In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back
In her new SBS documentary, Rachel Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years.
Primary Results
Gargoyles and silence: ‘our story’ at the Australian War Memorial
The Australian War Memorial promises to tell ‘our story’ about the nation’s war experience – but it silences many stories about Australia’s nationhood and glosses over Indigenous experience.
The Australian War Memorial must deal properly with the frontier wars
The memorial promotes a powerful national origin story. The story of frontier warfare is also a powerful foundation story that deserves to be told.
Why First Nations ‘ununiformed warriors’ qualify for the Australian War Memorial
The Australian War memorial recently announced it will extend its exhibition to recognise the Frontier Wars, where Aboriginal resistance fighters fought in retaliation to massacres and other attacks.
Friday essay: it’s time for a new museum dedicated to the fighters of the frontier wars
The widespread conflict that accompanied Australian life for 140 years was arguably our most important war. We need a museum telling this story, funded on a par with The Australian War Memorial.
Recognising the warriors: Henry Reynolds on the war memorial’s surprising change of direction
The Australian War Memorial’s pledge to recognise the frontier wars is an end to ‘black armband’ rhetoric. It should now investigate the Aboriginal resistance, and see it as a military operation.
‘A defiant stand’: histories of Australia’s frontier wars are revealing their true complexity, but there’s more to be done
Australian military history is still unsure how to represent the frontier wars. Uprising contests most histories, describing a coordinated Aboriginal military front.
The Australian War Memorial’s prize controversy betrays the institution’s purpose: to tell the messy truth about war
Chris Masters’ book on Ben Roberts-Smith was chosen to win the Australian War Memorial’s Les Carlyon Prize for Military History. But the prize wasn’t awarded. Why?
On Anzac Day, we remember the Great War but forget our first war
On Anzac Day, Australia remembers its war dead, with one tragic exception. Australia is apparently disinclined to acknowledge the fact or the importance of frontier conflicts. What’s the nexus between…
Friday essay: neither a monster nor a saint … Sir Samuel Griffith, Queensland’s violent frontier and the rigours of truth‑telling
Many argue Samuel Griffith, twice Queensland premier and our first chief justice, is guilty of colonial war crimes. Raymond Evans searched for the evidence to nail him but found a different story.
Secondary Results
