The NAIDOC Week National Awards night this year made much of the 2024 slogan and poster: Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud. The implication of that slogan was that last year's disappointing Referendum result was not the end of the road.
NAIDOC Week was 7-14 July. At the Australian War Memorial, the NAIDOC slogan appeared on the Memorial's website, but there was very little new beneath it. This was a surprise, when Minister Keogh's imaginative call for Expressions of Interest for positions on the Memorial Council, and the subsequent change in Council membership, had raised hopes for change at the Memorial on the Australian (Frontier) Wars.
After a confused and confusing couple of years, the Memorial could have used NAIDOC Week to say clearly how it intends to properly recognise and commemorate the Australian Wars. Here are three statements it could have built on:
Minister for Veterans Affairs, Matt Keogh, said last month: 'The new appointments [to the Memorial Council] will bring a fresh perspective to the Council and ensure the Memorial continues to adapt and reach contemporary audiences'. That sounds like a hint that the Memorial should do things differently, including on the Frontier Wars.
Memorial Council Chair, Kim Beazley, said in April 2023 that having the Australian Wars dealt with at the Memorial would be 'an important part of truth-telling for the country as a whole'. Truth-telling; straight from the vocabulary of the Voice.
Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, said in 2022 the Labor government was committed to Truth-telling about Australian colonial history 'and a failure to see that reflected in this key institution [the Memorial] would be jarringly out of step with this new phase of national reckoning'. The defeat of the Referendum does not reduce the need for Truth-telling; it magnifies that need.
Suggested next steps are here, but, meanwhile, let's compare the above remarks with what the Memorial put up under the NAIDOC Week heading. First, it acknowledged that 'First Nations people have occupied and cared for this continent for over 65,000 years and invites all Australians to embrace the ancient history of this country'. Good start.
Then we have: 'Compiled on this webpage are just some of the stories from the Memorial that recognise, celebrate and commemorate the history and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.' Again, good.
But the next sentence narrows the focus: 'As part of NAIDOC Week, the Australian War Memorial is sharing stories of the service of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on Facebook, Linked In, Instagram and Twitter' (emphasis added). The message is clear in that word 'service': this is just about First Nations people donning the King's or Queen's uniform.
Over what period? The introductory sentence to the Indigenous Service section of the page nails it down: 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have served in every conflict and commitment involving Australian defence contingents since Federation, including both world wars and the intervals of peace since the Second World War' (emphasis added).
So, nothing before 1901, though one page down on the site we read 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a long tradition of fighting for Country, and continue to serve with honour among our military forces' (emphasis added). We sidle past that coded reference to the Frontier Wars, however, going on to packages on the Boer War, Indigenous Service in Peace and War, Service List, Tell Us Your Story, Collection Highlights, Stories of Service, Classroom Resources, Commemoration, Art, Photographs, Film, and Sound.
The sharp focus throughout is on Indigenous service in the King's or Queen's uniform although, under Indigenous Service in Peace and War, there is a passing reference to 'the brutal (often violent) process by which Indigenous people were dispossessed of their traditional lands – often referred to as the “Frontier War”'.
Stories of Service includes links to 71 items on the Memorial's website, posted since 2017. We are told the aim is 'putting the Indigenous face onto the Anzac legend'. References to the Frontier Wars are, again, coded or in passing. The Ken Colbung story mentions his resistance warrior ancestor, Yagan. The FR Archibald story says 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a long-standing tradition of fighting for Country' then confines the coverage to 'since Federation'. 'The Fighting Gunditjmara' quotes Reg Saunders on the Eumeralla War: 'I would have fought the war my forefathers fought because I think we were right'. The item on the unveiling of the 'For Our Country' sculpture notes that 'tens of thousands of Indigenous Australian people have been killed in Frontier Wars'.
The 71 stories stress a limited range of themes. They include many examples of returning Indigenous soldiers being denied citizenship, Soldier Settlement blocks or drinks in pubs. There are, however, no references that we could see to their ancestors being given poisoned flour or water, or murdered as children. There are no details of dispossession, none of massacres or resistance. There should be.
We should applaud the Memorial's work to identify the thousands of First Nations people who served in Australia's defence forces, despite the difficulties these people faced, in enlisting, during service and afterwards. We should, however, stop using the argument that First Nations uniformed service is more admirable because it happened despite the depredations inflicted on First Nations people during colonisation.
There is an example of that argument here, with then Memorial Director, Brendan Nelson, talking about the Memorial's display of the Queenie McKenzie painting 'Horso Creek killings': 'Their determination to serve and fight for Australia, only four or five generations after the First Fleet arrived, existed despite the history of dispossession and violence perpetrated against them'.
Some non-Indigenous Australians would respond to that argument along the lines that, if blackfellers still fought in uniform for Australia despite everything that whitefeller Australians did to them, why should we whitefellers care about what we did to blackfellers?
With the refreshing of the Memorial Council, it surely is not a big step for the Memorial to move on from acknowledging Indigenous service in uniform to acknowledging Indigenous men who fought and died in the Frontier Wars, often along with their women and children.
The common thread is Defending Country. Defending Country applies to all who have fought for Australia or parts of it. It applies just as much to First Australians, defending their Country on Country (and dying on Country), as it does to uniformed Australians fighting our overseas wars.
How far have we really come? Here's Peter Stanley ten years ago on NAIDOC and the Australian Wars: Defending Country President, Professor Peter Stanley, spoke at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra for NAIDOC 2014:
We need to explicitly reject interpretations of Indigenous involvement in the defence of Australia that begin only in 1914. The honest acknowledgement of what happened in our history is the only basis we have for reaching a true and just reconciliation.
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