Canberra Times, May 29 2026 - 5:30am ; also published in hard copy Canberra Times, 30 May 2026.
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One-hundred-thousand Australians died in our overseas wars and are rightly commemorated on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial.
Perhaps as many First Nations Australians died in the Australian wars after 1788. They receive almost no recognition in the Memorial, which some Australians regard as our most sacred place. (We don't know exactly how many First Nations people died because bodies were burned or buried, bones scattered, and records lost or destroyed.)
Much of the reason for that injustice lies in more than two centuries of the dominant white, Anglo-Celtic Australian culture treating First Nations people as less than human.
Reconciliation Australia's website says that First Nations people "have experienced a long history of exclusion from Australian history books, the Australian flag, the Australian anthem and for many years, Australian democracy. This history of dispossession and colonisation lies at the heart of the disparity between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and other Australians today."
The Australian Wars meant not just the dispossession of First Nations people, but continuing state-sanctioned violence towards them, followed by the "great Australian silence", where most white Australians tried to forget what had happened. Dehumanising the people being dispossessed made that dispossession easier - for the dispossessors.
After the Boorloo/Perth attempted atrocity in January, First Nations advocate and writer Thomas Mayo wrote "my people are the furthest from the reach of people's empathy. We are the furthest from experiencing equality. We are the first to be arrested and tossed into jail, and we remain not fully human in so many minds."
The dozens of massacres and episodes of First Nations resistance against dispossession are just as much part of Australia's war history as are Gallipoli, Kokoda, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Yet most white Australians know little about the Australian Wars, the wars fought here, on our own continent.
The Australian War Memorial and our other memorials and shrines do not place an equal value on sacrifice for one's country (Australia) and one's Country within Australia (Arrernte, Noongar, Wiradjuri, and others). Anzac Day, our defacto national day, pays no regard to the people who died in the Australian Wars, which, as historian Henry Reynolds writes, "determined the ownership and the control, the sovereignty of a whole continent".
We, black and white, could make real progress if we stopped distinguishing between uniformed Australians who fought and died in our overseas wars and First Nations Australians who defended their Country on their Country. Both died defending their country: why valourise whites in uniform but disregard blacks without uniform?
Broadening the focus of Australian war commemoration to include First Nations (and indeed all) deaths in the Australian Wars would give those deaths a status, a respect they have not previously had. It would help to counter decades - centuries - of systemic racism.
Changing how Australia commemorates means equality of respect. A continuing failure to act is a denial that Australia is the land of the fair go.
We need to stop judging the worth of war service and sacrifice by whether the combatants were wearing a uniform, or who they were fighting, or how they fought and with what weapons. We need to look instead at what they were fighting for - for their country Australia or for their Country within Australia.
Colonisation, dehumanisation, dispossession and exclusion add up to systemic racism. Conversely, says Reconciliation Australia, "including recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in events, meetings and national symbols contributes to ending the exclusion that has been so damaging".
Having a War Memorial and an Anzac Day that includes First Nations deaths in the Australian Wars, that treats them as equal to deaths in uniform, would make Australia a less racist country.
The story of the Australians who fought and died in the Australian Wars is at least as important as that of the Australians who died or fought in our overseas wars. Anzac Day and our commemoration need to encompass all our wars. The Australian War Memorial, an iconic national site and symbol, does not properly deserve that name until it gives proper recognition and remembrance to the Australian Wars.
- Professor Peter Stanley is president and Dr David Stephens treasurer of Defending Country Memorial Project Inc., which has lodged a submission with the current Parliamentary inquiry into racism against First Nations Australians.
We welcome a response from the Memorial and will publish it without amendment, taking account of our Moderation Policy.
Thomas Mayo and Henry Reynolds, mentioned above, are among Defending Country's distinguished Patrons and Supporters.
Picture credit: Conflict on the Rufus, South Australia [1866]: Samuel Calvert, engraver, from a sketch by WA Cawthorne, State Library of Victoria: PCINF; IMP 27-07-66 P.308. The so-called Rufus River Massacre was in 1841. It actually included fierce resistance by First Nations people. It is the sort of event that would be covered by a War Memorial firmly and bravely presenting the Australian Wars. Discussion of Rufus River by Amanda Nettlebeck, Journal of Australian Studies, 1999.
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