in a kind of surprise, as interpreted by some.Her hair is gathered intoPsyche knot, revealing her long, slender neck and adding a touch of sensuality to the sculpture.The cloak delicately covered her hips, hiding enough but not all, allowing the viewer to use their imagination. She is reclining on a catafalque with rich drapery, evoking a sense of immortalitylike the statues often seen on sarcophagus lids of Etruscans.Sarcophagus of Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa, 150-140 BCE. Source: British Museum, LondonFor a closer look, Canovas Venus evokes the Venus of Urbino by Titian. This oil painting, completed in 1538 by the Venetian Renaissance master, is considered one of the classic masterpieces. It is probable that Canova was inspired by Titian. He aimed to create a timeless masterpiece and sought to have his name associated with the great Renaissance masters.Both Venuses are portrayed reclining in an erotic pose, exuding an unashamed confidence in their bodies. While Pauline holds an apple, the Venus of Urbino cradles flowers. Both figures gaze forward, inviting viewers to appreciate their forms. Interestingly, it is believed that this painting was commissioned by Guidobaldo, possibly to celebrate his marriage in 1534 to Giulia Varano. Canova positioned his model on the couch in a manner reminiscent of the Venus of Urbino, allowing the viewer to experience a duality: on one hand, she embodies the goddess, and on the other, she is a real woman made of flesh and blood.Venus of Urbino by Titian, 1576. Source: Uffizi Gallery, FlorencePauline Bonaparte got what she wantedher daring statue became the talk of Europe. For a few years in a row, people gathered just to see the shimmering, moving statue barely illuminated behind the curtains.But soon, their lives would change dramatically, as well as the life of the statue, which would switch locations several times before finally settling in.Paulines health had been in steady decline since the death of her only son in 1804, prompting her to travel to various spas in search of relief. In 1814, Napoleons downfall led to his exile in Elba, marking the collapse of her life as an imperial princess. Pauline sold her assets and moved to Elba to join her brother until his opportunistic escape and return to France in February 1815. Meanwhile, her husband revealed a longstanding affair and chose to live separately from her. After ten long years, the couple were briefly united for three months before Pauline passed away from cancer in 1825.As for Venus Victrix, she was transferred to Camillos residence in Turin, then later moved to Genoa. She returned to Rome in 1838, where she can still be admired by visitors in the halls of the Galleria Borghese.

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