The integrity of Australian history demands truth-telling and our shrine to the military should lead the way

The Australian War Memorial’s decision to more fully chronicle the frontier wars between First Nations resistance fighters, colonial troops, police and militias is a welcome progression from an institution that for decades has obstinately defied the bloody truth of Australia’s foundation history.

The noble mandate of the memorial, this country’s most revered and politically protected national institution, is to “assist Australians to remember, interpret and understand the Australian experience of war and its enduring impact on Australian society”. But under a succession of memorial directors the AWM has resisted meaningfully depicting the wars for this very continent – those of violent dispossession and ongoing oppression of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people upon which the Australian colonies, their wealth and finally the federation were constructed.

‘The problem you see’, the Memorial explains, shrugging its institutional shoulders, ‘was that frontier clashes involved British soldiers, or police, or armed settlers. None were members of military units raised in Australia. What can we do … besides display an abstract painting alluding to frontier violence?’

Two problems. First, members of the Mounted Police, a British military unit raised in Sydney in 1825 did conduct ‘campaigns’ against Indigenous resistance. So, one of the Memorial’s responses is and always has been wrong historically.

Second, the Memorial’s evasive response relies on a ridiculously legalistic definition of war. We now know . . . that conflict accompanied European settlement. Those ‘warlike operations’ made possible the creation of this nation, perhaps Australia’s most costly conflict. How can an institution intended to commemorate ‘wars and warlike operations’ evade that reality? Because of a definition in the Act? . . . Here’s an idea: change it! Every parliament amends dozens [of acts]. We need to change the Memorial’s legislation to make it accord with the reality of Australia’s history.”

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