Ever since SBS/NITV first ran Rachel Perkins' explosive documentary, The Australian Wars (2022), the view of Australia's Black and White past has been different - that is, for those who have cared to look.
Now, Rachel Perkins, Stephen Gapps, Mina Murray, and Henry Reynolds, editors, offer the book The Australian Wars with the sub-title 'The truth about the bloody battles fought to establish a nation'. The book is due out in November from Allen & Unwin and can be pre-ordered at the above link.
From the blurb:
For the first time, The Australian Wars brings what for too long has been considered the historical past into connection with its reverberations in the present. It is estimated up to 100,000 people died in the frontier wars that raged across Australia for more than 150 years. This is equivalent to the combined total of all Australians killed in foreign battles to date. But there are few memorials marking these first, domestic wars.
The pre-publication publicity includes remarks from authors Kate Grenville, Don Watson, and Tim Winton, former Coalition Ministers, David Kemp and Ken Wyatt, and, significantly, former Defence Minister and Opposition Leader - and current Chair of the Council of the Australian War Memorial - Kim Beazley, who said this:
There was a fight for this country and in many places an intense one where the colonials were held at bay. This book has the best of contemporary research. It will ensure that the original people of this nation are not denied the dignity of their resistance and the truth telling has the edge it should.
Editor Henry Reynolds is one of Defending Country's distinguished Patrons. For work by Stephen Gapps and references to Kim Beazley and Rachel Perkins, use our Search engine. Rachel Perkins has been closely involved with the Culture is Life program for schools, using The Australian Wars documentary and other sources.
Finally, though we don't know for sure, we understand that then War Memorial Council Chair Brendan Nelson's showing of the rushes of the documentary to the Council at its August 2022 meeting gave a push to the case for proper recognition and commemoration of 'frontier conflict' at the Memorial - at least for some of the then members. The path has not been smooth since.
Perhaps, three years on, there is real change coming. This book will help greatly; those responsible for it deserve praise. As a fellow traveller, Defending Country wishes the book, and its authors and editors, all the very best.
Picture credit: detail of book cover
