As Anzac Day draws near, we prepare to celebrate the 102,000 Australian men and women who lost their lives in defence of their country. Anzac Day commemorations tend to neglect the history of the many Indigenous Australians who also died in defence of their land.
Until the 1970s, a myth dominated Australian history that the continent was settled peacefully. Then research of the historical record inspired by Australian anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner brought that fiction to an end.
The Frontier Wars raged across the continent for 140 years. Historians generally regard the wars to have ended in 1928 with the killing of 31 Warlpiri people by a police punitive party at Coniston in the Northern Territory.
In 1979, distinguished Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey proposed that the Australia War Museum (AWM) commemorate the Frontier Wars. The idea has been raised a number of times since by historians including Henry Reynolds, but the AWM steadfastly refuses to consider the matter.
This is a moral issue — it is incumbent on non-Indigenous Australians to own our past and accept that our British antecedents perpetrated wrongs against Australia's Indigenous peoples.
War memorials honour the fallen in battle and celebrate sacrifice and valour in war. They are central to our national identity. We should commemorate Indigenous people who fell fighting British invaders on their lands.
A number of Australian historians have proposed that the AWM erect a memorial to Indigenous Frontier War dead alongside existing sculptures commemorating Australian war dead that line Anzac Avenue in Canberra leading to the War Memorial.
The War Memorial Council says frontier conflict falls outside its charter, a claim that is disputed by historians and military academics. The Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) also rejects the proposal.
The Frontier Wars began in 1790 when Bidgigal resistance hero Pemulwuy killed Governor Phillip's convict gamekeeper for his abuse of Aboriginal women. In response, Phillip ordered a punitive expedition to bring back any six Bidgigal or their heads. Though the expedition failed, Phillip's order foreshadowed countless such wanton reprisals against Indigenous people for the next 140 years.
Pemulwuy was said to be at the head of every raid on settler farms. In October 1802, two settlers shot and killed him. Pemulwuy had led his peoples' struggle against the invaders for 12 years.
In 1795 in the Hawkesbury-Nepean area, Dharug people began to raid farms, and there were a number of deaths on both sides. In response, Governor Macquarie sent the