Anzac month always has a special flavour in the media, emanating from PR folks, corporate spokespersons, and media outlets hoping for a new angle. This past weekend we saw a piece from Peter Rowe in First Nations News, which included input from the Australian War Memorial's Indigenous Liaison Officer, Michael Bell (Ngunnawal/Gomeroi):
The Prince [Harry] spent an hour in conversation with Indigenous veterans, discussing their experiences and the relationship between Aboriginal identity and military service. Mr Bell said the visit could help deepen understanding of Indigenous contributions to Australia’s defence forces. “Hopefully the veterans will enhance Harry’s knowledge about the impact of Aboriginality, Aboriginal service, and also defending country,” he said.
We added the emphasis and we'll try to find out how much the Prince heard about the Australian Wars.
Then there were AAP stringers Lloyd Jones and John Kidman, picked up by the Canberra Times, First Nations News, and National Indigenous Times. They quoted one of Defending Country's distinguished Supporters, Ghillar Michael Anderson, who said the Australian Wars were about people dying on their land in defence of their own Country. 'Land tenure changed after all that, as if the Aborigines never existed.' He wants the Australian Wars featured at the Memorial but says it only recognises wars in which people wore uniforms.
The AAP piece carried incomplete reporting of the Memorial's space allocation plans for the Australian Wars. They will be covered in just 1 per cent of total gallery space and that to be shared with the Australian contingents sent to the New Zealand Wars 1840-60 and the Sudan 1885.
Sunday's Canberra Times had a photo spread on the Memorial's Big Build, which looked rather like SBS's current documentary, 'A New Anzac', filmed over a number of years as the Big Build proceeds. Two episodes down and we've been looking out for mentions of the Australian Wars, few and far between so far but let's wait till the end.
Finally, there was Peter FitzSimons's interview in Nine Newspapers with Memorial Director, Matt Anderson ('MA' in the quotes below). FitzSimons said that, as a member of the Memorial Council around 2015, he had proposed recognising Indigenous warriors as the first Australian soldiers and had received just one vote in support. What did the Director think?
MA: Well, they were certainly the first “battles for Australia” – I think that’s the way I would put it – Australia’s wars, the first wars included the resistance that they put up against the colonisers. So there’s absolutely a place, and there will be a place in the new gallery for the recognition of frontier wars at the Australian War Memorial. Because, you know, it was warfare, it was guerrilla warfare and they should be given the dignity of people understanding that they formed war councils, that they actually fought a war of manoeuvre. They were outgunned, they were outmanned, but they still resisted, and they resisted in war-like ways, and that’s the story that will be told in the galleries.
Given what we said above about the Memorial's space allocation plans, there is a question of how big a 'place' the Director has in mind. On the other hand, he seems now to understand the nature of the Australian Wars, perhaps from authors like Henry Reynolds, Stephen Gapps and Ray Kerkhove. (Reynolds is one of Defending Country's Patrons, Gapps one of our Supporters, and we have featured Kerkhove's writing.)
FitzSimons asked about the Memorial's intentions on repatriation of First Nations artefacts.
MA: [In calming tone.] Well, you’ve identified something, but I think let’s just do baby steps. Let’s just make sure we begin by having a conversation with those communities involved in this frontier violence, and we can ask them what they would like to see on display and the stories they would seek to have told through the display of those objects. I’ll start that. That will be the process that we go through, and let’s see where it goes.
'Baby steps!' Two centuries and more after the Australian Wars began, 40 years after historians from Geoffrey Blainey on called for the Memorial to properly recognise and commemorate the Australian Wars, the Director is still talking about 'baby steps'. Really?
What is clear is that the Director’s promises are - and have been for ages, as Defending Country posts have shown again and again - vague about how much recognition there is to be. Council Chair Beazley said many times that there should be substantial coverage in a separate section of the Memorial, and portraying the dignity of resistance. The Director picked up only the last leg of that trifecta.
Defending Country President, Professor Peter Stanley, asked in his Wilks Oration last Friday in Adelaide, 'Where else should the dead of the Australian Wars be remembered but in the Australian War Memorial?’ It is time for the Memorial to specify, firmly and bravely, precisely and without dissembling, how much space it will devote to the Australian Wars. Until then it is impossible to understand how serious the Memorial - the Council Chair, the Director, the Council, Memorial staff - is about Australian Wars recognition.
Finally, the 'conversation' the Director anticipates needs to be with whitefellers as well as blackfellers. As Prime Minister Keating said at Redfern in 1992, 'We [that is, whitefellers] committed the murders'. The Australian Wars are whitefellers' business just as much as blackfellers'.
Picture credits: Captain (later Rear Admiral Sir) Leighton Bracegirdle DSO RAN, c. 1932 (AWM). Bracegirdle’s military career began in 1898 and he served on the Board of the War Memorial from 1938 to 1962. He would not feel uncomfortable in today's Memorial.
We welcome a response from the Memorial and, as is our practice, will publish it without amendment, taking account of our Moderation Policy.
FitzSimons also asked Director Anderson about the Memorial's future treatment of Ben Roberts-Smith. We'll do more on that shortly on our sister site, Honest History.
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