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If Anzac Day is about Australian servicemen and women fighting in overseas wars to protect our freedom, then Australia needs to face up to the truth of its history and accept what happened in the past before we can move forward towards shared Sovereignty.  The aftermath of this bloodbath is still with us. Judging by the racist remarks (unrepeatable here), that the author of this website heard an attendee utter today during the National Anzac Day Ceremony, we are a very long way from Australians even knowing about, or understanding, what happened on Australia’s killing fields from 1788 up to he 1940s. Speaking at the National Press Club, Canberra, on 18 April 2018, Man Booker Prize Winner Richard Flanagan reflected on Anzac Day, Australia’s First Peoples, what happened in colonial Australia and why Australians need to face up to the truth of our history. Below (in italics) are edited excerpts from Richard Flanagan’s speech that refer to the frontier wars: … We could ask why–if we were actually genuine about remembering patriots who have died for this country–why would we not first spend $100m on a museum honouring the at least 65,000 estimated Indigenous dead who so tragically lost their lives defending their country here in Australia in the frontier wars of the 19th century? Why is there nowhere in Australia telling the stories of the massacres, the dispossession, and the courageous resistance of these patriots? The figure of 65,000, I should add, is one arrived at by two academics at the University of Queensland and applies only to Indigenous deaths in that State. If their methodology is correct, the numbers for the Indigenous fallen nationally must be extraordinarily large. As one prominent commentator noted, “Individually and collectively, it was sacrifice on a stupendous scale. We should be a nation of memory, the commentator went on, not just of memorials, for these are our foundation stories. They should be as important to us as the ride of Paul Revere, or the last stand of King Harold at Hastings, or the incarceration of Nelson Mandela might be to others.” The prominent […]