Anzac Day is shortly upon us. Each year I try to put time aside as the sun rises to remember those who volunteered to defend this country in past wars and the many who have died and the many others who have suffered as a result of those wars. I particularly remember my father who served in Papua New Guinea. He had taken up a senior medical role in St Vincent’s hospital but, like many other Australians, volunteered to serve his country and help those injured in the war. At the age of thirty-one he and his younger brothers, one also a doctor, joined up and the two young doctors served in the Australian Air Force.
As I grew up my father did not talk much about the war but I sensed it had a deep effect on him. He returned from Papua New Guinea and had to make some important work choices. He could have returned to hospital work as a physician or moved into private practice. Instead, he chose to enter general practice and, in the more than thirty years that followed, committed himself to a day each week to work with the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service in addition to attending his general practice. Helping those injured in war. He had witnessed at first hand the short and long-term effects that war has on the living wounded.
While all wars have their short and long-term effects, they leave behind the living wounded, often in greater number than those who have died. We might wonder what suffering the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East will leave behind when they at last they cease, either from some sort of negotiation or settlement for peace or the result of one side giving up being simply broken and exhausted.
As we witness those wars that continue to rage, we might wonder, this Anzac Day, what were the effects on our First Nations people when their lands were first taken? We can now see only too clearly that it is difficult, if not impossible in the longer term, to defend one’s land when the invader has more powerful resources and shows no intention of negotiating peace. We can also sense the helplessness that some must feel when they find they cannot defend their family and where women and children can be killed quickly by silent drones or die slowly when access to food, water and health care is denied.
In our Australian context, what we now know and increasingly have come to know in recent years, is that from Tasmania to North Queensland, from the Blue Mountains of NSW to the Kimberley of WA there were no negotiated agreements or treaties with any Aboriginal groups of people. Instead, there were many frontier wars where innocent First Nations people were killed as they sought to defend and survive on the only land they could call home. Not just a physical home but one that provided an essential resource of food and spiritual nourishment.
At that time there was no understanding by the invading settlers how Aboriginal people lived in a daily relationship with their ‘country’ and, unlike those who came from overseas, could not simply pack up and move to live somewhere else. There was no understanding of the deep interconnection between what desert people often name as ngurra (land), walytja (family) and tjukurrpa (spirituality).
Last year’s Anzac Day I was listening to the early dawn service in Melbourne and heard the Victorian Governor say something I had never heard before from a representative of the Crown. She began with an acknowledgement of the Traditional Custodians of this place of Melbourne and then added something more, much more. She acknowledged that we were standing on their lands. They had never been formally handed over to the British Sovereign. They were unceded.
I was not quite sure if I had heard it right, so later I went back to the actual recording and there it was: “We gather here today on the unceded lands of the Bunerong, Boorwurrung peoples of the eastern Kulin nation …”. You won’t read these words on the Governor’s website but they were recorded and are the ones she used and all who were listening heard.
Later that day I managed to join some friends at the MCG for the traditional game between Collingwood and Essendon (I confess to being an Essendon supporter). Close to 100,000 people were there that day. And when it came time to stand and acknowledge those who had died in past wars there was not a single word or sound to be heard. We stood together and paid attention to the many Australians we have lost in past wars. It was a brief and moving experience, Australians standing together in shared silence. And then those words of the Governor uttered earlier that day took on a greater importance. We were also remembering our frontier wars and those who had died defending this land, the land of my birth but also one that had never been rightfully handed over or negotiated.
As Australians we are gradually learning to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians or Caretakers of each part of this vast land. It can take an effort to find the right words to link our present lives with those of our ancient peoples. We might even use the names they used before white settlement. But to acknowledge that people died on this land and no treaties or agreements were ever made are important truths of our history and with so many consequences for the generations of First Nations people and the settlers who followed.
This year, on Anzac Day, I will stand for the Governor of my State of Victoria for her courage to speak the truth of this unceded land. I will stand in memory of my father, his younger brother and all those throughout the world in the past and today who risk their lives caring for the living wounded. I will stand for all those who have died defending this land since 1788.
Brian McCoy is an Australian Jesuit who has spent many years across much of north Australia with First Nations people. His doctoral research focussed on the health of Aboriginal men in the south-east Kimberley. He is the author of numerous papers and publications.
PICTURED: Dawn Service at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. Photo by Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images.