Difficulties arose for the settlers as it was discovered that few Pacific languages use possessive pronouns, instead denoting ownership through activity, thus he who carves a canoe owns it (11). The early settlers had not made sufficient enough effort to learn local languages in order to be able to understand the sophisticated unwritten local ownership systems, thus imposed formal state-controlled European ownership.

Unlike the Tahitians, who had a clear hierarchical social structure that the British could relate to, the indigenous people of Australia were nomadic, and had no real concept of ownership. Instead, they cultivated a symbiotic relationship with their surroundings, living off the land and replanting what they had used. This allowed the convict settlers to infringe upon Aboriginal hunting and fishing grounds, later stealing possessions from the Aboriginal people and claiming land freely, creating huge resentment among the Aboriginals. The settling of land happened on a large scale, as the British convicts had come from a society where land ownership was dominated by gentry, thus rushed to take estates where they were available in Australia, as they associated land ownership with belonging to an upper social class. Reprisal attacks thus began on European settlers venturing into the bush to cut rushes. (12). Faced with mounting pressure to quash this indigenous resistance, Governor Phillip set about instead to capture a few Aboriginal men in order to better understand their culture, and end the violence. From this directive came the story of Bennelong, now one of the most famous names in Australian history. Born in about 1764, Bennelong was about 24 when the First Fleet arrived to create the first convict colony in Sydney Cove in January 1788, and lived to see the significant damage done to his people in the early phases of colonial presence. In mid-1789, a wave of smallpox swept the indigenous population, killing, Bennelong estimated, about 50% of them, including his first wife, and Arabanoo, the f