Lest we forget: The Coniston Massacre

Whether we want to face the massacres or not as a nation these things shape us. At present we are somewhat like the episode in Fawlty Towers when John Cleese says “Don’t mention the war”. We don’t mention the massacres. Perhaps partly this is due to the difficulty of finding out what really happened. But not with Coniston. There’s plenty of information. Google, goggle and gag at the details. The only dispute seems to be about how many were killed. Windschuttle estimates 50, the National Museum of Australia say 60, Indigenous sources think at least twice that and everyone seems to think that’s possible.

Isn’t it time we acknowledged it and acknowledged it was wrong.

The enquiry into the Coniston massacres was a police enquiry into mass shootings by a policeman. On the board sat Cawood who had sent Murray out to Coniston in the first place; Mr. A.H. O'Kelly, Police Magistrate, the chairman and Mr. P.A. Giles, Police Inspector of South Australia. They decided that the shootings had been justified.

There has never been another enquiry.

How safe would we feel if the police had shot our grandparents dead, plus dozens of other people of our ethnic origin, and an official enquiry concluded it was justified?

It is to our shame that this has never been redressed. We need a new enquiry. As yet we don’t even have the concepts and words to come to grips with what happened. Was this a war? If so it was undeclared and peace has never been declared either. There has never been a treaty. The people killed were not military but neither were they civilians as the word civil is defined as of or consisting of citizens. Aboriginal people didn’t get citizenship until 1967. Neale, born in Alice Springs in 1964, didn’t become a citizen until she was three.

White Australia has largely forgotten the massacres but Indigenous people are still affected. Social and health problems among the Indigenous people in and around Alice Springs are well known and there seems to be a collective wish among white Australians that they’d get over it - but we don’t really want to know what “it” is. It is too uncomfortable. Some people wonder why “throwing money at the problem” doesn’t work, but maybe it’s a case of whole communities having communal post traumatic stress disorder. As a nation we are pretending massacres didn’t happen while Australians are still reeling from the effect.

When Kevin Rudd took office as Prime Minister one of his first acts was to apologise to Indigenous people, especially for the Stolen Generations, but his speech didn’t mention the massacres. At the last election, neither major party seemed to think Indigenous issues were important; it was as if that had been ticked off. The nation needs to make another apology, this time for the massacres. Many Australians, black and white, want reconciliation but we are living in two realities, one in which Coniston exists and the other in which it doesn’t. Don’t we have to bridge that difference before we can have reconciliation?

We have a long way to go and one of the impediments may be that some of us may have to face the fact that members of our families were perpetrators of massacres. One person who has already done so is Rhubee Neale. Billy Briscoe, who accompanied Murray on the shooting rampage, was her great grandfather. “He was fluent in Anmatyerre and other Aboriginal languages and had a couple of Aboriginal wives that I know about,” she said.

“If I can reconcile my Aboriginal and Irish sides - I reckon that’s true reconciliation,” she added. “He fathered my grandmother Ruby and I’ve found out that he has family living in Adelaide. I personally would love to meet them and also my relatives in Ireland.”

Neale performs a song, “Kangaroo Irish Stew” that she co-wrote with Kenneth Smith and Nathan Scott. “This song talks about my Aboriginal and Irish blood, Australian history and the treatment of my Aboriginal people and my personal embracement of my Irish and Aboriginal heritage, even if my Irish family doesn’t want to know me.”

“Kangaroo Irish Stew” has a recurring line which reflects her heritage, “Drawn to the tin whistle and didgeridoo”. One verse is about her grandfather coming home from hunting and finding his small children chained to a tree, an event many of us can’t imagine. Neale is resolute. “This song is not about blaming but about my identity of being Indigenous Australian and Irish.”

The Coniston Massacre is something we should deal with because many people are still hurting, because there is a lot of evidence and because this is the heart of our nation.

According to Rhubee Neale, “The perpetrators should be held accountable and the stories of both sides told and shared. It is the past that should be addressed because how can we move forward united if it is not addressed?”

It’s a good question. Isn’t it time we held a new enquiry and as a nation accept what happened and absorb it into our reality?