Reconciliation in Action | The Frontier Wars

It is a deeply challenging question.

It goes to our fundamental understanding of who we are as Australians.

Of who we are as a nation. Of the real story of the history of this continent.

It is asking us to listen. To hear. To understand.

To put aside the one-sided history we learnt in schools and to open our minds to a more complex and at times disturbing narrative of the settlement of this land.

It means hearing about and understanding the impacts of war. But not the wars we all know about, those wars that saw so many of our nation’s young men go off to fight on foreign soil. Those wars that are commemorated in memorials dotted across the nation, found in every city and even in small country towns.

Perkins’ question asks us to face the reality about another war — a war on Australian soil.

A war that many of us have never heard about, or if we have, only in whispers.

It is a war that has stamped its legacy on this country and one that has shaped who we are.

It is a war that saw the deaths of almost as many Australians killed on home soil defending country as were killed in all the overseas conflicts combined.

And yet, it is a war of which we are mainly ignorant.

So how can this be?

How can so many of us not know about such carnage, about such loss of life, about what has been termed the “frontier wars”?

But there are those who know only too well about this story of war.

They are the descendants of survivors, who know the heartbreaking and graphic stories handed down from generation to generation. They are the custodians of a brutal history.

They are the First Nations people of these lands. They understand only too well the impact of these wars — the slaughter, the poisonings, the rape, the genocide.

“Aboriginal people carry this burden of knowing what happened in our past, knowing that there’s never been any justice and there’s never been any acknowledgement,” explained Yiman woman, anthropologist and activist Marcia Langton in episode one of The Australian Wars.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have long called for a process of truth–telling about our colonial past and for all Australians to understand this dark part of our history.

The meticulous work by University of Newcastle’s Professor Lyndall Ryan mapping the colonial massacres across Australia — identifying and recording sites of frontier massacres of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people across Australia in the period 1788-1930 — has provided a glimpse into this history.

As the mapping progressed from the eastern states to the rest of the continent, the number of yellow dots, each one representing the death of six or more people, tracks the progress of colonisation.

But up until now, the silence on this aspect of Australia’s history has been deafening.

It is a particular conundrum for our country.

Historian Henry Reynolds captures this perfectly when he is discussing Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s role in the military campaign on the Paramatta Plains.

“Do we say Macquarie was a murderer? Or do we say he was engaged in a colonial war and conquest? It’s got to be one or the other. And I think it makes it far easier for us if we accept that it is war. Because the alternative is that they are murderers,” he said.

As Aboriginal people were considered British subjects, their killing should have been considered illegal — murder — and perpetrators brought to justice. Yet it is clear this did not happen.

But neither has there been acknowledgement of a state of war between the British and Aboriginal nations.

We are caught in a state of collective denial of what actually happened.

And yet it is not difficult to find this information. It is in newspapers, letters, colonists’ diaries, official reports and obviously in the oral history of so many Aboriginal communities across the nation.

Visit the Reading Room at the State Library of Victoria and locate a volume of the Clyde Company Papers (1821-35). It details the composition of the forces Governor George Arthur commissioned in the Tasmanian “Black War” and their attitude towards their task.

The Australian War Memorial (AWM) in Canberra, the country’s holder of our known stories of conflict — the Boer War, World Wars I and II, Korean War, Vietnam War and other theatres of war and peacekeeping roles involving our troops — has, until now, steadfastly refused to acknowledge the defining conflict of our country — the Frontier Wars.

The recent announcement by AWM Governing Council chairman Brendan Nelson that there will be a “much broader, much deeper depiction and presentation of the violence committed against Indigenous people, initially by the British, then by pastoralists, then by police and then by Aboriginal militia” is what Rachel Perkins called a “watershed moment”.

It is a moment historians and First Nations leaders have long been calling for, arguing that the resistance of colonisation and the battle for sovereignty is a critical part of Australia’s history, and a failure to tell this story in the leading national institution telling stories of war is part of the great Australian silence.

For the battles of the Frontier Wars are part of our history, arguably more important and nation-defining than the Anzac stories of battles far away.

But what has stopped us from acknowledging this history? That is the question Perkins posed in her documentary.

Sandi Hamilton is a descendant of a member of the 46th regiment ordered by Governor Macquarie to take part in the Paramatta Plains operation. The regiment was also involved in the documented massacre at Appin on April 17, 1816. When asked this question by Perkins in the documentary, she replied:

“It (is) part of the whole picture of denial and whitewashing, not blemishing the great Australian story. Australians love those romantic stories where against all odds we create something wonderful. Some people don’t want that story to change.”

But as Australians, it is important we have a history that allows us to look back with honesty, to be able to acknowledge and understand all facets of this story, even though to do this is deeply challenging. But it will ultimately strengthen our nation.

As Hamilton went on to explain when confronting the truth in her family history, “It’s awkward. It is difficult and it is emotional, but there’s a real sense of healing on both sides”.

And this healing is what our country is crying out for.

It is Perkins’ balance between humanity and truth-telling that underscores The Australian Wars and makes this an important offering in helping us all to break the great Australian silence.

So, take a step on this healing journey for our country. Find out more.

Watch The Australian Wars and perhaps it will become more clear as to why First Nations peoples are calling for truth-telling and honesty in our nation’s story.

The documentary also sheds light on why January 26 — the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 — is considered a day of mourning.

The Australian Wars can be seen on SBS on Demand.

To find out more about the work of the University of Newcastle’s mapping of massacre sites, visit https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php

Visit your local library and look for books by historian Henry Reynolds.