Individuals can change their minds. One recent example was senior Canberra Times journalist, David Ellery. On 22 September, he wrote an essay, 'I was indoctrinated from a young age. But I have changed my mind on "frontier wars"'. It included these paragraphs:
Having been born at the tail end of the baby boom, it was inevitable I would grow up heavily indoctrinated in the white-armband view of Australian history.
I, and an entire generation, were force-fed an ideology that borrowed heavily from the American concept of "manifest destiny" and dismissed the 60,000 years before 1770 as a footnote. It is no wonder so many Anglo Australians of my vintage are triggered when the frontier wars are brought up or some brave soul argues for their recognition in the Australian War Memorial.
Ellery's generation (also mine) knew about courageous explorers and colonists and Captain Cook but not the Myall Creek massacre. Now, they have to consider the new evidence that Australia's pre-1788 population was more than double previous estimates, and thus that First Nations deaths since settlement have been much greater than thought, perhaps more than 100,000.
The consensus on the conservative right is that because the army was not involved on the European side and that the Indigenous resistance did not meet their OED definition of a military force this was not a war - regardless of the body count ...
But from the other end of the spear, the intent was very different. From the Indigenous perspective the purpose of the violence was the erasure of their sovereignty, their way of life and their survival. They were fighting for the right to exist. The only accurate word for that reality is "war".
While there is an argument that the legislation that established the Australian War Memorial does not allow for more than token recognition of those who fell in the frontier wars, there is a simple fix for that. Legislation can be amended.
Then, on 24 September, after a favourable reception for his first piece, Ellery followed up with 'The invasion of the body snatchers: a history darker than any fiction'. More than 50 readers had responded to his first article and
they had come to learn about the massacres, brutality and settler-inflicted violence as adults and now acknowledge the conflict was widespread, that Indigenous deaths [from violence and disease] numbered in the millions and that this chapter in our history needs to be acknowledged.
Where are the bodies though? Our harsh climate turns unburied corpses to dust, and there were lots of corpses.
Another [reason for the lack of bodies] is that after the Myall Creek trials and executions perpetrators of settler violence realised leaving bodies behind could lead to the gallows. It was not uncommon for the bodies of victims to be cremated on massive wood pyres and for any large bones that survived to be crushed and thrown into rivers.
As well, museums and universities around the globe hold the remains of tens of thousands more First Australians. Repatriation has been slow.
Changes of opinion like David Ellery's do not occur by chance. They follow the discovery and processing of new evidence, like the estimate of pre-1788 population. Which, in turn, depends on a willingness to recognise that evidence.
'History means interpretation', as EH Carr said. It is never immune from rewriting; it changes as new evidence emerges and new interpretations are made. The discipline of history is a contest between interpretations.
This is not just something that individuals experience. Masses of people can go through the same change. We are seeing something of that in Australians' experience of their own history, particularly the Australian Wars. The Defending Country website has set out some of that evidence and our rationale as a group has been to encourage the Australian War Memorial to properly recognise and commemorate this conflict.
Change follows awareness and knowledge. On the other hand, there is the old and true saying, 'none so blind as those who will not see'.
Picture credit: The foundation of the Australian War Memorial was laid in 1929. Australian War Memorial
