It’s time to commemorate the Frontier Wars

In Frontier: Aborigines, Settlers and Land (Allen & Unwin 1987), Henry Reynolds reviews correspondence in which British settler invaders drew parallels in their letters home with other conflicts the British Empire fought in the world. There were comparisons with Indian rebellions; Jamaican riots; fierce hordes in the Sudan; savage Abyssinians, Apaches, Iroquois,Maoris, Zulus and many others.

Frontier conflict was the most persistent feature of Australian life for 140 years. This was an inescapable consequence of the invasion and colonisation of the continent. The invaders saw no need to negotiate purchase of land or make treaties as they had done in North America and New Zealand.

The Frontier Wars were a series of violent confrontations and massacres across the continent and many Europeans were ruined through despair and bankruptcy following Aboriginal incendiary raids on crops, huts and livestock. Native peoples fought the invaders on a tribe by tribe basis because each of them was a sovereign people defending their land.

In a battle between the Duangwurrung people and George Faithful's party near Benalla in 1838, natives killed eight of his men. Faithful wrote of Aboriginal women and children running between his horse's legs to retrieve spears for their warriors to re-use.

Conditions on the frontier were unpredictable and revenge was often the principal motive for an attack on both sides. There were no frontlines, no clear demarcation between territories held by opposing forces, and no distinction between civilians and combatants.

The Aborigines sought to remain on their traditional lands rather than fall back before the invasion and they continued to defend their land and sacred places for as long as they were able. Eventually, the British gathered the disoriented leftovers of colonial conquest on reserves and they entered the twentieth century out of sight and out of mind.

For the AWM to say that the Frontier Wars do not fit its charter is to exclude a whole people from commemoration based on a trifle. By way of comparison, our partners in the Anzac

legend have no problem commemorating the Maori Wars (1845-1872).

This is a moral issue-it is incumbent on non-Indigenous Australians to own our past and accept that our forebears perpetrated wrongs against Australia's Indigenous peoples. If our Indigenous peoples could go to the War Memorial and see a portrayal of their resistance heroes and testimony to their ancestors' tenacious struggle for their land what a boost to their morale it would be.

If we are to be members of one nation, we cannot continue to have conflicting stories about our past. We will know we belong to one nation when a shrine honouring fallen Indigenous warriors is placed alongside the tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldierin the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.