Memorialisation, Reconciliation and Truth-Speaking: The Role of Explorer and Massacre Memorials in Settler-Colonial Australia

ABSTRACT

Memorialisation in settler-colonial nations such as Australia is intensely political. It creates public symbols of people and events those in authority consider important and worthy of remembrance. Counter-narratives of various marginalised others are silenced through processes of collective forgetting. In Australia, this forgetting has meant that colonial histories of exploration and discovery have been commemorated through ubiquitous explorer memorials. But these memorials represent a very selective account of settler-colonial history firmly based in the colonial fiction of terra nullius or empty land used to justify the British claim to Australia. This fiction is now being actively countered by social protests focused on memorials to explorers and colonial administrators. Furthermore, a trend to memorialise and commemorate the massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as part of the colonisation process is overturning the myth that Australia was peacefully settled. In fact, truth-speaking is now recognised by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians as an integral part of the reconciliation process. However, the truths spoken as part of the shared memorialisation of Aboriginal massacre sites by the Australian reconciliation movement are only partial, and may serve to perpetuate rather than interrupt what has historically been a resounding silence about colonial dispossession and violence.

KEYWORDS:

• Explorer memorials
• massacre memorials
• settler-colonialism
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
• reconciliation
• truth-speaking

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term “explorer” is formatted in quotation marks to critically position the claim that these white men were the first people to traverse the Australian continent. Australia was fully occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples before the arrival of Europeans, and was thus not an unpeopled wilderness available for white exploration, as the term implies. Additionally, such journeys were not typically an individual but rather a collective effort, in which Aboriginal peoples often played an important role. See Tiffany Shellam et al., Brokers and Boundaries: Colonial Exploration in Indigenous Territory (Canberra: ANU Press, 2016), 1–2.

2 Lyndall Ryan et al., “Colonial Frontier Massacres Australia 1780 to 1930,” Newcastle University Centre for 21st Century Humanities, accessed 18 May 2020, https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php.

3 W. E. H. Stanner, The Dreaming & Other Essays (Melbourne: Black Inc. Agenda, 2009), 189.

4 Penelope Edmonds, Settler Colonialism and (Re)conciliation: Frontier Violence, Affective Performances, and Imaginative Refoundings (UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

5 Paul Daley, “Bathurst, Where the Spirits Prowl and Whisper Painful, Bloody Truths,” Guardian, 7 August 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/aug/07/bathurst-where-the-spirits-prowl-and-whisper-painful-bloody-truths. See also Cole Harris, “How Did Colonialism Dispossess? Comments from an Edge of Empire,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94, no. 1 (2014): 165–82.

6 Michael Asten, “The Risdon Cove Site: Birth of a State or Site of a Massacre; Bone of Contention or Future Site of Reconciliation?,” Tasmanian Historical Studies 18 (2013): 103–21.

7 Monument Australia is a non-government organisation that maintains an online register of Australian monuments. See https://www.monumentaustralia.org.au/.

8 Approximately 170 explorer monuments/memorials appeared on the Monument Australia website on 29 April 2021 for the state of NSW; however, I note this is likely to be an underestimation because these entries are based on information contributed by the public. I searched all entries under the category of explorer memorial for NSW and chose every tenth entry to examine in more detail for information such as date of installation or dedication and location. Of the eighteen entries identified, no date was available for four.

9 The Orara River is within the Clarence River catchment, in the NSW Northern Rivers area: https://www.myclarencevalley.com/operators/orara-river/ (accessed 25 November 2021).

10 Clarence Valley Aboriginal Heritage Study (Sydney: Australian Museum Consulting, 2014), 33, https://www.clarence.nsw.gov.au/page.asp?f=RES-CAM-60-43-25 (accessed 18 May 2021).

11 Martha Rutledge, “Ogilvie, Edward David (1814–1896),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ogilvie-edward-david-777/text7017 (accessed 18 May 2021).

12 Paul Daley, “Heroes, Monuments and History,” Meanjin (Autumn 2018): 86–97.

13 Sue Jackson, “The Colonial Technologies and Practices of Australian Planning,” in Planning in Indigenous Australia: From Imperial Foundations to Postcolonial Futures, ed. Sue Jackson et al. (New York: Routledge, 2017), 72–91, https://doi-org.ezproxy.uws.edu.au/10 .4324/9781315693668.

14 Bronwyn Carlson, ABC Radio interview, quoted in Daley, “Heroes,” 91.

15 Camron Slessor and Eugene Boisvert, “Black Lives Matter Protests Renew Push to Remove ‘Racist’ Monuments to Colonial Figures,” ABC News, 10 June 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-10/black-lives-matter-protests-renew-push-to-remove-statues/12337058.

16 Christopher Knaus, “‘No pride in genocide': Vandals Deface Captain Cook Statue in Sydney's Hyde Park,” Guardian, 26 August 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/aug/26/captain-cook-statue-and-two-others-in-sydneys-hyde-park-attacked-by-vandals.

17 Kevin Nguyen, “Enormous Crowds March in Sydney Black Lives Matter Protest after Last-Ditch Win in Court of Appeal,” ABC News, 6 June 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-06/arrests-at-sydney-black-lives-matter-protests/12329066.

18 Stefan Armbruster, “Captain Cook 250th Anniversary Voyage Suspended Due to Coronavirus,” SBS News, 27 March 2020, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/captain-cook-250th-anniversary-voyage-suspended-due-to-coronavirus/a9ead301-f591-4fa5-bc08-2e1c403f340c.

19 Daley, “Heroes,” 90. The inscription reads: “He was a perfect gentleman, a Christian and supreme legislator of the human heart.”

20 Stephen Gapps, Gudyarra: The first Wiradyuri War of Resistance—The Bathurst war 1822–1824 (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2021), 13.

21 “Proclamation,” Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 19 August 1824, 1.

22 This data was obtained by Lyndall Ryan and her team of researchers based at Newcastle University, NSW, who have produced a web-based map of colonial frontier massacres that occurred in Australia between 1780 and 1930. See https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php.

23 Stuart Banner, “Why Terra Nullius? Anthropology and Property Law in Early Australia,” Law and History Review 23, no. 1 (2005): 95–131.

24 Harris, “How Did Colonialism Dispossess?,” 165–82.

25 Bathurst Historical Society, Bathurst Regional Council and NSW Department of Environment and Heritage, interpretive signage, Kings Parade, Bathurst.

26 Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 10.

27 Gapps, Gudyarra, 13.

28 Christian Paas-Lang, “Samuel de Champlain Monument Will Be Re-installed in Orillia, with Alterations,” Canadian Press, 24 July 2019, https://www.proquest.com/docview/2264367363?pqorigsite=primo&accountid=36155.

29 Paas-Lang, “Samuel de Champlain”.

30 Bathurst Historical Society et al., interpretative signage.

31 Journals of Captain Cook 1999, cited in Banner, “Why Terra Nullius?,” 100.

32 Banner, “Why Terra Nullius?,” 100.

33 Banner, “Why Terra Nullius?,” 101.

34 Adrian Little and Mark McMillan, “Invisibility and the Politics of Reconciliation in Australia: Keeping Conflict in View,” Ethnopolitics 16, no. 5 (2017): 527.

35 Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2011); Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture (Broome, WA: Magabala Books, 2014).

36 “Explorer Evans,” Wyalong Advocate and Mining, Agricultural and Pastoral Gazette, 3 December 1920, 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article112439925.

37 “Explorer Evans,” 3.

38 Bathurst Historical Society et al., interpretative signage.

39 Bathurst Regional Council, Bathurst Courthouse and Bathurst District Historical Society are located on Russell Street, which bounds Kings Parade on one side. All Saints Anglican Cathedral is located on Church Street, which bounds Kings Parade on the other side.

40 Bathurst Historical Society et al., interpretative signage.

41 Philippa Scarlett, “Aboriginal Service in the First World War: Identity, Recognition and the Problem of Mateship,” Aboriginal History 39 (2015): 163–81.

42 Daley, “Bathurst”.

43 Owen Dwyer and Derek Alderman, “Memorial Landscapes: Analytic Questions and Metaphors,” GeoJournal 73 (2008): 169.

44 Australia ICOMOS, The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance (Burwood, VIC: International Council on Monuments and Sites, 2013), https://australia.icomos.org/publications/burra-charter-practice-notes/.

45 Anna Haebich, “The Battlefields of Aboriginal History,” in Australia’s History: Themes and Debates, ed. M. Lyons and P. Russell (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2005), 1–21.

46 Andrew Taylor, “Historian Questions whether Graffiti Should Have Been Left on Captain Cook Statue,” Sydney Morning Herald, 18 April 2018, https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/historian-captain-cook-statue-graffiti-indigenous-20180418-p4zade.html. See also Brianne McGonigle Leyh, “Imperatives of the Present: Black Lives Matter and the Politics of Memory and Memorialization,” Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 38, no. 4 (2020): 239–45.

47 Taylor, “Historian Questions”.

48 Roger Simon, “Afterword: The Turn to Pedagogy: A Needed Conversation on the Practice of Curating Difficult Knowledge,” in Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places, ed. Erica Lehrer, Cynthia E. Milton, and Monica Eileen Patterson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 193.

49 Silke Arnold-de Simine, “A New Type of Museum?,” in Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 7–13. See also Erica Lehrer and Cynthia Milton, “Introduction: Witnesses to Witnessing,” in Lehrer, Milton, and Patterson, Curating Difficult Knowledge, 1–22.

50 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 389.

51 Ryan et al. have identified 350–400 documented massacre sites of Aboriginal people across Australia, although they note this is likely to be a conservative estimate. See also Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians: A History since 1788 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2010) and Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the early Colony 1788–1817 (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2018).

52 Gary Foley and Tim Anderson, “Land Rights and Aboriginal Voices,” Australian Journal of Human Rights 12, no. 1 (2006): 83–108. See also Gabrielle Appleby and Megan Davis, “The Uluru Statement and the Promises of Truth,” Australian Historical Studies 49, no. 4 (2018): 501–9.

53 A search of the Monument Australia website in May 2021 using the terms “conflict” and “Indigenous” identified only nine listings for massacre memorials in the state of NSW.

54 Kelly Fuller, “Appin Site of Aboriginal Massacre by English Soldiers Added to State Heritage Register,” ABC News, 15 December 2022, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-15/state-heritage-listing-for-appin-massacre-site/101765746.

55 Governor Macquarie letter to Earl Bathurst, March 1816, quoted in Gapps, The Sydney Wars, 225.

56 Gapps, The Sydney Wars.

57 Ryan et al., “Colonial Frontier Massacres Australia 1780–1930”. See also Gapps, The Sydney Wars.

58 Gapps, The Sydney Wars, 235.

59 “About,” Winga Mayamly Reconciliation Group, accessed 31 May 2020, https://wingamyamly.com/?page_id=21.

60 This assessment is based on my own observations when I attended the annual commemoration of the massacre on Sunday 18 April 2021.

61 I have retained the original formatting.

62 Little and McMillan, “Invisibility and the Politics of Reconciliation”. See also Adrian Little, “The Politics of Makarrata: Understanding Indigenous–Settler Relations in Australia,” Political Theory 48, no. 1 (2010): 30–56; Sarah Maddison and Sana Nakata, “Introduction: Questioning Indigenous–Settler Relations: Reconciliation, Recognition, Responsibility,” in Questioning Indigenous-Settler Relations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Singapore: Springer, 2019), 1–13; and Damien Short, “Australian ‘Aboriginal’ Reconciliation: The Latest Phase in the Colonial Project,” Citizenship Studies 7, no. 3 (2003): 291–312.

63 Sara Ahmed, “The Politics of Bad Feeling,” Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association Journal 1 (2005): 72–85. See also Sarah Kizuk, “Settler Shame: A Critique of the Role of Shame in Settler–Indigenous Relationships in Canada,” Hypatia 35 (2020): 161–77.

64 Gapps, The Sydney Wars.

65 Whyte, cited in Maddison and Nakata, “Introduction,” 4.

66 Maddison and Nakata, “Introduction,” 4.

67 Little and McMillan, “Invisibility and the Politics of Reconciliation,” 519.

68 Little and McMillan, “Invisibility and the Politics of Reconciliation,” 520.

69 Sharon Macdonald, “Is ‘Difficult Heritage’ Still Difficult? Why Public Acknowledgement of Past Perpetration May No Longer Be So Unsettling to Collective Identities,” Museum International 67, no. 1/4 (2015): 17.

70 Noam Lupu, “Memory Vanished, Absent and Confined: The Countermemorial Project in 1980s and 1990s Germany,” History and Memory 15, no. 2 (2003): 149.

71 For example, the Myall Creek massacre memorial in Northern NSW is included on Australia’s National Heritage list.

72 Jenalee Kluttz, Jude Walker, and Pierre Walter, “Unsettling Allyship, Unlearning and Learning towards Decolonising Solidarity,” Studies in the Education of Adults 52, no. 1 (2020): 49–66.

73 Kluttz et al., “Unsettling Allyship,” 55–56.

74 “Myall Creek Massacre,” National Museum of Australia, accessed 31 May 2021, https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/myall-creek-massacre.

75 Bronwyn Batton and Paul Batton, “Memorialising the Past: Is There an Aboriginal Way?,” Public History Review 15 (2008): 92–116.

76 “Country” is a term used in Aboriginal English “to describe land as a ‘nourishing terrain’: sentient, sapient, multidimensional, and intertwined with Indigenous kinship, ancestry, law, language, and culture". Rose in Sarah Wright et al., “Telling Stories in, through and with Country: Engaging with Indigenous and More-than-Human Methodologies at Bawaka, NE Australia,” Journal of Cultural Geography 29, no. 1 (2012): 58.

77 Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage (New York: Routledge, 2006). See also Rodney Harrison, Heritage—Critical Approaches (London: Routledge, 2012).

78 Timothy Brown, “Trauma, Museums and the Future of Pedagogy,” Third Text 18, no. 4 (2004): 247–59.

79 Edmonds, Settler Colonialism and (Re)conciliation, 13.