This media release has gone out today. It advises of the launch of our associate website defendingcountry.au. Honest History’s long time interest in the War Memorial and the Frontier Wars will continue on the new site.
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15 November 2023
Media release: The Australian War Memorial has let Australians down: Defending Country website launched
‘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.
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A new website, defendingcountry.au, has been launched with the primary objective of ensuring that the Australian War Memorial properly recognises and commemorates the Australian Frontier Wars.
For decades the Australian War Memorial Council has denied the need for the full recognition of Australia’s first wars – the Frontier Wars – despite the overwhelming evidence of what today would be regarded as not only war but war crimes.
Defendingcountry.au shows that the War Memorial is wrong.
Part of the problem is the entrenched views of a War Memorial Council which does not represent the views of Australia’s leading historians and many, many veterans and their families.
We need to recognise the services of our veterans and the sacrifices of those who died or suffered for the rest of their lives from physical and mental wounds. But we also need to tell the truth about all our wars and tell it in the Memorial.
The Defending Country website includes a detailed analysis of how the Memorial is trying to evade its responsibilities. The analysis shows how far the Memorial has retreated from a commitment in September 2022 by its then Council Chair, Dr Brendan Nelson, for a ‘much broader, much deeper depiction and presentation of frontier violence’, how it has misused the Freedom of Information process to conceal and mislead, and how its Council has become divided on an issue where it had the chance to lead Australians to a new understanding of our history.
Australians who welcomed an apparent change in direction at the Memorial should feel let down. The future Memorial – after redevelopment costing $550m – will tell much the same stories it has told since it opened in 1941. The Frontier Wars will be marginalised. This is a long way from what Patricia Karvelas of the ABC in October 2022 described as ‘the beginning of a new chapter for Australia’.
Defendingcountry.au includes FAQs on the Frontier Wars, why these wars are important in Australia’s history, and why the War Memorial is the place to lead the change. Broadening the focus of the Memorial opens the way to reframing Australian commemoration, so that we acknowledge and commemorate all our wars, not just the ones fought overseas. The website includes dozens of references on the Frontier Wars and First Nations history as well as links to related websites.
Extracts from defendingcountry.au
Closing the Commemoration Gap
The Australian War Memorial must properly recognise and commemorate the Australian Frontier Wars as an essential part of Truth-telling and as a first step to reframing Australian national commemoration.
About Defending Country
‘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.
Recognising and implementing the Defending Country theme is the key to the Australian War Memorial’s future as an honest Australian cultural institution, one that owns and acknowledges all our history of war and its effects.
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 poison;
- 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’.
All these people believed their Country was threatened and needed defending.
As the War Memorial is Australia’s premier commemorative institution, grounding it in the Defending Country theme should set the tone for institutions and communities across our country. It should also have implications for national days of commemoration, like Anzac Day and Remembrance Day.
Defending Country Memorial Project Inc. has been formed to encourage the Australian War Memorial to properly recognise and commemorate the Frontier Wars. Its members are Noel Turnbull (Secretary), Professor Peter Stanley, Dr David Stephens, Dr Carolyn Holbrook and Pamela Burton. We are seeking senior First Nations Patrons; Megan Davis, Henry Reynolds and Clare Wright have already agreed to be Patrons. The new website is an associate site of honesthistory.net.au, established in 2013.
Contact: Dr David Stephens
info@defendingcountry.au ; 0413 867 972
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