Words matter. Like any bureaucratic entity, the Australian War Memorial produces lots of words, though their meaning is not always crystal clear. There can be deliberate ambiguity (reflecting the splits on the Memorial’s governing Council) as well as clumsy prose (due to haste or carelessness).*
Here are some words from the Memorial Council decision of 19 August 2022:
It was agreed that Frontier Violence perpetrated against Aboriginal Australians would, as in the previous Colonial Galleries, continue to be presented in the new Pre-1914 galleries.
It would provide a broader and deeper depiction and presentation of the violence perpetrated against Indigenous Australians.
Wherever possible it would relate to and inform, subsequent Indigenous military service to Australia, providing a context for that service.
That third sentence is of particular interest. What does it mean?
A partial answer lies in an Estimates hearing on 31 May 2023 of the Senate Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee, where Senator Canavan (LNP, Qld) quoted the (probably leaked) Minutes of the Council decision. Responding, Memorial Director Anderson used Private William Punch – Wiradjuri man, infant survivor of the Bland River massacre, wounded in battle and died of illness, 1917 – as an example of that link in the decision between ‘violence perpetrated against Indigenous Australians’ and ‘subsequent Indigenous military service’.
He could have used Douglas Grant (Poppin Jerri) – victim of frontier violence, served and wounded in World War I – as another example. (There is some doubt whether Grant’s family members were killed by the Queensland Native Police or died in intertribal conflict.)
Beyond Punch and Grant, we don’t know of any other individuals with the same ‘violence-service’ link. Perhaps there are some others and perhaps the Memorial will identify them.
There is a broader question, though: is the ‘wherever possible’ test applicable only to individual frontier violence cases like Punch and Grant or does it allow us to make a link between the frontier violence that occurred across Australia and mass later service by Indigenous Australians?
That leads to further questions:
Does a search for individual cases like Punch and Grant drive the Memorial away from considering systemic frontier violence?
Will the Memorial need to find ‘violence-service’ Punch/Grant style victims of an outbreak of frontier conflict before it decides to depict that outbreak?
How is ‘outbreak’ defined? For example, will the complete Frontier Wars in Queensland remain unexamined until a ‘violence-service’ individual appears or will finding such an individual pave the way at least to an exhibit on the specific incident where the family tragedy occurred – Butchers Creek in Grant’s case?
The above approach would deliver very few actual depictions, given there are likely to be very few cases like Punch and Grant where a survivor of violence went on to serve in uniform.
There is another possibility, though. It is best introduced through the words of the Memorial’s former Director and later Council Chair, Brendan Nelson. He used such words often:
Only 4 or 5 generations after the arrival of the British First Fleet, having endured discrimination, brutal social exclusion, and violence, many Indigenous Australians denied their Aboriginality and kinship to enlist, serve, fight, suffer, and die for the young nation that had taken so much from them.
In this view, frontier violence is part of our history. Indigenous people donned the King’s or Queen’s uniform despite their experience of frontier violence. ‘Wherever possible’, interpreted this way, would not be restrictive at all.
So, in untangling the decision of August 2022 and parsing the words ‘Wherever possible’, we are left with a choice. On the one hand, the Memorial would depict very few instances of frontier violence affecting specific Indigenous soldiers. On the other hand, it would depict all frontier violence because that violence was part of the history of Australia, including for Indigenous soldiers, who served despite it. (See the Appendix below for more evidence related to this choice.)
Either way, the August 2022 decision is ambiguous, prevaricating, dissembling. It should be rescinded and replaced with a decision that reflects the early statements of Council Chair, Kim Beazley, that proper recognition and commemoration of the Australian Wars should be substantial, in a separate section of the Memorial, and portray the dignity of resistance.
Words matter. They matter most in institutions like the Australian War Memorial, which claim a special place in our history. Waffle like the August 2022 decision has no place in the Memorial.
*Spokespersons for the Memorial quote the 19 August 2022 decision as Memorial policy, though on at least one occasion they dated it September 2022. Haste or carelessness?
Related posts: ‘The War Memorial's Corporate and Strategic Plans (Part 2: Don't mention the war)’; ‘War Memorial reply on the Australian Wars: misleading stonewalling’; ‘War Memorial’s ignorance of Frontier Wars must end’; ‘The last chance for the War Memorial on Frontier Wars, says Defending Country Patron, Professor Henry Reynolds’ and earlier items under ‘News’.
Appendix: Our previous posts disclose some more evidence
(added 27 September 2024)
First, there is the remark of Director Anderson in 2021, interviewed by Rachel Perkins for her documentary The Australian Wars: ‘What we seek to do is to tell the story of frontier violence in the way in which it affected the men and the women who joined the Australian Imperial Forces and went away’ (The Australian Wars, episode 3, mark 57.00).
So, being affected by the Australian (Frontier) Wars is seen as a factor in a decision to enlist. We are asked to imagine a First Nations individual considering whether, say, the death of their family in a massacre would dissuade them from donning the King’s or Queen’s uniform, while other factors (joining mates, security of employment, love of country) pushed them towards enlisting. ‘They killed my family and tried to kill me, but I will still fight for them.’
Secondly, we have put some context around the Director’s words in May 2023 about Private William Punch (quoted in the post above):
Private William Punch is one person that we actually have in our galleries, in the First World War galleries. He is identified as a survivor of frontier violence – the sole survivor of frontier violence. Subsequent to that, he joined the first AIF – he joined the 1st Battalion of the first AIF. He served, he suffered and he died in the First World War and was buried with full military honours in the First World War. I think that's what we mean by saying that we can speak both to the nature of frontier violence and to the nature of how some of those who were subjected to it still went on to serve in the Australian Imperial Forces.
What does this evidence suggest? The main takeaway is that the Memorial is more interested in uniformed service for Australia’s overseas wars than in the Australian (Frontier) Wars. Whether a man or woman or their family had survived a massacre is mostly seen as a factor in their decision whether or not to fight for Australia.
With that mindset, the Memorial will be more interested in finding more William Punchs and Douglas Grants than in recognising and commemorating the Australian Wars. Indigenous uniformed service is once again a ‘figleaf’ for avoiding consideration of the Australian Wars.
Look again at what Director Anderson said to Rachel Perkins: ‘What we seek to do is to tell the story of frontier violence in the way in which it affected the men and the women who joined the Australian Imperial Forces and went away’ (emphasis added). Or, as we said in an earlier post on how the Memorial Council came to its crucial decision of 19 August 2022: ‘It [the Council] was trying to confine the Memorial to depicting men and women who had gone on from being frontier violence victims to serving in the King’s or Queen’s uniform’. The Memorial’s interest in the Australian Wars does not yet extend to how these wars laid the foundations of today’s Australia.
Picture credit: Inauguration of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Anzac Day, 1929 (AWM ART09852/Louis McCubbin)
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