Two new FAQs for our website: Defending Country unites; interesting individuals don't cut it

We have put together a number of FAQs to explain what Defending Country is about. The original list of FAQs. Here are two new ones:

How can Defending Country help unite Australia?

Defending Country is the common thread between First Nations people in the Australian (Frontier) Wars and, on the other hand, Australians in our defence forces fighting in our overseas wars.

Defending Country applies to all who have fought for Australia or parts of it. It applies just as much to First Australians (Arrernte, Noongar, Wiradjuri, and others), defending their Country on Country (and dying on Country), as it does to uniformed Australians fighting our overseas wars.

Defending Country is the theme that binds together:

• First Nations warriors who resisted settler-invader, police and military power;
• First Nations women, children and old folk who died with their men or suffered massacre, rape and poisoning;
• men and women in the country’s uniform (including Indigenous service people) sent overseas to fight for King and Empire, for Australia, or ‘to defend our values’.

Defending Country is a force for unity. It means that we recognise in the same way those who have suffered the same effects for the same cause – Defending Country.

Why is comprehensive coverage of the Frontier Wars preferable to a stress on individuals and individual battle grounds?

Focussing on interesting individuals (like William Punch, frontier violence victim who later joined the 1st AIF) or notable individual massacres (Myall Creek, Coniston) or resistance (Bathurst War, Eumeralla Wars) diverts attention from the overwhelming scale of frontier conflict and its lasting impacts on First Nations people and on all Australians.

This was Australia’s most important war, no less important than the world wars. It was our very first war and the only war fought entirely on this continent. The Australian Wars deserve a high profile at the Australian War Memorial.

The Memorial’s treatment of the Australian Wars should not just be a series of special displays, divorced from context and succeeding each other at irregular intervals, while the overall significance of the conflict is glossed over. Nor should it be a few website pages buried in a War Memorial website devoted overwhelmingly to our overseas wars.

Frontier conflict is fundamental to the Australian story. It is not a curiosity, not an anomaly.

‍The original list of FAQs: 

1. What were the Australian Frontier Wars?
2. Why should the Australian Frontier Wars be properly recognised and commemorated at the Australian War Memorial?
3. What is meant by properly recognising and commemorating the Frontier Wars at the Memorial?
4. What mechanisms would ensure the Frontier Wars are properly recognised and commemorated at the Memorial?
5. Will having a Frontier Wars Gallery at the Memorial be sufficient to properly recognise and commemorate the Frontier Wars?
6. Will the redeveloped Memorial have enough space to properly recognise and commemorate the Frontier Wars?
7. Why should we move now to ensure that the Frontier Wars are properly recognised and commemorated at the Memorial?
8. Why should the Frontier Wars be properly recognised and commemorated at the Memorial rather than in some other institution?
9. What do First Nations people think about having the Frontier Wars properly recognised and commemorated at the Memorial?
10. What do non-Indigenous Australians think about having the Frontier Wars properly recognised and commemorated at the Memorial?
11. How will proper recognition and commemoration of the Frontier Wars at the Memorial affect Anzac Day and other commemorative days?
12. How is this not just trying to rewrite history?
13. How is it possible to change what the War Memorial stands for?
14. How can you call frontier violence ‘war’ when it wasn't declared and wasn’t fought by armies wearing uniforms?